The Sweet By and By Read online

  I had to ask her people if I could fix her hair, and they said yes, it would be one less thing they had to think about. Bernice’s son never did look me in the face the whole time I was talking to him, just stared down at the floor. I think he’d been drinking. I know that look, eyes red around the rims. His wife did come into the salon later, looking all around sort of like she was thinking about buying the place. “Are you the lady that asked to style Mrs. Stokes’s hair?” She raised her eyebrows high and perky.

  “I’m Rhonda.”

  “Rhonda. I wanted to tell you that will be fine with us, and thank you very much.” She looked down at her watch and walked out before I said a word. I can’t decide if she was rude or nervous, probably both. But this is between Bernice and me. I wanted to say my good-bye the same way I said hello to her for the first time, raking my hands through her soft hair. I don’t need to be friends with her family. Family can be overrated anyway, at least the one you’re born with.

  All my growing up years I stayed as far away from my grandma as I could. She told me more times than I can count that I didn’t look or act like a girl, much less like a lady. She was always on me for something. I used to close myself in my room while she took her nap in the afternoon in front of the TV watching her programs. By myself, I made up all kinda hairdos for my dolls, trying to copy out of my mama’s magazines, and I would put homemade dresses on em too. Mama couldn’t buy much with what she made being a secretary, but she knew I loved to work on dolls, so she would get me one for my birthday every year. Sometimes a baby, sometimes a grown woman doll. She bought me a black doll one time, and I liked it even though Grandma didn’t and told us so. Mama didn’t care. She handed me that doll and said, “The world is a big place, Rhonda, with lots of people in it.”

  I played dolls every day as soon as I could run in the door from school and throw my books down. When Mama came in, she brought a glass of milk and something sweet to my room. I loved that because it was like being waited on when you’re sick or in a restaurant. Lots of times she stayed and watched from the doorway.

  “I ought to let you work on me sometime, sugar, I think you’ve got talent. Don’t ever waste talent,” she’d say. Then she’d kiss me on top of my head, and I could smell her powder. I loved that smell, like clouds, if you could catch one and hold it.

  I was twelve when she left. It was in May cause it was the night of my birthday. I was in bed but not asleep, and I heard yelling in the front of the house. That wasn’t anything unusual—Mama and Grandma fought almost every night. Sometimes it was only a couple of mean sentences, thrown like spears at a target; other times it might last a whole hour, broken up by short snatches of silence. I always thought the silence was them thinking up the next hateful thing they could say to each other. On this night the sound was coming from outside, and that was different, because they usually did their fighting in the living room or kitchen, and it ended by one of them storming off and slamming a door to her bedroom.

  I got up and looked out the window in time to see Mama spinning out of the driveway in her old Buick with dirt flying everywhere. I screamed out after her even though the window was shut tight, then ran outside in my nightgown and jumped off the porch, falling on the ground, still yelling. By that time she was nothing but a big dust cloud. It was like Grandma had practiced for this moment. She grabbed me by the shoulder and said it was no time to cry, that my time to be a child had ended, and now was the time to put away childish things. Then she took my hand and walked me to my room. I thought she was going to tuck me back in bed and ask me to say my prayers even though I had already said them once. Instead, she told me to stand to one side. “Witness the beginning of becoming a grown-up woman,” she said, and she gathered up all my dolls and their little clothes and shoes and tiny pocketbooks that Mama bought, hauled them into the kitchen, and threw them in the trash with fish bones and eggshells and other mashed-up garbage. I cried, “Grandma, don’t!” but she turned and pointed a finger directly at my nose, “You’re grown up now and I dare you to fish them dolls out. Let the past be in the past.” I hid everything I cared about from her from that day on. I tried not to talk to her at all except to answer her questions, which got to be fewer the older she got and the less time I spent at home with her. Far as I’m concerned, she lost me the same night she lost Mama, but I doubt she ever knew it, not that she would have cared much. I can’t to this day tell you what she cared about. I can’t think of anything.

