The Sweet by and By (25 page)

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 f lammable 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.

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

Margaret

I

f 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 under- stand 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 some- thing 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. Crys- tal 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 high- way 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 fu-

neral 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 the difference between one slice and the whole pie. The chandelier is all ref lection 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 f loor 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 f lute 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 f lower. 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.

The preacher is going on now, earnest seeming enough. If I had been paying attention I would have probably heard him say, “Friends and family of dear Bernice Stokes.” That’s a reasonable way to start a funeral. Cameron and Greta Stokes and their two children are oppo- site me in the pew across the aisle. I wave to the little ones, who wave back even though they have no idea who I am. That’s how children are. Wave at them, and they wave back. Greta stares straight ahead. She is wearing a hat. She is trying to look like the idea of what she thinks a well-bred Southern wife of a man who has lost his mother looks like. Bernice’s son brings a handkerchief to his eyes, then his nose, in one continuous gesture. He is sweating. It seems to me that he’s been sweating every time I’ve ever seen him.

I am digging in my purse, which I am aware has always been a dis- tracting and very time-consuming habit of mine, but I feel like I will die if I don’t find a mint or piece of hard candy, my throat is so dry. There is a woman standing behind the pulpit now with a fountain of curly blond hair and very pale skin except for a red inf lamed area at the nape of her neck, reading from the Bible. I don’t recognize what she’s reading. I’m not sure it’s from the Bible; I must have misunder- stood. It sounds more like poetry, and something makes me think I heard it in a movie. Could be; Bernice loved old movies. Hell, half the time she thought she was in one. Aside from that, all she wanted to do was talk. The talk got progressively nonsensical and childlike as time went on, but so do most things the more you dwell on them, so it never bothered me. Bernice was only being Bernice.

The morning after she passed away, Rhonda closed the beauty shop and came to me to ask if I thought Bernice’s family would mind if she did her hair for the funeral. I said, “Rhonda, that is so lovely, I know Bernice would have loved it, but she would also probably insist that you did Betsy Ross’s hair too.” There wasn’t as much hair on the bulldog as there had been on Mister Benny, but she had always obliged Bernice by putting a little shampoo on the short hair and around the ears.

“You’re talkin about that bulldog? Since when does it have a name?”

“Since I suggested it, and don’t ask me why I did.”

“Well are they gonna bury her with Betsy Ross then?” Rhonda asked in all sincerity.

Thinking of the daughter-in-law, I answered quickly, “No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Well that’s not right. People get buried with all kind of things pushed in down by their feet. My great uncle got buried with a fishin pole.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes it is, and the funeral home was glad to do it too. The man there said one time he buried a lady with a saxophone.”

“Well as I said, that’s not going to happen. Actually, I think Ber- nice would want you to have old Betsy, you took such good care of her every week. And may the Stars and Stripes forever wave.”

“You don’t think her family might want her? Maybe for the grand- children?”

“Rhonda. Honey. I believe you have met Greta Stokes and so I think you already know the answer to that question. Consider yourself lucky, Bernice used to keep whiskey up inside Mister Benny until she got caught. No telling what you might find. I’m sure she got herself a regu- lar stash winning poker games with Alvin and the rest of them. You and Mike might be able to have yourselves a full-blown cocktail party.”

Rhonda laughed, but I could see she wasn’t through crying yet. As it turned out, Greta Stokes couldn’t have cared less what arrangements were made. She didn’t go with her husband to pick out the casket or f lowers. She went to Hudson Belk and bought a new outfit for Bernice to be buried in. “Something appropriate,” she said, because “there is not a thing fitting to wear to a dog fight in that closet of hers, not to mention that everything is stained with God-knows-what and wadded up like trash.”

I feel tired. I hear the door open in the back of the sanctuary, and I turn as discreetly as I can. Lorraine is standing in the aisle, scanning the congregation. The usher tries to hand her a service bulletin but she slips quickly past him and situates herself on the end of a back pew. It’s not like her to be late, I had wanted her to sit with me and Ann, but I swear I don’t know how she does everything she does anyway. At least she made it. She nods when she sees me looking at her, and I feel like I can rest. She had to be here, and now she is. I cup my hand to Ann’s ear and whisper, “Lorraine.” That’s all I need to say. I want to lie down, but I’m not sleepy. Lorraine gave me a second cup of coffee this morning even though she’s supposed to keep a watch on my caf- feine. I need to move around or something. I can’t concentrate.

The preacher is standing again, saying some thank-yous on behalf of the family. There’s an awful lot of noise up there, can’t anyone else hear it? The organ is playing, but what’s coming out isn’t organ music. The sound at the front is louder now, it’s deafening. The organist is smiling, but what I hear is Hank Williams singing “Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used to Do?” The preacher does not notice. How can he not notice? The choir is sitting still, no one is moving. The bottom half of the casket is cracked open. I cough and I see a leg. Bernice has kicked open the casket lid. I’m too old to be here. I need to lie down. Bernice is sitting up now, she’s laughing, sort of dancing in the casket with her arms over her head. “Now that’s what I like,” she cries out. “You can give me Hank any day of the week.

He makes me feel sad and happy and wild all at the same time. That’s what a funeral needs to be. This is me. This is what I like!” She is out of the casket now, straightening the bottom of her dress. I turn to my daughter Ann to say something. She sees nothing. She is listening intently to the preacher whose mouth is moving, even though no words are coming out. I start to stand up. Ann turns and puts her hand on my arm. “Do you need to go out?” she whispers. She means, “Do you need to go to the bathroom?” because that is what she always assumes when I try to leave any room. A skinny usher with two white carnations on his jacket stares at me. I can tell from his face that he thinks I may be feeling ill, dying, as far as he knows. I settle back down. I will not draw attention to myself. I’m obviously not well. This is my damn medication. I’m going to kill Lorraine. She is sup- posed to watch Mathilda. She’s giving me too much, I know it. I’ve always known it. I’ve become so used to pill-taking that I don’t even know what’s me and what’s a chemical reaction. I’m going to hide. I take the church bulletin from the pew in front of me and hold it close to my face. People probably think I’m upset. I am.