The Sweet by and By (9 page)

I knew I would not leave without saying something. I needed to let her know that her privacy was a sacred thing, that I would never mention even to my mother what I had seen. I could only think of her searching eyes, scanning the room. I knew she wanted to f lee. I also knew that she used to stand and dress and go out to dinner and chat with other ladies, and carry a purse and wear shoes. I knew that she used to send Christmas cards and wrap birthday presents. That she knew what it feels like to laugh until you start to cry. That she used to plan her tomorrows by herself. Her eyes revealed everything.

“Mama?” I pulled the curtain open slightly wider.

“I thought you prob’ly went to the car. You been waitin out there?”

“I wondered if I could help you.”

“Baby, it’s against the rules for you or anybody but family to help us. Insurance.” The woman in the bed was looking at me to see what if anything I was going to do. My mother broke the silence of antici- pation. “This right here is Mrs. Margaret Clayton, she’s one of my

patients. Miss Margaret, this is my daughter I was telling you about. She’s home from college. Says she might be gon go to medical school, now ain’t that something?”

The woman opened her eyes wider, more energetic. “She might have it in her, Lorraine, judging from looking at her. What’s your name, shug?”

“April.” I didn’t like her calling me “shug.” It was too familiar. “You’re April and you graduate in May,” she continued, rather

satisfied with her own wit.

“Nice to meet you.” I started to put out my hand but retreated and I’m not sure why.

“Nice to know you too, April. Now y’all go and get on with your business.”

Mama half snorted. “I thought we might go have us something to eat this evening, but April don’t want a thing in this world but for me to cook, ain’t that right, baby?” I didn’t have time to answer.

“Well you need to bring me some of whatever you make, Lorraine, that’s what you need to do, even though I can’t imagine not wanting one of the delightful entrées that are on the menu here.”

“You feelin better already, I’m gon leave you.”

“If you don’t, I’m going to start telling April the truth about you.”

Mama dimmed the light and turned on the lamp by the bed. “All right then. You want to watch TV?”

“Put it on without sound. I’d rather look at them running around and try to figure out the story myself.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“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.

ch a p t e r eigh t

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 per- manents 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 car- rying 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 f lowers, 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 with- out doing all that much. Her eyes f luttered 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, f lipping through a
People
magazine and not look- ing at it, much less reading it. “So. Rhonda, how are you, dear? Ev- erything 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 colli- sion
. 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 trav- eling 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 Hos- pital. 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 some- body 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 f lew back across the street with the newspaper still in my hand and f lung 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.

ch a p t e r nine

Margaret

F

rom 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 f lowers. I usually like cut f lowers, but I don’t like carnations, and her basket was overf lowing 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 f lowerbed. 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 believ- able. 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 f latly. “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 f ly 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 f luffed 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.