The Sweet by and By (4 page)

“My Benny Boy,” she wails. “That’s my Benny! You’ve killed him.

See, he’s dead!!!”

She is sobbing for all she’s worth, and I reach over to put my arm around her, but she knocks it away.

“Ada, I know she’ll be all right if she can go lie down for a minute,” I offer. “Just wheel me on down the hall with her and I’ll sit in her room to keep her peaceful, honey.”

Ada motions Lorraine over and tells her to do exactly as I sug- gested, but Lorraine sort of squints one eye at me. “Miss Margaret, I know just as good as you that you don’t want to be at this party a bit more than the man in the moon.”

I look up at her and don’t have to say a word, but she sees a smile forming at the corners of my mouth. She grunts, hands Benny back to Bernice, and off we go, Lorraine pushing me, with Bernice holding on to one side of the wheelchair, pacified now down to a few little sniffs and snorts rather than screaming bloody murder. When we get to her room, Lorraine settles her into a chair and pushes me right up alongside of her, then turns on the television to a Christmas music special with a group of four teenage boys that look like criminals sing- ing “The First Noël.”

“Now y’all behave in here, you hear?” Lorraine half scolds and squeaks back down the hall toward the party. Before she’s out of sight good, Bernice is pulling on Benny’s head all over again.

“Now hold on a minute, shug.” I touch her arm lightly. “You’re going to tear him all to pieces if you don’t mind.”

She is not to be deterred by anything I do and keeps on tugging until she finally has her hand down inside that monkey’s mouth, all the way up past her wrist.

“What in creation are you doing, Bernice? You need to leave Mister Benny alone and settle down or they’re going to send Mathilda down here to give you a pill.”

Bernice lets out a loud laugh and yanks her hand out of Benny’s throat, holding up her blue ribbon prize, another baby whiskey bottle. I nudge the door closed with my foot and wheel back around. She unscrews the tiny bottle top with her eyes set on me, grinning all the time. Now as I’ve already said, I do not touch a drop of whiskey, never ever. I do, however, partake of Bernice’s miniature offering just to keep her sane and make sure we’re left alone. Bernice grabs the remote control off her bed and uses Mister Benny’s dirty yellow hand to turn the volume up as loud as it will go. The Christmas show has switched now to an ancient gray-haired man, perched on a stool, croaking his way through “Jingle Bells,” while trying to snap his fingers along to a jazz band behind him. It’s pitiful. He looks as bad as I do and can’t snap worth a f lip. Bernice takes the bottle back from me, gulps the rest of the liquid down, and stuffs the empty down into her housecoat. With- out missing a lick, she reaches down into that poor monkey’s intestines and pulls out another. “Christmas!” she screams out like a cheerleader, waving the bottle above her head. She kisses Mister Benny square on the mouth and holds him out to me to do the same.

I lean in close enough to give him a peck. “Merry Christmas, Benny!

Merry Christmas, Bernice.” I can’t believe I kissed a monkey doll.

It startles both of us when Mathilda bangs on the door and pushes it wide-open with her usual tractor-trailer load full of medicine. “Sounds to me like you might want something to help you rest, Bernice, is that right?” she bellows.

“No ma’am.” I speak up. “We’re fine, thank you. In the Christmas spirit, that’s all. How about you?”

“The party’s over,” she says without even trying to hide her sar- casm, then backs out of the room, an eighteen-wheeler on an interstate highway. Roll on.

“I’m going to go on to my room,” I say to Bernice. “You lie down for a little while, don’t you want to?”

“Benny’s plum worn out.” She sighs, pulling down the covers on her bed.

“I know he is. I’ll see you after while.”

Bernice blows me a kiss, then cackles, waving her fingers like a movie star to her fans. I wheel myself across the hall. I honestly feel like I can get out of this chair with nobody’s help except Jack Daniel’s, but I think better of it and ring the nurse’s bell.

“Do you need anything else?” Lorraine asks after she gets me situ- ated on the bed.

“No ma’am I don’t,” I say matter-of-factly. “I’m full of Christmas cheer.”

