The woman behind the desk at the mortuary office in Clinton, Mississippi, looked at me with her mouth open, and then looked at the telephone, and then looked at me again. I am Hattie Mae Coleman, eighty two years old, of Jackson, and I had walked in on my own two feet with my cane and my church hat and my pastor at my elbow, and I laid the letter from Social Security on her desk. It said, in cold black type, that I had passed away on a Saturday in September. “Madam,” she said at last, and her voice shook, “you are standing right there.”
Her name tag said Mrs. Dupree, and she was the owner, a plump, frightened woman in a lilac suit. She pulled up the file on her computer and turned the screen toward me. The report of my passing had been filed with the state on a Saturday, signed by a Mr. Gaines, an employee of the office, with the name of the informant: Terrence Coleman, grandson. My grandson, who had lived in my back room for six years, who had driven me to the Social Security office that very morning, and whose car was now gone from my driveway.
My telephone buzzed in my purse, a text from a number I did not know. I read it standing at the desk. Miss Hattie, this is Keisha. I am a friend of Terrence. He is at the bank on Highway 80 right now, taking out the last of your money. Please hurry. I am so sorry. I showed the screen to my pastor, Reverend Banks, who took off his glasses and put them back on. The lump sum of eleven thousand dollars, the insurance savings of my husband, was already gone, and the boy was about to take the rest.
A Social Security letter declaring her gone gave one grandmother the length of a Saturday to bring her grandson back to the truth in Jackson.
I gave my terms right there in the lobby of the mortuary, in my Sunday voice, to Mrs. Dupree and Reverend Banks and the young man called Mr. Gaines, who had just come out from the back with his hands in his pockets. “Mr. Gaines, you will sit here and write down exactly who paid you, and how much, to file that paper. Reverend, please drive me to the bank on Highway 80, and I will bring the boy home myself. Mrs. Dupree, you will fix this record today, because I have a doctor appointment on Monday, and I mean to attend it alive.”
We found Terrence in the parking lot of the bank, leaning on the hood of a borrowed car, with a cash envelope in his hand. When he saw me step out of the car of the pastor, he went gray. “Grandma,” he said, and then he could not say anything more. I walked up to him slowly, with my cane tapping, and I waited. At last, he spoke. “I put nine thousand dollars of your money into a coin scheme that a man at the barbershop told me about,” he said. “It all disappeared. I owe the rest to people. I thought if the government believed you were gone, I could take your account and fix it before anyone knew.”
But the boy could not stand to be seen weeping in front of a bank full of customers. He suddenly threw the envelope of cash into the front seat, snatched the folder with the false papers from the roof of the car, the forms that proved he had reported me gone, and jumped behind the wheel, meaning to drive away down Highway 80 and burn them in a field. The engine roared. The tires squealed. And across the exit of the lot, a church van with the words Greater Mount Zion painted on its side swung into the way.
Terrence stood on the brake in the middle of the lot, the church van filling his windshield, six women of my choir stepping down from its doors in their purple robes with their hands on their hips, the afternoon sun shining on their gray hair. The oldest, Sister Odom, rapped on his window with her knuckles. “Terrence Coleman, I changed your diapers in the nursery. Turn off that engine and get out of that car.” He sat for a long moment with his hands on the wheel. Then he turned off the engine, and his head fell forward onto his arms.
The consequences were orderly and slow. The man at the mortuary, Mr. Gaines, was fired and charged for filing a false report, and Mrs. Dupree cooperated and corrected the record that very week. Social Security restored my benefits in full, with an apology letter that I framed, just to look at. Terrence was charged with fraud, but because I asked for mercy, the judge allowed him to repay me through work. He took two jobs, one at a tire shop and one at a grocery, and he handed me an envelope every Friday with a small note: sorry, Grandma.
In the name of my husband Abner, who passed in 2009, I started the Abner Coleman Fund. It pays for help with benefit errors and for legal help for older people who have been reported gone by mistake or by fraud, in Hinds, Rankin and Madison counties. In the first year we restored benefits to ninety seven people and helped twenty three families stop false reports. One was an eighty nine year old veteran from Canton who held his reinstated card against his chest and told the volunteer he had gone two months without a check and eaten crackers for supper.
On a warm Sunday in the fall, I walked into the sanctuary of Greater Mount Zion in Jackson on the arm of my grandson, in my best purple hat, with every head in the pews turning to look. Terrence wore a pressed white shirt and a tie that Reverend Banks had given him. We sat in the front pew, the same pew where Abner and I had sat for fifty years, and when the choir began to sing, Terrence reached for my hand. “Grandma,” he whispered, “I am so glad you are still here.” I squeezed it, and I told him that I was not going anywhere.
