The Sweet by and By (26 page)

“I don’t like this dress, you know that, don’t you?” Bernice has picked me out of the congregation. “You were supposed to be in charge of what I’m to be buried in, so please explain to me why I have this thing on?”

The preacher is going right on preaching, and here she comes, walking straight down the aisle as pretty as you please. She’s coming toward me; there’s nothing I can do about it. I try not to look up at her but she keeps on talking. “I have never liked powdery blue, or any powdery color for that matter. They look like the kind of pajamas that sick people wear. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not sick.” Why is she speaking this way? Why is she speaking at all, and she’s clear as a bell. This is another Bernice. No. This is my medication. I am definitely going to kill Lorraine as soon as I get my hands on her.

People are watching the casket be carried down the aisle. “Nobody’s

in it!” I almost say out loud but catch myself. Bernice is standing over me. I will not speak. I will not talk to her. Absolutely not. I will not speak. This is exactly how old people lose their minds. This is it and it’s happening to me right now. Why will she not go away? I’m going to force her back into that casket. I fix my eyes on her like a target. I brought her out and now I’m going to put her back where she’s supposed to be. She won’t look back at me. She’s swaying down the aisle, and now Hank is singing “If You Love Me Half as Much as I Love You.”

People are standing up and filing out after the casket. My daughter Ann reaches for my hand. I pull away. Bernice has me blocked in. Ann looks at me askew but stays with me. She probably thinks I want a few more minutes before we go to the graveside. Bernice touches Ann’s shoulder but she doesn’t notice. Undiscouraged, Bernice speaks to her anyway, nodding my way. “Honey, I know she’s always driven you a little crazy, but she’s a good girl, you need to remember that when you lose your patience with her.”

I refuse to acknowledge her. “Do you hear me or am I talking to a brick wall?” I stare straight ahead. I will not give into voices; this is where it all starts. The slipping away into senility. The one thing I have had is my mind and I will not let it go. This is how it begins, and I will not accept it. I will not participate. Her voice doesn’t exist to me. She leans down close to my face. “You go ahead and sit there. I’ve got all day. I’ve got my mind made up to talk to you and I’ve got all the time in the world.”

Bernice walks up to the woman who sang “The Old Rugged Cross.” “I’ve never seen this woman before in my life. Do you know her? I was hoping Ole Hank would sing ‘Hey Good Lookin’.’ I have always loved that song. There aren’t enough young people here. I know a lot of young people. Where are they? Where’s Rhonda?” She is momen- tarily distracted by someone she recognizes and points him out to me. “That man is a deacon in this church and has had an affair with the

organist, who also happens to be the preacher’s wife, for going on ten years. He thinks no one knows but everyone knows, including the preacher.” She continues, as though for my personal edification. “And the lady behind you, Leola Matthews, has never missed a funeral for the thirty years I’ve known her. One time she told me that she’s even gone to funerals when she’s on vacation. She picks out the obituaries in the local newspaper and then shows up on time. I told her years ago I thought it was the most morbid thing I’d ever heard tell of, but she told me that on the contrary it certainly is not. She said it always makes her feel grateful. I can understand that.”

Bernice continues surveying the room. “Too many black dresses and other assorted outfits here. I thought I said a long time ago, ‘God forbid everyone wear black to my funeral.’ I want some red. I’ve always adored red. I’m tired of what passes as tradition to keep us from think- ing about what we like, or to make us feel guilty for being different. I do hate this sick blue dress they’ve got me in. I don’t know why you let them do this.” She glares my way.

“I didn’t.”

“What?” Ann whispers, placing a hand over mine.

I say nothing, shake my head slightly, and retrieve my hand.

Ann excuses herself to give me some privacy, while other friends and relatives file by. Bernice steps out into the aisle in front of her son and daughter-in-law. “I feel sorry for him. He has lost the desire to be curious about anything. That is his worst fault. Greta’s not the prob- lem. She’s sad in her own way, sad, you know?”

There is only one person left in the room besides me. She is sitting in a back corner, and just when I decide that she’s too far away for me to see well enough to identify, I recognize Rhonda. Bernice’s voice lowers to a whisper. “Do you know she did my hair? She was always so kind to me. You probably thought I was senile and gone. But I insisted. I wouldn’t leave you alone. You were alive. You were the most alive

thing I saw around me in that place. Not scared to give life a go as long as we could. We did all right, didn’t we?”

