I am sure our childhood could not have been comprehended any human, a more Almighty being on earth, than was my Father. His word was absolute. He was stern but we reverenced him more for that.
Father told us that God had appointed man three score and ten to live on this earth, and he himself died punctually at seventy. I think he would have considered it like given God backchat to over overstepped his time limit. Mother predeceased Father by two years. He did his best to keep her longer, but she died at the age of fifty. Twenty years was between their ages at his death. Father was eighteen years older than Mother to start with, so that within two years our house was left without a head.
The “Elder,” my oldest sister, immediately stepped into Father’s shoes. Father had been forced to be tender with his feet because of his gout The Elder’s step was hard firm. The Elder’s rule was more acute even than Father’s. She was always at home and now there was no intervening Mother to appeal to. My sister strove with us because she loved to dominate.
Father’s fierce rule had the determination behind it of bringing his family up right. Occasionally I had seem him with a slight scowl overlook some small naughtiness as when Dick rushed to the dinner table almost late and hurried his hands under the cloth.
“Did you wash your hand before coming to the table?”
“Yes, Father.”
Now, we could see, and so could Father, that the palms only had come in contact with soap. The backs were very grubby. Had that been the Elder, Dick would have been due a touch of riding whip around his black-stockinged legs. Father went on early, ignoring the almost-lied.
Dick’s and my black stockings were well acquainted with that riding whip. Bigger and Middle never got it. It would have been no fun whipping Bigger. She would have taken it as “chastening from the Lord” and the Elder would not like the Lord to take credit for her chastisements. Middle’s path was the way of least resistance. She went her own way and pretended she was going to Elder’s. So Dick and I took the family whacking till Dick was sent to Ridley College in the East.
I never eldered Dick in spite of my four year’s seniority. He was a delicate little fellow. He contracted TB in the East and was advised to go down south. He went to Santa Barbara and died their some years later.; then I was the youngest in the family without argue.
The Elder work Father’s stern shoes as if she had been born in them. We were such little steps, Bigger, Middle and I. It seemed we were a bunch of contemporaries with neither head nor tail. We were middle-aged women when, in her sixty-ninth year, the Elder died. In family affairs, Bigger had always been fussy but meek; when it come to big things, she was determined. The Elder and Bigger lived together in the old home and Bigger was completely dominated by the Elder. It was amazing to see her evolve, magnify herself and take place as head of the family after the Elder’s death.
She was good at business and pulled the place up, got after mending and back taxes the Elder had let drift. Middle and I went to her for advice in business problems. She loved being consulted and her advice was good, though we usually asked by went our own way. Bigger ruled very much as the oldest Miss Carr. Then she too died and that wretched little nigger rhyme would buzz in my head: “Ten little nigger boys…” and now we are down to two. I had never thought of a family of two having a head and a tail but apparently it does.
We went down to the undertaking parlours to take things to Bigger. The head of the establishment was engaged. We were put into the office to wait. A falsely blond girl was at the counter violently lipsticked. A cheeky loud voiced man breezed in and lolling across the counter tickled the powder off her nose with a flower and made course jokes. A boy was mopping down the front hall singing, of all things, “Ten little nigger boys.” Beyond, we could hear the organ wheezing out a hymn, accompanied by sniffles; there was a funeral in progress.
“Come! I can’t bear any more! We will go into the waiting room. Perhaps it will be quieter there.” I bounced off but it was worse there. The nigger boy song was at the door. The walls were hung with photos and gravestones and models of more were on the shelf. There was a block carpet with a grey border, a wicker lounge and two chairs that groaned and creaked. There was a roll-top desk and on it were files and files of funeral bills, great cruel bills extorting people for splurge funerals while wanting their dead dignified simplicity instead of show-off.
I was all riled up and Middle was annoyed with me. She said, “You ought to calm yourself,” and showed her own superior self-control by caressing ma model tombstone on the desk.
“Don’t you bring me here to be buried!” I flared “Don’t you!”
“Don’t you take me anywhere else,” she retorted. “They go to our church and they have always buried our dead.”
“They’ve buried themselves too. These are only successors. It’s a beastly place. No quiet, no dignity.”
“Miss Carr?” The head was in the door. I don’t know how much he had heard, not do I care.”
Middle stepped forward, “I am Miss Carr.” But Middle hated making such arrangements of all sorts. She handed the parcel over to me, Suddenly it occurred to me that I did not know how to ask for my dead sister. Middle had said, “I am Miss Carr.” I jumbled a “late’ into the sentence somewhere. The man took Bigger’s dainty gown from the parcel and strained it through the fingers course as a bunch of sausages.
“It’ll do,” he said. She ain’t fixed yet. Won’t take a jiffy. I’ll call you when she’s ready, that door.” Pointing, he was gone. He only wanted a white apron and a knife to turn him into a complete butcher.
“Ready” he shouted down the hall as if Bigger was waiting to play a game of hide and seek with us.
“Don’t you bring me!”
Then we were in the tiny room with only Bigger’s coffin in it for furniture. Flowers were beginning to come, a soft shaded light was on her face, a face utterly serene, all the fret and worry wrinkles habitual to her life were gone. My fret and fidgets had gone too. We looked and then came quietly home.
There were letters in my cottage post box. I took them out and automatically slipped my fingers under the flaps. Middle stretched out a hand.
“Miss Carr, I think! Remember from now, I am Miss Carr. You are Miss Emily. You can never be the oldest, the family head. You were and will be tail, always, even if I die first.
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