Afterlife

Breena Clarke

On the lip of first light . . . Ah! They said that often in Russell's Knob for they could capture that exact moment the light came over the hilltops. On the lip of first light, Robert had set out and followed a path that he'd followed his mother on long ago in the summertime.

He slipped on a pair of soft, doeskin shoes, the foot coverings of his childhood summers. Mother always exhorted him to wear them and to take care of running over splinters. Only here at the homestead did Mother allow him to slough off his collars and cuffs and run about with abandon. Mother was different here, too. She took off her corset and stockings and went about in plain cotton dresses and aprons with large pockets filled with cookies and nut pieces. She was a different mother in the summers at Russell's Knob. Yes, it was in summer that she made most of her drawings of birds. These were their happiest days. They were alone together and carefree. Mother in her soft summer dresses with breezes and bird calls and berries tramping and hiking with him through these woodlands as though they were first peoples here.

He lay his head on the ground at his mother's grave. In some weeks the granite headstone will be placed. Now only a wooden placard with her legend marks her spot. He lay stretched out on the ground beside her and wept loudly, wetting, and pummeling the ground.

Killy, killy, killy

He sat up suddenly. The kestrel, the blasted kestrel made strangled, bleating sounds as if its middle was being squeezed in the maw of some animal. Kneeling before the headstone, Robert confronted the words.

Lucille Murtaugh

1868 – 1933

The abruptness, the cruel shock of watching her drop dead at his feet had taken his breath. No chance to beg her pardon for disagreeing. No chance to say farewell. Of course, Pearl is right to say that he must bear up and assume his mother's place at the school. It's the job he's trained to do. His mother has prepared him though she never prepared him to be without her. And she never managed to tell him the truth about his birth. It was so shocking to have discovered the facts that his mother had concealed – why? Yet the facts were so easily discovered after she'd died. They were there in her journals, her blasted journals! He'd been obedient. She'd forbade him ever to read her journals and he'd obeyed. He'd never read them while she lived. The identity of his true mother and father! Mother had lied to him. Now he realized he was no different from any of the other waifs and orphans she took in over the years. Apparently, he was only the first, the only one that she gave her family name to. He’d always felt a little bit closer and more vital to her than the others, the true orphans, the waifs like Pearl who claimed her maternal attention. He'd thought that he had the more primary claim to her because of his familial links. He'd even thought he'd been Mother's love child, a token of a great and fatal affair. Now even that silly, romantic notion seems sullied by Mother's web of inventions.

Killy, killy, killy

            “Beloved, Robert, how handsome you are on this early morning. The kestrel is here. Ah! The yellow goldfinch is a lovely visitor, a favorite. You must remember that it is a particular favorite of mine. Did you follow it here? The abundant colony of lily of the valley has perfumed the air. It must have drawn you. Look! The tiny bells hanging over. I know that you are as fond of it as I am. You pretended that a kingdom of ants used them as parasols.”

Killy, killy, killy

Killy, killy, killy

Kee, Kee, Kee

Killy, killy, killy

Killy, killy, killy

Here in this place, with birds around and about, he heard his mother’s voice clearly.

“Do not shout in this place, Robert,” she gently scolded. “This is not the place for noisiness, Robert. This is the place for sadness, for remorse, for apologies, restitution, resolution, and finally transcendence. I regret not knowing this sooner, but sooner no longer matters.  And regret? When I was with you, I did not have – as you do not yet have – a complete understanding of the so-called Afterlife.”

Killy, killy, killy

How often did she warn him about setting fire? She said that he did it badly, carelessly. His mother could set a small hot fire to boil her coffee in the blink of an eye and set a hearth to roaring in just about no time.  He struggled to set a match to his mother’s journals, but the stubborn papers refused to burn, the flames extinguished. Those blasted journals! And the letter! So innocuous yet filled with shocking revelations. Had she always meant to keep this information from him while she lived?  Or did she die before she could reveal these facts?

For Robert, upon my death

Robert, legally your surname is Closter. Your father, Reuben Closter, married my cousin Mary, your mother, on her deathbed. She did not survive the day. You did. He left. Mary and I met Reuben Closter at Oberlin College in 1886.  Reuben Closter and Mary began a courtship during our second year at Oberlin. Rules were strict, but Mary managed a rendezvous with Reuben, and the matron came in upon them in compromising circumstance. There was a furor and Reuben and Mary were asked to leave the school. Mary was completely under the spell of Reuben Closter. When they left Oberlin, she was confident that he intended to marry her. Reuben abandoned her in Cincinnati. She was, by this time, pregnant. The poor girl was left alone and destitute. I do not know how she survived all those months. I received two letters from her. She wrote brightly, cheerfully. I had no reason to be concerned. Then I received a telegram from Mrs. Abigail Franklin, a boarding house proprietor who said that Mary was pregnant and alone and she was reluctant to take responsibility. I came immediately. Within three days of my arrival, Mary began a long, arduous labor. I made inquiries to find Reuben, and I engaged a doctor. Mary was in labor when Reuben arrived at her bedside. He married her during a lull in her ordeal. I knew that Mary would die, and I was profoundly and irreparably affected by her loss.

            We went to Oberlin because Father had attended there. Mary did not wish to study to be a teacher. I twisted her arms to go with me to Oberlin knowing my parents were wavering at the thought of my going alone. The two of us together would be safe and our town needed teachers. Reuben Closter was handsome as you are. He was young, tall, slim, black-haired, biscuit-colored with hard black eyes that were then called beautiful, and he was of a lively temperament. After he left Oberlin, he continued schooling as a mortician. 

            I understand you may find it difficult to learn about yourself in my papers. Now that you are reading this, now that I have gone on, every single person who was affected by your birth has died. You are naked before no one. But, Robert, perhaps I do regret not explaining all of this to you before now. I am convinced I did the right thing, the compassionate, the heroic thing. It is only because I am committed to the preservation of our family's true history that I put these facts before you. Mary's parents and I invented an entire web of lies to cover up the truth. I stepped in to say that I would claim you. Among people who aspired to propriety, having a baby outside of marriage was deemed low. We were concerned with rising from indignity and disrespect. We Negroes felt we must show the white man that we, too, honored the Christian tradition of chastity before marriage. Many people were hard upon this point. But there were other traditions that would not allow our people to give an orphan or an outside child to the state home or the police. Nor would we put them out to starve. In our town, there was traditionally an unmarried Auntie who took in the child of adverse circumstances or tragic death and provided for them. I chose to be that and more for you, dear Robert.

Your Loving Mother

He would question his sanity though he feels that, in this glade is a sacred place for souls, that his mother is speaking to him. Is it the kestrel or the goldfinch or the mockingbird who performs these prophetic utterances, this glossolalia?

Don't be angry long, Robert.

All persons have secrets, Robert.

Perhaps you feel my breath on the back of your neck now?

I have always loved to buss that place upon you, Robert.

Don't burn my journals. Forget this plan. Forgive me.

We are helpless here. We cannot change what has been.

Time does not pass here. My friends the kestrel and the goldfinch do and there is lily of the valley in abundance. I do think of you and smile when you are thinking of me as you snap open your watch that is engraved For Robert Love Always, Mother.

Killy, killy, killy

He put the bundle of papers, the kindling, and the matches back into his pocket. He brushed dirt that had been newly turned and smelled like peat moss from his cheeks, his arms, his pants, his moccasins. He followed the yellow goldfinch back to the porch, its flitting color easily seen. Per-tee-tee-tee-tee!