The Sweet By and By Read online

  “Lord willing. Come here a minute shug, before you go.” It was clear she was talking to me. I looked to Mama, who nodded in the direction of Mrs. Clayton, and I obliged. I did not like a white woman calling me “shug,” but I tried to relegate it to a generational difference and leave it at that. She crooked her finger and I leaned down to her, apprehensive.

  “You take care of your mama, she needs to be loved back for all she loves. And I do like your name.”

  Mama knocked on the door to get our attention. “That’s enough you two. April, don’t you listen to a thing that woman tells you. She’d just as soon lie as look at you.” Mrs. Clayton laughed like a teenage girl, and I could for the first time believe she had been one once.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RHONDA

  I recognized Bernice at Ridgecrest as soon as they told me her name was Stokes. She woulda never known me, we never even met, but something clicked when I looked at her. I sure never dreamed I would know Wade Stokes’s mother, especially not after so many years. And with what happened.

  Evelyn’s is closed Monday mornings like a lot of beauty shops, but I was going in by myself because I had a lady coming for an eight thirty appointment. I told her I’d do it because she was leaving a few hours later to go to a wedding in South Carolina. Mrs. Twiny Allen. She must have been in her late sixties then. First time I ever shampooed her hair, she told me her real name was Elaine, but that everybody had called her Twiny since she was in school. She was twiggy and tiny so they called her Twiny. It was easy for me to remember cause her hair had so many permanents it was like worn-out rope. Twiny, she made me call her that, started talking as soon as she walked in the door. She loved to talk and I was glad for it cause at that time of day I’m a better listener than I am anything else. “How you been, Miss Twiny?” I asked. “You want to hang your coat up?” That’s usually about all I had the chance to say for the whole two hours I worked on her head.

  “Thank you for coming in, Rhonda. Have you ever? This rain? A wedding on a day like this? Can you picture? I declare.” She always spoke real fast in a string of questions, firing at you like a machine gun. There wasn’t any need to answer, you didn’t have time to, and she didn’t expect you to.

  “I’m afraid we’re going to have a sad bride, that’s all. Sad on a wet wedding day.” Twiny Allen clucked her tongue and looked out the plate glass window in front. I’ve never liked that window but Evelyn said she needed light in her beauty shop and that having it open would help attract new people because they could see us all in here talking and carrying on, and that’s one thing people looked for in a hair place.

  “You want color today?” I wasn’t in the mood to talk about brides and flowers, I’da rather been still asleep.

  “Yes darlin, I will wear chestnut brown to my grave.”

  “If I’m still here I’ll make sure you do, Twiny.”

  She put her head back in the sink and I turned on the hot water, testing with my hand before wetting her hair. I looked down at her closed eyes. This is a position that is so familiar to me, seeing someone lean their head back into my sink with their eyes closed. They look peaceful, like they can let go of everything for a few minutes, not think about anything, and let somebody take care of them by running water through their hair and fingers over their scalp. The breathing changes too, the face changes. I take my position serious, I feel like they trust me. Twiny looked like she’d already gone to heaven, and it made me think what a lot of comfort you can give to somebody without doing all that much. Her eyes fluttered some, maybe I splashed her, so I wiped her forehead lightly before she sat back up.

  “That’s the best I’ve felt all week long,” she said, trying to cover up a yawn.

  “Well good, I’m glad. Good.” I helped her up to the other chair where I cut hair.

  “How’ve you been, Rhonda? I don’t see you much.”

  “You know, Twiny, you oughta come every four weeks, I could do you a whole lot better if you wouldn’t wait so long.”

  “I know, I know, I will. You’re sweet.”

  I knew she wouldn’t come more often cause she didn’t want to spend no more money. When I raised my prices two years ago, Twiny was one of the only customers to say anything. “Well, this makes it harder doesn’t it, to come so often I mean. I know everything in this world costs more, but I thought some of the more personal services would be more consistent. You know I heard at my bridge meeting that Hair Village only charges thirty dollars for cut and color. That’s a good deal. Not that I would go there though. It’s not convenient to where I live.”

