Family is an aspect of Southern life that takes on a mythic level of importance. Family can define a Southerner’s way of life, social connections, religion, beliefs. Localized narratives about one’s family can also determine who finds them acceptable, leading to decisions about what opportunities are offered. So what does all of that mean for Southerners who aren’t typical within their own family’s milieu, or for Southerners who reject or are rejected by their family, including those who move away and seldom return? In this essay, a writer from eastern Texas offers her response to such questions.
Soft Avocado Heart
By Sherri Alms
To be in Texas is to be a diplomat, determining how much to reveal, how much to keep back, how much I want to love them. The same, I imagine, is true for them. As Mom and I turn onto the road to the church in a Houston suburb, I steel myself for seeing all of them, with their comet tails of politics and religion sparking and blazing behind them. I tell myself it will be okay, this explosion of Texans gathered for my aunt’s funeral.
We see Troy and another cousin at the front doors, greeting people. Troy is the cousin I am most worried about, afraid he might turn away without speaking. Instead, he buries me in a hug and holds on. He does the same with Mom. I see the little boy he was, tender like the dewberries that grew in my grandparents’ garden. The one who wanted a little sister so much and finally got Kelley when he was eight. The one who hardened into the man who unfriended me on Facebook in 2016. It is so good to see you, Troy. Mom and I walk inside.
* * *
I had never thought of myself as estranged from this family until a woman in my writer’s group asked if I was. Merriam Webster defines estranged as “in a state of alienation from a previous close or familial relationship.” Alien is exactly how I feel within these borders. When I was in kindergarten and first grade, I had a red cowgirl outfit with matching boots and hat that I wore for Texas Independence Day before we moved to California when I was eight. I miss it, that sense of belonging to a place and its people. I don’t miss cowboy masculinity or cowgirl femininity. I’m a vegetarian. This alone probably means the eyes of Texas are no longer upon me. My aunts and uncles used to ask, But you eat chicken, right?
* * *
The living fill the narthex with clamor, talking fast and loud. I am enveloped in hugs by cousins, my uncle, in-laws, my mom’s cousins. Their hugs feel like home, my body responding to our shared identity and history, even though they may not like me any more than I like them. My mom used to tell us that she didn’t like us when we did something wrong, but she loved us always. This is what comes to me at the funeral. That it’s okay to love someone even if you don’t like them.
The casket looks like something Aunt Allene would have refused to buy if she was alive. Too expensive. Later, at the post-funeral lunch, her granddaughter will tell me that Aunt Allene periodically went shopping for her funeral dress. Over the years, she had bought several, all dark, all the same tailored style. I am certain they were all on sale. The navy blue dress she wore in her casket was the newest of those.
Allene was my mom’s oldest sibling at 89. Their brother, Melvin, died two-and-a-half years ago. Now it’s only Mom and her younger sister, Elois. Allene was a presence, 5 foot, 11 inches, angular and wide-shouldered. Bossy, with big love to match. Raw, tough, damaged. All of my grandfather’s children and grandchildren were. We kept the trauma of his rages between our bellies and our hearts. Like acid coming up from the stomach, that rage bubbled out of us. One of my cousins once told me how her husband implored her repeatedly to stop yelling when they argued. My husband has done the same. Well into my adulthood, my visits to my parents were marked by loud arguments about politics and religion, followed by sullen silence, like the quiet after a thunderstorm.
* * *
Food is my love language, Donia, my cousin, said at our lunch at the Guadalajara Grill the day before the funeral. We sat in a big dim dining room with sombreros and embroidered serapes, lots of tile and dark wood. Jan, Allene’s daughter, and I nodded. On the other side of the table, Mom and Aunt Elois, Donia’s mom, carried on their own conversation.
We ate guacamole and chips, cheesy enchiladas, tacos, beans, and rice. I drank sweet tea because it tasted like home. The sweetness made my teeth ache, a reminder that I was a foreigner even in a place that still feels familiar. We stayed in the restaurant for three hours. On our side of the table, my cousins and I traded stories of our mothers. We laughed loud and long, a kind of wake. A lady who had been sitting with two others came over to our table. I’m sorry to bother you. May I ask, are you three cousins?
Yes.
And are they sisters? She gestured to Mom and Aunt Elois.
Yes.
We could tell by the way you all were talking and laughing and how much you all looked alike. I felt that thrum deep inside, recognition of what binds us, how loud we are, the way our conversations are punctuated with interruptions, a sarcastic, just this side of mean, sense of humor. Our likeness is a memory of beer and cigarette smoke, our fathers calling out from the open garage door where they and our mothers play pinochle in the humid summer dark. Sherri Beth! Ann Janette! Donia Lynn! Get back here right now. I am too far gone from the cast-iron beliefs and mores they take for granted to ever come back.
* * *
Love is a hard word to use in a literary essay. Thrown around so often, it is confetti dotting the sky. As meaningless as yay.
Love is a hard word to use in this essay when I am so removed from these people. Flying to Houston through culture warps thick as walls, every hard bounce a reminder of the differences between us.
Love is a hard word to use for these people. And yet. My avocado heart will love theirs, soft green flesh, shed of its bumpy skin and hard pit. To be in their presence, to hear their twangy Texas voices is to feel the hard pit of my heart drawn out of my body, leaving only the give of flesh, the history I have with them, the long nights outside running wild, the letters we exchanged as children, the scrawl of Love at the end of every one.
* * *
I cry when we sing “For All the Saints” near the end of the service, hymn of my childhood, my parents’ and grandparents’. It was one of the songs we sang at my father’s funeral. Its lyrics of saints who from all their labors rest highlight the impossible passage between us and those we have lost.
I told Mom I would cry. She said, That’s fine but be quiet. I texted my sisters and brother. Julie texted me back, And if you aren’t, she will poke you. Mom is afraid of being embarrassed, afraid of excessive emotion. I was an adult before I realized it was not my tears that bothered her; it was that she had grown up with a father who screamed, cried, and swore. It made so much more sense why she sent me to my room whenever I cried. Come out when you are done.
The air is thick heat at the cemetery, the sun a white blob. A green awning shades the casket and chairs. Salty sweat trickles down my neck inside my black dress. I want to taste it to distance myself from the death all around us. Mom sits behind me. She has not cried all day, smaller than even the day we arrived, shrinking as her family members die one by one. Everyone under the canopy bows their heads and folds their hands as the pastor prays.
Aunt Allene left us in glory, I try to think. The graveside service ends and the heaven I used to believe in and the god who lived there vanish. I see the piles of dirt left from when the gravediggers dug the hole the day before. I see the wide platform on which her casket rests. On the way to the car, I turn to see the men standing ready and the gurney that will lower her into the ground.
Mom and I are at our rental car in the cemetery parking lot, heading to the airport. Jan and her family are leaving the canopy, the machine ready to lower Aunt Allene into the ground behind them.
Thank you for coming, she yells.
We are so glad we did, I yell back.
You know I will be there for you when it’s time.
I know you will, Jan.
Mom is in the car. I get into the driver’s seat to drive to the airport. In the rearview mirror, the Texas flag waves languidly, the press of wet green trees and grass behind it. I imagine the water moccasins roiling in the bayou beyond the cemetery. I merge onto the freeway and push the gas pedal in the first step toward the place I belong.
*This essay was previously published in Salvation South.
Sherri Alms writes weird, sad, and occasionally angry stories, poems, and essays. Her work has appeared in Salvation South, Cleaver, Rattle, Jelly Squid, and other publications. She lives with her husband and two cats in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. You can find her on Instagram and Bluesky: @sherriwithab.
Nobody's Home 