A Piece of Mine (16 page)

When I was through fixin her and she was restin nice and easy, I sat by the bed and pulled the covers up and she said, “Hold my hand, I’m so cold.” Well I grabbed her hand and held, then I rubbed her arms tryin to keep her warm and alive. Then, I don’t know, life just kept rollin and I began to rub her whole little beautiful sore body … all over … and when I got to them bruised places I kissed them and licked them too and placed my body beside her body in her bed
and the love for her just flowed and flowed. One minute I loved her like a child, the next like a mother, then she was the mother, then I was the child, then as a woman friend, then as a man. Ohhhhh, I loved her. I didn’t know exactly what to do but my body did it for me and I did everything I could to make her feel loved and make her feel like Gee Cee makes me feel, so I did everything I could that he had ever done to me to make me feel good, but I forgot Gee Cee … and I cried. Not sad crying, happy cryin, and my tears and my love were all over her and she was holding me. She was holding me … so close, so close. Then we slept and when I wakened up, I went home … and I felt good, not bad. I know you don’t need nothin “forever”, just so you get close to love sometime.

Well Pearl got better. When we saw each other, we weren’t embarrassed or shamed. She hit me on my shoulder and I thumped her on her head as we had done all our lives anyway. We never did it again, we didn’t have to!

Pearl wasn’t made, I guess, for the kind of life she had somehow chosen, so a few years later she died and Tommy Jones picked her plot, right over there where she used to be, and put her there and the tombstone man put that old-brand-new ruby colored gravestone on her grave. The preacher said a few words cause there wasn’t much to pay him with and we all went home to our own lifes, of course.

Soon, I commence to comin over here and sweepin and cleanin up and plantin plants around and this ole Sycamore tree, Pearl had planted at her house, was moved over here before Tommy Jones got put out for not payin rent. I planted it right here over where Gee Cee, me and Pearl gonna be. I likes shade. Anyway I was out here so much that’s how I was able to notice the day Pearl’s tombstone disappeared. Well, I like to died! I knew what that tombstone had gone through to get there! Right away I had my sons get out and find out what had happened and they found out that Tommy Jones was livin mighty hard and was
mighty broke and had stole that tombstone and took it way off and sold it for a few dollars! You can chisel the name off, you know? But I can’t understand what anyone would want a used tombstone for! I mean, for God’s sake, get your own!! At least die first-class even if you couldn’t live that way! Well, we couldn’t find how to get it back so that’s when I started payin on another one for her, and yes, for me and Gee Cee too. They’s paid for now.

In the meantime, liquor and hard livin and a knife put Tommy Jones to rest, and imagine this, that daughter of theirs came down here and bought
ONE
gravestone for her
DADDY!!!
To hold up her name I guess, but that’s all she did, then she left! Ain’t been back!

Well, life goes on, don’t it! Whew!

Now I come here over the years and chip away and chisel and hammer away cause he don’t deserve no stone since he stole Pearl’s. He never give her nothin but them two babies what was just like him and then he stole the last most important thing she wanted! So me, I’m gonna see that he don’t have one either! When it’s through, I’m gonna be through, then the gravestone man can bring them two stones over here, they bought and paid for! And he can place them here beside each other, for the rest of thousands of years. I’m in the middle, between Gee Cee and Pearl, like I’m sposed to be. They don’t say much, but Ruby and the dates and Pearl’s on hers, and the dates. Then my husband’s name and the children on mine and her children’s on hers. And that’s all. I mean, how much can a gravestone say anyway?

After Ruby died at 91 years of age, Gee Cee was still living at 90 years of age and he had a marker laid across the two graves saying, “Friends, all the way to the End.” It’s still there
.

J. California Cooper is the author of three collections of stories—
Some Soul to Keep, Homemade Love
(a recipient of the 1989 American Book Award), and
The Matter Is Life
—as well as a novel,
Family
, and seventeen plays, many of which have been produced and performed on the stage, public television, radio, and college campuses. Her plays have also been anthologized, and in 1978 she was named Black Playwright of the Year for
Strangers
, which was performed at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts. Among her numerous awards are the James Baldwin Writing Award (1988) and the Literary Lion Award from the American Library Association (1988). Ms. Cooper lives in a small town in Texas, and is the mother of a daughter, Paris Williams.