  I’ve tried my best, but I’m gonna have to cut this tangle out of Bernice’s hair. I know she don’t feel me pulling on it, but I can’t stand the thought of yanking on her hair just because she can’t feel it. She used to drive me crazy saying, “Be careful not to pull Mister Benny’s hair, Rhonda. He’s sensitive. He can feel everything, you might not know it, but he can.” I prob’ly snapped something back at her. I hope I didn’t, I think I was pretty patient most of the time without having to try too hard. I washed Mister Benny’s few strands of yarn hair many a time, and then that bulldog’s after that. Childish things, that’s what they were, the stuffed animals of an old woman. I don’t know how to feel except soft for somebody like that. She always acted like she liked me. That meant something to me. She would try to stay and keep talking after she got her hair fixed, even if I was working on somebody else. I always liked when she stayed. I don’t think I told her.

  In the last month she was alive, Grandma had to go to the hospital twice before the one time when she would never come back out. The last time the ambulance took her, I went to see her lying in the hospital bed, bloated and gray-skinned. It’s strange what you think about when you see somebody sick in the hospital. My first thought was that I must look really old without makeup. And then that I didn’t want nothing from Grandma except for one thing and I hadn’t never asked for it, I guess because it never crossed my mind that she might tell me the thing I wanted to know.

  “Grandma,” I started, “why did Mama leave us on my birthday?” She looked up and breathed out a sigh like a puff of air when you pick up something too heavy and finally get to put it down. She was laboring to get words out.

  “She left because she couldn’t be a mother to you. Lord knows that would have ruined her plans, so she left the job to me.”

  Grandma died the next afternoon. I was at work, Evelyn answered the phone and handed it to me, but I knew what the call was about from the way she avoided looking at me. I did not cry, I did not get mad, I didn’t do anything different from what I usually do. I have no doubt that Grandma will spend her meanness on whoever she meets on the other side, and she better hope it’s not Jesus right away, because even he’ll have none of her, I’m goddamn sure of that.

  Connie asked me if I hated her so much then why did I fix her hair before she was buried? I couldn’t answer her then and still can’t. It wasn’t to make peace with her or anything holy sounding like that. It might have been pure spite—I could treat her like a doll that couldn’t feel anything. A lot of people said they were touched that I wanted to fix her hair for the last time. The funeral home lady who stood at the door made a point to tell everybody who came in for the viewing. She liked letting them in on some insider information which is probably something that a funeral director doesn’t get to do very often. I don’t even remember what I made Grandma’s hair look like, and that’s one thing I never forget. I have a photo album inside my head of everybody’s hair I’ve ever fixed. I can tell you the length, the color, permanent or not, everything. I know exactly what they all look like. It’s like turning the pages of a book. But Grandma’s hair was like plastic straw that’s in the bottom of a Easter basket, so there wasn’t much I coulda done even if my heart was in it. Bernice’s hair is a whole lot nicer. Whenever I had her head over the sink getting ready to shampoo her, I told her I could run my hands through her hair all day long. It’s the same now, fine and soft, like feathers. She’s an angel with feathers, lying on a metal table. Touching her, I think of Wade’s long hair in h
is lifeguard summer, the last time I saw him. I wonder if this is what his hair felt like. He came from her, this lady who couldn’t say two things in a row that made sense. But she was his mother, she raised him, and that was lodged forever inside her, even if she couldn’t remember it all the time. I’m resting with my hands in her hair, feeling the warm soapy water and the softness. I’ll be gentle on her head, even now. It’s like taking care of him too, a boy who thought he had to take care of the whole world.

  The door behind me sounds like a jail cell opening, a hollow metal ringing out. “’Scuse me Rhonda, are you ’bout finished in here?” asks Paul, in a maroon jacket and matching tie.

  “I’m gettin there,” I answer. I want him to go away. This ain’t none of his business.

  “We need to dress her for the viewing, so if you can hurry up some, that will make my life easier.”

  “I’ll tell you when I’m through.” I don’t look up from what I’m doing.

  Paul sees from the look on my face that he needs to give me some space, and he points to a phone on the wall. “Call me. Push star-three and it’ll ring upstairs.” He closes the metal door behind him and I can hear his feet clomping back up the steps, up to the main floor, where there’s prob’ly another service going on for somebody else. They’re good at making you feel like you’re the only one who’s died, when on any given day there’s got to be three or four deaths going on.

