Mockingbird

Contents

Chapter One 1

Chapter Two 20

Chapter Three 40

Chapter Four 65

Chapter Five 90

Chapter Six 119

Chapter Seven 134

Chapter Eight 151

Chapter Nine 166

Chapter Ten 188

Chapter Eleven 206

Chapter Twelve 227

Chapter Thirteen 252

Afterword: The Process 259

Acknowledgements 263

About the Author 264

When I told folks what Momma could do they figured I was fibbing, or that my sister and I suffered from delusions brought on by too much drinking, blows to the head, or the repressed memories of incest or devil worship. Now, it is true my mother was a liar. It is true she drank too much and she slapped me more than once when I was growing up. But I promise you, worshipping the Riders was the farthest thing from her mind. They were Life's collection agents. When Momma drew too much on her gifts, the Riders would take their due. Unless you worship the IRS, drop the whole idea that Momma loved her gods.

Momma's magic was real. When she predicted IBM stock would go up, it went up, and the money her investors made was real too. Once I even saw Momma raise the dead, although that went so badly that we all agreed, even her, never to do it again.

It wasn't exactly a person that Momma resurrected. It was Geronimo the frog.

I had better explain that.

The chief feature of my parents' house in Houston, Texas, was the glorious garden in our backyard. The whole wall of the house facing it was French doors, which Momma left open all the time, so it was hard to tell where the garden ended and our kitchen began. My little sister, Candy, and I spent a lot of time in the garden, hiding from Momma and catching frogs. Now, the early seventies in Texas were a doll-crazy time for little girls. Besides a legion of Barbies, I had a bunch of Kiddles, little weensy dolls whose clothes would fit a good-sized frog just right. I still have Polaroids of Geronimo in a pink doll tutu that is to die for. At first Geronimo didn't like being caught and dressed up, but he seemed to get used to it. After we had been acquainted a while, he would come squat on our hands and let us dress him up, so long as we bribed him with mealworms and doodlebugs.

Just after my eleventh birthday I found Geronimo dead, floating in the little concrete pond under the banana tree. Candy and I were inconsolable. At first Momma was sympathetic, but our whining and snivelling soon commenced to aggravate her. I was a sulky girl at the best of times, and made life miserable for everyone with my moping. Finally Momma took the frog over to the cabinet where she kept her gods and stuffed him in the Preacher's cubby and lit a candle and told us to get out of the room. Then she did something she had seen in New Orleans when she was younger. I never knew the details, but the next morning we found Geronimo in the garden again, shouldering his way heavily through the monkey grass.

But he wasn't really alive. He never ate, he never sang. He just staggered after us as if hungry for our warmth. He was worse than dead: he was a Zombie Frog, a horrible pathetic remnant of himself. Candy, who was only seven, started screaming whenever he came near. Finally I squashed Geronimo flat with a shovel from the garden shed. Then I stood on the blade, pinning him to the flagstone path, while Candy ran and got an empty milk carton. I could feel the shovel jerking and trembling under my foot as Geronimo tried to get away. When Candy got back I opened the spout end of the carton and shoved Geronimo inside. Then I held it closed with my foot while Candy got the big stapler off Daddy's desk. Together we stapled the end of the milk carton shut and then we crept out of the yard and ran to the storm drain at the end of the block and stuffed the milk carton into its big dark mouth, with poor Geronimo still bumping and hopping inside.

It was an awful episode. I mention it as an example of how real Momma's magic was, though it wasn't always that ghastly. I have to admit that as they lowered Momma's coffin into her grave, I wasn't crying and grieving like Candy was. I was listening for the sound of Momma bumping and knocking against the lid, trying to get out.

My name is Antoinette Beauchamp, pronounced BEECH-um, and I am my mother's daughter only in DNA. I have a degree in mathematics from Rice University and am a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries. I hate lying. Leave the prayers and possessions and the Riders in the wardrobe, the stories of Sugar and the Widow and the Little Lost Girl—leave all that buried with Momma, along with the tears and the scenes and the Bloody Marys. Buried with her where they belong.

Even in death my mother was a schemer. Somehow she got herself planted in Glenwood, Houston's most exclusive cemetery. I do not doubt it gave her great satisfaction to be buried beyond her means.

