The Pointing Picture

As far as funerals go, this one could have been worse, Jatoun thought to herself. Aunt Benny didn’t scream and holler like she had at all the funerals since Jatoun was an itty bitty girl. Mommy did all the cooking this time so at least the repast food wasn’t burnt and bland like when Aunt Cherise makes it. Mommy and Benny joked that their baby sister’s food tasted like free lunch. The Vernon Family Funeral Home had been operating since the late 1800s and had been passed down from father to son for 7 generations. Grandaddy hadn’t had any boys and maintained a warm and protective distance from his daughters. With no sons to take over, he hoped that Mommy being the oldest would do what was necessary to assume leadership. No one would have known that Mommy was his favorite unless they paid close attention while he was alive. Aunt Benny knew. That’s probably why she didn’t lay on the casket with a wail and flail during the burial.

“Let’s go to the basement,” Duval said to Jatoun while the adults burped and patted their bellies in the food hall sharing memories of their stoic grandfather.

“Who’s gon watch the babies?” Jatoun replied, remembering how legendary the basement was. That’s where Grandaddy embalmed the bodies of all his neighbors and kinfolk who came through there to send their bodies back to earth and lay their souls to rest. Plus she was happy to get away from Mr. Cry, as she had dubbed her younger brother Sunny who passionately wept at the smallest inconvenience to his delicate balance.

“Let they mamas watch em!” Duval countered with a glance at his little sister Pacha who was quietly watching one of her baby shows on Aunt Benny’s phone. “Go get your mama’s phone so Sunny can stay quiet.”

Jatoun went to her mother behind the banquet table where she sat, tired from serving the repast meal to everyone who came to pay their respects. Mommy’s skin gleamed under the lights. Glistening, she called it when she sweat lightly from a little heat and work.

“Mommy, Sunny is crying. Can I have your phone to give him?” she lied just a touch so he would stay quiet while she ventured into the basement.

“Y’all bet not be roaming through the house. Stay in the parlor with the rest of the children, you hear me?” Mommy said like she knew the plan already.

“Yes ma’am,” Jatoun kept a straight face. She knew Mommy was too tired to come hunting for her, and really Mommy just wanted someone there to keep Sunny quiet so he didn’t embarrass her with his drama show in front of all their family and neighbors. The phone would definitely keep his attention long enough for her to go look at Grandaddy’s tools and letters. Maybe there was even a body or two down there. Never know.

“Gah lee! Took you long enough!” Duval said when she got back from the food hall.

She turned on Sunny’s favorite movie and gave him the phone. She and Duval walked through the hallway to the back of the house trying hard not to make a noise on the hardwood floors in their loud dress shoes.

Duval stepped in front of Jatoun to open the door and go downstairs first into the cold, dark basement to see what was left behind for them to find. She turned the light on and the whole workshop flickered and buzzed loudly as the electric current thumped through the walls like a heartbeat.

“Smell like brimstone down here,” Jatoun held her nose but she could still taste its scent.

“Remember when Grandaddy let us come downstairs when we were little just to scare us so we wouldn’t come down again?” Duval remembered with a smile on his face.

“It didn’t work then, and it ain’t workin now,” Jatoun smiled back at him.

It would take days and days of begging, but Grandaddy would always bring the older cousins downstairs with him. Jatoun and Duval were the youngest and last of his family business initiates to watch him work and hear his stories.

“The dead have a new life,” he told them. “While we can’t see them, if we listen very closely, sometimes they talk.”

Since then, Jatoun waited to hear from the dead but her ears could never pick up the sounds of their voices. Did they even have voices anymore? She stood at the mantle in his office fireplace studying the photos of her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins deeply observing their lines and silhouettes. There was a photo of Grandaddy standing next to Grandma pointing something out to her while she looked on to see what it was. Jatoun followed his fingertips to the edge of the photo and all the way across the room to Grandma’s blue standing crate. She gave their likeness a wink and walked to the crate Grandma used to stand on to reach the cabinets. She looked back at the photo to make sure she was in the right place.

“Grandma was a shorty like you, J,” Duval teased. She ignored him and looked around for a clue. A reflection of light glinted at the top of the cabinets. She climbed on the countertop to reach whatever it was. Grandma couldn’t have reached up here, not even on her standing crate.

“Youch!” Jatoun stifled what was meant to be a much louder yell than what came out. The sharp metal revealed itself just a bit. She reached up carefully to pull it all the way out.

