“The B-Side of Blackness”
By Zandria Felice Robinson, originally published in The Believer (2018). A notable story in Best American Essays 2019 and recommended by Longreads.
Illustration by Tony Millionaire
I was so loud at my funeral. On the way down front to my casket, I paused at every third or fourth pew to wail and gnash and crumple myself up until somebody retrieved and righted me, whispering and patting me. “It’s all right, Sis Robinson. You gone up yonder to be with the Lord. It’s all right.” I responded, breathless and voice cracking, “Oh, oh, OK, Lawd, OK, Jesus,” but I didn’t even mean it at all. Because as soon as I got to the next third or fourth pew, I was down again, hollering like my insides was on fire until somebody fetched me. And so on.
The choir, all black women, most in their good wigs, beckoned me forward to view my body, clearly following the funeral director’s insistence to hurry me along so they could close up the casket and proceed with the service. They looked stately and solemn, singing “Be Encouraged,” and nary a one of them was flat. I had warned them all before I died that if their intonation was off, I was gone raise up out that casket and snatch the culprit(s) back to hell with me. Now that I had decided to attend, they knew I would come up in that choir stand.
At the front, I collapsed onto the mourning bench just before I went to view my body, my black dress, big and flowy, settling itself easy over the side of the pew’s cedar arm like an old tablecloth. I tried to spread my legs across the width of the bench to distribute the grief evenly between my two feet, swollen still from the Racist Sugar that had killed me, and leaned deep and forward, like I was gone do Ailey’s Revelations. But, psyche, I threw my head back and up to the ceiling, yelling, “Just take me now, Jesus! Take me now, Lawd!” One of the petty ushers pointed out that, as evidenced by my body up there in that casket, Jesus had already taken me. She did not whisper this observation, nor was she discreet in her gesticulations at my casket. I wanted to say, Where, Sis James? Where Jesus done took me then, since you know so damn much? But I didn’t say that, because she was still an elder, even though I was an ancestor and technically in charge now, and I shouldn’t have been calling on Jesus in vain, and she had a logical point. Still, I turned my lip up at her and went on and gathered myself to view my body.
Continue reading at The Believer.
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