There are things we can’t talk about in this house, not because someone has told us we can’t, but because no one has told us we can. In our world, in the child world, most everything is black or white, love or hate, rest or play. You are either in mother’s way or she can’t see you at all. Bodies become invisible, and the most important ones are dead, stored in a mausoleum off State Route 119. My grandparents are buried, not in dirt, but in stone drawers. I read in a magazine that hair and fingernails continue to grow after death, picture my grandmother with wild, gray strands thin as wire, my grandfather’s toenails yellow and curled. I swear to Linda, my older sister, that I would open one of those drawers if I could. She dares me, double dare, double dog dare.
At the change of each season, we put the little black stool in the trunk of the Lincoln and drive to the cemetery, where my mother climbs up and retrieves vases full of silk flowers. She takes them to DeMath’s Florist in town, has a woman named Tibby create a new arrangement to fit the new season. Sunflowers for summer, mums for fall, poinsettias for winter, lilies for spring. I like to pull the old flowers out of the vases, release the plastic stems from green foam that used to be spongy, but now crumbles, dried out from the wind on top of the hill where the mausoleum looks down on the highway, no lights to guide you there at night. You just have to know where it is. You just have to know that your family is sleeping there, behind golden name plates, tiny days, months, years.