Porgy rushed down the hall of the seventh floor. Everything was white, the ceilings, the floor, the walls. Even the lights were white, casting down from above illuminated the space making the hall feel brighter. He felt out of place in this environment. His street clothes were worn down and ragged, needing a good wash that they only received on occasion. In this hallway that smelled of disinfectant and had not a single spec of dust anywhere Porgy felt dirty. He checked behind him as he walked expecting to see a trail of dirt from himself. He was shocked to see that the floor was just as clean as it was before he stepped on it. Leaving his thoughts, Porgy rounded the corner and began counting the room numbers.
“243. 244. 245, AH! 246.”
When Porgy entered the room, he was upset by what he saw. In the middle of the room laid Robbins with a sheet over his head and a dark monitor standing tall next to his bed. His brown hand stuck out from under the sheet and his widower held it with a grip so tight it seems as though she would never let go. The cries that she let out were ear piercing and her body shook violently as tears rolled down her cheeks. Friends and neighbors all stood around the two of them with sympathetic and sad looks on their faces. One at a time people approached the widow, handing her checks as a token of their sorrow and wanting to help cover the funeral costs. Porgy had heard that Robbins never bothered to get life insurance, probably not realizing the toll that would leave on his family if he passed. Now with no way to pay for the funeral neighbors came together to try and help the widow out.
Suddenly the door to the room flung open and a short brown man rushed in.
“How much money have we raised?” He asked pulling out his phone.
“Brother, I do not know, I have been too upset to check. My gaze has not left him, and I refuse to leave him until I have to.” Said the widow.
Not listening to what his sister just said he raised his eyebrows at his phone. “Wow our GoFund me page has only raised about one hundred dollars. That simply will not cover the costs of the funeral.”
“Brother, we have also gotten some generous donations from our neighbors that have gathered today. See here, here it is in my hand.”
The widow held up her free hand presenting all of the checks that had accumulated from those in the room. Her brother grabbed the checks and looked each over. He still looked dissatisfied but slightly more impressed with the amount they were able to collect.
“I think we should wait a couple more days to have the funeral so we can keep collecting money.”
“NO! Absolutely not. My husband clearly stated while he was alive that he did not want to be an organ donor and if we stay in this hospital with him much longer the doctors will start sending in the organ donation people to convince us to change our minds. He gets buried tomorrow, end of discussion.”
The widow’s brother rolled his eye. He pulled his phone out and started to dial a number, probably for the funeral home to start the preparations for the service. He then left the room and was not seen for the rest of the day. As the day went on neighbors began to leave, giving the widow a squeeze or pat on the shoulder before making their exist. Porgy stayed in the back of the room, hanging close to the wall. He was more of an observer, and he liked watching the interactions going on. Soon it was only him and the widow, however, and he took this as his cue to leave. Dragging his weaker leg behind him, Porgy hobbled his way out of the room, sliding the glass door closed behind him.
The next day was cloudy. Rain threatened to ruin the whole service, yet it felt appropriate at the same time. Porgy sat in the back seat of one of his neighbors’ cars. He didn’t get to ride in cars very often and peered out the window like a child at the candy store. He was fascinated by the scenery outside of the city. Porgy spent most of his days begging on the streets of Charleston. His favorite spot was right under the bridge on East Bay Street. It was shaded there and all of the tourist visiting had to exit there to get into the city. Sometimes he had to arrive early to beat the other beggars, it was a popular spot. Today he did not care if someone took his spot, they could have it for now. He was instead fixated on the views he was looking at. His neighbor drove slowly, he was following a line of other cars who were also attending the funeral. That was the tradition, everyone rode at the same speed in a line behind the car carrying the casket to show others that they were all together.
After about forty-five minutes they finally arrived at the funeral home. It was a beautiful brick building surrounded by a field of tomb stones and flowers. Despite the eeriness of death that was in the air the area was beautiful. Porgy found himself walk around and reading the names on each of the stones.
Not long after all the guest’s arrived the service began.
Explanatory Paragraph
The exert I chose is on pages 26-29 and is the scene where Robbins is dead and his funeral. I wanted to give my remake a more modern twist. In this scene Robbins dead body is at home and I wanted to make him be in a hospital. I also really wanted to include the things about organ donation since that is a big aspect of death today and his widow mentioned in the original version that she didn’t want the students at the hospital using his body for practice. I thought about including a funeral scene in my remake but decided against it. I have never been to a funeral, so I am not sure what they are like, and I did not want to misrepresent it. I did, however, want to include the drive to the funeral. In the original version they all ride a wagon out to the country, but I wrote about how they all drove behind the car with the casket. That is a very big part of funerals today, so I thought it was interesting to include that. Besides making this remake more modern I also did not use the Gullah language in it. Gullah was a language among the black community in Charleston that was used throughout history. I felt like I could not represent that language appropriately, so I did not want to even attempt it. I know when we talked about John Bennet writing in Gullah we discussed if it was appropriate for him as a white man to write like that, so I did not want for that same question to come up for me as well. Overall, I hope that the remake still embodies that exert from Porgy that I chose but felt more modern.