The Sweet by and By (24 page)

“Not now, Bernice.” That’s what came out. “Not now.” No one heard.

I

waited for Ann in the lobby, planting myself on a wicker love seat in the middle of the glassed-in rainforest, surrounded by boys and girls in green and gold uniforms with big white plumes on their hats.

Shining gold and silver metal gleamed on everything from tubas to f lutes all over the room.

Don’t believe it the next time somebody tells you they’ve seen a peaceful smile on the face of a dead person. They’re liars. What you see is
nothing
. I needed that woman. I still do.

I sank down deeper into the chair cushion and felt genuinely tired

for the first time. I closed my eyes lightly. I could see the two of us, Bernice and me, inching our way across the parking lot in the dark

like drunk snails. We found our freedom at a Tastee-Freez. For a few hours, we got to be like people who come and go and eat and sleep when they want to. I remember holding Bernice’s arm, feeling like a wildcat. She was beside herself, pointing at the oversized pictures of ice cream creations. “I don’t want any pineapple sauce, just straw- berry,” she said. “Lots of strawberry.”

“We can have anything we want,” I told her. “One—two—three—four!” a voice pierced my ears, startling me

back to the present. I opened my eyes, for a moment I panicked. I thought the Hilton was having a fire drill. Then snare drums rolled, a high pitched whistle blew, and the “Stars and Stripes Forever” blared full throttle. Thunder sounded in my head, and I looked around me. Horns of all shapes and sizes protruded from red faces of children blowing with all the wind God gave them. There must have been sixty, seventy, eighty. I lowered my shoulders and leaned my head back a second time. Bernice was there again, still there, ice cream dripping from her chin. I felt Betsy Ross in my lap, she was staring up at me, eyeless. If somebody had asked me in that moment what joy was, I would have had to say John Philip Sousa in a tropical garden in downtown Raleigh. If there’s a God, and I have always believed so, those children won a trophy that day. It should have been the biggest trophy in the whole state of North Carolina. To hell with Elvis.

“Mama? Mama are you all right?” I heard Ann call out over the sound of the brass. I didn’t see her immediately, but I could smell her perfume and hear her jewelry clanking behind me. She appeared in front of my face. “I’m so sorry, Mama. I don’t know what to say, I’m torn up. Let’s go home.”

She pulled me to my feet. “What did you say?” I yelled as loud as I could. Ann guided me gently with her arm around my waist. I almost ran into a chair and stopped to look at a chubby girl with pigtails wearing a green and gold uniform, standing by herself in between two hibiscus plants. She was playing the Sousa piccolo solo with all of

her heart in it. “Mama, we need to go,” Ann comforted me, and then to herself, “I’ve never heard such a racket in my life inside a build- ing.” I went with her unbegrudgingly, she was there to help me, but I glanced back at the piccolo player. I needed to see her again. Bright morning rays poured through the glass over her head and made her whole body shine. The music played on. I think she had wings.

c h a p t e r tw e n ty- tw o

Rhonda

I

’ll wash her hair and rinse it real good before I tease it. I’m not gonna tease it too much though cause she didn’t like that. She mashed her hair down with her hands every time I tried to do anything with it to make it look fuller. I’ve got to put on a sweater before I can do anything. I’m freezing in this basement. I know they have to keep it this way, but I can’t concentrate. I’m trying to get her situated so I can work on her better, but her head don’t move much at all. I remembered to bring a little lavender eye pillow that I got out of a catalog. It said it was for relaxing and feeling rejuvenated, but I tried it and found out I’d just as soon smoke a cigarette. I’m gonna put it over her eyes, real gentle. I don’t want to look at her eyes; I’m scared they might open up part way. They put what they call eye caps under her lids to help keep em closed, that’s what Paul Gaines told me and he works here so he oughta know. Still, he said changes are happen- ing all the time in a dead body. I wish he hadn’t called her a dead body just because he’s used to messing with dead people all the

time. She’s Bernice to me. Bernice.

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 f loor. 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 some- thing. 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 f lying 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 Ber- nice’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 labor- ing 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 prob- ably 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 plas- tic 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 his

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 f loor, 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.