The Sweet By and By Read online

  Rhonda takes me in first, but Bernice always insists on watching me get my hair done, so she drags her folding chair in behind me and sits down within a few feet of the sink. Sometimes Rhonda moves her back but most of the time works around her.

  “Don’t you get tired of talking to people, honey? I know I would,” I ask Rhonda as I let her lower my head back in the sink.

  “Shoot, most people don’t talk. I reckon some of em can’t talk, I don’t know. My grandma had a stroke and she couldn’t talk.”

  “Is that right?”

  “She used to make moaning noises in her throat. I hated that. It freaked me out. Her moaning and groaning, trying to say something every time you looked at her. It was like she didn’t know nobody couldn’t understand her.”

  “I meant the people that can talk,” I say. “There are a few of us.”

  “They always want to know if I’m married. Where do I live? Who’s my mama? That kind of thing.”

  “That’s all anybody talks about anywhere you go.”

  “I reckon.”

  “Honey, do you mind if I ask you why you work here?”

  Before she can answer, Bernice stands up. “My turn now. Y’all are talking and you’re supposed to be doing hair. It’s my turn!” She has Mister Benny pressed by her cheek as though he is the one doing the talking. Rhonda finishes putting the last curler in my hair and helps me under a dryer to bake for a while.

  Bernice jumps into the chair. “Is it my turn now?” Her demand has for some reason turned into a question.

  “Bernice, if you don’t calm down, I’m gonna make you wait ’til you’re peaceful,” Rhonda says. Her voice is firm but soothing.

  Although it sounds like an air raid going on around my head underneath the dryer, I am able to ignore it by watching Rhonda. She is the only person I know of who can pick up Mister Benny without causing a disaster with Bernice. You would think she was picking up a newborn she’s so gentle. She holds Mister Benny’s head in her hand and looks down at him. “Now what’re we gonna do today, Mister Benny? Same as usual?” Bernice smiles, transfixed on the monkey doll as if he might speak any minute. “Same thing!” She can’t contain herself. “He wants the same thing!”

  “I can handle that, we’ll fix you right up,” Rhonda keeps talking to the doll. While she leans Mister Benny back over the sink, Bernice takes hold of one dirty yellow monkey paw. “Just be still now, Mister Benny,” Rhonda says, “this is some warm water, that’s all. Let me know if it’s too hot.”

  “It’s fine. It’s just fine with him.” Bernice clasps her hands together over her chest.

  “Bernice, I’m gonna dry Mister Benny’s hair and then see what I can do with yours. Go have a seat in the shampoo chair.” Rhonda walks over to me and feels my head. “God, that’s been dry forever!” She switches off my vehicle and escorts me to the second chair. Bernice has leaned all the way back into the sink and fallen asleep, head dangling like it’s about to be chopped off. That sometimes happens, and sometimes Rhonda lets her sleep, even if there is a line still waiting outside. Rhonda hurries to get me teased, shaped up, and sprayed before Bernice wakes up. My legs are starting to ache from my lower back all the way down the thighs and calves, like something is pinched in my spine. Rhonda helps me to my cane; I need it today. “Just tell her I went on back, honey, do you mind?” I say and keep moving.

  When I pass Bernice’s room, her son is inside, unwrapping a stick of chewing gum, waiting with his wife. He knows me, but he never calls me by name. Every time I see him I tell him the same thing. “Hello there, I’m Margaret Clayton. Bernice will be so glad to see you, I know.”

  “Is she in therapy? Or, I hope, a bath?” the wife says in a perky voice.

  “No ma’am, she’s still down having her hair done for Mother’s Day. We all do, whether we’re mothers or not. I think even some of the men do!”

  “I imagine they’ll be finished with her in a few minutes.” The son glances at the wife while talking to me. “We have to go to a church thing later. That’s the one thing about being a deacon that’s changed my life, I can never be late.” He lets out a wheezing laugh like I am supposed to be an insider on a joke. “You want some chewing gum?” he asks. “I can’t stop chewing it. Better than cigarettes though, right?”

  The wife doesn’t acknowledge him at all. She moves things around on Bernice’s dresser top, throwing tissues and greeting cards into the trash without looking at them.

