The Mix Up

Upon my word and honor—
that’s what Fanny Belle Feathers
would’ve said if she
could’ve sat up
in her casket that day.

Her a laying there
with Avon make-up smeared
across her wrinkled face
when she never once wore
lipstick—not even the day she
married Ackey Feathers
or the Monday she
applied for her job at Big Jack
Sewing Factory. And there she lay
stretched out in a purple silk
dress, wearing Maybeline lipstick
and nail polish as red as a cherry.

Her lips had never been stained
with anything redder than ripe
raspberries, and if any woman
at Sinking Creek Sunday School
had painted their hands
like that undertaker painted hers,
she would have been labeled
a hussy on the road to hell.

Clara Withers sat there
on the back pew of Asbury
Funeral Home and wiped
her eyes with a clean white
starched handkerchief,
knowing that Fanny Belle’s
nieces didn’t know any better,
them living way off in Cincinnati, Ohio,
and seeing their aunt only once every year
at the Graveyard Meeting.

They had come here putting on airs
and dressing Fanny Belle up so
that Roscoe Davis declared Asbury
Funeral Home was burying the wrong
woman up there on the hill
beside Ackey Feathers.