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By Monique Quintana
If her grandmother had not been dead, she might not have cared about theatrics. She first fell in love with the theater at her grandmother’s funeral. Her grandmother didn’t want an open casket. She had always found such a thing to be tacky, and so to make up for it, her husband ordered the most ornate flower arrangements he could find in the shop catalog. He really wanted one in the shape of a horseshoe, resembling a beauty that he had seen with his wife once. They had gone to look at the horse races or the pony races, so he called them because he was a cowboy man who liked to sound endearing. He had been able to see the beauty up close because he and his bride had been invited to the winner’s circle by a man that was even richer than he was. There was always going to be someone wealthier than her grandparents, Rae would often think to herself, and that gave her the contentment that she could never fully explain.
But at her grandmother’s funeral, her whole family wore a big hat as a mask of money. Throughout the ceremony, she could feel her cousin tugging on the ribbons of her dress, not because he was a pervert, but out of sheer boredom. None of the grandchildren had much use for the ceremony. Now ritual was quite a different story. Instead of their grandfather’s much longed-for ring of flowers, a girl showed up with a flower o’ gram. She was brown like them, thank god, thought Rae and she had her pantyhose line tattooed all the way up her legs. The sprinklers went on and made her stilettos slop and bob in the grass, and she stood with her arms stretched on, perhaps hoping not to fall. She’s like an angel, Rae said out loud. The girl sang a sailor tune that Rae almost thought she recognized, but then she remembered that everyone in her family hated sailors, and she knew right then that this angel girl was a mistake. All the funeral guests swayed in their weep, and Rae’s mother cried even louder, all because of the sailor girl. Rae adored how the sailor girl’s dressed glowed in the morning light like a daffodil. She had seen daffodils only once, at a fruit stand near Pacheco Pass. Rae began to wonder why her grandmother chose to die when it was such beautiful weather out, but then she remembered that the woman had been known all over town for her hospitality, and she wouldn’t want her guests to get rained on. Dying in the sunlight had been her grandmother’s most beautiful courtesy of all.
To pay her own respects and courtesy, the sailor girl walked up to the casket, her voice slowing down to a low ring like a schoolhouse triangle and pulled a bunch of daffodils out of the heave of her breasts. Daffodils! Thought Rae. She had wished the things into reality. The stems shook when they were laid out on the casket, and the sailor girl sloshed off to the periphery of their little green tent and sat on top of the headstone of the town’s only white man. Someone had kindly brought a pail of dirt, and a bunch of white roses rolled up in her grandmother’s butcher paper. She had used the stuff to cover the kiddie tables when they had barbeques. The butcher paper flew away in the breeze, and Rae or any of her cousins, for that matter, didn’t try to catch it. Rae liked the way the breeze felt on her legs. She watched the sailor girl pull a cigarette out of the sack slung on her back, and she watched her light it. The girl had skinny fingers that shook, and she had raccoon eyes from either a lack of sleep or too much black makeup. Rae couldn’t tell at all.
All the family took turns walking up to the casket and putting a rose on it. The adults went first, and the younger ones, the children trailed behind them. Rae’s cousins tried to look like they were putting their roses on the casket lovingly, twisting their wrists in circles and making their mouths in Os that only Rae took notice of. She surprised herself when she jolted away and out from the line, still thumbing the rose stem against her dress.
Hey girl, the sailor girl called out to her. Rae felt her stomach turn and sour, and she thought it was rude how the girl called her that way, but she walked over to see what she wanted. Who died? The sailor girl asked her. Rae could tell by the rasp in her voice that this sailor girl wasn’t really a girl, but a woman. When Rae told her it was her grandmother that had died, she smiled. The skin under her eyes was loose, and she had a tiny map of veins on her thighs. She flicked her cigarette in the green sea, kicking her feet on the stone. She floated in the green. My grandma would have killed us if we got a flower o’ gram at her funeral. Rae could feel the words shape in her throat, but we didn’t get you, it was a mistake, but the shudder of cousins made their way over to the stone. There was the buzz of their voices, questions, a new cigarette passed over their mouths, their mouths like little bird beaks. You all are clowns, the sailor girl said.
All the cousin kids were much more beautiful than the ones who came before them, their mothers and fathers tapping their boots against the ground, no lassos today, just trying to send their dead off in style. They bought all their kid clowns Shirley temple sodas at the bar at the reception hall, and when no one was looking, Rae and all her cousin clowns spiked them with tequila, and though it wasn’t the right concoction, it went down smooth and justly.
Monique Quintana is the author of Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019) and a contributor at Luna Luna Magazine. She has been awarded artist residencies to Yaddo, The Mineral School, and Sundress Academy of the Arts. She was also the inaugural winner of Amplify’s Writer of Color Fellowship and has been awarded fellowships to the Community of Writers and the Open Mouth Poetry Retreat. She lives in Fresno’s Tower District and can be found at moniquequintana.com.