I am burning. “What do you want?” I shout. An usher clears his throat behind me in the vestibule. He has heard me, wonders if some- thing is wrong, and is letting me know that he’s back there, ready to help or to intervene at the right moment, just give him the signal.

“Why are you talking like this?” I shock myself as I hear the words fall off my tongue. “You have never talked this way.”

“You mean lucid?” She laughs. “I don’t really know. It just hap- pened, like what’s in my mind is no longer being blown around like a hurricane. I feel settled inside, and when I open my mouth I know what’s coming out.”

“You are dead.” I lower my voice. “Well at least I’m here,” she says.

“Mama, I’m sorry to bother you, but you’ve got to get in the car. It’s here at the front and they’re ready to go.” Ann is standing beside me.

“I’m coming.” I get up.

“Good. Come on. It’s going to pour as sure as day.” Ann walks out. Rhonda is leaving now too, dabbing her eyes with a wadded Kleenex.

“Bernice, I am not going to talk to you.” I start down the aisle toward the foyer. I am f leeing, but I am not afraid. I am not losing my mind. I am not losing control of myself. “I am finished talking,” I tell her again.

“Suit yourself, sweetheart,” she says. “I can talk to you whenever I want to.”

I am walking away telling myself that I will not remember this once I sleep for a while.

Bernice follows me. “Can’t I tell you one more thing?” “You can tell me why you’re walking around talking.”

“Actually, I can’t tell you that because I don’t understand it myself.” Bernice smiles. “But I want you to know something if you don’t al-

ready. Life is choosing whom and what you love. Everything else fol- lows.”

She is gone from sight. “Thank you,” she whispers, her voice lin- gering.

I stop and turn around, raising my cane toward the empty front of the sanctuary. “Thank me? I didn’t keep you from dying. I didn’t keep you from losing your mind either. Who’s supposed to sit with me now? Who’s going to get me out of a chair? Not you. I’m tired of going from one day to the next with a bottle of Tylenol.”

The organist is playing “Amazing Grace.” She is frowning at the sheet music in front of her. At the foot of the porch steps, Ann has the car door open, and the same skinny usher is holding an umbrella. We have to go to the grave.

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

Rhonda

T

he stationery is thick like cloth and expensive-looking, even though it’s frayed at the corners from being handled too much. I never bought stationery myself ’til I got married, but I can tell when something is nice. I think I got that from my Mama; she told me I had a good eye. Some of the pages have stains, some of the words are smeared. A thin navy blue line runs all the way around the edge of each piece of paper with “Bernice

A. Stokes” printed at the top in the kind of curly letters that no real person could ever do, they’re so perfect. Grandma all the time told me my writing looked a nest of copperheads whenever I tried to show her my homework. I was stupid to look for some kind of compliment from her, but that’s the way you are when you’re young; you don’t know no better. “Is that why you go to school?” she said. “I stopped goin when I was thirteen years old and I can write better than that,” then she hoisted herself out of her chair and turned the TV up as loud as it would go.

“Could you please tell me why we have been summoned down here? You’ve already fixed my hair once today, unless you took advantage of my failing brain and lied about it.” Margaret is standing in the door on a walker with Lorraine steadying her.

Lorraine adds, “I had to drag her, Rhonda. I told her you said it was important. I think that’s the only reason she came. Too jealous I might know somethin she don’t.”

Margaret rattles her way in and sits down. “And to think all this time, Lorraine, I’ve been foolish enough to think you tell me every- thing you know.”

“Woman, your head ain’t big enough to hold all I know,” Lorraine follows.

“Let’s turn our attention to Rhonda if you think that’s possible. I’ll deal with you on my own time.”

“It’s gon be dinnertime soon, Rhonda,” Lorraine says. That’s her way of letting me know that we might only have Miss Margaret’s pa- tience for a short while. Patience goes and comes when a person gets old, I’ve learned that much. You gotta go with the f low.

“Oh look, isn’t that a sight?” Margaret points to the wall shelf behind me.