“You’re full of something else too, and you better be glad it’s me that came down here.” Lorraine turns off the light, squeaking down the hall like she always does. I’m not worried though, she’s all talk. She’ll be back in the morning, same as always, and I’ll be where she left me.

c h a p te r th r e e

Rhonda

M

y car is one helluva sight, it looks like somebody’s living in it. I haven’t quite got to that point yet, but I did see a

car yesterday at the Food Lion that made me wonder if somebody hadn’t beat me to it. That thing was filled up to the windows with newspapers, magazines, clothes, and McDonald’s bags, along with what looked like some T-shirts and underwear sprinkled around a pint-sized hole for the driver to sit in. I was tempted to sit there in the parking lot and wait and see who came out and got in that trash pile, but after about ten minutes, long enough to find my billfold and brush my hair out a little bit in the rearview mirror, I went on into the store. I loaded up my cart with the usual stuff, sugar, milk, eggs, a can of Maxwell House, but in the back of my mind I was still thinking about that car. Somewhere inside this store with me was the owner of all that mess, walking around just like I was, looking at hamburger buns and cereal and Cool Whip. A secret slob, and you probably wouldn’t even know it to see her. I know it was a her because of the underwear. Unless it was a him that likes lace better than Jockeys. Now
that
made me real curious to figure out exactly who it might be by looking up and down at everybody I passed in the aisles. Especially their eyes. I started wondering if I coulda picked out Charles Manson before he ever killed anybody just by looking at him doing something innocent, you know, like picking up packs of chicken thighs.

Right now I ain’t doin a thing but killing time, I know it, sitting in another parking lot about to freeze to death in my own filthy car. At a rest home, for God’s sake. Hey, sometimes you do what you gotta do, isn’t that what they always say? Well some people say it. And I keep telling myself that, especially today. Of all the ways I could spend my day off, you’d think this would be the last place I’d want to go. I don’t know a soul in here. But I got a few ideas, that’s my problem, and my ideas are gonna cost me some money, so I figure this is as good a way as any to get some. So what if I’m having some second thoughts, any- body would, thinking about working in a place like this. I’m gonna take my time. I don’t want to go in yet, I’m gonna wait a little bit. It’s just a job, right? No need to make it into more than that. Shit, I’m gonna have to get myself a better attitude.

There’s a ring of bushes around a brick sign with white letters that spell “Ridgecrest” and the “i” is dotted with an orange sun. I was able to find a parking place way down on one end of the semicircle of a driveway. I ain’t bothering nobody sitting here for a minute. How bad do I need the money anyway? I could work at the Target or some- where, but I can’t really see myself standing at a cash register selling eye makeup to high school girls and family-size boxes of Huggies to tired women in sweatpants. And the truth is too, I’ll make more here, and I’ll be doin what it is I do. Hair. That’s my job. That’s what I do the other six days of the week. This is about one thing to me. Cash on the barrelhead. All so I can have my own shop, and I will too one day, you watch. I got lots of ideas about how to design it and everything. I started pulling pages out of magazines and putting em in a drawer by my bed.

Damn, it’s cold. My breath is steaming the windows up. I should get out and go on in, but I need to look around some more from where I am, out of the way, here behind my wheel. A black man in a uniform is sitting at a picnic table off to one side of the building, smoking and laughing with an older man in coveralls holding a rake,

both of em without any coats on. I see their breath just like it was smoke, in between puffs. They’re laughing awful hard at something. They get up when an ambulance backs up to the sidewalk. The doors open, and a bearded young guy and heavy woman in white get out and unload a gurney with somebody on it, blue-looking with a wild shock of white hair on top of his head. They’re heading for a set of double doors at the front entrance. The coverall man grabs one of the doors for them, and the gurney disappears inside.

Last week sitting inside that building, I told the woman who in- terviewed me that I was comfortable around old people, and then I thought, hell I don’t even know any old people. My grandma was def- initely old, but I ain’t so sure she was a person. More like a rattlesnake. Or an alligator. I don’t think I’ll freak out around any of em, unless they act crazy or wet themselves or something like that. Or if they die, that would be pretty bad, I’m really not into somebody checking out while I’ve got my hands in their hair.

There’s prob’ly gonna be a bunch of em that can’t even talk. That’s all right with me. Might even be better that way. The last thing I need is a bunch of half-dead people trying to get into my business. And you know that’s how they’ll be. Asking am I married and do I have any kids. Well I can spare em the breath. One big old “NO” to all of the above and anything else they want to know about me.

