The New Moon's Arms Read Free

therefore commit his body to the ground.”
    When I was nine, Dadda had shown me how to fish. But for months he wouldn’t let me bait the hook myself. He did it for me, because he was afraid I would jook my fingers.
    “Earth to earth,” said Pastor Paul.
    When I was twelve and woke up one morning to blood-stained sheets and my first period, Dadda ran to the store and brought back a big shopping bag with pads in all different shapes and sizes. He stood outside the closed bathroom door and called out instructions to me for how to put them on.
    Ifeoma sniffed and wiped her eyes. Stanley’s bottom lip was trembling. Damn, now I was tearing up, too.
    “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
    When I was thirteen and had passed my entrance exams to get into high school, Dadda took me to the big island to celebrate. We went to a fancy restaurant. He bought me ice cream and cake, and drank a toast to me with his glass of sorrel drink.
    “In the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.”
    When I was fifteen, I told Dadda that I was four months pregnant. He raged through the house for two hours, calling me nasty names and demanding to know who’d done it. I wouldn’t tell him. He stopped talking to me. He wouldn’t eat when I cooked. On the third day he ransacked my room and threw away all my makeup and nice clothes. On the fourth day I packed a small bag and moved out. Went to the big island and knocked on the door of Dadda’s sister Aunt Pearl and her husband Edward. Auntie Pearl let me know that I had shamed the whole family, but she and Uncle Edward gave me a roof and fed me, and they didn’t lecture me too often. I got a part-time job as a page in the library. Until my belly got too big for it, I worked all the hours they would give me, saved my money. It was Auntie who was with me the day I had Ifeoma. Auntie, and Michael.
    I dashed my eyes dry. Old brute. He’d had his ways, but if he thought I was going to get sentimental about him now that he was dead, he was sorely mistaken.
    “Amen.”
    “Amen,” responded everyone at the grave site.
    Pastor Paul turned to me and Ifeoma. “Now we’re going to lower the coffin into the grave,” he said. The word “grave” applied to my father was a shock. I felt it, like a blow over my heart. Dadda was in that box, and now they were going to cover him with dirt. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t make words come out.
    “That’s fine,” said Ifeoma to the pastor. “Let’s just do that.”
    Stanley was tugging urgently at my wrist. I patted his hand to let him know I understood. “We have a request first, Egbert,” I said to the pastor.
    “Yes, Miss Lambki… Calamity?”
    Good. He’d managed to force it out. “Pastor Paul, ” I said as his reward—when the puppy obeys, you give it a treat—“can we open the coffin, please? I want to see Dadda’s face.” My voice broke on the last word.
    “Of course, Mistress… Calamity; of course.”
    “Oh, dear,” murmured Ifeoma. She pulled Stanley to her, wiped his face with the corner of her dress. He squirmed. She rummaged around in her handbag; one of those handwoven things made of jute or hay or something ecological of the sort. I gave Stanley a shaky wink. He looked scared and excited all at once.
    “Let me give you your asthma medicine first,” said Ife.
    “I don’t want it!” he replied, trying to wrench himself out of her hands. “It tastes like ass!”
    I snorted, pretended I was blowing my nose.
    “Stanley!” said Ife. She gave Stanley’s shoulder a little shake. “You have some respect for the dead!”
    Fine thing for her to say, Ms. Braless. Stanley scowled at her, then looked down at the ground. I whispered to Ifeoma, “It tastes like—”
    “Not so loud!” she muttered. “He hears these things on American television.”
    I chuckled.
    Pastor Paul called over the usher with the big hands, whispered to him. The usher nodded and got one of the others to help him slide back one