  Twiny went on, flipping through a People magazine and not looking at it, much less reading it. “So. Rhonda, how are you, dear? Everything all right? Anybody special these days? Anybody I might know? Did you see the front page? It makes me never want to get in a car again. That man had everything in the world, college professor, book just about to be published. I think he was about your age, went to school right here before he went on to Chapel Hill.”

  Her hair was a tangled mess. It wouldn’t have killed her to run a brush through it every so often. I only cut a little and got on with her color. “I don’t take the paper,” I said, working away. “Evelyn usually brings it down here.”

  “Did you know him, Rhonda? He looked about your age.”

  “I didn’t see it, Twiny.”

  “Well it was horrible. He was a Stokes. His daddy’s been dead for years. Gardner Stokes Contractors, very successful, he made a killing in construction. I thought y’all might have been in school together.”

  “Wade?” I said the name and waited for Twiny Allen to say, “no, that’s not it.” Instead she answered, “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  I took off my rubber gloves, tossed them in the sink, and left Twiny in the chair with color solution on her head. “Sit still, Twiny. I’m gonna run across the street to the drugstore. I won’t be but a minute.”

  I saw the headline before I could get the paper out of the wire rack. NATIVE BORN ACADEMIC AND WRITER DIES IN HEAD-ON COLLISION. There was a picture of Wade from high school beside one of him from the present and I thought, “Why’d they put that old yearbook picture in there? He left, are y’all never gonna get it?”

  The caption read:

  BENJAMIN WADE STOKES died early last night at the hands of a drunk driver in downtown Raleigh. He was traveling alone while visiting his mother, Mrs. Bernice Stokes, in the Cameron Village area. According to Mrs. Stokes, her son had gone out on an errand for her and never returned. The driver of the other car, a Virginia man in his mid-60s, survived with minor injuries and was taken to Rex Hospital. The survivor was accompanied by his two-year-old granddaughter, who was killed on impact (names withheld pending notification of the child’s parents).

  I stared at the picture and read the same words over and over like I was gonna see something new. Nothing though. Died. That was all.

  Even now I hope he didn’t suffer. I think Wade Stokes was somebody the world oughta have spared suffering. Somebody as kind as he was oughta be able to build up a savings account to pay off their own pain before it happens. I don’t need nobody to tell me it don’t work that way. But it makes me feel like I want to do everything right now, while I can. I got a long list of things I want to do. I’m gonna go to Mexico one day and I’m gonna ride a horse on the beach like you see in magazines. I’ll tell em I want to ride a different horse every day, and I might even stay down there. Once they see how much I know about horses, they’ll prob’ly offer me a job at the Club Med of Mexico, or I could be in charge of all the horses in all the Club Meds and get to travel around and show people how to train them, and teach people to ride. I’d be real gentle. I’d tell them, “Don’t worry, it’s goin to be fine. Nothin’s gonna happen. I’m goin to stay right here beside you, just hold on.” Sometimes the hardest thing is holding on, when you feel this huge force of movement under you that’s not part of you. No matter what, you don’t have total control of it.

/>   Thank God there was a wall clock behind the pharmacy counter. I was in a total daze. I flew back across the street with the newspaper still in my hand and flung the door open, sending it slamming into the magazine rack in the waiting area. “Twiny, I’m sorry!” I shouted before I was even inside good.

  “My scalp feels like it’s on fire! Are you trying to skin me alive?”

  “I know, I am so sorry.” I was crying but she didn’t see.

  “Rhonda, you know I try to support you, I do, but you’re making it real hard, you know that, you really are. Don’t bother rolling it; just blow me dry with a brush. I have got to go.”

