We Are Not Like Them(60)

Even grief can’t shake my compulsion to fill the quiet, to make everyone around me comfortable at all times. “I’ve read a lot about it. The memorial and the Legacy Museum down the road from it too. They’re supposed to be incredible.”

“Well, you’re here, you might as well check it out,” he says. “I’m Willie, by the way.” He extends a hand.

“Nice to meet you.” I don’t offer my name as he pumps my hand vigorously up and down.

Willie has at least two decades on me, and there’s something about his slightly flirty vibe that makes me think he’s angling to invite me along. Figures, my only action in ages would be with a man old enough to be my father at a museum dedicated to racial terror.

“Oh, well, I’m already late. I need to get to Perote.” I’m not sure why I bother to say the name of a dot on a map no one has heard of like it’s New York City.

“Never heard of it. Where’s that?”

“A little town, if you could even call it that, about an hour south of here.”

I will Tiffany to hurry up and finish with my paperwork so I can escape. I’d forgotten this about the South, the incessant small talk that draws out every errand and interaction twice as long as it needs to be. Sure enough, Willie shifts toward me now, fully invested in our chat. “And what brings you down here?”

It’s a reasonable question—a predictable one—and yet the answer doesn’t want to come out of my mouth. “Oh, uh, it’s actually my grandmother’s funeral.” The convivial mood is ruined as everyone suddenly looks at me with sympathy. The upside is that introducing death into the conversation might make Tiffany get me the keys already.

“Oh, well, I’m sorry for your loss,” Willie says with genuine compassion. “My moms died last month. It, well, it’s tough.”

My back stiffens when he turns to me; I’m irrationally afraid he’s going to hug me. Then I feel bad for tilting backward and force myself to lean into the conversation again. He nods and tells me to be strong as he walks toward the exit.

Be strong. God knows I’m trying.

His words have me slipping right back to the night Gigi died. Momma said the same thing when we were gathered around Gigi’s bed. “We have to be strong. We have to be strong.” The doctors had stabilized Gigi after she’d suffered a stroke. She was unconscious but looked peaceful. You almost wouldn’t know her organs were shutting down, even though the doctor had explained that was exactly what was happening. I made it to the hospital in time, which will always be one of the things I am most grateful for in this life. When I arrived, the first person I saw was my dad, staring vacantly into a vending machine down the hall.

“Daddy?”

He jumped a little, coming back from wherever he was. “Oh, hey, baby, come here.” He reached over, pulled me close. In the glass of the machine, I could see our reflection, how much we look alike, same round eyes and large forehead, same sadness.

“How you holding up, Daddy?”

“I’m fine. It’s your mother we need to worry about. You know this is—this is it, right?” He looked at me solemnly. He wanted me to be prepared. If there’s one thing my dad always wants, it’s for me to be prepared, for anything, everything in life.

But I wasn’t prepared for this, for losing Gigi. I nodded anyway. I knew that was what he needed to hear.

“How’s Momma holding up?”

“Oh, you know how she is. She’s making unreasonable demands of the nurses and of Jesus… going on about miracles. I keep trying to tell her that she has to let Gigi go, but I know that’s easier said than done. She should be grateful it’s so peaceful.”

The look on his face made me wonder if he was thinking about his own parents. They’d died before I was born, on their way from Baltimore to Philadelphia on a Greyhound bus that crashed. “Here one second, gone the next,” was how Daddy always put it. The modest settlement from the crash helped pay for my education, which makes me feel connected to the grandparents I never got to meet.

I reluctantly pulled myself out of his arms. “We should get in there. I want to… I want to say goodbye, I guess.”

It was the last thing I wanted to do.

And now we’re here, about to bury Gigi at sundown, and again it’s the last thing I want to do.

I glance down at my watch. It’s 11 a.m. If I leave now, I’ll still arrive in plenty of time for the service. I can spare an hour to visit the memorial. And the man had a point: I’m here, I might as well. When else am I going to be in Montgomery?

By the time Tiffany hands me the packet of papers and keys to my economy rental, I’ve decided to make the detour. I shoot a text to Shaun, letting the family know I’ll be a little later than expected. I want to be with my family, but the pull of the memorial is stronger, a need I can’t explain or ignore. Jimmy.

Turning into the parking lot itself brings on a sense of reverence and dread, as if this patch of asphalt is already hallowed ground. My breath grows shallow as I approach the entrance, almost like I’m afraid, which I am: afraid of how this place might affect me. I already feel fragile, like I’m walking around with an open wound.

Don’t fight the tears. I haven’t cried once since Gigi died, even though crying may be exactly what I need. Maybe that explains this weight I’ve been carrying around with me, all the unshed tears.