  “She’ll be back. It doesn’t take long,” I say. “It never takes too long. Don’t y’all want something to drink? She’s got a refrigerator full of stuff.”

  The wife speaks this time. “I don’t think so. We’ll get something when we get to the car.” She looks down at her watch.

  “I’m gonna go get Mama. I’ll be right back,” the son says and takes off down the hall.

  Alone with the wife, I can’t decide whether to stay or go back to my room. “Are y’all taking Bernice out?”

  “We’re going to have lunch at the K&W, then come right back. She never eats much anyway. I think the cafeteria’s better so she can take just what she wants and not waste.”

  “My nurse Lorraine told me the new Chinese restaurant was good. Have you been?”

  “We don’t like Chinese food. They use too much oil.”

  “Well I sure wouldn’t want to get fat before the beauty contest.” I strike a pose with a hand on one hip. She is expressionless. “Oh I’m teasing. I think it’s wonderful that you young people are concerned about what you eat and your bodies and all. It’s healthy. You all will probably live a lot longer than us.”

  The prospect of that does not seem to suit the wife very well, maybe because it’s not much fun thinking about living forever while standing in a place that always smells faintly like urine. She picks up a wilted potted hydrangea and throws it in the garbage.

  “Bernice loves to show pictures of her grandchildren. How old are they now?” I ask.

  “Three and five,” she says. “The oldest one just turned five.”

  “I have always loved that age. They’re so curious. They’ll talk about anything in the world. A friend of mine who used to teach kindergarten said it was like teaching college.”

  I think I might have broken the ice. She laughs. “Well I don’t know about that, but my Christine is curious all right. Both of them are.”

  “Well I can’t wait to meet them sometime. Bernice said they might come today.”

  “No, we decided we better let them stay home with the babysitter.”

  “Is one of them sick?” I ask.

  “No, no. They’re fine. I think sometimes they get depressed, you know, when they come here. They’re little. They don’t understand.”

  “You mean about Bernice?”

  “No. Yes. Well in general you know. It’s hard for them to see.”

  “She’s their grandmother.” The wife arches an eyebrow at the tone of my voice, and I can tell I’ve overstepped a boundary. “I’m sorry honey, it’s none of my business.”

  She turns away from me to the sink and rinses her hands. “They’re children. They love their grandmother, and she loves them. That’s all that matters.”

  “Doesn’t Mama look beautiful?” The son appears in the doorway with Bernice on his arm, and Mister Benny on hers, his yarn hair teased straight up and fluffy. “I told the girl that fixes hair I’ve never seen her look any prettier. Have you?”

  I’m not sure to whom he is directing the question but I answer. “Bernice is always able to pull it together when she needs to, isn’t that right?”

  She crushes Mister Benny’s head against her cheek. “We’re going to the restaurant!” she squeals.

  “You’re going to need a sweater,” the wife says. “You know you always get cold, even when everybody else is burning up.”

  The wife slides open the closet door, almost violently. Most of what is in there are housedresses and nightgowns with the tags still on them and bedroom shoes of ev
ery description in piles on the floor. There are two or three sweaters hanging, and beside them, a couple of dresses each for hot weather and cold. The son helps Bernice into the armchair that was intended for company and stands by the window, rocking from side to side with his hands in his pockets, jangling change or keys.

  The wife buries her head in the closet. “I would give you this navy blue one, but it looks like something is spilled all over the front of it. It needs to go to the cleaners.” She wads it up and throws it on the bed. “All these sweaters do. They all have an odor.” She throws another pile on the bed.

  “We’ll take care of that, Mama,” the son says. He has stopped jangling. The wife stares at him, somehow disappointed.

  “This old red one is the only one that’s even fitting to wear. We’ve got to go.”

  Bernice looks at me. “We’re going to the restaurant! You come too, okay?”

  “No, honey, Ann’s going to be back to visit with me after while. She’s showing a house. Y’all go on.” I smile at the wife even though she isn’t the one who invited me.

  She hands the sweater to her husband. “Here Mama, let’s get this on you so you’ll be warm enough,” he says. Bernice hesitates, then lays Mister Benny down on top of the pile of sweaters. It looks like a little nest made especially for him. He is resting peacefully.

  The wife picks up her purse and waits in the doorway. “Are you all coming any time soon?”

