Rosedale is empty. There are never many visitors, and the few who do come freshen up the more modest gravesites with flowers, food offerings, and from time to time, a radio set to a favorite station. Lecia’s headstone is across from this section—an area of old and new graves with a few shiny headstones amid the nondescript markers.
The sun is gone but there’s still a purple glow in the sky. A gust of wind sweeps through the cemetery. She hears the sound of broken crockery, offerings scattered and strewn.
Then she hears something else. “Give that back!”
Dorian sees a man she recognizes as one of the caretakers hurrying toward the custodial house, his arms cradling carnations in a plastic vase, a couple of teddy bears, a balloon.
“Give that back!”
Dorian steps to the side just as a wiry black woman about her age pounces on the caretaker from behind.
“That’s mine. Give it back to me.”
The caretaker shakes her off. “You’re lucky I’m too close to the end of my shift to bother calling the police.”
The woman darts in front of the custodian, blocking his path. Her features are sharp, her skin scarred and thin—the signs of past addiction. “Are you telling me it’s a crime now to leave what I need to on my daughter’s grave? That seems more like sacrilege than criminal. I’m just doing what the Lord commands. I’m just honoring the dead.”
The custodian adjusts the objects in his arms, trying to get a better grip. “If your daughter was buried here, you could leave what you want. But what you’re doing is vandalism. You can’t just dump your stuff on someone else’s plot. You can’t—”
“Now that too seems sacrilegious. Seems like a sin to tell me I can’t honor the dead. My dead. What’s more, I don’t hear anyone complaining. Do you hear anyone complaining?” The woman tilts her head back, opens her mouth wide. “Should we ask any of these dead souls if they’ve taken issue with me leaving stuff on a grave? I suspect they appreciate it.” The woman wheels around and sees Dorian standing on the path. “Do you have people here?”
“I do,” Dorian says.
“Now that’s a blessing. You know what I had to do? I had to cremate my girl. I had to burn her like a dead Christmas tree just because the dirt in this place is saved for folks with deep pockets. Doesn’t matter that I’m God-fearing. Doesn’t matter that I recommitted myself to the Lord, that I love him even though he took my baby away.” She lowers her voice and draws closer to Dorian. “But my girl deserved the best. She deserves to be here with all the stone angels watching over her. So I scattered her ashes all up in that meadow, right up by the grave with a woman on top with her head in a tree. A heavenly lookout.”
Dorian knows it well. A perfect vantage over the gentle hill. But private, too—its own little sanctuary sheltered by the overhanging oak. Before the woman winds up again, Dorian hurries off to Lecia’s plot.
The wind comes in waves. You hear it first tangling in the trees above before it descends to the ground. The cemetery is a mess of the day’s offerings rattling through the headstones and rolling down the paths. She finds Lecia’s spot and kneels down. She’s never sure what to say to Lecia, never sure what to do at her grave. In fact, sitting at Lecia’s headstone is when she finds it hardest to think about her daughter at all. Because there’s no real connection between Lecia and this place, no memories. So Dorian’s mind wanders, back to Kathy, to Julianna, to the razor’s-edge life beyond the cemetery walls.
Across the drive is the large meadow where the woman berating the custodian claims she scattered her daughter’s ashes. The meadow is dominated by a massive grave Dorian remembers belonging to someone named Ruddock—the name engraved on the base of a tiered pedestal that rises up supported by four short Corinthian columns. On top of this is another pedestal with Gothic arches, which rises into a third pedestal. On top of that a statue of a woman holds a garland of flowers, her head partially obscured by the overhanging oak.
In the last light, Dorian watches Ruddock’s angel presiding over her meadow. There’s movement in the shadow of the grave’s columns.
Dorian crosses to the meadow and arrives at the Ruddock grave in time to see the angry woman wielding a can of spray paint. Even in the faded light she can make out what is already written on the marble. “JAZMIN FREEMO—”
Dorian watches the woman finish the name to read Freemont.
Jazmin’s mother turns and sees Dorian. “You got a problem?” She cocks her head to one side, waiting for Dorian to challenge her. “No one visits any of these damn graves. I claimed my spot. What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing,” Dorian says.
The woman takes a step back, then gives Dorian a look. “Nothing? Bad enough my daughter was murdered. I don’t need you and that caretaker snooping on my business.”
“My daughter was murdered too.”
“You want a prize or something?”
“It doesn’t get better.”
“Do I look like I expect it to? Do I look like I expect the Lord or anyone to take this off my shoulders? I might pray to ease the pain, but I’m no fool. This is a violent world, and to expect it won’t touch you is madness.” She puts away her can of spray paint. “I did my best with her. You want them to be part of you but they’re not.”
There’s a noise from above, a chaotic rustling. Together they glance up and see the green parrots swooping through the air, bringing their hectic song. It’s a quick flyover—no stopping or roosting. After the birds are gone, Dorian’s still craning her neck, trying to follow.
“Crazy birds,” Jazmin’s mother says. “They can go anywhere in the world and they stay here. My choice, I’d go to Hawaii or Mexico.”
“Maybe they like it,” Dorian says.
“Maybe they just don’t have any sense in their heads. Maybe they expect the world is going to change for them. That this place is going to get better. Or maybe they just don’t care.” She shakes her head at the insanity of it all. She takes a cigarette out of her purse.
Dorian kneads her hands together. She feels the same tightening in her chest that she does whenever Idira Holloway comes on the radio—the strangulating proximity of another mother’s grief. Because this can’t be happening again—another reminder, another hand creeping from the past to reach around her throat.
“You good?” the woman asks.
Dorian doesn’t reply. Because she’s not good. And never will be.
The woman kneels down and presses her lips to her freshly painted daughter’s name. “Bless you, baby,” she says.
Headlights are coming up the hill. The custodian is on his way in his golf cart. Before he pulls into view, Jazmin’s mother hurries off in the opposite direction. Dorian watches her go, slipping away into the night.
She exhales, shakes her limbs, breaking free of the claustrophobia of another’s sorrow. But this time, she doesn’t let memory disappear. She turns around, taking in all the graves, the dead, the reminders of violence and tragedy that surround her. It was she who’d been the fool, burying her head in the sand whenever the past tapped her on the shoulder, thinking that because she’d tried and failed to make things right for Lecia it was over and done.