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Black Widow

  by Janice Daugharty

  Copyright 2010 Janice Daugharty

  First published in Kalliope, 1999

  From her seat of honor on the front pew, Lavonia can see through her black veil without moving her head: winter rain sliding down the red-curtained windows each side of the crowded church; the grizzled corpse of her legal husband in the coffin below the pulpit; and behind the plyboard lecturn, singing in the choir, Eddie-the-corpse's common-law wife puffed up like a frog about to hop. Betty, who by rights should be sitting where Lavonia sits, dressed in new black shoes, dress, hat and gloves. Pocketbook perched on her lap like a bag of magic tricks.

  Well, Betty can blame William Blaxton & Sons' Funeral Home for the messup. Not Lavonia's fault that she got listed as widow in the newspaper obituary last Monday. Twenty some-odd years ago, yes, but for twenty some-odd years now Lavonia has been on her own. Hadn't wanted nothing else to do with that man, who hadn't wanted nothing else to do with her either.

  Lavonia is large, about three-hundred-pounds large (since she lost her back teeth she has had to eat mostly fat meat, greens and hoecake) and proud of it. She has a round face and smooth skin that looks like fresh fudge. No neck and not a wrinkle.

  A nurse in a whispery white uniform stands on Lavonia's left, fanning the widow with a hand fan advertising William Blaxton & Sons' Funeral Home. The nurse's octagonal glasses look put on upside-down and make for a good focal point for Lavonia who is genuinely tired of gazing at Betty and the corpse, one gazing back at her and the other as close-eyed in death as he ever was in life.

  Lavonia snakes her right hand beneath the veil to scratch her nose and somebody behind her flaps a white handkerchief over her shoulder and she takes it and wipes her dry eyes and when she checks again Betty looks like a bottle of frozen pop about to blow. But keeps singing. Loud. Lavonia can say that much for her--she can sing loud.

  When finally the choir sits and the preacher stands, blocking Betty in her orange suit from view, Lavonia presses her stiff spine to the pew and clutches her pocketbook with its precious can of snuff, glad to be rid of all that orange, those brassy eyes and that hair like a grass fire. Glad to be rid of those voices outsinging the rain on the tin roof.

  The giant black preacher, with a tie red as Christ's blood, starts off low and slow, naming the beloved's next-of-kin and those gone on to heaven to await Eddie Earl Thomas, and winds himself into a circular chant about streets of gold and angels with harps and a cabin in gloryland that sets everybody to rocking and moaning and shouting amen. Pausing to catch his breath and mop sweat and shuck his black coat, he reflects on Eddie Earl Thomas, who in his last days would sit on his front porch over there by the store with a kind word for all who passed, and Lavonia cannot recall such a kind man or such a rocker, only a kitchen chair Eddie Earl Thomas once sailed over her head because she had gone out riding with a truckload of turpentine hands. All men. All night. To pay Eddie back for stepping out on her.

  And suddenly it comes to Lavonia that the corpse before her is old, that she is old, that young Betty behind the preacher will likely outlive Lavonia too and will have her chance as honored widow some glad day, but Lavonia may never have the chance again. She sits high, crossing her feet at the ankles so that her pointy black shoes rest on their sides and relieve her pinched toes. The nurse fans harder, her hot nylony smell mixing with the hot nylony smell of the veil and maybe the plastic flowers banking the coffin. Church house rocking under the stamping feet of the preacher whose bull body lunges into the lecturn with each renewed writhing of the Holy Ghost.

  Another song--young, loud Betty eyeballing the widow, and the widow eyeballing her back. Bulb eyes roving beneath the veil to see who is seeing, Lavonia thinks she recognizes a few people she used to know before she moved to town--Valdosta, 25 miles away. Fieldhands she used to work with in Withers, but old-looking with seamed faces and bowed backs. One old man looks like Abraham in the Bible. Ouija Board was the name he went by, Lavonia seems to remember, because he used a game board to tell people where to find their lost cows and dogs.

  Two of the four Blaxston boys stride up the center aisle of the tiny frame church and take their places one on each end of the coffin, the brother at the head ratcheting a lever on the side so that Eddie-the-corpse rises almost to sitting position in his white suit and ruffled blue shirt. Then both Blaxtons strongarm the coffin and wheel it forward for the mourners passing by to view the body--a long line of men shuffling past, women sobbing and babies lifted up and lowered for good-bye kisses.

  Then the Blaxtons sidesling the coffin toward the front pew and park it before the widow's blunt knees. All standing, all watching, as Lavonia gathers her pocketbook and stands too, two nurses now holding to Lavonia's elbows and stepping her forward. She stares down into the grizzled bear face of the man sleeping on a white satin pillow, then without moving her head, stares at the crowd, at young loud Betty, still singing.

  Rain coming down harder, William Blaxton himself presents the flowers, booming out the names on the cards, and passes each arrangement along the assembly line of ushers in prissy tuxedos to the flower wagon parked outside the door where a white limousine sits waiting behind the hearse. Just for Lavonia. Like Cinderella's coach come to carry her to the ball.