Rules for Being Dead Read online

  Praise for Rules for Being Dead

  “Kim Powers writes a glorious novel about a boy and his journey to feel whole after the mysterious death of his mother. Mr. Powers’ prose is artful and searing as Clarke’s story unfolds in a Texas town so vivid, the reader is there. Secrets are revealed, hope is lost and found, and redemption awaits in this beautifully rendered tale about love and loss, and the courage to face the truth with an open heart.”

  —Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of Tony’s Wife

  “A tour de force in voice and structure, this uniquely heartbreaking novel—literary fiction meets boy detective—is somehow adorable and sinister at the same time. The brilliantly talented Kim Powers has created a poignant and remarkable story.”

  —Hank Phillippi Ryan, award-winning author of The Murder List

  “We all know a few rules about being alive but who knew that the afterlife could command equal attention. Kim Powers’ Rules for Being Dead caught me by surprise with its intrigue, wit, and nostalgia. His incredibly moving novel takes you back home—no matter where, or when, you grew up. It reminds us that mothers and fathers can never be as perfect as we want them to be, and that childhood secrets can still haunt into adulthood. Get ready to be captivated by a lonely boy who’s lost in the world of ’60s movies and true crime and employs both of them to try to solve the ultimate mystery: what caused his mother’s mysterious death? And one more thing? Despite its title, this book is about learning how to live, with every breath you take.”

  —Deborah Roberts, ABC News Correspondent

  “Rules for Being Dead is a rich and compelling novel about a mother and her sons that is filled with nostalgia, heartbreak, and a love that will never die. Kim Powers has created an unforgettable story about discovering the world through movies, engaging with the tougher realities of life, and learning to forgive the people around us and ourselves.”

  —Will Schwalbe, New York Times bestselling author of The End of Your Life Book Club and Books for Living

  “It’s time well spent with the Perkins family, though the father should be locked up, one son should be disarmed, and the mother who might fix everything can’t—because unfortunately she’s a ghost. Unorthodox, quirky, funny, and heartbreaking, Powers’ love letter to difficult families (and 1960s film classics!) is a blast.”

  —Wilton Barnhardt, bestselling author of Lookaway, Lookaway

  “Tenderhearted and touching, Rules for Being Dead is imbued with the imagination and emotion of such beloved books as The Lovely Bones and Ellen Foster. The narrative is laced with nostalgic references (from Elvis movies to mentions of Don Knotts and TV shows like Family Affair) that bring to life a forgotten time. All these elements come together to create a vibrant backdrop to the story of one family’s unexpected loss and journey toward healing.”

  —John Searles, bestselling author of Help for the Haunted and Strange But True

  Narrated from multiple points of view but dominated by the two protagonists, a dead mother and her ten-year-old son, Kim Powers’ Rules for Being Dead is intoxicatingly hilarious, smart, and deadly serious. Creola’s problem is that she isn’t sufficiently dead. She’s hovering close enough to life to see everything and affect almost nothing. For anyone who has wondered what limbo is like, here’s a startling answer, for Creola can’t fully ascend until she remembers how she died. And not even the living know the answer to that. Ultimately, Rules for Being Dead offers a startlingly original perspective on misapprehension, forgiveness, and love and delivers its vision with a punch. I picked up the book and could not put it down.

  —Elaine Neil Orr, author of Swimming Between Worlds

  RULES FOR BEING DEAD

  RULES FOR BEING DEAD

  KIM POWERS

  — BLAIR —

  Copyright © 2020 by Kim Powers

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover design by Hannah Lee

  Interior design by April Leidig

  Blair is an imprint of Carolina Wren Press.

  The mission of Blair/Carolina Wren Press is to seek out, nurture, and promote literary work by new and underrepresented writers.

  We gratefully acknowledge the ongoing support of general operations by the Durham Arts Council’s United Arts Fund.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright owner. This novel is a work of fiction. As in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience; however, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ISBN: 978-1-949467-35-2

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020930164

  Contents

  Clarke: Saturday, April 2, 1966

  Creola

  Clarke: Sunday, April 10, 1966

  Clarke: Saturday, April 16, 1966

  Creola

  Clarke: Saturday, April 23, 1966

  Creola

  Clarke: Sunday, May 1, 1966

  Creola

  Clarke: Saturday, May 7, 1966

  Clarke: Saturday, May 14, 1966

  Creola

  Clarke: Saturday, May 28, 1966

  Clarke: Saturday, June 4, 1966

  Creola

  Clarke: Saturday, June 11, 1966

  Clarke: Sunday, June 12, 1966

  Creola

  Clarke: Saturday, June 17, 1966

  Clarke: Sunday, June 19, 1966

  Creola

  L.E.

  Rita

  Creola

  Maurice

  Clarke: Saturday, June 25, 1966

  Clarke: Monday, July 18, 1966

  Creola

  L.E.

  Clarke: Saturday, July 30, 1966

  Creola

  Clarke: Friday, August 6, 1966

  Creola

  Clarke: Saturday, August 28, 1966

  Creola

  Clarke: Saturday, September 3, 1966

  Rita

  Clarke: Saturday, September 17, 1966

  Creola

  Maurice

  Clarke: Saturday, September 24, 1966

  Clarke: Saturday, October 1, 1966

  Creola

  Clarke: Sunday, October 23, 1966

  Clarke: Monday, October 24, 1966

  Creola

  L.E.

