The Sweet By and By

by Todd Johnson

  I pulled into my empty yard. Mama’s car was not there. I decided, wished, that she had taken Thomas back to her house and Samuel had to go do something or other for Mr. Turlington, but I knew as soon as I thought it I was wrong about both of those things. Nobody can talk themselves out of the truth once they know it. Thomas was dead before anybody found him, suffocated, lying in his crib in our little bedroom in the back. Mama had got sidetracked and decided to stop on the way to buy some sweet potatoes from an old woman she knew up the road. When she pulled in at our house, Samuel was asleep in a chair on the porch, beer bottles on the floor like someone had scattered them looking for something. Whatever sound my baby tried to make, his daddy didn’t hear. Whatever struggle my baby went through, his daddy didn’t see or know nothing about. I wonder what my angel was doing while I was looking at chicken in a grocery store not five miles away. I wonder if he woke up coughing, strangled. I wonder if he was wheezing. I see him tryin to breathe, then not breathing, but tryin as hard as he could, his little lungs not having the strength. My baby Thomas tryin his best to stay alive with nobody to help him, not even his mama.

  I didn’t let Samuel touch me for near a year after that. I didn’t care who he did touch or where he went to do it, long as it was out of my sight. I wasn’t any wife to him, in the bed or anywhere else. When I finally did let him come close to me, I had April nine months later. I thought I could put the past in the past. I even tried to make myself feel something for my husband again, but that was hard to do when he couldn’t give me nothing back. So I put all I had into April, raising her up the best I could do for her. She was my second chance. Whatever my Mama might have said about Samuel, and Scrape before him, she stood beside me every time, all the time. She looked after April every day while I worked a job and went to school. Samuel got to drinking so bad he couldn’t hardly work, but Mr. Turlington felt sorry for me and thought a lot of April, so he kept paying him a little something to do whatever he could, which got to be less and less. Samuel was a young man but already turned old. I got tired of the fightin, it was almost every night, but after time, that was the only thing we did together. It was my habit until I couldn’t do it no more.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  APRIL

  On the morning of my college graduation, like many of my classmates, the phone call of a parent or relative took the place of any need for an alarm clock. My particular alarm came at 7:30 A.M.

  “We’re here!” a voice squealed, followed by the more immediately recognizable voice of my mother. “Give me that phone!” I heard her say, with some banging around of the receiver, and then an effortful attempt at courtesy. “Are you asleep?” she asked demurely.

  “Not anymore, Mama.” I could hear Althea cheering “woo-hoo-hoo” in the background.

  “Where are you?” I was inclined to whisper until I saw my roommate’s bed empty. Janice had obviously spent the night at her boyfriend Brandon’s, her usual home away from home. I was jealous of how much sex she had but was happy to have the room to myself most of the time. Not this morning. I was worried about her.

  Althea grabbed the phone. “Honey, we’re having breakfast down here on Hillsborough Street. We just had ordered and then your mama asked if we should call you and I said go on and call her she might want something to eat, it’s gon be a big day for her too, so call, maybe she’ll come down and meet us, and I told her I’d order her some coffee while she did, but then I decided I wanted to talk too so I picked up both of our pocketbooks and followed her and told the waiter not to bring us any coffee yet so it wouldn’t get cold, and we’d be back at our booth in a minute.” Althea came up for oxygen only briefly, then got to the point. “Come on down here, we’ll wait for you if you want us to.”

  “I wish I could, Althea,” I said although I didn’t wish that at all, but Mama’s insistence on manners from early childhood had obviously taken hold and stuck. “My car’s broken down again, and I can’t afford to spend another dime on it.”

  “That thing barely ran when you bought it.”

  “You are not allowed to say anything evil about that car, Althea. It’s made for short trips.”

  “It’s made for the junk pile. Here, talk to your mama.” She relinquished the phone, and Mama’s voice broke through the shuffling of changing hands.

  “Go on back to sleep if you want to, baby. We can keep ourselves busy for a few hours. Althea wants to stop at Hudson Belk’s.”

  “They’re not gonna be open now, Mama.”

  “We’re just sittin down to eat, we’ll take our time.”

  “Why’d y’all come so early? I’m surprised you got Althea out of the bed.”

  “As long as I’ve waited for this day, child, you know I didn’t sleep two hours. Althea knew better than to mess me up on your graduation. You rest. We’ll pick you up about ten forty-five.”

  I hung up and yawned but found that I didn’t want to go back to sleep. I didn’t want to shower and dress yet either, so I lay in bed staring at the long crack in the ceiling that ran from the corner into the center of the room where it branched out like tributaries on the map of a river. I was lying so still that I wondered what it would be like to be in a coma where you were aware of everything but couldn’t do or say anything. I had heard a story about a person who learned to use eye movements to communicate by “blinking” the alphabet with A being one blink, B two, all the way through. I started to blink my name but after sixteen blinks to get to P, I was too tired to do R. I might get an eyelid spasm or something and then I could lose control of my eyelid altogether and turn into one of those people who blinked all the time when they looked at you, like a nervous tic. I didn’t think of myself as a nervous person, but Mama made it her habit to tell me that she was proud of me and she would be equally proud even if I didn’t work so hard, so to please make sure that I didn’t try to do too much. We already knew I would start UNC Med School, my first choice, in the fall, but I couldn’t imagine being a doctor if I had a nervous tic in one of my eyes. I remember thinking that this was exactly how people lost their minds, obsessing on details, but what else does a person do on graduation morning? The big work is finished, if it weren’t you wouldn’t be there.

