Mourning People

by JT Lachausse


​Dreary stood on the roof of the Sedan and swung a shovel at the air. A routine, you could call it, a ritual she made within the past year, swinging that big black shovel at nothing, her feet denting the steel roof inward, her mouth liberating wild strings of slobber that dampened the top of her dress.
 
Dreary would wear only this dress for her shovel-swinging activities. It was a bright green muumuu ornamented with a great red dot at the center of its chest, an attachment made after months of saliva weakened the fabric enough to need such repair. Most nights, she possessed the energy to swing her shovel with unyielding might, her screeching and stomping commencing after dinner and concluding before bath time. A particularly good night, such as tonight, would find the jade green splotches extending down to her knees, the rivers of a map crawling forth from the ocean-dampness at her chest, splitting at the circular lava bank that was the red dot and rushing down; it would find the trenches on the roof of the Sedan to be filled like thick basins of spit, Dreary’s feet splashing it all about onto the windshield and between her toes.
 
From across the street, where the Pleasants would watch Dreary through their dining room window, they would tilt their heads in unapologetic interest. The street light that rose from their driveway illuminated the dark just enough so that Dreary seemed to be but a floating garment.
 
“Confined to her misery,” Mrs. Pleasant had said, as she usually did.

It had taken a few months for Mrs. Pleasant to find the words she wanted to say about the Dreary-shovel-swinging situation, but once she had found them, she made sure to use them daily. One of the first incantations of this phrase was, “poor thing, she will never not be miserable,” but she figured this was much too wordy for dinner talk, as dinner talk was meant to be brief; “confined to her misery,” she would say, and then take another sip of soup, or tea, which it was always soup or tea. The Pleasants understood that consistency in life was important, and as such, while they found the Dreary-shovel-swinging situation to be rather despondent and horrific, they respected her consistency.
 
“Mmm,” Mr. Pleasant would grumble, as he always did, and then, “what a pity.”

He found comfort with these brief beginnings, Mrs. Pleasant believed, and he too seemed to understand that consistency was important to fostering a better self, that even in conversation you must exercise restraint, and so he closed with a “where is her mother?” before taking a slurp of his oatmeal, or his coffee, which it was always oatmeal or coffee.
 
The Pleasants had known Dreary’s mother for many years, as she had grown up in the house across the street. Merry had always performed herself with “consummate elegance”, Mr. Pleasant would often explain to Mrs. Pleasant, and so it baffled them as to how Dreary came about. How had Merry’s child fallen so far from the landscape of human decency? Perhaps it was the father, Mrs. Pleasant would hypothesize, as Dreary had never before been seen until her father had died. Perhaps the consistency of her life had broken and now Dreary could not function as the rest of society could, although she did have her routine, and as such, she was “sorting herself out”, she was “adjusting her consistencies” Mrs. Pleasant would conclude before another spoonful of soup, or tea, which it was always one or the other, or both.
 
“Perhaps,” Mrs. Pleasant began, which was uncommon, as the conversation was usually made to end after her closing hypotheses, “perhaps I should see about giving the poor girl one of my old dresses.”

Mr. Pleasant looked up to his wife with a furrowed brow, his oatmeal spoon waiting in the air to be eaten from, his coffee steaming up in anticipation.
 
“Mmm,” Mrs. Pleasant heard him say as they both turned back to the window.

Beyond, Dreary’s garment spun around in the air, that same phantom presence as always; but there, in the reflection, Mrs. Pleasant noticed her husband’s face staring back at her, a floating head that seemed to sway with the dress, almost responding to it, the steam of his coffee rolling up the glass and curling around his face. Mrs. Pleasant reached out to the window and rubbed a forefinger at the condensation, brushing the cheek of her husband’s reflection, forming a line on the screen, and through it, she found a paralyzed green garment watching her, the sound of a shovel banging against metal.
 
Dreary stood atop the vehicle motionless, the shovel tumbling onto the steel and then off onto the concrete driveway. The blood and innards of a crow had erupted onto her, the beak caught in her saliva-laden hair, the feathers stuck to her dress and her face, the basins of spit mixed in with a dark, brown juice. She looked down onto her chest and found one of the crow’s eyes stuck to the center of her red dot. “What a wonder, what a wild thing to happen,” she thought. Dreary looked up into the sky, as if the crow would still be hanging there, glaring down at her like, “Hey! What’s the big idea?”, but it was gone. She looked across the street where she found one of her neighbors, Ms. Pleasant, seated at her dinner table. The woman ate by herself, always, always watching Dreary from across the road to keep her company, maybe, always talking to her behind the glass window.
 
Dreary crawled off of the Sedan and walked back into the house. It was time to take a bath, she said to herself, carefully walking through the front door and down her hallway, careful to not touch anything. She entered the bathroom and slipped out of her clothes. She stepped into the bath tub and turned the faucet on, the clear water flooding up and eating away at the grime on her body.
 
Her throat was sore from screaming and her arms were tired. She found it hard to clean herself, but now she was too exhausted to think, which was a good thing. Dreary told herself that she was done crying and so she was done crying. She told herself that the day was over and there was no reason to worry anymore, that tomorrow would bring something better for her, like her husband had always said. After she dried herself off, she watched the black water spin at the drain and disappear.
 
When Dreary woke up the next morning, she put on her work clothes, as usual, and stepped out the front door. In the yard across the street, Ms. Pleasant watered her flowers and looked up to greet her, as she always did.
 
“Morning, Merry!” she called, and Merry returned the greeting with a wave.

She stepped into her Sedan and turned on the ignition. As was always the case, she would need to clean off the windshield, and so she sprayed some water on the glass and turned on the windshield wipers. She put the vehicle in reverse and started to back out of the driveway when the Sedan jerked up in a violent reaction, the sound of a loud rupture coming from beneath the car. In the rearview mirror, Merry could see Ms. Pleasant waving her arms frantically and striding across the street.
 
Merry stepped out of her vehicle and found her shovel broken in half, the metal handle punctured into one of her wheels, her Sedan gradually sinking with a gentle hiss. Ms. Pleasant stepped beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, both of the women staring down at the broken shovel, the blade still stained with the gory crow remains.
 
“I can give you a ride to work, dear,” Ms. Pleasant said to Merry.

​ “I don’t think my husband would mind.”


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