Tending to Virginia by Jill McCorkle Page A

Valley” at the funeral; they wouldn’t have allowed that there in the church. She asked for “How Great Thou Art” because that was her favorite but she hadn’t known his. There were several he’d sing from time to time, “Love Lifted Me” and “Have Thine Own Way” but she didn’t know the favorite. All those years and she never knew which one.
    “Go early with me, Hannah,” Emily had said the day of the funeral. “Let’s go be with him before everybody else comes.” Nobody was there, not even the preacher. “Play something real quiet,” she said and pushed Hannah up toward that altar and then behind it where there was an old organ. Hannah could play by ear, had her whole life, and they sat there side by side, just the two of them and sang so quietlike, “For they say you are taking the sunshine,” and Hannah started crying; Hannah could not even press the keys or sing, so Emily finished it out herself. Hannah’s mouth quivered so and those big eyes filling, her hand clinging to Emily’s arm and Emily had wanted so bad to take Hannah in her arms like she might be a baby and rock her there in front of the church. She wished for a minute that she could grab hold of her own mama and let the tears come. “We’ve got each other,” she told Hannah and patted her hand. “You’ve got a family all your own and your daddy wouldn’t want to see you so upset over him. He’d want you to be strong.”
    Emily didn’t cry, really cry through that whole service because it was too personal and people should not have seen. If she had let herself cry, then they all would have started, Lena and Hannah, and James wouldn’t have wanted such a sad day. She sat through that service and concentrated her mind on Ginny Sue, pulled that child up on her lap and held her there, and while the preacher talked of how good James was, she thought of all the things that she’d tell Ginny Sue; she’d tell of when she met James and she’d tell of her own daddy and she’d tell all the funny stories about Lena, how Lena would try to sneak out of the house to go to school with her chest stuffed up great big with socks when she wasn’t but nine years old and how their mama grabbed Lena there in the front yard and pulled sock after sock out of that child’s dress, said, “There’ll be time enough for bosoms, Rolena Pearson. I wouldn’t go wishing things on my body before it’s time.” Emily caught herself wanting to laugh right there in the church. James had laughed for years over the things Lena had done and she knew that Ginny Sue would laugh that same way, that some day the two of them would be right by themselves and she’d tell those stories one right after another.
    Emily did not cry until late that night when she sat in that glider all by herself, Hannah and Ben sound asleep in that room she hadmade up for them, Robert and Ginny Sue on a pallet there on the floor near her bed. Just fifty-nine years old then, a widow and a grandmother, the nights getting longer and cooler, spider lilies blooming, leaves turning, and she tried to feel his hand pressing and squeezing her shoulder.
    “Is this the same woman that loves pigs’ feet?” he had asked and she scooped up some of that river water and threw it in his face. “My mama told me that possum was colored meat.” My mama told me if I was goodie that she would buy me a rubber dollie / My auntie told her, I kissed a soldier, now she won’t buy me a rubber dollie / Three six nine, the goose drank wine, the monkey chewed tobacco on the street car line. “Tell them old friends of yours to hush with such silliness there on my front porch,” she yelled out that front door. “Hannah and David got no business hearing it.”
    “Is this the same woman that loves pigs’ feet?” he asked when she turned up her nose at what he was telling of French people eating snails. He was talking of going to war; he was talking of a long time away from home. Would she wait for him?