The Sweet By and By Read online

  “She ought to have told him to go to hell.” Margaret sneers.

  “She’s mad now, she’s hot as a firecracker!” Bernice cackles, looking at Margaret through a magazine that she has rolled up like a telescope.

  “I’m not mad, I’m just telling the truth. I don’t even know those people.”

  Bernice laughs. “She might get in a fight before supper!”

  “Stop peeping at me through that tube, Bernice, you make me nervous.” Margaret shifts in her chair, turning her whole body towards me. “Now, Rhonda. You’re going out again I guess, aren’t you?”

  I’m trying to squeeze a big stack of folded towels into the only storage cabinet I have. “I don’t know, he hasn’t asked me yet.”

  “Oh, he’s going to ask you,” Margaret says, “I’ll bet money on that.”

  I feel embarrassed cause she has come right out and said what I’m hoping but there’s no way I woulda told. Bernice hasn’t caught up with us just yet, but at least she has calmed down some. She points to Margaret like she’s telling me a secret. “You get that girl right there mad, and you’ll know somethin, I’ll tell you that.”

  Margaret can see right through me. “Sweetheart, you really are worried.”

  “I’ve been goin out with friends mostly,” I say. “Last time I went out with a stranger was a year ago. I was at the Y-Not Drop Inn, that’s a bar pretty close to where I live. It’s also got a little restaurant but nobody’s hardly ever in there, everybody’s all crowded into the bar part, especially on the weekends. I was there with my friend Connie, but she said she had gotten up real early for her route and was gonna head home, but did I want to stay. I said, ‘Yeah I’m gonna finish my beer, go on.’ It wasn’t two seconds after she got off the stool that a guy sat down beside me.

  “‘I know you,’ he said.

  “I lit up a cigarette. ‘From the movies?’ I asked. A voice in my brain said real loud that I wasn’t in the mood to be picked up. And believe me, if I was in the mood, nothin would stop me, so you know I must really not have been to blow him off like that. And he was good lookin too, in a stray dog kind of way.

  “‘I do know you,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember your name, but I know you. From school.’

  “‘It’s been a long time since I was in school,’ I answered him. I really didn’t want to be rushed through my beer. It was Friday night and I had spent all day with my hands in people’s hair.’”

  “You love hair, don’t you?” Bernice interrupts, innocent as a five-year-old.

  “Yes I do, but there can always be too much of a good thing,” I say. “Anyway, turns out he had gone to college somewhere in the mountains and was working for a company that makes bike locks and I guess other locks too, but the bikes were the ones he talked about.”

  “What is there to say about a lock?” Margaret asks. “Either it locks or it doesn’t. What else do you need to know?”

  “I know, I know it’s boring but some people might think what I do is boring too.”

  “I beg to differ,” she says. “Under every head of hair is the head of a person. That’s at least the potential for something interesting.”

  “Well he wasn’t lyin. He was a year ahead of me, I found out later. Randy Roper. I didn’t know him but I had seen him around. He played baseball. When he asked me didn’t I want to get somethin to eat, I said, ‘Not here. Have you ever seen anybody eat here?’ We didn’t go to a restaurant. I knew we weren’t gonna eat as soon as I said ‘not here.’ He had a scar on his chest, told me he got it from the blade of a band saw that snapped off. Next morning, he left me lyin in bed at the Super8 and went to get coffee and didn’t come back. So much for ‘I-know-you’ Mr. Randy Roper.”

  Margaret and Bernice sit staring at me, silent as two corpses. “Don’t y’all feel sorry for me. I got what I wanted and so did he. Hey, I do what I need to do and I take what comes along with it.”

  “What did you get,” Margaret says, “other than the obvious?”

  I want to snap at her, it’s like I hear my grandma in her voice, not that she said it mean, but I heard it that way. Judge and jury rolled up into one, that was Grandma. Instead, I feel the pressure start to build up behind my eyes, then tears. “I need Mike to be different.”