  Uncharacteristically, I had stayed up all the previous night going to parties, the last count being either six or seven. Janice, my roommate, had appeared in the doorway at around 10 P.M. “You’re coming, aren’t you? Don’t even try to tell me no, April, you said you’d come.”

  “I just came back to change clothes. I want to wear jeans.” I had on a sheer skirt but I really didn’t feel like wearing it all night even though it was hot out, a taste of the unbearable summer ahead. We had been out to dinner at a new place called the Cask of Amontillado. I guess the owners thought that naming a restaurant after an Edgar Allan Poe story seemed like a good idea in a college town, but I would have settled for better food and a less clever name. It was definitely more of a bar than a restaurant, but Janice wanted to go, so she rounded up the girls, no men allowed, and we headed out for “The Last Supper.” That’s what she called it, and I wondered whether life was really going to be so different the day after we put on caps and gowns. I had the vegetable lasagna and garlic bread. Guess it didn’t matter that amontillado is Spanish. So much for the diet.

  Janice persisted. “Well good, you’re not backing out now. Hurry up.” She dumped out her purse on the bed and started putting what she deemed essential for a round of house parties into a small designer backpack that she had gotten at an outlet mall off I-95.

  “You act like I’m a wallflower.” I defended myself. “Maybe that’s because I actually look at my syllabus every once in a while?”

  “Baby, if the shoe fits…” She continued rummaging through multiple lipsticks and hair accessories before picking the last two or three items that she could effectively wedge into the little pack once her wallet was tucked inside near the bottom. I put on jeans and some clog sandals that I knew Janice hated.

  “Y
ou’re wearing those hooves?”

  “I only do it to spite you.”

  “Hey I’m looking out for you, girl. I’m just saying you’re fishing with the wrong bait, that’s all.”

  “I’m not fishing, Janice. I know that’s hard for you to believe.”

  “Yeah, yeah, med school. I already know that tune, you don’t need to sing it for me.”

  She fastened the backpack with so much effort that I wondered if she would actually be able to open it again without an explosion. “I wish I could focus like you do,” she said.

  “No you don’t!” I snapped back, and both of us burst out laughing. Janice was an average student, which she was able to accomplish without studying at all, which seemed to be all right with her as well as her parents.

  The first couple of stops were dead. Janice said it was still too early. More people would be coming out later. I saw Louis Yancey at the Omega Psi Phi party, the first time since we stopped dating after Spring Break.

  “I was thinking about you,” he said, but the look on his face made me think the words surprised even him.

  “That’s nice.” I let it go. It hadn’t been a bad break-up. More an inevitable one. We had both moved on I guess.

  “I missed your help with Organic,” he added. He was planning on going to dental school at Carolina once he graduated next year.

  “I’m sure you did all right by yourself.” I was gracious, thinking how true the words were. By yourself. By myself. I was going to be by myself for a while. I had decided that. I wanted to start off at Chapel Hill right, no baggage, no way.

  “Are you gonna stay home this summer?” he continued. Was guilt really so powerful as to make him stay in this conversation, when even our body language mocked us by showing how awkward we felt? I’ve always envied those people who could stay friends with their exes. I’ve never been able to do it. Maybe my definition of friendship involves something I can’t expect from a lover who is now someone else’s lover.

  “I’ll be around,” I answered, wishing immediately that I had thought of something else because that sounded like I might want him to call me, which I secretly did. “What about you?”

  Janice appeared. “April, let’s go. Shareen’s giving us a ride to Brandon’s. He’s having a bunch of people over.” She looked at Louis. “Come if you want to.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me with her. She knew he wouldn’t come; that’s why she asked him.

  Brandon met us at the door of his fourth-floor apartment with a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey in his hand. Pretty expensive stuff for college, but according to Janice, he always seemed to have money in his pocket, and it never occurred to her to wonder where it came from. He didn’t work. A campus job would have been beneath him, and for that I resented him, having spent my share of weekend time behind the checkout desk or shelving books at the library in exchange for part of my scholarship money.

  “Hey baby, I thought you wasn’t ever gonna get here!” He hugged her and I watched the arm with the bottle of swishing brown liquid wrap around her back. They kissed deeply. I wish I had stayed and talked to Louis. Janice would have never cast me as a third wheel on purpose, but I think sometimes people forget what it feels like when you’re standing in a hallway, waiting to be invited inside, while two people, one of whom you came with, have their tongues down each other’s throats. I pretended to look for something in my purse, wishing I hadn’t just climbed four flights of stairs.

