Last year, when I finally saw her again after twenty-three years, I was overwhelmed by one thing: I did not know this woman. I had thought perhaps I would have been overcome with a recognition, a primeval, instinctual knowledge. Mother. Mamma. Mater. Nothing. All my feelings of Mother were directed to the still woman who lay in state in a bronze and chocolate coffin, her face covered with too much powder, her cherrywood skin too dark, her bold, brown lips almost black, her eyes forever glued shut.

Rose stood at the graveside ceremony as Reverend Raines eulogized my grandmother, reading from Paul’s letters to the Corinthians (“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal”), a beautiful woman, once blessed with that intangible irresistible nature men call sexy, her skin still richly loam dark, her lips full and insolent. I could easily detect the defiance that had set her against her mother those twenty and odd years ago—all in those lips. (“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.”) But her eyes—I could see them even through the veil—bore the consequences of hard living, hard love, hard times. They were lonely, lovely, scorned eyes. Eyes that had learned to look for themselves, and had seen. (“And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”) When she began to cry, a calm and low sob, she looked suddenly forlorn and forsaken, a child lost and alone. And even now I cannot believe that no one, not Aunt Rebecca, not Aunt Ruthester, not Aunt Rachel, not Isador, not Franklin, and not I, especially not I, turned to comfort her. (“Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.”). Until finally, in a moment of such black tension, huddled over the lowering casket, a thin, invisible line separating the prodigal from the faithful, my Uncle Lester stepped over that line and put his hand on her shoulder. (“For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is part shall be done away.”) It was a crude and clumsy gesture, but in all its lack of grace it was full of grace. (“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”) Seeing that, I knew my sin, but was unrepentant.