  “It won’t take but two minutes, I promise.” I ran warm water over her head, rinsing streams of dark color down the drain. I pushed the back of the chair up to towel her hair and turned towards the mirror, away from her, to wipe my eyes on a clean towel. I was thankful for the roar of the blow dryer. I didn’t have to say anything else. The hot air felt good on my hands and face, drying everything off.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MARGARET

  From the moment I woke up, I had the feeling something was off. Ann came in first thing in the morning with a Mother’s Day bouquet of cut flowers. I usually like cut flowers, but I don’t like carnations, and her basket was overflowing with them. Blue ones. A color of blue that doesn’t exist in nature, only in a box of crayons. I think that’s the reason I don’t like them, nothing against carnations even though they are sort of the trailer park of the flowerbed. It’s more that I don’t like anything that doesn’t look natural, and that includes food and hair color. I insist on still coloring my hair, but I try to keep it at least somewhat believable. It has never been gray, so I can’t think of a reason to let it go now. Unfortunately, Beauty Shop Day only comes once a week, and if you happen to be sick or asleep during the allotted hours, that’s too bad. It’s usually on Sunday, starting first thing in the morning. Some people skip breakfast altogether to get there first. Those that can make their way by foot or wheelchair down to the Salon, and I use that term loosely, where we line up down the hall and wait our turns.

  I used to get Rhonda’s name mixed up for the longest time, but a few weeks ago, she stopped brushing my hair and leaned over a few inches from my face, tapping her name tag with a pointed orange fingernail. “It’s Rhonda,” she said flatly. “Spelled like Honda with an R in front of it.” I don’t think she likes that I might call her the wrong name, even though I don’t mean to, because sometimes she’s real rough when she’s teasing my hair. Not that it’s an easy job. My head is like a rat’s nest after wallowing around on a bed for hours every day.

  I do not skip breakfast on Mother’s Day to go to the Beauty Shop line. I woke up with an appetite, and that has come to be something I do not take lightly. “I’ll get there when I get there,” I say to Lorraine when she brings my tray into the room.

  “Fine with me. Long as you get your hair fixed cause you’re too mean to live when you don’t.”

  There are two sinks in the Salon. They do not match. One’s pink and the other one is tan, leftovers I imagine from some closed-down hair place. There are also only two hair dryers, the old-fashioned chair kind that looks sort of like a spaceship that you could fly off in if you knew how to drive it. Most of my neighbors and I have the same hair-style with only a slight variation. It’s basically fluffed up and perfectly round, and a little hard to the touch. I like that way of wearing my hair because it looks like the hair of a person my age. There’s nothing that’ll take your breath away like a woman with the long blond locks of a twenty-five-year-old and the face of a mummy.

  I watch a little TV while I eat my toast. I like to see the weather. It makes me feel like I know what’s going on in other places. They always show what the day is going to be like in places like Portland and Denver and San Antonio. I love to travel and I have no idea where I got it from. My daddy never went anywhere in his life except one trip to a cattle convention in New York City. I can’t imagine why there would have been a cattle convention in New York, but I think maybe because having a convention in a fancy city made it appear serious and important, much more so than it ever could have in somewhere like Topeka. I myself have been to New York two times. And I’ve been all up and down the eastern seaboard. I love that word “seaboard.” I like any word that makes me think of the ocean. Dune. Tide. Gull. Squall. They’re all water words. Water moves and flows into every nook and cranny, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. I like that kind of flow. One time I went to London for a week with my husband Charles. We saw everything. The Tower, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, all the famous sites. I could walk a whole lot better then, and Charles said he couldn’t keep up with me, which to tell you the truth, didn’t bother me all that much. The tour guide, a pretty British girl, told us to be prepared, it might rain the whole time, but there turned out to be a heat wave. She kept apologizing for the temperature and I told her, “Honey, y’all don’t know what hot is, come back to where I live in July and you’ll get an education.” That was my only trip overseas, but it was enough for me to tell Ann that she has absolutely got to go while she’s young enough to enjoy it.

  Lorraine doesn’t have to come back for me, because Bernice shows up at my door with grape jelly in the corners of her mouth. “You’re not finished eatin? We’ve got to go to the Beauty Shop. I need a hairdo, and so do you. Hurry up, or there won’t be enough time.”

  “She’s got all day, honey. We don’t have to rush.”

