The Ticket

I turned, pressing my face up against the cold glass of the car window. I would do anything to stop the pounding in my temples. It seemed as if my ears had been ringing and my head pounding since my mother’s lips formed the words, “Your father passed away last night.” It’s as if the words flicked some type of switch in my head, turning on the ringing and pounding in order to drown out the words coming from her mouth. I shook my head trying to stop the sound so I could hear her, but I realized I didn’t need to hear her. I knew what she said. She said my life would never be the same.

I watched as a raindrop slowly made its way down the glass, and I wondered how long it would take to get to the cemetery. I knew I wouldn’t make it too far if I had to sit next to Aunt Sophie. Her rear end was taking up any extra space that I might have used to get comfortable. Wedged between her and the car door, I hoped she wouldn’t try to talk to me while we were in that tight little space. I rolled the glass down to get fresh air, and that’s when I saw her.

She didn’t belong in the mix of mourners that had gathered for my father’s funeral. Nearly six feet tall, her slender frame stood in stark contrast to the short, round women of the church. Her dress was at least three inches too high, and her lipstick was a shade of red that no respectable woman would wear during daylight hours. She was bright, vibrant even. Compared to her everyone else took on a washed-out quality, but that’s not what made her stand out. She stood out, because as everyone else looked sad, dabbing at their eyes and wringing their hands…she didn’t. She wasn’t crying. In fact, she looked bored. She stood there, her eyes searching the crowd that had gathered in front of the church as everyone was moving toward their cars, preparing to begin the procession to the cemetery.

I watched as her eyes spanned the crowd, suddenly stopping as they came to rest on whoever or whatever they were searching for, and a wry smile spread across her face. I followed her gaze, my stomach turning slightly as I located what had caught her interest…my mother. She had been scanning the crowd in search of my mother, and now she stood staring at my mother’s face with an expression that I couldn’t quite read. My mouth went dry, my breathing shallow, and fear rose in my chest as I fumbled with the door handle. Breaking her gaze, the woman reached into her purse. I felt I needed to warn my mother. I grabbed the door handle again.

“What are you doing?” Aunt Sophie questioned. “Are you, okay?”

“No, I…,” I sputtered, jerking on the handle.

“Hold on! It’s locked, honey.” Aunt Sophie reached across to unlock the door. “Are you feeling sick? Funerals can have that effect on people sometimes,” she sighed as she opened the door. The opening door gave me no time to shift my weight, and I tumbled out of the car into a puddle, splashing muddy water all over the front of my dress. I was desperately trying to see what was happening. I needed to find the woman again. I leapt to my feet and looked in the direction where the woman had been standing. She was still there pointing her cell phone in my mother’s direction.

“What the fu… Mama!” I yelled. People in the crowd turned to look at me. My mother was doing what she did best. She was making everyone feel better. It was her husband of 49 years that she was burying that day, but she was taking care of folks…giving hugs, patting shoulders, holding space for those who were having trouble accepting that the good Lord had seen fit to take my father.

“Mama!” I tried again. She glanced in my direction with her brows furrowed the way she would whenever I was late for church and made too much noise coming in. I knew not to call her again. I looked back over to where the woman was standing, but she was gone. Some of the ladies from the church were heading in my direction. They were shaking their heads collectively and pulling out napkins and such to dry my dress. They surrounded me clucking like hens, rubbing my dress, patting my face, taking turns pulling me into their arms.

Once we were in the car on the way to the cemetery, Mama turned to me, “So what were you doing? Are you trying to embarrass me? You know how those women talk. You can’t act like we’re falling apart. You just can’t. Your father wouldn’t have wanted that. He wouldn’t have wanted any of this. We’re going to have to keep up appearances until they figure out who is going to take the pulpit now. Understood?”

“Understood,” I sighed. There was no need trying to explain the imminent danger I thought she was in. What was I going to say? For all I knew the woman wasn’t taking a picture of my mother at all, so I kept my mouth shut and decided to assume the role I needed to play for the rest of the day. Aunt Sophie grabbed my leg with her meaty hand and gave it a subtle squeeze. She silently nodded her head without looking in my direction. I melted into the seat thankful for the warmth radiating from her body.

