The first time I ever said a word to him, he was already dead. James Mason was seventeen. I was seventeen. I leaned over his casket and stared at his face, all lovely and clammy; cleared of any teenage blemishes. “I am sorry, James,” I told him, and I was sorry. For holding back; for not talking to the boy I saw every day, alone with his beautiful brown hair, long and twisted into a magisterial display of dreadlocks. For months I passed by his shoulder in our school hallways, close enough to brush him with mine. I wondered how it would feel to be the one to make his shy face crack into a sly dimpled grin; to show his perfectly aligned teeth, strong. “I bet we could have been great friends,” I said to the boy dressed in a black suit. Different from his regular black tee-shirts, or the ones faded and tie-died that he wore like a billboard reading: I love this band. I loved those bands too. But I was just as shy.
I didn’t have the right to cry, I didn’t even have the right to be there. Neither did the rest of my high school. We made his parents wonder how their boy could have been lonely with so many friends. The truth was, we weren’t his friends. The elite came because they had to; they had to proclaim their presence. They had to be able to report to the rest of their lunch table that they saw a real dead body. They had to be able to report to the rest of their school that they were close enough to reach in and touch his hard fingers, frozen like a giant doll’s. Of course, they didn’t know the new texture of James’s fingers anymore than the rest of us knew his texture when he was alive. They came for the souvenir, for the folded piece of Catholic paper branded with a pixilated photograph of James on the cover, young, in full smile with his name printed in script above: their trophy mark for witnessing a burial.
A dead body, a missed math exam. There was no better way to spend a Wednesday morning than to leave behind the cinderblock hallways, their thickly painted off-white color was rough to the skin. Cold, even the over-stuffed hallways couldn’t bring enough life to a building with low ceilings. Some went to see James just to get out of there. They stood in the back of the church with their black pants and their black sweaters, their mock misery mocking his miserable family.
Some kids wanted to see his face. The school was filled with controversy: would it be open casket or closed? No one knew where the bullet entered his skull, or if it even exited. We weren’t allowed to know.
The boys insisted it would be closed-casket, that no bullet at self-range could go cleanly. Most of the girls agreed because they didn’t know the first thing about the topic. They all went anyway, hoping for a display, a purple mark on his forehead where the makeup artist couldn’t cover the damaged tissues. Their faces cringed in preparation when they approached his body, his open casket. They were wrong about him- his face was clean, almost breathing, and almost smiling when I looked down on him. There was no purple mark, no pieces of skull missing from its perfect shape. I almost thought he never did it. I almost thought he was still alive. “I’ll miss you,” I whispered, knowing that I would, and that I didn’t have the right to do that, either.
I showed up at St. Anthony’s church early, before any of my classmates. Before James’s, I had only been to a funeral once. I was too young to understand what being gone would feel like, but I cried anyway. And at James’s, I mimicked the only funeral movements I knew: the tucking of the chin, avoidance of eye contact, crossed arms- anything to show aloneness in grief.
I showed up early, alone. Parking was behind the church and I parked there like I did every Sunday for seventeen years of my life. I walked across the lot and through the back door; the oversized floor mat was there too, like every Sunday, and wore the emblem of the church, stamped, in a large black print against the red background. Two people stood at the opposite end of the hallway. Their shoulders rolled, the woman’s hair veiling her cheeks from my view, the man’s brow drawn together tightly in the middle.
I shook the man’s hand, “It is so wonderful you are here,” he said with the expected kind of smile, painful. “Were you a friend of James?”
I lied.
“Good, good,” he looked around, releasing my hand, and handing me instead my souvenir pamphlet. Officially a grown up, I could attend funerals solo now. I didn’t need to walk the aisle on my daddy’s arm; I didn’t need to look away from the corpse face. “It is wonderful to see the faces of his friends here today,” the man said. In my black pants and black sweater, I took my seat at the back of the church.
After proceeding to the front of the church to see James’s face in its final teenage splendor, I snuck out the back door, into the parking lot where I could breathe air outisde the Catholic rituals. Inside my car, I stuck James’s pixilated portrait, my trophy, into my glove compartment, and never spent a Sunday inside that church again.
I didn’t have the right to cry, I didn’t even have the right to be there. Neither did the rest of my high school. We made his parents wonder how their boy could have been lonely with so many friends. The truth was, we weren’t his friends. The elite came because they had to; they had to proclaim their presence. They had to be able to report to the rest of their lunch table that they saw a real dead body. They had to be able to report to the rest of their school that they were close enough to reach in and touch his hard fingers, frozen like a giant doll’s. Of course, they didn’t know the new texture of James’s fingers anymore than the rest of us knew his texture when he was alive. They came for the souvenir, for the folded piece of Catholic paper branded with a pixilated photograph of James on the cover, young, in full smile with his name printed in script above: their trophy mark for witnessing a burial.
A dead body, a missed math exam. There was no better way to spend a Wednesday morning than to leave behind the cinderblock hallways, their thickly painted off-white color was rough to the skin. Cold, even the over-stuffed hallways couldn’t bring enough life to a building with low ceilings. Some went to see James just to get out of there. They stood in the back of the church with their black pants and their black sweaters, their mock misery mocking his miserable family.
Some kids wanted to see his face. The school was filled with controversy: would it be open casket or closed? No one knew where the bullet entered his skull, or if it even exited. We weren’t allowed to know.
The boys insisted it would be closed-casket, that no bullet at self-range could go cleanly. Most of the girls agreed because they didn’t know the first thing about the topic. They all went anyway, hoping for a display, a purple mark on his forehead where the makeup artist couldn’t cover the damaged tissues. Their faces cringed in preparation when they approached his body, his open casket. They were wrong about him- his face was clean, almost breathing, and almost smiling when I looked down on him. There was no purple mark, no pieces of skull missing from its perfect shape. I almost thought he never did it. I almost thought he was still alive. “I’ll miss you,” I whispered, knowing that I would, and that I didn’t have the right to do that, either.
I showed up at St. Anthony’s church early, before any of my classmates. Before James’s, I had only been to a funeral once. I was too young to understand what being gone would feel like, but I cried anyway. And at James’s, I mimicked the only funeral movements I knew: the tucking of the chin, avoidance of eye contact, crossed arms- anything to show aloneness in grief.
I showed up early, alone. Parking was behind the church and I parked there like I did every Sunday for seventeen years of my life. I walked across the lot and through the back door; the oversized floor mat was there too, like every Sunday, and wore the emblem of the church, stamped, in a large black print against the red background. Two people stood at the opposite end of the hallway. Their shoulders rolled, the woman’s hair veiling her cheeks from my view, the man’s brow drawn together tightly in the middle.
I shook the man’s hand, “It is so wonderful you are here,” he said with the expected kind of smile, painful. “Were you a friend of James?”
I lied.
“Good, good,” he looked around, releasing my hand, and handing me instead my souvenir pamphlet. Officially a grown up, I could attend funerals solo now. I didn’t need to walk the aisle on my daddy’s arm; I didn’t need to look away from the corpse face. “It is wonderful to see the faces of his friends here today,” the man said. In my black pants and black sweater, I took my seat at the back of the church.
After proceeding to the front of the church to see James’s face in its final teenage splendor, I snuck out the back door, into the parking lot where I could breathe air outisde the Catholic rituals. Inside my car, I stuck James’s pixilated portrait, my trophy, into my glove compartment, and never spent a Sunday inside that church again.
1 comment:
I loved it, Meg. Very beautiful.
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