  Bernice picks up the whole stack of magazines she has piled on her lap and puts them on the floor. She gets up, slightly wobbly, and takes hold of my hands, still in the yellow rubber gloves that I use to clean sinks. She doesn’t try to say anything, maybe somehow she knows it’ll come out crazy, so she doesn’t want to. Then she kisses me, on the mouth, and standing perfectly still, smiles the biggest smile you can think of before going back to her chair like absolutely nothing happened.

  “You need to bring Mike around here, Rhonda,” Margaret says. “When you feel ready to.”

  “He said he wants to come. He’s heard me talk about y’all ’til I’m blue in the face and he wants to see y’all and everything else for himself. I said to him, ‘Should I want to see where you work, cause I have to tell the truth, I don’t really.’ ‘Darlin,’ he said, ‘anytime you want to see, just go stick your head in the truck, that’s my place of business.’”

  Margaret clears her throat. “I’m going to say something, sugar, and I assume you will bother to listen since you took the time to tell us that story in the first place.”

  “You’re scarin me now.”

  “Rhonda.” She pauses. “You deserve to be noticed. Not once or twice, always. Now that’s a tall order, because when you stop acting like there’s something worth noticing, then you can be sure everybody else will follow suit.”

  “We’re just datin,” I say.

  Margaret goes on. “You want somebody to be different, you’ve got to be different. I myself didn’t learn that. I spent a lot of time waiting for my husband to change, and I’m not so sure that he didn’t actually try. That, my dear, was a pure waste of time. I don’t know how much anybody changes, they just take on different forms at different times. Kind of like water. Sometimes it’s liquid, sometimes it’s ice, sometimes it’s slush.”

  “I bought them slushies when they were little. Red, orange, grape, whatever they wanted at the 7-Eleven!” Bernice squeals. “If you drink em too fast, you’ll get a headache. That’s what I told them, and they listened.” She seems real satisfied to have the last word.

  “I’m listenin too,” I say to both of em. “I am. Thank you.”

  “Anytime,” Bernice says. “Have you got a bathroom?”

  “You know exactly where it is.” Margaret takes hold of Bernice’s hand. “Down the hall. Come on, I’ll go too. Let’s get out of here so this girl can get on with her life. She’s got a lot of fish still to fry.”

  I watch them teeter out and into the hall. It’s so quiet that I can hear the fluorescent lights humming. I hate those lights cause they make the walls look fake. You can’t see the real color of anything. But I don’t want to turn them off. I don’t want to close up. It’s way past time for me to go, but if I leave too fast, I might forget something, and I don’t want to have to come back to look for it.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  LORRAINE

  By the time we pull into the parking lot, both of my passengers are sleepin like babies. Neither one of their families even knows Rhonda except by sight, so they had to sign release papers for me to bring them to the wedding. They’re used to it, sometimes we’ll take a van to the mall at Christmas, things like that, for any of em that are able. I like Rhonda all right even though I don’t really know her that good except from helping people get to the salon when she’s there.

  When I volunteered to bring the ladies here today, Bernice’s son asked me, “Do you have a car that’ll run?”

  I told him, “It gets me to and from work every day.”

  “Uh-huh. Okay,” he said, like he was giving a test, then he added, “You know I’d take Mama myself, but my wife and I have plans we can’t switch around, we got the kids and all.”


  “We’ll be all right, don’t worry yourself,” I said as my way of lettin him know I didn’t need or want to hear any explanations. We weren’t going but ten miles down the road into the country. As for Margaret’s daughter Ann, she’ll be workin like she does every weekend showing houses, that’s her busiest time. Standing with me in front of Ada Everett, I felt like she wanted to make a point. She said, “Lorraine, you know I trust you with Mama like I trust myself. If she wants to go, I want you to take her. Ada, are you going?”

  “I can’t leave here,” Ada answered, handing over the form Ann needed to sign. “We’ve got a state inspection week after next. I wish I could, I think a lot of Rhonda.”

