The Sweet by and By Read Online Free PDF

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