MORNING SERIAL

I FEEL sorry for the sister. She isn’t here. Neither are the brothers. I bet they teased the sister and twisted her arm in a Chinese burn and were meaner than even Pigeon is to Cher. Bet He was mean. He was mean. He was mean. He deserved everything he got. But that thought is too big and too nasty. Serve Him Right. I can’t think that either. Not properly.

“My impression,” says the Priest, “is that he was a boy full of fun.”

The priest talks about this Adrian and the games he used to play as a kid. Fishing. Tiddlywinks, which means counters, and boxing. That makes sense. Boxing. Adrian was never a kid. I know he wasn’t. He was Him.

“Let’s not beat about the bush,” says the priest. “Adrian could knock out a man twice his size.” The big men laugh. Pigeon’s mum doesn’t, she just sits there, being alone and small and pretty and a Bloody Disgrace. I look at her, feeling how Pigeon isn’t there, where he should be, sitting next to her. Efa says not to mention him. “He’s not allowed to come,” she says. Like he ever would. Like he’d want to hear about this Adrian.

Standing in the church, looking at the coffin with Him in it, I think how it was Adrian. The massa-killer, the sicko-psycho, was Him all along, and I never knew. Pigeon never told me. I never knew until I saw Him in their living room that day, with Pigeon. Hurting Pigeon. My friend.

The hymns for Him are very quiet because there’s only fifteen people. Some of them are the same songs we know in chapel, but they’re in English instead in this church. Only the priest really sings. He sings nice and round into his microphone, and it’s like he really believes in the song and in God! and in Him. And then the priest, who’s dressed in a long robe like a warlock, with a scarf around his neck and a special serious look on his face shakes clouds of spicy smells over the coffin where He is, as if He’s something that should be treated kindly, as if He’s something special, as if He’s something soft and not just a body you have to break to survive.