Momma should have been stashed at Cherryhurst, or stuck under a few feet of sod at the old Confederate cemetery on Memorial Drive. Or she could have been cremated, that would have been like her; her ashes sprinkled into the sea at Galveston, or worked into a clay sculpture and stuck in the garden, or mixed up with lime juice and tequila and consumed at a wake where shadow-eyed zydeco gypsies with cat familiars would play on sweat-stained accordions with cracked ivory keys. Or she could have disappeared, no body left to find: vanished into the jungle in Costa Rica, or fallen off a shrimp boat in the Gulf of Mexico, or plucked up by a tornado; one pointy-toed witch's boot, size 7, left standing in the field below.

Any of those endings would have made sense.

But for her to die of cancer and be buried in Glenwood: that was a travesty. Glenwood is the cemetery of Houston's Establishment, chock full of Hoffheinzes, Holcombes, Cullens, and Friedrichs; a little Greek Revival village of white marble cenotaphs chiseled with the same names you see in the lobbies of the city's museums and theatres and hospitals. Howard Hughes is buried in Glenwood. Cardinal Richelieu probably should be, along with Lorenzo de' Medici and Vasco de Gama. But my mother has no business being there.

The first few days of being dead are very rushed. Usually I am careful and scrupulous and I pay attention to things. But in the week after Momma died, my focus seemed to slip away. Funeral plans and insurance forms and calls to relatives fluttered over and around me, half-noticed, like birds passing through a garden. I wasn't sad, not for a minute. Candy was. Candy cried and cried. But I felt no grief. Just that lack of focus, and a tightness in my chest almost like anger.

When old Mr. Friesen offered to take care of things, I made the mistake of letting him. I had been dreading what funeral arrangements Candy would suggest: hair fetishes, voodoo, St. Anthony's candles at the reception, midnight Masses—God knew what kind of spookery. At the time, it seemed easier to let Bill Friesen handle it.

My mistake. Never, never, never be beholden to anyone.

By the time I realized Mr. Friesen meant to plant Momma in Houston's most exclusive neighborhood—you can't depart more dearly than at Glenwood—it was too late to make other arrangements. So Glenwood it was, on a glorious November afternoon. The gulf coast breeze blew softly through the ash and the towering white-barked sycamores, the massive live oaks and the tremendous lanky pines whose limbs branched upward like green ball-lightning. The grave was a long black gash of turned earth amid the sweet grass. Leaf-shadow trembled over it from a live oak so old its limbs were furred with moss and ferns that had rooted in its ancient bark.

William Friesen stood before us, reminiscing at the graveside. He was mostly bald, and his bare head with its collection of freckles and liver spots was the color of mashed potatoes with a few of the peels still in. He spoke at length. Like a lot of rich men, Bill Friesen never seemed to be troubled by the possibility his stories might be boring. “In 1958 I saw a pretty girl at the counter of the House of Pies,” he said. “I didn't think much about women at the time, I was working long hours at the office, but suddenly there she was, and there I was, with my nice suit and my pretty smile. I reckoned I had a chance. So I walked over to her stool and asked if I could buy her a piece of pie.”

We had all heard this story many times. It seemed to be stirring up some grief for Candy, judging by a new couple of tears trickling from her pretty eyes, but I was mostly wishing I could scratch my calf where my stockings itched.

The Grand Old Man of Friesen Investments grinned, remembering. “She turned to me and said, ‘I'm not the woman you will marry, so don't get your hopes up. But if you still care to buy me that slice of pie, I b'lieve I'll try the pecan.'” Bill laughed. “Well, she had me there, didn't she? I couldn't back out after that. I ordered the pie and tried to keep up my end. ‘Why be so sure we won't be married, little lady? This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.'

“‘Oh yes, we'll be friends,' this gal said. ‘But your wife will be a blonde, five foot four, with small hands and a pretty face.' Well, my jaw dropped at that, and dropped again one week later when I met the woman she had described.” Bill Friesen looked fondly at his wife, Penny, who stood beside him at the grave head.

(I am fifteen. I have just applied for a summer temp job at Friesen Investments and Bill Sr. has told this story to me during my job interview. Momma is driving me home. “Expurgated old turd,” she laughs. “What I really said was, ‘Your wife will have small hands, cold feet, little breasts that turn up at the nipples, and lots and lots of money.' Lord but he blushed. Though I daresay he doesn't remember it that way now. He's very good at forgetting things, Bill is. Too bad for poor Penny.”)