The internment went by without incident. I scanned the crowd, but didn’t see the woman again. Mama kept her hand on my arm the entire time as if she knew I would fade to the back of the crowd if she were to let me go. She held onto me as we dropped flowers into the space that would house my father’s body until Jesus returned. She held onto me as she one-arm hugged each of the mourners who approached her. She only let me go when we returned to the car. She sat on one side of Aunt Sophie, and I sat on the other, because Aunt Sophie always sat in the middle since she almost fell out of a car door as a kid while the car was moving. The drive back to the house was silent as we each gathered our strength to finish out the day’s events with the repast.

I awoke the next morning to the distinct smell of pipe smoke. I bolted upright in my bed. “Pops?” I whispered to myself. The only person allowed to smoke in our house was my father, and that’s only because Mama never found a way to break him of the habit. I jumped up and ran downstairs to my father’s office, taking the steps two at a time. The door to his office was cracked open, so I pushed it open and rushed in, smiling. I stopped short my mouth hanging open, Mama was sitting at my father’s desk holding his pipe under her nose, her eyes were closed, as she let the smoke waft up into her nostrils and curl around her head.

“Mama? What are you doing?’ I asked cautiously.

“I’m trying. I just can’t find it. I don’t…I don’t know what we are going to do,” she said with tears in her eyes.

“Mama, what are you talking about? Find what?” She picked up an envelope on the desk and tossed it in my direction. I stood there staring at the envelope with the word congratulations printed on it.

“I got in?” I asked, my voice shaking.

“You got in,” she nodded. “You can’t go though. You can’t.”

“Mom…Mama, it’s NYU!”

“I know it’s NYU. You can’t go. With your father gone…,” her voice trailed off.

“I thought we had money. Dad said I could go if I was accepted. He said he had everything under control,“ I could hear the desperation rising in my voice. “He had a college fund for me put away. What?”

“What? What happened? Is that what you were about to ask? Your father happened! Your father up and died! He created this mess!”

I picked up the letter and backed out of the room, trying desperately to fight back the tears that Mama would see as weak. As I turned to open the door, a piece of paper dropped onto the floor. It must have been stuck to the envelope from NYU. “Some stories should never be told?” The words were scrawled across the paper. “Mama, what’s this?” I turned to catch the expression of horror on my mother’s face.

“Nothing for you to concern yourself with,” she reached her hand out for the paper. “Take the grocery list off the counter and go to the store. I can’t deal with another casserole. Close the door behind you,” she ordered. “What? She asked sounding exasperated.

“Nothing,” I whispered closing the door.

When I got back from the store, there was a car sitting out in front of the house. The sight of it made me uncomfortable. As I got closer to the house, I could hear my mother’s voice raised in anger. I ran up the steps and dropped the bags onto the counter. My mother’s voice was coming from my father’s office. As I reached the door, it swung open.

“He’s gone! Telling won’t benefit me!” my mother yelled. It was her. The woman from the funeral.

“I suggest you find it, or that won’t be the only story that gets told around here.” She stepped out of the office pulling a little girl behind her. The girl looked confused as her mother pushed her out the door ahead of her. The woman paused to look at me. Her eyes locked in on mine, and she smiled. “You should probably help her,” she sneered. Her perfume was warm and cloying. I could smell it hours later. My mother slammed the door to my father’s office, and I could hear her moving things around for the rest of the night. I ate dinner alone and went to bed.

The next morning I woke up to an empty house. I crept into my father’s office to try and make some sense of what was happening. It was clear that Mama had been searching for something. Everything was out of place. I could feel my head spinning, the blood pounding in my ears. I stretched out on the floor the way I would when my father would be working in his office, and I just wanted to be near him. That’s when I saw it. It was taped to the bottom of his desk. A little black notebook. The kind my father was always writing in. He carried them everywhere. Once I had opened one that he had left sitting on the table, and it was full of strange writing. When I asked my father about it, he chuckled saying that he liked to write in riddles, and I would need to break the code to read it. That had become our game. He would write in code, then give me clues of how to solve it. I peeled the notebook off the bottom of the desk and dialed my mother’s number. “Mama, I think I found what you were looking for.”

My mother’s hand shook as she took the $20,000 check out of the woman’s hand. She glanced at me briefly. I nodded her my reassurance. The woman stood, grabbed her daughter’s hand, and made her way to the door. “What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a story that should never be told,” she smiled.

“Understood,” I said returning her gaze.

I closed the door, smiling as I ran my finger over my ticket to NYU, the little black book in my pocket.