—an excerpt—
The bench is hard.
It shouldn’t matter, but it does. I should be able to focus on the words of the funeral, but I can’t. Instead, all I can see is how much I don’t belong – a black sheep, a fish out of water, a plant, uprooted.
It is cold and dim in the church. No electricity, no heat, no plumbing. It’s a different world from a different era. You can see your breath despite sitting shoulder to shoulder in the wooden, one-room building. Everyone wears their boots and coats and mitts, but no hats, except for the women with their white mesh caps, bright against the darkness of funeral clothes.
Uncle John sits in the front row with his four adult children. My other aunts and uncles all have six to eight, as if they were aiming to form a league of baseball teams, but Uncle John only has four. He cannot compete. Three of his four children have been busy trying to right the wrong – five to seven children each, my oldest cousin with seven grandchildren, how many more on the way?
My eyes shift down the line of pairs until I reach Rachael, alone beside her widowed father. The pew covers all but Rachael’s shoulders, shrouded in her black wool coat; she could have bought it in any department store, but underneath, I know she will be wearing a plain cape dress she made herself. She tucks a stray graying hair back into its bun, properly covered by her white mesh cap. I don’t think that I have ever seen it down.
Even when we were kids, it was in the required braids. She has always looked just like all the rest of my relatives. I was the only one wearing ponytails. At school I wore jeans, but at family reunions, I wore a dress, storebought. By three, I knew that I didn’t really belong here. By five, I knew that there were things you didn’t say here. By seven, I knew not to talk about my piano lessons or my new swimming suit or making the soccer team.
When I started high school, I was already beyond my mother’s education. When I reached grade 11, I was beyond my father’s education. When I headed to university, I was the first person, on either side of the family, to do so.
Rachael dropped out of high school after grade 11. What’s the point, she asked me. Now she still lives with her parents at 50. Well, one parent. She turns back to face the minister, now onto the third sermon and into the second hour of the funeral.
