The Murderer's Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers Page B

behind.
    “Come on,” my father urged.
    My teeth chattered hard enough to shake out of their sockets. I pressed my lips together so he couldn’t see.
    “Lulu, we don’t have much time,” he said, his voice as ordinary as if we were going to the movies and he was afraid we’d be late.
    Merry looked at me, her eyes pleading, begging me to come over. I shuffled the short distance to where they stood, stopping just out of reach. He seemed so different. Not thin, not fat. Thicker. His body appeared hard, even in his baggy suit. His glasses made him look like Clark Kent.
    “How old are you?” I asked.
    “Thirty-two.”
    Mama would have been thirty-one.
    He cocked his head and inspected me. Merry leaned against him, her head buried in his suit. “And you’re thirteen,” he said. “You’ll be fourteen in July. Wow.”
    Wow.
My throat filled up at the word, and I didn’t know why.
    I squirmed as he studied me.
    “You’re tall, like my father.”
    I tried to remember the photographs Grandma kept on top of the television.
    “Your hair is nice,” he said. “I like the color.”
    I touched a mittened hand to my hair.
    “I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair,” he sang. I’d forgotten what a nice voice our father had. He’d sung to me when I was little. Never children’s songs. He liked to croon, not recite, he’d explain.
Don’t expect any “Hickory Dickory Dock” crap from me,
he’d say. At bedtime, he’d sing “Only the Lonely.” When Merry was born, “Oh, Pretty Woman” had just come out, and he would go around the house singing that. Hearing Roy Orbison sing always made me think of my father. I turned off the radio whenever one of his songs came on.
    “Lulu’s lost her voice, huh?” my father said to Merry. Then his face changed. “Come on, girls. Let’s go say good-bye.”
    We walked together, the cold wind stinging my nose, my father swaying a bit, maybe having a hard time keeping his balance since he was handcuffed. How did he walk with his hands locked in front of him? My hands twitched. I wanted to try it.
    Cousin Budgie moved as far from us as she could, as though Daddy might reach out and stab her or something. I moved closer to my father, so close the edge of my coat touched his sleeve, and I shivered.
    The rabbi chanted in a language I guessed was Hebrew. My father and Uncle Irving swayed with the words. As I listened to the foreign sounds, I wondered if I’d be allowed to lean on my father, if it was legal. Not that I wanted to.
    The rabbi switched to English, and I tried hard to pay attention, but too many thoughts fought in my head.
    “May you, who are the source of mercy, shelter them beneath your wings eternally, and bind their souls among the living, that they may rest in peace, and let us say: Amen.”
    “Amen,” my father said, his head bowed.
    Uncle Irving and Cousin Budgie murmured “Amen,” though Budgie might have been whispering,
This is so sick
for all I knew.
    “Amen,” Merry whispered.
    I wanted to say it. I wanted to be a source of mercy. I wanted Grandma to rest in peace, and maybe saying “Amen” was some special way of helping her, but I couldn’t speak in front of my father. Finally, I used my right hand to scratch the word on my left arm, repeating each letter in my head.
    The rabbi picked up a shovel and lifted a small piece of cold, crumbling earth. He overturned the spade and dropped the soil in Grandma’s grave. Merry inhaled as the dirt hit the coffin. The rabbi passed the shovel to Uncle Irving, who repeated the ritual and then handed the shovel off to his daughter. She dug a spoonful of dirt, and then stood holding it, looking caught and angry.
    “Why are they doing that?” Merry asked my father. She rubbed her striped gloves over her chapped, wet cheeks.
    The rabbi placed a bare hand on Merry’s shoulder. “We do this to assist the journey of our loved one.”
    Merry sobbed, holding our father’s arm; he could do nothing but rest his