  She looks annoyed. “Mister Benny needs a hairdo too. He doesn’t like it cut, just shampooed.”

  If Rhonda is in a good mood, she will in fact wet the scraggly strands of yarn that are Mister Benny’s hair, put a few drops of shampoo on it, and rinse it out over the sink. Seeing her do that for the first time made me like her, although that is still no excuse for being so rough on my head. At first, Bernice wanted Mister Benny to have an apron on for his shampoo, just like she does, but that is where Rhonda drew the line. She said, “Bernice, I don’t have time for that, sweetheart. Put Mister Benny under that faucet right now. I’ve got about thirty more heads to finish today, and I am not staying late. I’ve got a date.”

  I push myself off the bed. It is going to be a walking day. That’s a good thing. Some days are wheelchair days, and I never know which it’s going to be until I take that first step in the morning. Then there’s no going back, and if it’s a wheelchair morning, then it’s going to be a wheelchair afternoon and night too. The physical therapist told me, “Mrs. Clayton, you need more willpower. Just because you might not feel like walking one minute doesn’t mean you can’t walk the next.” Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? What is she going to tell me about willpower? I’m the one that’s still here waking up in the morning and making the effort to put on lipstick. I’m all willpower, all the time.

  “Let’s go, Bernice. We need to tell Lorraine to make sure they’ve got enough folding chairs down there. Sometimes Alvin doesn’t put enough out, and then waiting for him when he’s on a cigarette break is like waiting for the Queen to show up here for tea. He’s a handy-man all right, very handy if you can find him. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to take a pillow. I can’t sit still for an hour without something behind my back.”

  “Mister Benny will carry it. He likes you.” She waves a filthy, careworn yellow paw in my face. “We’re neighbors!” Bernice breaks into cackling laughter like she’s just now figured out that we live in the same place. Then the singing starts. “Hey good lookin, what you got cookin? How’s about cookin somethin up with me?” All she ever sings is country music. She is surely in a happier place than most of us will ever be, and from the sounds of it, it could be Nashville. We meet Lorraine in the hall.

  “Well hey, Miss Bernice. Happy Mother’s Day to you. I know your boy Cameron’s coming later on. That’s real nice, it sure is.” Lorraine doesn’t say anything to me directly. We have an understanding. She doesn’t speak to me like I’m a five-y
ear-old, and I try to cooperate with her daily routines.

  “Happy Mother’s Day to you too, Lorraine.” I follow. “Did you hear from that fine girl of yours this morning?”

  “I did. You know she’s on Dean’s list this semester again. Doin fine.” She walks on past, pants legs making a swishing sound.

  “Well I sure would like to see her again one day,” I call out behind her.

  “Oh, you will. You will,” Lorraine answers.

  The Salon line is long, getting ready for a holiday. Bernice and I park ourselves along the wall. Alvin obviously got the message from somebody besides me, because there are enough chairs for a small army. Bernice doesn’t like to sit down much, she stays too restless, so I save her place with my pocketbook. She would never leave Mister Benny in a chair by himself while she walks around. That is out of the question, because if anyone touched him and she happened to see it, she might do anything from scream to haul off and hit somebody.

  Rhonda’s already busy, but she waves as soon as she spots us. As a rule she has long, wavy platinum blond hair, but I think she’s starting to let it go back natural, which would be somewhere in the dark brown or black family. This in-between phase leaves it looking sort of rough. She can’t be more than thirty-five or so, but her hair looks like it’s been used as a burnt offering. That’s the danger of being in the beauty business. You can do anything in the world to hair, but you have to know when to stop. The possibilities are definitely not limitless. Doesn’t matter, Rhonda’s still pretty even though she’s got a few hard lines around her eyes. I don’t know if she’s lived as hard as she looks, but I do know she rides motorcycles. I saw her once through the window of the dining room scoot off on one, holding onto the waist of a man in a blue jean jacket, beard flying out on either side of his crash helmet. I like motorcycles because they get straight to the point. Get on and go. They serve no other purpose than to fly as far as I can tell.