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Show Go Love/187 straight in the face, thinking, that I'm the same punk-fuck he once Cain and Abled, but that's not so, and that I know this means all. Mama knew it from the beginning, where this was all going, how it would come down, and still she fought like a tiger, and there's something to be said for going down swinging Forever people will stab you in the back, the very genes we're made of necessitates self-interest and viciousness and survival no matter what-that's what life means, live, no matter what. And if there's any transcendence in these strange, strange lifetimes we keep on living, it's about love, the lone buoy in a sea of death. Love or death. The preacher takes three steps up onto the podium, sits down on the bench facing us and nods his head at me The music quits I step up into the vacuum of false light, past Mama's casket and up to the pulpit where I look into the sea of faces and unfold Mama's eulogy. The mike whistles when I touch it, Brother Dell's eyes burn into my back. My daughter looks straight at me through my mother's face-how on earth to explain this to a four-year-old child. How on earth to explain anything at all to anybody, really. The silence is down on us. Breaths are being held in chests where hearts beat. Before the last operation, the one Mama and Daddy believed would kill her, Mama sent the talking photo of her and O.W with a bright flash on their faces and happy grins. "I love you, Lara," Mama said "I love you, Lara," Daddy said Only Lara somehow erased the voices, so when you pushed the button, nothing happened. Renee retaped the I love vous in her own voice, alien and downright funny out of O.W.'s mouth, but dead on for Mama. Lara never knew the difference. I meet O.W.'s eyes-ice blue in this light. Off to the right, sitting on the edge of the wood pew, my blood Uncle Davey with his hands in his lap When Renee was pregnant with Lara, I'd been afraid we'd birth a dwarf. It was |