31 min
PodCastle 837: Good Fortune For a Beloved Child PodCastle
-
- Drama
* Author : Alexia Tolas
* Narrator : Omega Francis
* Host : Matt Dovey
* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes
*
Discuss on Forums
PodCastle 837: Good Fortune For a Beloved Child is a PodCastle original.
Content warnings for the death of a child, racism, and allusions to sexual assault
Rated PG-13
Good Fortune for a Beloved Child
By Alexia Tolas
There ain’t no body for Thomas funeral, so we bury an empty coffin.
Not empty, Daddy did tell me as we followed the undertaker to the cherry-woods and mahoganies. The coffins they pretty up with ivory velvet and pillows and other shit the dead ain’t gonna care about ‘cause they dead. We don’t even know if Thomas really —
Quintia . . .
But I hear him at night. Singing.
Please!
When the tide goes out.
Enough!
The undertaker cleared his throat. Daddy nodded at the mahogany for $6,000.
For his mother’s sake, enough.
His mother.
Ain’t she my mother too? That’s what she told me the day we picked up the adoption certificate.
Since there ain’t no body to bury, we filled the coffin with the pieces of Thomas we find around the house. A softball glove. A crawfish spear. His favorite rashguard. There’s still pieces of him on the sleeves. His smell — sun-tan lotion and sugar apple. A strand of his yellow hair. I tried to keep it, but Daddy said Thomas needed to be laid to rest.
Mummy don’t want Thomas to rest. She near dead when she see Daddy pack the rashguard away with the other pieces of her child. Her cries did shake the walls. Her tears flooded the tubs and sinks. She did sink her words into the box, and with every plea and threat, she take back another piece of Thomas.
Was the coffin a dumpster?
Was Daddy that eager to give up on his one child?
Was Thomas so easy to replace?
But you can’t blame her for being angry. Every day there’s more and more blank spaces in Thomas room. And the more Daddy take away Thomas, the more he fill up the house with me.
I can feel her eyes burning through my skull as I walk up to the coffin to pay my last respects. Daddy and I avoid her hate by taking the side aisle back to our pew instead of the center aisle Mummy takes to the nave.
Mummy. That don’t sound right in my head no more.
Of all people, she should’ve believed me. She who follow Thomas singing to the bluff every night. She should’ve been happy to know that I too hear his voice riding the white caps to shore. But that ain’t all I tell her. I tell her something I ain’t tell the police. Something I ain’t tell Daddy. I tell her about the wet girl. The wet girl with barracuda teeth and backwards feet who pulled Thomas into the sea.
I run my tongue along the gash inside my cheek. That’s how hard Mummy slapped me.
Mummy rests her hands on the coffin, and a hush falls over the congregation. There’s a knowing in the people, a knowing I can touch but can’t feel. There ain’t no separate sorrows, just one mourning, like a song with many voices. Is not like the sorrow at my grandmother’s funeral where two of my aunts tried to jump into the grave. The wails at Grammy wake can’t compare to the stifling anguish in this room. What’s more, it’s a secret anguish, one that don’t show itself in tears (because there ain’t a wet eye in this church) – or in screams (because it’s so quiet I can hear my own blood rushing through my ears). It almost feels like . . . defeat.
* Author : Alexia Tolas
* Narrator : Omega Francis
* Host : Matt Dovey
* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes
*
Discuss on Forums
PodCastle 837: Good Fortune For a Beloved Child is a PodCastle original.
Content warnings for the death of a child, racism, and allusions to sexual assault
Rated PG-13
Good Fortune for a Beloved Child
By Alexia Tolas
There ain’t no body for Thomas funeral, so we bury an empty coffin.
Not empty, Daddy did tell me as we followed the undertaker to the cherry-woods and mahoganies. The coffins they pretty up with ivory velvet and pillows and other shit the dead ain’t gonna care about ‘cause they dead. We don’t even know if Thomas really —
Quintia . . .
But I hear him at night. Singing.
Please!
When the tide goes out.
Enough!
The undertaker cleared his throat. Daddy nodded at the mahogany for $6,000.
For his mother’s sake, enough.
His mother.
Ain’t she my mother too? That’s what she told me the day we picked up the adoption certificate.
Since there ain’t no body to bury, we filled the coffin with the pieces of Thomas we find around the house. A softball glove. A crawfish spear. His favorite rashguard. There’s still pieces of him on the sleeves. His smell — sun-tan lotion and sugar apple. A strand of his yellow hair. I tried to keep it, but Daddy said Thomas needed to be laid to rest.
Mummy don’t want Thomas to rest. She near dead when she see Daddy pack the rashguard away with the other pieces of her child. Her cries did shake the walls. Her tears flooded the tubs and sinks. She did sink her words into the box, and with every plea and threat, she take back another piece of Thomas.
Was the coffin a dumpster?
Was Daddy that eager to give up on his one child?
Was Thomas so easy to replace?
But you can’t blame her for being angry. Every day there’s more and more blank spaces in Thomas room. And the more Daddy take away Thomas, the more he fill up the house with me.
I can feel her eyes burning through my skull as I walk up to the coffin to pay my last respects. Daddy and I avoid her hate by taking the side aisle back to our pew instead of the center aisle Mummy takes to the nave.
Mummy. That don’t sound right in my head no more.
Of all people, she should’ve believed me. She who follow Thomas singing to the bluff every night. She should’ve been happy to know that I too hear his voice riding the white caps to shore. But that ain’t all I tell her. I tell her something I ain’t tell the police. Something I ain’t tell Daddy. I tell her about the wet girl. The wet girl with barracuda teeth and backwards feet who pulled Thomas into the sea.
I run my tongue along the gash inside my cheek. That’s how hard Mummy slapped me.
Mummy rests her hands on the coffin, and a hush falls over the congregation. There’s a knowing in the people, a knowing I can touch but can’t feel. There ain’t no separate sorrows, just one mourning, like a song with many voices. Is not like the sorrow at my grandmother’s funeral where two of my aunts tried to jump into the grave. The wails at Grammy wake can’t compare to the stifling anguish in this room. What’s more, it’s a secret anguish, one that don’t show itself in tears (because there ain’t a wet eye in this church) – or in screams (because it’s so quiet I can hear my own blood rushing through my ears). It almost feels like . . . defeat.
31 min