  He can wait. Bernice is going to look her best, I don’t care if it takes me the rest of the afternoon. People are going to cluck-cluck about how sad it was that her mind went, and how the last few years couldn’t have meant much to her anyway. But they’re gonna say how good she looks, they won’t be able to help themselves because I’m goin to make her look better dead than some of them look alive. They’ll stroll by and tap each other on the arm and whisper about it, but I won’t be there to hear what they say. This is my viewing right here. I’m goin home and make some eggs and ham and then I’m gonna take myself a good bath. I’ll be at the funeral, but I don’t want to be here in the middle of a crowd of talking people at a funeral home.

  At Grandma’s viewing, her face looked like somebody had put a hot fireball in her mouth and forgot to take it out. She looked like she wanted to scream and spit out that fiery thing but couldn’t do anything, so instead her pain and fury stayed trapped in her lips and the skin around her mouth. All her cruel years were pursed into one expression.

  I don’t miss her at all. I’m still changing the house, prob’ly will be for a long time. It don’t take much cause I can do a lot of the work myself. Last week I painted the kitchen orange. Mike likes it. He says I’ve got a great sense of style. Bright hot orange makes me think of a sunny day and a place where you can sit outside and drink iced tea. That’s my dream now. Sitting somewhere pretty with a wet glass of tea in my hand, full of lemon and sugar, and reading a magazine with my legs crossed. I take it all in, everything there is to see, hear, and smell. People look at me funny cause I’m sitting in the sun drinking tea instead of running around like they are between houses, offices, churches, day cares, and everything else. I take a long swallow of my tea, swing my leg, and smile when they go by, that’s all.

  One day Mike wants to make my old bedroom into a exercise room. I’ll never use it, but he thinks he will, so I said, “Go for it.” I’m glad he wants to stay in shape and look good, especially since he’s not going to do it sitting on his tail all day long in a UPS truck. I told him that first I wanted him to help me build a little house outside, in the back. And once we get it built, we’re goin to hook up heat and air-conditioning and fix the inside real nice, and one day that’s gonna be where I cut hair, called Rhonda’s Style for Today. That’s what the sign will say, and under the name, “Tuesdays–Saturdays. Call for an appointment, or just drop in.”

  Paul told me not to spray Bernice’s hair but I’m goin to anyway. She’s goin to have to be moved around by God knows who. Paul said hairspray could be flammable and that they have their own that they like to use. I know better than anybody what good hairspray is and nobody’s goin to be smoking a cigarette around her face. I’m gonna spray her head just like I sprayed it every week since I’ve known her. This is one head that’s goin to stay looking exactly like it does right now. I lift up the pillow I put over her eyes. They’re all the way closed like they’re s’posed to be. I trace my finger along one of her eyebrows. She’s all right now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  MARGARET

  If it’s good luck when it rains on someone’s wedding day, what kind of luck is it when it rains on a funeral? I dreaded getting out of bed as soon as I looked out the window. Ann came by yesterday afternoon to ask me if I wanted to sit with the family at the funeral home viewing. She said Bernice would have wanted me to. I know damn well what Bernice would have wanted, but I didn’t go. I didn’t have the energy, and Bernice would understand that too. There were lots of days she led me around holding onto her arm for dear life when I had a weak spell.

  Now here we are, they’re going to start in a few minutes. The choir is walking in, robed in green, followed by a preacher that I do not recognize as any of the ones who came to visit Bernice. I do not feel comforted by this place, neither the building nor the people in it. It’s a sanctuary, it’s supposed to make one feel safe. Instead I’m staring straight ahead at a casket, looking at something that’s going to happen to me and everyone else in here. A promise of salvation may offer comfort, but it is no preventive medicine. What’s going to happen is going to happen, and then we are no more of this earth.

