It was the sort of day for sitting on a broad shaded porch, paddle fan turning overhead, a pitcher of iced tea sweating on the table, wicker creaking, cushions shifting, bees buzzing in the flowers nearby. Laziness would float on the air, along with Eric Clapton, B. B. King or Louis Armstrong himself, while kids played in sprinklers and dogs hunkered in the cool damp earth beneath an azalea bush. It was a day only a true Southerner could enjoy, a day for making outsiders think about returning to wherever they came from. A day for laying to rest a woman who had thrived through thousands of such days. Alia stood in the shade of a tree she didn’t recognize—much to her mother’s dismay when it came weeding time in the garden, she’d never been interested in flora and fauna—and watched as mourners filed from the church. Some stood and talked, some left and others went to their cars, starting the engines, rolling down windows and turning the air-conditioning to high while they waited for the procession to the cemetery to begin.