  Rita

  Clarke: Monday, October 31, 1966

  Creola

  Clarke: Tuesday, November 22, 1966

  Maurice

  Creola: Saturday, December 24, 1966

  Clarke: Tuesday, December 27, 1966

  Clarke

  Creola

  Clarke: Sunday, January 8, 1967

  L.E.

  Clarke: Saturday, January 14, 1967

  Creola

  Maurice

  Clarke: Wednesday, February 1, 1967

  Rita

  Clarke: Saturday, February 19, 1967

  Creola

  Clarke: Saturday, March 18, 1967

  Creola

  Clarke: Saturday, March 18, 1967

  Creola

  Clarke

  Creola

  L.E.

  Clarke

  Creola

  Clarke

  Clarke: Tuesday, April 1, 1967

  Creola

  In memory of my two mothers,

  Creola Perkins Powers and Rita Cobb Powers

  Memory is a complicated thing,

  a relative to truth, but not its twin.

  —Barbara Kingsolver

  If you cannot get rid of the f
amily skeleton,

  you may as well make it dance.

  —George Bernard Shaw

  Lucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do.

  —Ricky Ricardo

  RULES FOR BEING DEAD

  — CLARKE —

  SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 1966

  The Ugly Dachshund is playing at the Ritz today, but my little brother Corey and I didn’t get to see it because yesterday was the day our mother died. It was April Fools’, so at first I thought it was a joke, but it wasn’t. Daddy and Aunt Altha both said it wouldn’t be right to see a movie because we’re in mourning, which is the kind like when you’re sad, not the kind like when you wake up.

  At the funeral home tonight, Aunt Altha said they didn’t do a very good job getting the red ink from grading papers off Creola’s hands. Creola is her name for Momma because she’s her sister, or was until she died. Then she started crying, and her eyes got as red as the ink on Momma’s hands, which I didn’t see because I was too afraid to look in the coffin. Aunt Altha is a teacher like Momma so she knows what red ink looks like. She held up her own hand and traced a line on her palm like she was pointing to the ink, except nobody could see it but her. She sees a lot of stuff that nobody else can see.

  Red is the color of the ink in Momma’s pen that she used to give grades with. So now I’m going to keep using it until it runs out, just like she did. The ink will be gone soon, but if I write down enough of what I remember about her, maybe she won’t be.

  P.S. I’m in the fourth grade at school and we’re learning how to write letters to people. “P.S.” is sort of like “pssst”—where you have an extra thought at the end, and you want to get somebody’s attention after you’ve already said goodbye to them.

  So this is my extra thought: I’m going to cut out The Ugly Dachshund ad from the Courier-Gazette and start a scrapbook with it, even if we didn’t get to see it. Starting a scrapbook and writing in it every week will be a good way to keep my mind off things, which Daddy says we’ll all need to do, until people stop talking.

  — CREOLA —

  This doesn’t seem like heaven; not the one I’ve heard about all my life.

  It doesn’t seem like anywhere, actually.

  It’s foggy—but the fog is dark, not light—and I’m having a hard time staying up in the air. I thought that when I was dead I’d finally have a chance to rest, but this is hard work, staying suspended. It’s like treading air and clouds instead of water. I don’t have wings, but something is back there. It hurts, like something barbed is pushing its way through my skin, trying to grow out of me. A little notion goes off in my head, or what used to be my head; my shoulder blades twitch, my whole body shivers—a dog, shaking off from a bath: Cutie, Vincent, Penny, the parade of dogs we had for the boys that they promised to take care of, but you-know-who ended up doing all the work—and somehow, something happens. Thought happens, and I keep from falling back down to earth. I guess that’s a version of flying. But after a while, my back aches so much from the effort, I think, If this is heaven, then just let me die.

  Oh, wait. I already did. (Haha, Clarke, my oldest, will write on something called Facebook years from now. Wait. Where did that come from? Too much is happening all at once.)

  The air is cooler up here, and considering the alternatives, I’m grateful for that. At least I’m not in hell. But there’s that damn ache in my back and my ankle’s throbbing from where I smacked it against Mrs. Bearden’s chimney—the boys used to call it her “chimley,” no matter how many times I corrected them—and my head hurts, left over from …

  That’s the part I can’t remember.

  Maybe that’s what heaven is; not knowing how the end came.

  Maybe that’s why I’m stuck here, flying around, looking for clues. Maybe I can’t go home—my real home, my heavenly home—until I know for sure. Until I remember.

  I teach fifth grade—whoops, first rule for being dead: get your tenses right. I taught fifth grade, so I’m good at organizing and sticking to a lesson plan. It’s a quick descent into chaos, being unprepared in front of a room full of eleven-year-olds who are hopping up and down they have to go to the bathroom so badly, so that’s how I’ve decided to approach this … down time. This sabbatical. This death, I might as well call it; I’ve never liked mincing words, and now is no time to start. I’m dead, I know that for a cold, hard, back-aching and ankle-throbbing fact, but as for the how and the why …

  I can’t remember.