  I’m sitting on the second row with Ann. I am wearing a light gray suit and that’s exactly how I feel. I am noncommittal, not about Bernice, but about all this ceremony and the scripted talk about dying that goes along with it. Even if heaven is an actual place, a real noun of a place, I can’t say for sure that I want to go. Crystal rivers and streets of gold are nothing but old gospel song lyrics in my mind. If there’s a mansion awaiting me, I’d rather have a short tour with a Realtor before I have to move in. I’d a whole lot rather think that heaven would turn all my senses upside down. What’s liquid here is solid there. And maybe the way people see is not with eyes. Maybe they don’t see at all. I sound like Lorraine talking now. She has all the imagination that a person needs to have faith. She believes like nobody else I ever knew. Still, whatever it’s like there, I do know that I’m about ready to hang it up here. I’m not thinking about Bernice. I’m sitting here dressed up, going through my own life as though it’s an oversized filing cabinet, and I might find a lost document that will tell me something I never knew. I’d settle to find anything that might help me know what’s coming, if I’ve got more ahead of me.

  It’s too hot in this room. I look up at the ceiling and I remember a time sitting in my car with the windows rolled up, just this hot. It is summer and there has been a hard rain, I can tell by looking around at the ground, but it has not cooled the temperature one bit. I would like to roll the windows down and let some air in, but they’re electric and I don’t have the car keys because my husband Charles has gone inside to buy some cigarettes. He doesn’t smoke since he had a heart attack. They’re for me. I’m going to give them up too, but not yet, not in this picture. I’m holding a potted peace lily in my lap. It’s heavy but the porcelain pot is cool on my thighs. A big blue bow decorates the base of it. We are going to the VA hospital. I was scared to put the lily in the backseat of the Plymouth because once you turn off the highway it’s bumpy and I was afraid it would turn over. Not that Charles is a bad driver. He has driven us to the Chesapeake Bay and the Blue Ridge Mountains and a few times down to Florida.

  I stare at the chandelier above my head. This is a pretty church. There’s no telling how long it’s been since Bernice has been here, maybe since Wade got killed. I’m glad they didn’t do it at the funeral home. A funeral home is a place for death only, while a church building at least gets to witness every stage of life. It’s the same as th
e difference between one slice and the whole pie. The chandelier is all reflection of light. It hurts my eyes a little, but I don’t want to look away.

  I can see us walking down a hall with faint green walls at the VA hospital. There is a hard tile floor that has seen many a mop to rectify many a disaster. We are visiting Papa Clayton, Charles’s father. He has been bedridden for two years because of having lost his legs to diabetes. Papa Clayton refuses artificial limbs and will not be put in a wheelchair. I am bringing him a potted peace lily. I do not know why. There are way too many young men in this hospital. All of them are back from Vietnam, most missing body parts, and some missing their right minds. I am bringing Papa Clayton a peace lily and I don’t have the slightest idea why. It must be Father’s Day.

  The choir and soloist sit down after singing “The Old Rugged Cross.” I wonder who chose that hymn; it’s the national anthem of funerals, at least Southern ones. More people would like hymns if they weren’t depressing. That one sounds to me like one long moan. It’s sad enough to be sitting here without having to hear that. Bernice wouldn’t have liked it at all. Maybe I’m the only one here who knows that. One time she pulled Lorraine into my room and said she wanted us to be witnesses, and when I asked “To what?” she said, “Funeral Wishes.” Lorraine said she didn’t want to talk about a funeral in the middle of the day, but Bernice would not be diverted. She insisted that she be buried in long sleeves, and that Mister Benny should have the same. That was before his untimely demise of course, when I guess she still assumed they would depart this earth as a team. And she said the only hymn that she would allow to be sung would be “Amazing Grace.” And there would be no other religious singing, and no organ music of any kind whatsoever. She would prefer a country song if it could be fit into the program. And she wanted a flute to play because she said she wanted to hear something that sounded like butterflies, that’s what she liked to think leaving this earth was like, a butterfly leaving a flower. She asked if we needed to write it down, and I told her, no, I believe she’d made a good enough impression. I knew she wouldn’t remember any of it in ten minutes anyway. Lorraine said, “I already told y’all once, I ain’t studyin this,” and walked out of the room.