  Ann nodded. “I know Mama does too, even though she says she’s hard on her head sometimes.” She clicked down the hallway in expensive shoes. She needed to look good to sell houses. She spoke without turning back. “Bye Lorraine, I’ll see you tomorrow.” And I knew she would too cause I couldn’t think of but maybe two or three times a year when she hadn’t been down here at some point in the day. That was her way, everybody finds their own way here. Miss Margaret complains about her sometimes, but they all do. Loved ones get it the worst no matter what, but far as I know, that’s life.

  They tell me Rhonda hasn’t known her fiancé but a few months. I expect she feels like she knows him pretty good to get married, and I hope for her sake she does. She wanted more than anything to have these two ladies come, Margaret barely able to walk some days, and Bernice with no tellin what’s gon come out of her mouth at any time. Rhonda asked me if I thought their families would let em go and I told her I didn’t think it would be a problem. Margaret wants to go to every wedding or funeral or baptism or any other service she can if somebody will take her. I’ve never in my life seen anybody so ready to go to get in the middle of somebody else’s church service. “It’s the rituals of life I’m interested in, Lorraine. Taking part in them is good for the soul.” I say she’s nosy, that’s it. As for Bernice, she may or may not know she’s at a wedding, you can’t never tell. She loves Rhonda though and I think that’s all right.

  I turn off the ignition. “Y’all sleeping beauties gon wake up or you want me to go to the wedding and tell you about it later?”

  Margaret stirs beside me and is the first one to say something. “Lord God, are we already here? That sun coming in the window puts me to sleep every time, I can’t help it to save my life.”

  I don’t realize Bernice is awake until she hollers from the backseat, “Is the bride here yet?”

  “We thought you might fill in for her if she can’t make it,” Margaret says. She nudges me. It goes right over Bernice’s head.

  I get out and start the preparations of movin these ladies from car to church. I’ve parked as close as I can, but I still think I better take em one at the time, Bernice first cause she’s a little bit easier to handle. She can still walk all right even though she’s had one heart attack and they think she might have had a mild stroke too. She’s fine if she don’t get in a hurry, then she can’t get her breath. I’ve got a walker for Margaret and a wheelchair in the trunk of the car cause I don’t never know which one she might need and neither does she. When I ask her some days if she wants to take a walk, she says, “It depends on how long a trip you’re planning.” Today she’s feelin all right. When I open the boot of the car, she snaps, “Don’t start hauling out any of that artillery, Lorraine. I plan to walk into that church, but I want to hold onto your arm.”

  Bernice is at the door already. I told her to walk up the ramp to the side of the porch. There are only three shallow steps but she’s not supposed to climb any stairs with her heart, and she knows I mean business. I learned a long time ago that the best way for me to help Bernice is to treat her like a bighearted, free-spirited child, and it’s that much more important now that she’s not well. “Bernice, wait there, we’re all gon go in together.” An usher opens the front door. He’s a big man, probably at least 250 pounds, and has got a red face like it’s sunburned in October and a reddish-blond bushy mustache. He claps his hands and rubs them together like he’s gettin ready to roll dice. “Let me help y’all, take your time, they’re not starting yet.”

  “Thank you, I ’preciate it,” I say, coming up the ramp real slow with Miss Margaret. I can see from the way he takes Bernice’s arm that he’s got a grandmother who loves him. Margaret sees it too. “That’s a sweet boy right there,” she says.

  “You feelin all right?” I ask her when we get to the top of the walkway.

  “If I’m not you’ll be the first to know.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  I take three programs and we follow the big usher down the aisle. Bernice is waving to some people, and I know she don’t know one soul at this wedding. Most of em are waving back like they think they’re s’posed to know who in the world she is. I hope he don’t put us too close to the front cause I might have to take one of the ladies out if they need to go to the bathroom, and I need to figure out soon where exactly it might be. We get ourselves situated on a long pew with nobody else on it even though the rest of the little church looks like it’s full. I put myself between Margaret and Bernice so I can do whatever I need to for either one of em. A side door opens up front and a girl and two boys come out, all of em in their thirties or somewhere around there, a few years younger than Rhonda by what I can tell.