  Inside, the music was loud. The living room was near dark and packed with bodies. One couple had pretty much taken over the sofa in a tangle of legs and arms. Brandon pulled Janice with him down the hall, presumably to the bedroom. I didn’t know, I had never been here before, only heard about Janice’s roller coaster of a relationship on a daily basis. Consequently, I felt like I knew the apartment, the setting for more middle-of-the night debriefings than I could count. I grabbed a glass of wine but didn’t get to drink it because Tamyra Johnson who was in University Choir with me pulled me out to dance in a group. Tamyra was the best alto in choir, everybody said so, and she wanted to be a professional singer. I thought that if anybody could make it in show business, she ought to be able to. She ran to the stereo and stopped Mary J. Blige in the middle of a sentence. Tamyra turned to the whole room and screamed, “I feel the need for some old school, y’all!” I recognized the bass line—who wouldn’t—it was “Fight the Power.” Tamyra screamed, “All right now!” and threw her hands up in the air. I did the same. It felt good. I was graduating, and it felt good. She shouted at me over the noise of the crowd, “So are you excited?”

  “Yes!” I yelled back. What else does a person say?

  “Is your mama coming?”

  “What do you think? She’s bringing Althea, remember her?”

  “She came to spring concert and never took off her sunglasses.”

  “That’s her!” I was going to lose my voice if I kept trying to override the noise.

  Tamyra did a twirl which cleared the people in her immediate vicinity and yelled out, “Hey, Althea’s doin her thing. I have no problem with that.”

  “NOOO!” I recognized Janice’s voice. Unmistakable. For everyone else, the cry blended in to the overall wildness. I heard Tamyra call out, “What’s up?” but I was already headed down the hall. I could hear Janice crying in a pleading sort of way from one of the bedrooms. I opened the door without knocking. Janice’s face was wet and smeared; her hands were over her mouth, and she pointed to the window, where Brandon, shirtless, was holding his dog, a boxer puppy, out by its neck, swinging it back and forth.

  “What the hell, Janice?” I asked, shocked cold.

  “He’s scared, you idiot,” Janice cried, stomping her feet. “Bring him back in!” The puppy whined, its eyes fearful.

  “You think I’m out of control?” Brandon raged. “Does this look out of control to you? I’ll show you who’s in fuckin control!” He tightened his grip around the puppy’s throat, making him yelp.

  “Janice, let’s go.” I grabbed her hand. I wanted to remove her without even looking at Brandon.

  “It’s okay, April, I’m fine. He gets like this. I’m fine.”

  “It’s not okay. I’m taking you out of here.”

  “Who the hell are you talkin to, bitch? This is between Janice and me. You need to get your ass out of my house, that’s what you need to do.”

  “April, just go,” Janice said.

  “Janice, do you know what you’re doing?”

  “It’s better if you go.”

  “You heard her, get the fuck out.” Brandon sneered.

  “I’m calling the police,” I said.

  “You do and I’ll fuckin dropkick the dog.”

  “April, go, please. I’m begging you to go. I’ll be fine. I’ll see you at home.”

  I’m ashamed that I left her, I should have called the police anyway. Not that anything would have happened. By the time someone got there, Brandon would probably have been passed out, and Janice back out in the living room enjoying the party. She was used to it, that’s what she said. He wasn’t a bad guy, only when he had too much to drink, that’s what she always said. She knew what I thought. That never stopped her.

  I sat up in bed. It hadn’t really hit me that I was actually graduating in a few hours until I heard Mama’s voice on the phone, and even then it was like she was talking about someone else. I was going to have a diploma put into my hands before I knew it and be told what amounts to “Congratulations, you’ve done it, now go be an adult and make your life mean something, to yourself, your family, and your community.” “Anything more than that is gravy,” the chaplain had said at baccalaureate. Well, I was interested in gravy. I had worked too hard not to be. When they announced honors last week, I called Mama to tell her I was summa cum laude. First she asked, “Some of what?” but when I explained, she said she never in her life thought she would need to know Latin, but those particular words suited her fine.

  The angle of the morning sun
made a bright streak through the window, across the night table, now visibly very dusty, and onto the wall opposite. I heard sounds of first stirrings in the hall by my neighbors, also likely awakened by their own family alarms in whatever form. Shower spray blasted on tile, voices echoed in the cavernous bathroom. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I would never wake up to that sound again in my life, not that it was necessarily something to be missed, much less mourned, but it occurred to me how quietly experience slips away unnoticed, camouflaged by its relative unimportance. Then at some point you step back and take a look, and what’s in front of you is like a tangled wad of string, all the “unimportants” rolled together in a loose knot, to be recognized as your very own and cherished, or mistaken for trash and discarded. And if you’re lucky, it hits you—that knot of strings, wound and intertwined, is your life, and savoring it is what you want to do. I think about my mother’s work. She sees the biggest part of her job as helping to hold the threads of a life together, savoring anything at all that can be used to sew something lasting. Determinedly, she will stitch meaning into the fabric of a being, creating, for an old and lonely soul, a protective garment, for a time, against the chill of loss, forgetting, and being forgotten.