Okay girl, do what you came here to do. I twist my body around with the seat belt still on and start grabbing plastic bags full of ev- erything you can think of from the backseat. I have to bring my own brushes, blow dryer, curlers, all my equipment. The only thing they supply is shampoo, conditioner, water, and a couple of second- hand hair dryers that sound like they run on Chevrolet parts. And I know they’re gonna have the cheapest shampoo you can find, but I can’t afford to bring in the stuff I use at Evelyn’s, where I work. She wouldn’t give me a discount anyway even though I’m in that salon six days a week. She’s like that. Nice to strangers but stingy with the

people close to her. I never have understood that, oughta be the other way around. And there ain’t no telling how long it’s been since some of these women had their hair cut, much less colored. The director f lat out told me that they’d been looking for somebody for three months because the woman they used to have got a divorce and moved to Tennessee with her three-year-old. “The patients thought a lot of her,” the director said, sighing like she was talking about somebody who died, twirling her index finger around the rim of a red coffee cup that said “NC State Wolfpack.” I thought she was trying to rub off the lipstick smears but she wasn’t doing much of a job of it.

I do manage to get myself out of the car, but I open the door one more time and drain the last of the coffee from my travel mug. I could turn around and go home. I say out loud, “Rhonda, you can go home and open a Corona anytime you want to, it’s your day off. You’re the one who wants to have her own salon.” That thought alone, sounding like a mean schoolteacher in my head, makes me move in the direc- tion of the front door. It’s weird, I can feel my feet on the sidewalk but they’re going real slow like they’re not attached to me. I wore boots with heels and I shouldn’t have, but I’ll change once I’m in there. I don’t never wear heels this high except on a date, and even then I don’t like em cause they hurt my little toe on both feet. I wish I had asked if they’ve got a drink machine. I always like to get something to drink about halfway through the morning. I’m usually coffeed out, but I do like a Sprite or something with no caffeine. They’re bound to have a drink machine, they got a ton of people working here, and then the families too that come to see these people. Everybody gets thirsty.

There’s nobody to open the door for me. The smoking men are long gone now. I wish I’da been smoking with em. I push my way through the first of two plate glass doors with a tiny foyer in between. A woman in a wheelchair is sitting in there, and how she got herself into that little room I don’t know except by wedging her chair against the door to keep it open while she inched herself in. She smiles, she

ain’t got no teeth, then she reaches for my arm. I feel like she’s a mon- ster in a haunted house trying to grab at me. She makes a moaning noise that sounds like either “say” or “safe.” I don’t look back at her. I pretend I don’t notice but she don’t buy it and so she yells again. “Same!!!” it sounds like. I ain’t got no idea what in the hell she’s saying so I keep walking up to the nurse station. This whole thing is gonna suck, I can tell already. There’s a couple of nurses inside a high circle of a desk messing with stacks of paper and file folders. I can’t see a door in it right away and I wonder how in the world did they get in there, it’s like a playpen.

“Can you tell me please ma’am where Ada Everett’s office is?” I say to a woman with short cropped gray hair. She ought to color it and let it grow out some, she ain’t that old, I think. She ought not to be walking around with those stubs on her head, she looks like she’s been at Dix Hill, which is where they put crazy people who ain’t got nowhere nicer to be put. I saw a picture of somebody with hair like that in a magazine, living up on the side of a mountain in a convent or some kind of a monk building, and I’ll tell you one thing, that is not for me. The woman acts like she’s waiting for me to say more. What else do I need to tell her? “I was here last week,” I say, “but I can’t re- member where that office is to save my life.” I’m trying to be pleasant even though it ain’t exactly how I feel.

The woman points several times like she’s stabbing air, punctur- ing something with a straight pin. “First door,” she says, adding a few more quick finger points. What’s she got to be so ill about?

Ada Everett is sipping from the same NC State mug I remember, f lipping through pages of a date book. I bet she’s looking for whatever it is she needs to fill in on the big plastic wall calendar outside her door. Last time I was here she was erasing off all the stuff that was either already over or canceled. She uses all different colors for movie night, art class, bingo, and I guess whatever else they can come up with for these people to do stuck in here.