Lucy Mae Hollis, stood on the side steps of Sneadlin's Funeral Home, staring at Pickering Head, the white director. She did not move one inch. "When you gon' send the babies to the church?" She asked.

"Well now, Lucy Mae, I'm gonna send the babies to the church when I get the money for doing 'em and not before." Pickering Head closed the screen door, went inside and locked the glass door behind him leaving Lucy Mae and Lottie standing on the steps. Lottie was crying.

Lucy Mae put her arm around Lottie and gave her a hug. "You stay right here. I'll be back" She said. "Me and Miss Sarah Ward straighten this out." She strode across the street towards Reed's gas station. "Miss Sarah Ward gon' jerk a knot in Mr. Pickering Head's tail." She muttered to herself.

When the phone call from Lucy Mae came, I could see my mother reddening in outrage. "Why that's ridiculous." She said. "Absolutely ridiculous. He has no choice but to let Lottie see them if she wants to."

My mother cast a worried glance in my direction, then said into the telephone. "There's nobody to stay with Christina."

"I'll go mama," I said, perhaps a bit too eagerly under the circumstances.

She shook her head. "I don't want you at a funeral home. I don't even like Funeral Homes and this thing might be ugly business."

Of course, ugly business was just what I had in mind. "Please mama." I begged.

"Oh, alright." My mother said. "I'm comin' Lucy Mae, ya'll just wait right there." She put the telephone down.

"Come on, Christina, if you're comin'." She called.

I raced to the back door.

My mother stood, tying a scarf around her head, looking down at me. "You are the strangest child I have ever known." She said, but she was always saying that, and I didn't take offense.

I was craning my neck to see when we drove up in front of Sneadlin's Funeral Home. Lottie and Lucy Mae were standing on the wooden steps outside the screened porch of the old house that used to belong to one of the Lanier's before it was turned into a funeral home.

"You stay in the car." My mother ordered as she got her pocketbook and gloves and started to get out.

"No." I whined. "Let me go."

My mother's eyes became big as saucers which meant stop whatever you were doing instantly. "Stay." She said.

I knew there was no point in arguing. So, I watched her go across the street and talk with Lucy Mae and hug Lottie, who was still crying.

Then, mother walked up the steps and wrapped with her little fist on the door so hard I could see it moving from across the street.

She stood ramrod straight waiting. Nothing. She wrapped again. "Pickering Head." She yelled. "You come out here. I know you're in there. You answer the door this minute."

The glass door to the porch opened and out came an even more ashen and unctuous Pickering Head than usual.

"Why Miss Sarah Ward." He said. "I didn't know you were out here. You could have just come on in the front door. It's open."

"The point is not where I could have come in, Pickering. The point is where they could have come in." My mother held out her hand to indicate Lucy Mae and Lottie who both stood up straighter. "And the point is that you have to let this woman see her children. And the point is that you don't slam the door in a woman's face and tell her to 'git' like she was a dog.

'And the last point, Pickering, is that I've known you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper and you have never had the sense God gave a billygoat. You are not going to call the law on these women, I am going to call the law on you if you don't open those coffins and let Lottie see her children right this minute while I'm standing here."

All the time mother had been delivering this breath-taking soliloquy, Pickering Head had been bending and bowing and holding his hands up in front of him and putting the fingertips of both hands on his cheeks in an attempt to somehow appease my mother.

Maybe Mother knew Pickering Head, but Pickering Head sure didn't know her. If he had he would have known that after what he had done, trying to appease mother would have been just about like trying to appease Adolf Hitler.