  The son sticks out his hand to shake. “Very nice to meet you. Or meet you again I guess,” he wheezes a laugh. “You have a happy Mother’s Day. Let’s go to the car, Mama.”

  Bernice picks up Mister Benny from his bed, and the son almost forgets to take the pile of clothes until the wife gestures with her chin.

  When she speaks this time, it is in a little girl’s voice. “Now Miss Bernice, you know you’re not going to take Mister Benny to the restaurant. He’ll be just fine right here, and he’ll be right here when you get back.”

  Bernice is silent. Her grip tightens on Mister Benny and she looks at her son, who grins and starts the metallic jangling in his pocket again with his free hand.

  “Miss Bernice?” the wife continues. “If we don’t go ahead, we’re not going to have time to have lunch. We have to get back to the babysitter and then go to church.”

  The son starts to speak. “Greta…” he says, but she cuts him off. “Don’t even suggest it, Cameron. I can see it in your eyes and don’t even suggest it. It’s Mother’s Day, and I am not going to sit at a table in public with that worn-out doll and pretend like that’s all right. It’s not.”

  Bernice says, “Mister Benny’s going to the restaurant too, okay?”

  “No. No, it is not okay. You can leave him for one hour, that’s all we’ll be gone. One hour.” The wife raises a finger to point at the son, and several gold bracelets clank together against a large sparkling wristwatch with a pink crocodile strap. “You have spoiled her. That’s what this is about and I don’t know how many times I’ve told you. She’s spoiled.”

  The son leans into Bernice. “Mama, can you please leave Mister Benny this once?”

  Bernice looks at me. Her eyes are red and pleading. “He has to stay with me.”

  “This is ridiculous.” The wife turns to me. “Have you ever in your life?”

  “She’s real tenderhearted. Maybe…” She doesn’t let me finish, it’s clear she never intended to.

  Cameron tries once more with Bernice, looking down at the floor and shuffling again. “Mama, it won’t be for long.”

  “No!” Bernice screams. “No, no, no, no!” She is slapping the air with her hands, like waving smoke away.

  The wife jumps in. “Stop making a scene. I mean it, Mrs. Stokes. That’s enough, I mean it.”

  Bernice is sobbing. She staggers back and slumps in the chair.

  “Should I go get Lorraine?” I ask.

  The son puts a hand on Bernice’s shoulder. “Mama, I think we’re going to go on. You don’t feel like going to a restaurant today. Just sit here and get some rest ’til you’re feeling better. We’re going to go on now. We’ll come back though.”

  “I’ll pull the car around.” The wife reaches out an open palm for the keys, but he doesn’t offer them.

  Someone makes a gagging sound in the hall. From a distance, Lorraine calls out, “I need Alvin to clean this up, please. Mr. Evans has got sick all over creation.”

  “Good Lord,” the wife hisses and turns on her heels.

  “Bye-bye, Mama. I’ll see you later, I promise.” Cameron Stokes turns in the doorway back to me. “Y’all have a good Mother’s Day. I’ll see you again soon, okay Mama?” His jangle fades down the hall along with the sound of leather shoes on linoleum.

  I sit down with Bernice. She lays Mister Benny’s head in my lap while she massages his legs. “Sometimes they hurt,” she says through tears. “I can’t stand it when he’s hurting. I’ll rub them a little while, and he’ll be all right.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  RHONDA

  The first time I did Mrs. Stokes’s hair she didn’t say a word, but the second time, a couple weeks later, she pulled out a wrinkled picture of someone in a deep burgundy cap and gown. She flashed it so quick that I couldn’t see it clear at first. “His name’s Wade. That’s my boy Wade.” Bernice held onto the creased and worn picture like she thought I might take it. She was showing it to me, but definitely not giving it to me. I wanted to tell her, “I was there. I heard him give a speech. I’m so sorry for you.” But from the way she said what she did, he might still be alive in her mind, I couldn’t tell. I said, “He looks like a real good guy,” and let it go at that.

  We all guessed in high school that Wade was his mama’s favorite. He was everybody’s favorite. He was smart and made all the grades and honors, but he was real nice, and I mean to anybody, not just the ones that everybody liked. Wade spoke to me every single time he saw me in the hall or outside. Didn’t matter to him that we didn’t have a thing in common. I was all the time trying to find a corner to smoke a cigarette, and shoot, I bet he never tasted tobacco in his life. I’d say “hey” back, take a puff off my cigarette, and blow smoke straight up in the air like a chimney, the way I still do when I’m feeling nervous or flirting.

