The New Moon's Arms Read Free Page A

corner of the coffin lid a little.
    “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Ife asked.
    “Yes, darling. Stanley, are you ready?”
    Stanley started to shake his head no. Turned it into an uncertain nod.
    “Good boy. Never back down, you hear me? No matter what people say to you, always hold your spine straight and look them square in their eye. You understand me?”
    “Yes,” he said in a small voice. He was staring at the casket.
    I hoisted him up onto my hip and walked to the head of the coffin. Together, we looked inside.
    It took a while to make out Dadda’s wizened face in the darkness of the coffin.
    “What you think, Stanley?”
    “He’s all skinny.”
    “It’s true. Smoking isn’t good for you.”
    “And he’s wrinkly.”
    “Yes. He didn’t have a whole lot of flesh left on him. But he was still your great-grandpa.”
    “And he’s not a skellington,” the boy said in a rush, “and Grandma?”
    God, I hated when he called me that. “Yes, dear?”
    “Why does he got makeup on his cheeks?”
    Ifeoma answered, “They did that at the funeral home, to make him look more natural. Don’t you think he looks natural, Stan-Stan?”
    “No,” said the precious boy. Oh, babes and sucklings. “I wanted to see a skellington. He just looks funny .”
    “Stanley!” said Ife. “Manners!”
    “Never mind, Stanley,” I said. “I agree with you. He just looks funny. You want to get down now?”
    “Yes, Grandm—”
    “Calamity.”
    “Yes, Calamity.”
    I sighed as I put Stanley to stand beside me. Ca-lam-i-ty . Easy to say. Just four small syllables, and not even so different from my childhood name. Just more truthful.
    I nodded at the ushers. They put the lid back and commenced to lowering the coffin. It was slung into some kind of fantastic contraption, a scaffolding of metal and straps, by which they winched it down. Two years I’d been the one supporting Dadda’s dying weight. Now that he had turned to earth, he was too heavy for me. This metal cradle would have to do it.
    We watched the coffin sink smoothly into the grave. People started throwing in wreaths and flowers. The man who had been standing close by turned to me. “I’m Gene Meeks,” he said.
    “Pleased to meet you.” He wasn’t bad-looking, in a “gruff black actor who always plays the honourable old-school army officer” kind of way. A little too lean on the bone for my liking.
    “You know your father used to tutor me, yes?” he said. “You were just a girl then. Maybe fourteen.”
    I stared into his face, trying to subtract the years from it. “Yes, you look familiar.”
    “Mr. Lambkin was the only reason I got into college. My science subjects, you know? I graduated secondary school with high honours because of him. He was like a second father to me.”
    “That must have been nice.” After I left home, Dadda never once asked after me, not even when Auntie told him that I had had the baby. He didn’t meet Ifeoma until she was four years old.
    The ushers escorted us to the funeral home’s reception parlour. Pastor Paul installed me in the only armchair; everyone else had to make do with the flimsy stacking chairs. Ife gave Stanley her car keys so that he could get his precious glider and play with it outside.
    The food that people had brought to share was already on the tables. The covers and lids came off, the mourners began to help themselves, and I spent the next hour enduring the slow, polite torture of the receiving line. Over by the decrepit piano, two cousins of Dadda’s I didn’t recognise—now, those were old women—belted out hymns while endless people shook my hand, told me how well they’d known my father, how much he’d done for them, how much they’d loved him. I recognised some of the ones who’d come to visit Dadda while I was looking after him. The rest were a blur. I smiled and said thank you until my teeth ached. Gene and Ife brought me some refreshment: a slice of the black cake I’d made, and