“You alright?” Duval asked her, walking over from the furnace. "I think it’s some bones in there, but I can’t get it open,” he said pointing back at it.

“Use this,”Jatoun replies, passing him the knife that had just sliced her index finger.

“Bet! I was just thinking a knife would be perfect for prying this open.” He helped Jatoun down from the counter and they went to the furnace to work on the door.

With a pop, the door flung open, whooshing dust and air at them. When it settled, they looked inside at a recently cleaned furnace.

“Aw man, no bones in there,” Duval said, his voice revealed his disappointment. He went to close the door.

“Wait,” Jatoun said. “You don’t see that?” She reached past him into the furnace as far as her arm would go, straining to reach whatever it was.

“There’s a box back here,” she said, not wanting to ask for help since it was her discovery.

“You can’t reach it, shorty. Your arms ain’t long enough,” Duval said. Jatoun sucked her teeth and backed up so that he could get it. Without any trouble, he reached his lanky arm to the box and pulled it forward. “There you go.”

“Thank you, cousin,” she reached in and grabbed it.

It was shined up, but visibly aged. They walked it to Grandaddy’s office and sat it on his desk. Jatoun immediately scanned the box for its opening. It had a lock that had symbols all over it, different squiggles and dots and x’s on each button. As she was about to pry the lock open with the knife she had found on the cabinet top, Mommy, Aunt Benny, and Aunt Cherise roared into the basement looking for them. Mommy rushed past her sisters and barrelled through the office door first.

“What I tell you? Didn’t I tell you not to go roaming through the house!” she hollered less like a question and more like a declaration of war.

“Sienna, look! They found the box!” Aunt Cherise said excitedly to Mommy. Aunt Benny rushed over and snatched it off the table.

“Give it here Benny. You know we’ve been looking for this box, give it here,” Mommy said to her younger sister.

“For what? Why should I give it to you? I have Daddy’s notebook. You can’t open it without the notebook,” Aunt Benny said with a devious grin. In her pocket, she kept their father’s little black notebook that held all the keys, codes, and the secrets to the family business. She found it days before the funeral while looking for the leather box.

“Daddy left that for whoever takes over the business, Benny. Whoever finds the box is who it goes to,” Aunt Cherise said to Aunt Benny.

“Duval found it, didn’t you Duval?” Aunt Benny said with desperate hope in her voice. Duval walked over to his mother and held his hands out for her to give him the box.

“See! I told y’all he-” Aunt Benny’s words were cut short.

“I didn’t find it,” he said, passing the box to Jatoun. “She did.”

“How did you find it, J?” Mommy asked, sweat dripping down her face.

“Grandaddy showed me,” she said. “Grandma too.”

Aunt Benny was mad as a rattlesnake. Her face turned red and her nostrils flared, but she knew she was outnumbered. Admitting defeat was not her style, so she turned around and stormed back upstairs.

“Grandaddy didn’t happen to show you the key to open it did he?” Mommy asked half joking, knowing that Benny wouldn’t part with the notebook.

Jatoun remembered Grandaddy’s words and she said aloud, “The dead have a new life. While we can’t see them, if we listen very closely, sometimes they talk.”

“Sienna! It’s the direction of the 4 winds!” Aunt Cherise said. “Start west, and then go north!”

Mommy looked at the symbols on the box. "The dead have a new life," she said. West was death.

"While we can't see them," she continued. Sight is north. From memory of what each symbol meant, she finished the phrase and entered the key. The lock clicked open.

“Here J, you open it. It’s your birthright,” Mommy said as she handed the box to Jatoun, calm now from her earlier anger.

Jatoun pulled up the latch and opened the box. Inside were 10 gold buffalo coins.

“Gold is worth bout $2000 an ounce. That’s 20 stacks right there, cuz!” Duval said.

“Granddaddy held onto these from his own inheritance when he found this same box 50 years ago,” Mommy told her. “Now the family business is yours. You have the responsibility of taking over when you are ready, but this money right here is yours to use in the ways you think are wise,” Mommy told Jatoun. “After you take over the business, of course,” she added.

Jatoun felt eyes and hearts on her. The nudges and the knowing, the clear direction- those are the voices of her dead. Jatoun made a new key for the box and locked it in Grandaddy’s desk.

“I think I hear Sunny crying. His movie must’ve gone off,” Jatoun said. Everyone headed upstairs. She and Duval took one look back at their Grandfather’s workshop. He cut the lights out before shutting the door and they gathered up the babies to go outside and play.