  We came from two different worlds. That much was drilled into me before I was old enough to start school. Mama and me lived with my Grandma in her house, the only house I remember. Grandma told us that somebody needed to teach me about the way of the world and it was going to have to be her because my mama was too sorry. She said, “You might as well get used to doing for other people, Rhonda, because that’s how you’re goin to survive in this world. That’s what we do, what other people need done, and no use thinking you’re different. You’re not. Your fool Mama can’t get that through her head, but I be damned if I’m not goin to get it through yours.”

  Mama got out of that house cause it’s the only thing she could do to take care of herself. If she thought she coulda done that and take care of me too, she’d have took me with her. I know that. She didn’t listen to Grandma; she did what she pleased, and I made up my mind to be like that too. At least I didn’t think I was listening to her, but I was, and it’s taken me all this time to know that I never did what I wanted to back then. I never could just listen to what my heart was saying and believe it. “Look before you leap” was one of Grandma’s favorite things to say, and I got the idea that whatever I might want to do, that if I looked first, I’d see a huge bottomless black pit so deep that I’d know better than to leap. Ever.

  When I was in high school, my best friend Tammy Moore got a white-and-black horse, not a field horse either, a regular riding horse. The man in Sanford who sold it to Tammy’s daddy said her name was Wyndfield Girl, but we always called her plain Wendy. Actually her daddy got it because I think he liked the way she looked out in his pasture. He said she had been in rodeos, but none of us really believed that, including him. Mr. Moore said I was a natural. He said
I could ride her a hell of a lot better than Tammy, like I could read Wendy’s mind. I loved to ride that horse, I think I loved her more than Tammy did.

  When you’re a kid, sometimes things hit like lightning bolts, not everything has to be thought through forever. Think about movie stars. They’re young and they get in their head they want to be an actress, and nothing, not their family or not having any money or anything else can stop them. They go after what they want no matter what, and it’s like the rest of the world stops getting in their way and finally starts cooperating, going along with their plan, like the world’s a trained circus.

  I decided that if I could help Mr. Moore with Wendy, I would learn everything there was to know about horses, and then I could have a farm one day and raise them in a pasture with a wide-plank fence around it and a house sitting on a hill. I could sit out on the porch with a cup of coffee in the morning and look out at all my land and horses as far as I could see. It would be the kind of perfect square green pasture that you’d drive by in your car and say, “Have you ever seen a prettier farm in your life?” And that would be my farm and I would make a living on it, and besides my own horses, I would take care of other people’s horses and teach children how to ride. When you can see something that clear, it’s not right that you can’t do something to get it.

  The Moores moved the next winter, before the spring we graduated. They shut up the barn and put the whole farm up for sale. Tammy Moore cried her eyes out when Mr. Moore said he might need to sell Wendy since they didn’t have as much land at the new place. She cried so much she got sick and stopped going to school, so he gave in, but I think he would have anyway because he was nice and would do anything in the world for his only daughter. I had my hopes up at first because they didn’t go that far, just to Sampson County, but that might as well be Atlanta when you don’t have a car. If I could have figured out a way, I would have gone over there and rode Wendy, groomed her and all, but Grandma said that this was exactly what she was talking about, wasting my time on something that I didn’t have one bit of control over, and she said once I graduated I better be able to help with some money around there because she was getting too old to work double shifts waitressing. I listened to her. I had signed up for cosmetology a long time ago because the guidance counselor said it might be suited to me. As long as I went to class for three hours, three times a week, I could be on my way to getting a license. I would just need to do the rest of the course work at the community college and pass an exam. By the end of the next hellish Carolina summer, I was finished and licensed and cutting and teasing up hair at Evelyn’s Beauty Shop on East Main Street. Grandma was as happy as she knew how to be, which wasn’t much. At least there was some more money. The day I walked in with my state license, I don’t know what I was expecting but I felt like showing it to her. Without looking up from her TV Guide she said, “About time we got some more money coming in here. Hope you weren’t expecting a twenty-one gun salute.”