After nagging him about the location of Virginia mourners the sciolist came to my rescue and gave me a starting point. I found on my bed one day when I returned from the Center a letter that the sciolist received from a professor who had read Ways of Dying, which, as I believe you know by now, is the story of my life as conceived and recorded by the same sciolist. The professor, William Edwards, wrote:
Regarding the information on mourners I can say that all of it is anecdotal (much in the oral tradition). My cousin, from NY, has been visiting over the holidays and she recalls in New York City knowing of mourners. A colleague of mine from Louisiana also recalls mourners there. The same is true for close friends who are from South Carolina. I can convey that mourners were exclusively female. They were most likely to appear at funerals of those in the lower (economic) and working classes. It was highly unlikely that they would appear for funerals of the middle class. In Louisiana mourners could be found at Catholic funerals. Most commonly they were phenomena of the Protestant churches, especially those that were given over to more emotional worship. Mourners may or may not have been friends of the family. The women mourners’ role was to ensure that the deceased received a due amount of respect through the expression of outward and vocal grief. The expression of grief would most commonly be crying with an occasional uttering of some quality about the deceased (“He was a good man/woman”).
As a sociologist I would interpret mourning as ceremonial rituals performed to anoint the deceased with respect which he/she may not have received in their lifetime. This is similar to Sunday worship where blacks would have special clothing to wear which would symbolize dignity and worthiness in God’s eyes. Duke Ellington captured some of this in his famous song “Come Sunday.” Given this interpretation you can surmise why mourning was more likely to occur in the lower class ranks than among the middle class. Mourning was a kind of legitimation, as noted earlier. It signified the fact that an individual had a worth which may not have been acknowledged in the ordinary patterns of social relations. In the South it was common for people to think of dying as “passing over” into the promised land. This can be seen in many of the “Negro Spirituals.” Mourning served as a transitional act whereby the deceased would be given a “proper” send-off.
There are some aspects of mourning that I am not sure about. Did mourners receive any pay? Were they invited by the family of the deceased? Could anyone be a mourner? I can understand why most were women since they, traditionally, have been more expressive than men. Their crying at a funeral would seem most appropriate.
The points that the professor raised in this last paragraph were the most important for me. I did not think we could just gatecrash a funeral and start mourning. We might need to scour obituaries, meet the bereaved and convince them that they needed us. Payment plays an important part in the practice of professional mourning. It is what elevates professional mourning from downright pedestrian mourning. We would have to convince the bereaved of this. Plus, my reserve of funds would not last forever.
As for the observation that women were more expressive, in our case I was the most expressive. After all, I perfected the art of mourning over the years. Orpah’s expressiveness came through her sitar and the quilts that we hung on rails next to Niall Quigley’s grave.
Although the quilts were sewn by me they were an interpretation of her designs. Sometimes we worked on them together at the Center. I sewed bits of discarded cloths together and she decided where the found objects — such as shells and beads and mirrors — should be placed in the collage. Those objects that could not be sewn were glued on. The shape of the ghost orchid was the theme that ran through the quilts.
“You are truly a fabric poet, Orpah,” I told her once.
The quilts, the sitar and my wails and moans gave color to our mourning. The fabrics were bright and dazzling and the mirrors and gleaming metals captured our souls and reflected them back to us. Her sitar also had a wide range of tone colors. Despite the fact that she changed her tunes in line with the sounds of my own invention, her strumming did not lose its sense of wonder and mystery.
As our joint creations developed I resuscitated the skill I thought I had lost as a child — that of drawing pictures. I remembered vaguely winning an art prize at elementary school. I also remembered the discouragement I received from my father, who ironically had extended his blacksmithing into fashioning metal figurines of creatures who visited his dreams. Here, with the influence of Orpah’s sitar, I was steadily contributing stylized human figures to her designs. And our work was an expression of joy. Joy that was not dressed with anything to make it valid. Naked joy.
And the nakedness extended into the nights at our RV. The tinge of guilt continued with our romps; as if I was betraying the memory of Noria. Things used to be different with Noria. The connection was more of a spiritual nature. I do not recall any memorable orgasms. With Orpah, on the other hand, every night brought with it earth tremors and sounds that could only be unworldly. She was no longer afraid of the mark of the Irishman. She was no longer ashamed of it. She danced in front of me naked and said: “Admit it; this is the most beautiful pussy you’ve ever seen.”
“It looks like an angel’s,” I said.
And that, of course, gave rise to more numinous sounds.
It was these sounds that we tried to reproduce as we went through our routine at the first Quigley’s grave. Here at the hands of Orpah I was developing from mere professional mourner to performer. After all, the roots of tragedy lie in mourning. I am talking here of tragedy on the stage. For the ancient Greeks dramatic tragedy was a ritual that took the songs of professional mourners at funerals to the levels of performance. It gave the dead a voice since the corpses could not utter a sound anymore. Like actors who steal the voices of those who cannot speak for themselves, professional mourners are hypocrites who weep for those who never belonged to them in the first place. Through Orpah’s direction the hypocrisy of the actor and of the professional mourner converged. And the movements that resulted from that union were intense and stirring.
All this mourning heightened our appreciation for each other. Sometimes in the middle of a movement we were so possessed by the demons of the flesh that we had to repair to the RV to relieve the tensions. We could only hope that the visitors to the Center did not wonder about the strange movements of the vehicle.
Throughout this period of our perfecting our act and of reveling in each other’s bodies we did not see Obed. I think we forgot about him altogether.
One day a man came to the Center while I was putting together one of Orpah’s collages. The women knew him at once, and one told me he was one of the greatest dulcimer players in southeast Ohio. After having a good laugh at what he considered pieces of ugly rags that I was sewing together he said that he had come to invite Orpah to play with his bluegrass band at a fund-raising event for the victims of Katrina — the hurricane that had destroyed New Orleans at the end of August.
“I don’t wanna play no gig,” said Orpah even before the man finished his story.
“Where’s this going to be held?” I asked.
“At the Stuart’s Opera House in Nelsonville,” said the man.
“We got our own gig on the road, baby,” said Orpah.
“It’s for a good cause, Orpah,” said the man looking at me for support. But I have no intention of involving myself in this. I saw what happened to Nathan when he tried to be Orpah’s “manager.” The women thought it would be a good idea if Orpah took part in the concert — it would be the American thing to do. She said she would think about it and contact the man later.