awake

"Why do we have to go to the awake?" my 7-year-old brother Chris asked from the swamp that was our back seat.

"It's not an awake. It's a wake. And we're going to pay our respects," my mom answered, a Salem Light clenched in her fist.

"I don't wanna go!" my brother whined.

"No one wants to go," my father added, slamming his fist on the steering wheel as we waded in traffic.

"Don't start John. He was my father's brother".

"My cousin Harry died last year and you wouldn't go to his wake."

"Oh please John. When was the last time you even spoke to your cousin Harry?

"I didn't have a chance. He was away."

"For bank robbery! What do you...."

"Wahhh!"

The argument was interrupted by my sister Erin squealing and sweating in her car seat. Chris and I covered our ears.

"What is it Erin?" my mother asked, annoyed.

"My stomach hurts!"

"Me too," Chris and I echoed.

"Here we go again!"

"It's not their fault John. They get car sick".

"There's no such thing. It's all in your heads. We're almost there."

During every car trip, one or all of us would complain of car sickness, and my father would tell us it was in our heads. That is, until one of us projectile vomited from the back seat into the ash tray on the dashboard.

"They're hot John. Can't you get this thing fixed?" my mother flicked the air conditioning vent.

"Whaddya talkin about? It's fixed." My father blinked the sweat out of his eyes.

Erin's screeching persisted. She was two, and hated the car seat more than spinach. This was back in the day when parents only had car seats to pile groceries on top of. My mother told me to take Erin out of the car seat and pass her up front. Erin wailed and kicked and cried, wanting to get out of the car as much as the rest of us. My mother tried to soothe her by shouting in her ear,

"Enough now! Stop your nonsense." Surprisingly, this tactic did not work.

"Jesus Christ!" my father began, "You have no control over these kids. Can't you do something? I can't drive like this."

Erin's screaming had trickled down to hiccuping sobs. Her face reddened in a familiar way, and she became eerily silent. I pushed against my brother and we hunkered down against the back seat. Erin's cheeks rounded and her eyes bulged. "Maaaa!" I tried to warn my mother, but it was too late. Erin let out a stream of vomit that completely covered my mother and the front seat.

Chris and I screamed. My mother gagged. My father goddamned us all. Everyone was scrambling and hysterical. Everyone but Erin. She wore this marvelous self-satisfied grin, and rested her head on my mother's filthy shoulder, ready for a nap.

We pulled up in front of the funeral home. My father shut off the car and opened his door. Chris and I fell out into the parking lot, holding our noses and our stomachs. My father opened my mother's door and backed away. My mother emerged, puke dripping off of her and Erin.

"How'm I gonna go in there like this?" she asked my father, holding Erin out away from her.

"You and Erin go in and clean up. I'll take these two in."

My father did his best to clean the puke out of the car while we stood sweltering in our dress clothes. When he finally finished, he walked us inside the funeral home, warning us to behave or else. He saw some relatives at the door and stopped to shake hands. Chris and I took this as our chance to escape and explore. In the misery of the car ride, I had almost forgotten my excitement at going to see my very first dead body. Chris and I had talked about it the entire night before. What would he look like? Would he smell? If we touched him, would his skin crumble like dust or feel hard like a stone? We were practically vibrating with anticipation.

People were milling about, smoking and laughing as if they were at a party. We scoured the room for the body but didn't even see anyone crying, so we continued into the next room.

"Where is he?" Chris asked. I shrugged.

"What's he look like?"

"I don't know! He's the one laying down."

Chris crept closer to me.

"I do and I don't wanna see him."

"Me too." I took Chris' hand.

We entered a large quiet room full of pungent flowers. The lights were turned down low. We were frightened and clung to each other. Towards the back of the room, a very old woman was laying in a reclining chair. She was wearing a black dress and had a black veil over her white wiry head. Her eyes were closed and her hands were folded across her stomach. Her mouth was slightly open.

"What's that?" Chris whispered. We inched closer, holding our breath.

"Is that him?" I shoved his shoulder.

"No stupid. It's a woman. She's wearing a dress!"

Chris rubbed his arm and sulked. "Boy babies wear dresses when they're baptized!"

I rolled my eyes at his ignorance, yet I wondered.... We crept closer until we were eye level with her head. We stared hard. Chris was breathing heavily through his mouth. I covered his mouth with one hand and covered my own with the other.

"Is she alive?" Chris asked through my fingers.

"Shhh!"

Chris held up a trembling finger and inched it closer and closer to the woman's face. As Chris' finger hovered a hair away from the woman's face, we looked at each other, eyes flung wide open, chins quivering. Chris squinted his eyes shut and plunged his finger into the woman's doughy cheek. An eyeball opened, red and veiny. Our mouths shot open to reveal our scarlet tonsils.

"Ahhhhh!!!"

The woman sat up, confused and ancient, but alive. Chris and I ran screaming out of the room, past our parents and Erin, past the smoking and laughing mourners.

We ran out to the car and locked ourselves in, huddled together in the back seat with the windows rolled up. We pinched our noses and fanned ourselves.

"It smells like Erin's puke!" Chris complained.

"Shut up! Would you rather be in there with that?"

"No way!" Chris shuddered at the thought.

We sweated and waited for my parents to come out, choking on the stench of Erin's vomit. I wondered which of us would be the one to puke on the drive home.