  “Is the bride here yet?” Bernice asks me again. “I sure do want to meet her.”

  Margaret leans out around me. “Honey, it’s Rhonda. She fixes your hair.” Then Margaret starts to read her program out loud, and she doesn’t know how loud her voice is. “Stairway…to…Heaven,” she says, like she’s making an announcement. “That’s a song?” She turns to me and I tell her yes, and I know it is, but maybe I’m thinking of the wrong one cause I never heard it at a wedding.

  Bernice sticks her head out around me to Margaret. “I’m going to get a hairdo. You want one too?” she says. “Later on,” Margaret says. I like the way she talks to Bernice real matter-of-fact. I learn a lot from her.

  The wedding party is gathering in the back of the church, people around us are turning and whispering to each other. There are a lot of people crammed into these pews. I hear a woman’s high voice from the back, as loud as if she was standing beside us. I can’t make out all of what she says, but I hear real clear: “She works with Rhonda, and Rhonda wants em all here. You got a problem?” I know I’ve heard that voice before. There’s some scuffling around in the bridesmaids, a lot of activity. I can see they’ve got on peach-colored dresses with wide white ribbons around the waist.

  The sound of a sharp crack rises above the rumbling, sounds like skin on skin to me. Margaret says, “Somebody got slapped back there, Lorraine. I heard it, didn’t you hear her yell?” There’s still music playing but it don’t cover the noise. Bernice turns all the way around and sounds shocked. “She’s crying!” she tries to whisper but it’s way too loud to be a whisper. The people around us look like they want to ignore what’s goin on even though you’d have to be deaf not to know there was a fight back in that vestibule. I feel like I’m gon die if I don’t turn and see for myself. The usher who took us in is holding onto a tall girl with long hair and moves her off to one side. Her makeup is smeared all over her face. Somebody says, “Okay, Connie! Shhh!” and the first pair of the wedding party is ready to start walking in. The music changes and it’s a little bit livelier, I know it from the radio. My program says, “You Are the Wind Beneath My Wigs” but somebody has gone through and crossed out the last word with a blue marker and wrote in “Wings” on top of it. That mistake had to be a joke on Rhonda; if not, then God does have more of a sense of humor than I give Him credit for. The first couple starts down the aisle, followed by four or five more. The congregation is smiling the same as all wedding guests do, but they look as uncomfortable as a spell of bad indigestion.

  The tall girl who was crying is the last bridesmaid out, drooping on the arm
of the big usher. She looks like she had time to wipe off her face but her eyes are still red. Margaret has forgotten the fight and already moved on to the next thing in her mind. You can’t never tell about somebody old, sometimes they’ll hang onto the littlest thing that doesn’t matter and can’t let it go for nothing, then something that might seem big to most people, they don’t care about it over a minute or two. She taps my hand and says, “I’m surprised to see that color on bridesmaids in October, I don’t care if it is warm.” She clucks her tongue. “Bless her heart, that’s what she wanted and that’s what she got.” I’m glad to be in between the two of them because side by side they could get on a roll about something. The usher who brought us in smiles my way when he passes while the tall girl looks straight ahead with a smirk on her face.

  Now that everybody’s up front who’s supposed to be there, I recognize Rhonda’s friend Connie, she delivers packages to the nursing home once in a while. Rhonda told me it was her best friend and asked wasn’t it something that we were on her delivery route out of all the UPS drivers in the county? Connie nods at me and the ladies like she’s saying, “Don’t you worry, I took care of the problem,” and I realize she’s the one who slapped that tall girl, and at the same time that I’m in the middle of a roomful of white faces. I know this story all too well, but whenever I forget, something like this happens to remind me that there’s no end to it. I’ve been angry before, every black person has been, but now I feel less angry than I do like a pretty balloon has popped in front of my face. I am here with my two friends, they are here because I brought em, and they want to be here. That’s the only reason I don’t get up and leave.