  Did I say that before? Sorry, I’m still a little woozy.

  What I can remember, what I sort of see when I close my eyes: my sleeping body in bed, my right hand, with veins that stick out too much from where I’ve lost so much weight with worry lately. My hand curled around something. I’m floating over my body; I seem to be a speck in that giant bed as I drift further and further away. A few early strands of gray are shot through my black hair, two weeks away from my hair appointment at Jean Ray’s Beauty Salon. I’m only forty-four—I was only forty-four—but somehow, I look old.

  I twitch, I shudder, I somehow think my way out of that room. My death room. Neither the ceiling nor the roof of the house gets in the way as I waft across the street to a tall tree in the Willises’ front yard. It’s spring, the very first day of April, so everything’s green. I hide inside the leaves, up in the highest branches, and peek out to see everything that’s going on across the street. (Later I will discover that I don’t need to hide; no one can see me, no matter how hard I try to make them.) An ambulance without its siren on pulls into our driveway at 815 Woodleigh Drive. Two men get out of it and go inside the house; they come back out a few minutes later with my body on a gurney.

  I guess it’s my body. It’s in a zipped-up plastic bag, so I can’t tell for sure.

  I fly from the Willises’ tree to the TV antenna over Mrs. Bearden’s house, trying to get a better glimpse, but the show is over. (Since I suddenly feel the urge to tell everything, I’ll tell you this: Mrs. Bearden is old. And fat. And childless. And if you really want to know, not that friendly. So why didn’t God just take her instead? Nobody needs her like my boys need me.)

  No one sees me as I fly over Highway 24 and Louisiana Street to the roof of the school where I teach—there I go again, where I taught—to wait for my husband L.E. to be driven here by his buddy Forrest Goodman from White’s Furniture and Appliance Store, where they both work.

  So there Forrest is, behind the wheel of his station wagon, waiting with L.E., who is waiting for our sons to come out of school when the last bell of the day rings, to tell them that I am gone. Forever.

  Oh, God, I think I’m dying all over again, seeing that.

  Ten-year-old Clarke. Seven-year-old Corey. My two miracle babies, after so many years of trying with no luck to have children. My two heartbeats, except my heart isn’t beating anymore.

  That’s the first time I cry that day, perched on the gabled roof of J. L. Greer Elementary School, where I’d done my best to prepare so many young minds for the future. For a second, I wonder if they’ll rename the school after me, but that flies out of my mind the minute I see my sons walk out the school door and into a car they’ve never ridden in before. I swoop down to the roof of the car to try to hear what’s being said inside, and I stay there all the way back to Woodleigh Drive.

  L.E. takes the boys into the backyard and tells them that I am gone.

  “Gone?” I want to scream. “I’m not gone. I’m up on the roof. Just look!” But I can’t make any noise come out. I can’t make them see me.

  That’s the second time I cry that day—April 1, 1966—the day I died.

  Some joke, hunh?

  — CLARKE —

  SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 1966

  The Ghost and Mr. Chicken with Don Knotts is at the Ritz today, and Corey and I really want to see it. Daddy hasn’t let us go anywhere all week, not to school or even to Momma’s funeral because he said it would upset us too much, and the neighbors keep looking at us strange when they
come by and leave food. At least in the dark at the Ritz nobody could see us, but I don’t know if a movie about a ghost is a good idea right now. All Corey’s done since Daddy told us last week is cry, and I have to keep drying him out.

  Daddy said, “Your Mumma is gone.” He’s from Vermont, and he says some words weird like that, because Vermont is closer to England than Texas, where we live.

  “Gone where, Daddy?” Corey asked.

  Daddy didn’t say “dead” at first because he thought we’d understand what he meant. I understood before Corey did because I’m older, but I didn’t say anything, so Daddy had to keep talking. “Well, she died, Corey. She went to heaven. Clarkie, you’re going to have to help out with your little brother now, since your Mumma’s not here anymore.”

  I told him I didn’t want to be here anymore either; I wanted to be at the Ritz in the dark, so nobody could look at me while I was crying.

  Daddy said we’d have to make do with Dark Shadows on TV for the time being.

  P.S. My real name is Clarke, but sometimes Daddy calls me Clarkie, which has an “i-e” at the end of it. You add an “i-e” or “e-y” to the end of something when you want it to sound sweet, like “honey.” Corey’s name already has a built-in “e-y,” so Daddy doesn’t have to add anything extra to be sweet to him. They gave us names with r’s and e’s and c’s in them so they’d be like our mother’s name, which is Creola. I like thinking about sounds and letters and words like that, almost as much as I like thinking about movies. That’s good for school but bad for me because Daddy says I’m “distracting myself.”

  P.S. P.S. I think I saw Momma’s ghost the other night, but I’m not sure. It was something white, and it looked like it had arms, but it could have just been my white shirt. Daddy made us lay out our good clothes to wear to the funeral home, and my white shirt was hanging off the back of a chair, so maybe that’s what I saw. I hope so. I don’t want to be haunted.