Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

A Cheerful Visit

Elmwood Springs, Missouri

February 13, 1976

That first morning Dena woke up in a strange room with a woman she had never seen before sitting in a chair across the room, staring at her and fanning herself with a small brown paper bag. As Dena opened her eyes, the woman said, “I know you were glad to get out of that old hospital, weren’t you, honey.”

Dena managed a weak, “Yes,” wondering who in the world this old lady was.

“Well, we are sure glad you are home where you belong. I kept saying to Norma, when is Baby Girl getting out of that hospital and coming home? I don’t envy anybody in the hospital. Did I tell you about the time Norma carried me up to the hospital for a checkup?”

“No.” Dena wondered if she had stepped into the Twilight Zone.

“That bed they had me in was like sleeping on a bunch of cantaloupes. I will say this, that bed could do anything you wanted it to, go up and down, flat or tilted; it did everything but dance the polka and kiss you good night. When they had me up there they looked at me up and down, every which way but sideways from stem to stern, and after they finished, I said to that doctor, I said, ‘You’re just like that TV show Star Trek.’ ‘How so?’ he asked. I said, ‘Honey, you’ve been places where no man has ever dared to go.’ ”

Norma came into the room with a tray. “Good morning.”

“I was telling Baby Girl about my hospital stay, how they checked me out, and how he said all my numbers looked good. Whatever that meant. But it finally calmed Norma down, didn’t it, Norma?”

Norma said begrudgingly, “Yes, but everybody needs a checkup once in their life.”

The old lady winked at Dena. “She’s scared I’m gonna die on her.”

Norma placed Dena’s tray in front of her. “Here, honey, I want you to try and eat this.”

Dena sat up and looked at a bowl of milk with a piece of toast floating in it. Norma went over and opened the windows. “Seriously, Aunt Elner, you could be watering your sweet peas one minute and the next topple over with a stroke. Or, who knows, a 707 airplane on its way to St. Louis could drop out of the sky. You can make fun of me but you never know from one minute to the next.”

“All the more reason to enjoy every one of them. You shouldn’t waste all your alive time worrying. It tells us that in the Bible. ‘Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?’ Luke 12:25.”

“Well, that’s fine for Luke,” Norma said, “he didn’t have you and Macky driving him crazy night and day. Do you want any more iced tea?”

Dena shook her head and Aunt Elner held her glass up. “I’ll take some more while you’re up.”

After Norma left the room Aunt Elner said, “I had that quotation crocheted for her on a doily, but she didn’t appreciate it. That girl worries herself into a frazzle over everything. If I don’t call her by seven A.M., she has me dead and buried. I said to her, I said, ‘Norma, when I finally do go, it’s gonna be anticlimactic. You won’t even be surprised, you’ve been practicing for so many years.’ “Aunt Elner pointed to the twirling trophies on the shelf that belonged to Norma’s daughter, Linda. “You know poor Dixie Cahill died last year.”

Dena had no idea who Dixie Cahill was. “No, I didn’t.”

“Well, she did. Of course, she was well up into her eighties but still teaching when she went. They buried her in tap shoes and with her batons.”

Norma came back and Aunt Elner said, “Are you going to take Baby Girl out to eat while she’s here?”

“Of course. She can go anywhere she wants. But I have to watch her diet. I have specific instructions.”

“You know that catfish place closed.”

“Yes, that didn’t last long, did it?”

“No,” said Aunt Elner. “But I told Verbena, I said, ‘They can stick a neon catfish up outside the door but everybody knows that’s where the mortuary used to be. Nobody’s gonna want to eat fish in a place where they came to see their relatives laid out, no matter how good the food is.’ ”

Dena could not believe what she was hearing. But Aunt Elner went on. “Baby Girl, since you were last here, Hatcher’s mortuary moved outside of town and now they put in a new, drive-through funeral home.”

“I’m sorry?” asked Dena, who was trying, in self-defense, to eat.

“They have a drive-by window to view the remains,” Norma put in. “It’s some lamebrained idea James Hatcher came up with.”

Aunt Elner said, “Instead of ordering a burger and fries, you look at a dead relative. No, I believe I’ll just get myself cremated, thank you. I don’t want anybody looking at me without me knowing it. What if Darlene did my hair funny? You know how horrified we were when she decided to give Mrs. Alexander bangs; everybody forgot about her being dead and just looked at her bangs. Darlene is liable to give me some peculiar hairdo and there won’t be a thing in the world I can do about it. At least while I’m alive I can come home and wash it out, but once I’m dead, I’ll be stuck for eternity with a bad hairdo. You remember what she did to that poor Church of Christ lady?”

“Oh, yes,” Norma said, “it was terrible.”

“She always wore her hair pulled back into some big old knot on the back of her head, like a cinnamon bun, and she never wore a drop of makeup, so you can imagine what the other Church of Christers thought when they saw her lying there with bangs and blue eye shadow.”

Aunt Elner added, “I’ll tell you, with Darlene around, people are afraid to die. My question is why would anybody want to fix dead people’s hair?”

There was a pause. Then Norma said, “Who knows? It’s quiet work, I suppose. No complaints. But I guess you never know whether or not your customer is satisfied, do you?”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Aunt Elner said, “but in her case that might be a blessing. Just the same, I’m not taking any chances. I’m getting cremated. Verbena and I went over there to the new mortuary and talked to James about it. He gave us a brochure to read up on it.”

“When?”

“The other day, after I went to my seventy-fifth high school reunion and there were only three of us left. I figured I better start thinking about what my options are.”

“Is Verbena thinking about cremation?”

“No, she was up there looking at coffins. She says for fifty years she’s been putting Merle Norman cold cream on her face, night and day, so she’ll look good, and she says she’ll be darned if she’s gonna get turned into ashes after all the work she’s put into her face. I said, ‘Your face may look great, Verbena, but if Darlene does your hair, you’re not gonna look good.’ ”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing. But as for me, I don’t care a thing in the world about wasting money on a coffin that you’re only gonna use once. I’d rather spend my money over at the mall … or give it to the Humane Society.”

“Uncle Will bought a burial policy for you, Aunt Elner. It’s already paid for.”

“I know he did but I’d rather have the money now. Do you think they’d give it to me or do I have to die first?”

“Aunt Elner, the subject of death gives me the willies and I am sure Baby Girl does not want to sit here and listen to you talking about getting yourself burned up.”

“Oh Norma, you don’t burn up, it says so in the brochure. It’s like a white light so bright, it’s like looking into the sun; you feel the bright light and then you just disappear … just one big bright light and you’re gone.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. That appeals to me, much more than a dark coffin. And you still get a headstone and a place over at the cemetery so you can come and decorate me every Easter, so don’t worry about that. And when you wonder where I am, just look up at the sun and that’s where I’ll be.

“Well, guess I better get on home,” Aunt Elner said. “I don’t want to overstay my welcome. I just wanted to come over and cheer you up.” She patted Dena on the hand. “I’ll come back tomorrow. Maybe I’ll even bring you my cremation brochures, see what you think.”

“Come on, Aunt Elner,” Norma said. “Let’s let her get some rest now.”

“ ’Bye, honey. Or I could bring my cat, Sonny, if you’d like.”

“Aunt Elner, you are not bringing that cat over here and get fleas all over my house.”

Dena smiled wanly. “ ’Bye … thanks for coming.”

When they closed the door, Dena thought: I have to get out of here.