The Precious Life by Che Parker

Author:Che Parker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Joshua had been to funerals before. Like everybody else, he didn’t like them. Two in adulthood. His grandparents’ when he was a child. He didn’t realize how hard Kathryn would take the passing of her father. A life-long smoker—a pack a day, like his mother—lung cancer should have been expected. Cancer, Joshua thought. Fucking plague. First his mother, now Kathryn’s father. He held Kathryn’s hand. She squeezed his tightly. Her wailing echoed throughout the small church. Motes floated through the air. Its wooden pews and wood floors lightly coated in a layer of dust. It irritated Joshua’s nose.

A little over a week had passed since he last saw Love or the Howard campus. He thought he would probably never see either again. So there they sat. In the front row of a small, boxy church in Fort Washington, Maryland.

“Daddy!” Kathryn called out. Her voice was hoarse by this time. Her father’s body lay in the casket like a gray mannequin. A sheet of spackled tears covered her face. The organ player, an old thin woman with glasses, continued with her song, the chords striking an angelic and ominous tone.

“Daddy!” she cried out.

Joshua held her hand. Patrice was having a rough go, too. She sat there quietly, but the pain showed on her face, steady streams running from her eyes. The sisters were both dressed in black. Kathryn wore a large black hat that mostly covered her eyes. Dawn looked afraid. Joshua thought this was probably her first funeral, her look indicating that she had never seen such a display of sadness and grief. She flinched every time Kathryn had an outburst. Dawn watched her like she was a foreign spectacle, a circus acrobat with a flaming sword. Joshua realized this was the first time he and Kathryn had been in a church together. He wondered what his mother would have thought, a woman who was in church every day the doors were open. He wondered if he and Kathryn should start going to church. He thought about his unpredictable work schedule and quickly dismissed the notion. Bills had to get paid.

Before this one, the most recent funeral Joshua had attended was his mother’s. No one cried out there. The mood was more solemn, reserved. He remembered the leaves falling delicately on the church’s windowsill. The autumn breeze tossed the orange and yellow orphans randomly. It was his senior year in high school. He would have to stay with his mother’s sister, a large woman he knew only as Aunt Trell. She wasn’t demanding, only asking that he go to school every day and make his bed in the morning. Aunt Trell was a good cook, like his mother. Joshua was actually very fortunate. When Lorraine died, her insurance policy at the light company guaranteed Joshua money for college. It would be his entry into State, and eventually into Kathryn’s life.

“Daddy!” Kathryn was becoming weak. Joshua held her hand tighter, reassuring her that he was there. A freezing wind snuck through the church’s numerous cracks.

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