Once I had inherited Bernice’s bulldog, I decided she oughta park herself in full view in the salon. I even made a little sign with magic marker that said, “Miss Betsy Ross.” I don’t know if the real Betsy Ross was single or married, but I wrote it how I liked. Bernice would have loved it, I know, and if anybody wants to say something about it, the hell with em.

Margaret is thrilled. “Perched up there on display like she’s in a museum! That’s wonderful, Rhonda, we’ll see her every time we come in here.”

“Yeah.” They’re still waiting for the reason I called them. “That’s what I wanted to tell y’all,” I say. “I knew I wanted to sit her out some- where, so I decided to wash her off a little bit first and when I started trying to unzip her, I felt something crumply up in there.”

“I told you!” Margaret cries. “What did that rascal do?”

“She had some letters,” I said, but Margaret is cracking up before I can finish telling.

“Lord have mercy! Who in the world wrote letters to Bernice? I can’t imagine
her
writing much more than her name, can you, Lor- raine?”

“I don’t know,” Lorraine says. From what I can tell, Lorraine is somebody who tries to never jump to conclusions, maybe because she’s seen too many things not turn out like they ought to, working in this place every day.

I pick up where I left off. “I didn’t want to read em by myself,” I say. “I thought maybe I shouldn’t be reading em at all.”

Margaret doesn’t like what she thinks is nonsense. “You make it sound like a mystery, Rhonda. What in the devil are they, some old Christmas cards or something she stuck up in there?”

“I’m tryin to tell y’all.” It’s my turn to be impatient now, and I sound that way. “She wrote a bunch of letters to Wade.” I hold up the bundle of folded paper and shake it in front of them.

Margaret looks awful suspicious. I think she’s wondering why if such a thing exists, she didn’t either know about them or find them before me. She isn’t acting jealous, more curious.

Lorraine is the one to break the silence. “Y’all were a whole lot closer to Bernice than me, but I tell you one thing. If she hid those letters, she knew exactly what she was doin. There ain’t no way to prove it, but you’ll never tell me different. I don’t care how out of her mind she got.”

“The question is, y’all . . .” I say, “should I give them to her other son, what’s his name?”

“Cameron?” Margaret asks. “Good Lord, if she had wanted him and his wife to have those, do you think she would have hid them in Betsy Ross? She might not have known much, Rhonda, but she knew that if those two ever had the first chance, that dog would be in the Dumpster before they got out of the parking lot.”

“That’s a fact.” Lorraine nods to Margaret.

“Go on then and read them.” Margaret pushes me. “This is about as private as we’re going to get.”

“Wait a minute.” Lorraine gets up and closes the door, not that I’m expecting anybody.

“I guess I felt like I needed permission, you know? I didn’t want to be the only one,” I say. I unfold an extra chair that I keep in case of overflow and sit close to them so they can hear.

Dear Wade . . .

My voice shakes some, but I swallow and start over.

Dear Wade,

I thought I’d be hungry but I’m not.There’s so much food left over from last night when we had visitation here. Everyone is worrying I might not eat. I don’t feel like it, but I’ll eat, they needn’t worry. If anyone finds this letter they will say I’m depressed. I haven’t taken off my clothes from the funeral even though it’s been over for two hours. I can’t change clothes because after I take off this dress, I don’t know what I’ll put on. What does a person put on after they come home from their child’s funeral? I feel like I could decide anything except when to take off these clothes.

“Bless her heart,” Lorraine says. Margaret’s face is f lat and gray as a piece of slate. I don’t know if it’s pain or shock.

I expect they’ve spread the flowers and wreaths all over the fresh dirt by now. I want to see that tomorrow, first thing. It’s supposed to be sunny all day, and I’m going to take some pictures of those flowers, Wade.There were so many beautiful arrangements, some of them from people that hadn’t seen you since you were little.They all remembered you though, they said.They told me things they remembered.

After much pleading on my part, Cameron and Greta finally agreed to leave me alone in my house.They wanted me to spend the night with them, but that’s not where I want to be right now. I need to be in my house. I had to promise them I’d answer the phone if it rang because

they’d call to check on me.They were smart to make that deal because you always did laugh at me for not answering the phone.You liked say- ing that what most of the world thought of as a lifeline was a terrible inconvenience for me, and you were right.