TWO IN A BED

Back then I had a friend named Ruthie who complained about her grandmother all the time. Everyday it was something and it wasn’t good. See, Ruthie was spoiled cause she was an only child and because she was cute with wavy hair and she had dimples like Shirley Temple only she was ten and always talking about something her grandmother did to make her life miserable.
"...and she smells!"
"You mean she don’t take a bath?"
" Of course my grandma takes a bath!" Ruthie said irritated that I could even asked something stupid like that.
"She wears so much baby powder she makes me sneeze. If it’s not that, the fumes from her Shalimar gives me swimmin’ in the head. Sometimes I can’t half breathe!"
"Well at least she don’t stink stink."
"Yeah, but she snores."
‘Real loud?"
"What do you think!"
That Ruthie could sure talk about her grandmother. I guess when you got to sleep two in a bed even sisters and brothers fall out. But at least with them, you can fight, push and shove ‘til finally you get yo’ way. But when your grandmother do something you don’t like, ain’t nothing you can do. Cause you got to respect your elders. I think it’s in the Bible somewhere. Thou shalt respect old people or else the devil will get’cha.
"I keep askin’ my mother when she gone leave. But Mama say she ain’t gone leave cause she too old to stay by herself. So I’m stuck with an old lady in my bed. Used to could do what I want in my own room, now that she’s in it, I’m the one visiting in my own room.
Ruthie and I were on our way to school. The afternoon the sun was cool as lemon popsicle, and morning traffic with the sound of impatient car horns pushed people along the bogged down lanes. We were passing by Big Jam’s Diner wanting to go in and get some fries but we couldn’t cause when you buy anything at Big Jam’s it’s greasy and stink so strong people in Detroit can smell it. But them fries be good though and you can see kids at lunchtime lined up around the block with their sweaty change in their hands trying to get fed before the school bell call’em back to school. I have seen kids crying cause the bell rang and they had to miss those fries. So all we could do was wait ‘til lunchtime, which seemed like a thousand years away. Just the thought of them fries made my stomach growl and I had eaten a big bowl of oatmeal for breakfast.
So we kept walking and Ruthie kept complaining and I just skipped cracks while Ruthie stepped on them on purpose. But it wasn’t her mother’s back she hoped she’d break. She sho’ was mad about her grandmother.
Now Ma Pearl was eighty something if she was a day. Had more cracks in her face than a crushed egg with a hammer. She had the habit is clicking out her false teeth. All of a sudden while you were talking to her, she shoot them things out and in so fast! But she was nice. Real nice. Liked to tell stories which I liked but she couldn’t tell none to Ruthie.
"I don’t want to hear nothin’ about the old days either. All that bent down Negro stuff where they scared of the white man and be sayin’, Yessah, boss! She be always wanting to tell me stuff like that cause she say I ought to know how things was. My Mama told her don’t be telling me stories like that. We the New Negroes now. We stand right up and look white folks in the eye. You don’t hear no Dr. King bowing and scraping," she said.
"But they do be spray everybody else with water and beatin’em up and stuff. And it’s because of stories yo’ grandmother be talking about," I said. Like I told you, I liked hearing about the old days-about where we come from. I guess Old folks ain’t got nothin’ much in the way of money but they are rich in the history of ourselves and I loved when they stepped back and pulled the sheet off of time. I liked that Ruthie’s grandmother liked to sing them old songs too, you know the ones that’s all about feelings and ain’t many words to remember. I cried a time or two cause some of the stories about those days made me thankful I got to be a new Negro.
"Back in my time, colored kids couldn’t go to a good school. We had fallin’ down shacks-me and my brother Jo-Jo had a coal room where the sound of coal chunks just be rolling down the shute while they were reading books so old the pages crumbled in our hands."
"All the same Mama is sick of her too. But you know she Daddy’s Mama and he loves his Mama and that’s why him and Mama fight all the time. Cause since she been livin’ with us there are two women tryin’ to rule the house and Mama don’t like that one bit, cause you cannot separate a boy from his Mama. My Mama want to send her to the old folks home but Daddy ain’t nothin’ wrong with his Mama. She got good sense and she strong as an ox. Then he said sending his mother away would kill her dead."
"Yeah," I said. It was the same way with my grandmother. She’d be just fine until you said something about an old folks home and then she’d start crying and saying, "Jesus, don’t never send me to the Po’ House."
My mother promised her no matter if she gets the Old Timers disease (Alzheimer’s) and cain’t remember nothin’ she’d still wouldn’t have to go there."
Anyway, that’s how it was for a long time wiht Ruthie complainin’ about her grandmother until one day, her grandmother got sick and they had to rush her to the hospital. Doctor said it was a stroke. Ma Burton didn’t come back home again.
Three days later she was dead. Days later, they had her funeral. There were so many flowers you could barely see the casket that was white with gold handles. Ma Burton’s son sure stretched his mother out nice. She lay there like a queen in gold brocade. So many folks turned out that it surprised Ruthie and her Mom. Folks they didn’t know. Folks they didn’t know she knew. Folks who loved that old woman just like me, Mama and Daddy did. Folks from down the South, New York, California. They came by bus, train and automobile and filled the pews and stood along the walls in their Sunday best, their faces and the faces of their children soaked with tears. And I was thinking how does somebody so small live a life so big that that many people be loving you that hard that they they’ll put off work and play and school just to send you off the good and perfect way.
Pastor Hayes stood in his great black robe and gave her the kind of eulogy that set folks sobbing and then he swept up through sorrow and peaked his sermon on joy. He said he had a dream that night before and the Lord showed him a vision of Ma Burton strutting down the streets of gold and the Church started shouting. And the tambourines started jingling , organ, piano and drums set the place rockin’ to its foundation.
When it was time to view the body one last time, Ruthie’s mother, decked out in a black velvet dress with a hat so wide that people behind her couldn’t see round it, ripped off her rope of white pearls, dropped to her knees and wailed: "Why, Lord! Don’t take my Mama! Please, Lord. Don’t do it!" But everybody including Ruthie who held her up and took her back to her seat, knew it was all for show.
The thing was with all that weeping and wailing I looked over at Ruthie who sat between her mother and father staring at that casket and she didn’t shed one single tear. Her eyes weren’t even red and never once did she do anything in the way of showing sorrow. It kinda made me angry to watch that stony face. Later as we all stood at the gravesite, Ruthie’s father gave her a rose to lay on her grandmother’s grave. She walked straight as a broomstick gathering dirt on the tips of her new her black paten leather shoes and tossed it in without feeling.
Weeks later, I was still angry and I blurted out: "Well, I guess you glad now that you got your room to yourself again. Happy now you got your bed all to yourself?"
"...yeah," said Ruthie all quiet like. I turned to look at her cause her voice sounded so strange.
We were walking back home from school and kids came pouring out the sides of the school building like marbles from bag.
Cory Thomas, the boy I liked in fifth grade was walking with his friends and laughing loud enough to draw attention to himself that he was walking with Kimberly Jones. Hmph, just cause she was light skinned and had long hair. I almost spit! He struttin’ down the Boulevard like he was a full time rooster! He got a big head anyway and I was thinking just cause he got hazel eyes don’t make him so handsome!
"I miss her, Punkin like nobody’s business," said Ruthie.
"Huh?"
"Didn’t think I would. Mama miss her too but she don’t say nothing. I guess nobody would believe her anyway. And my Daddy sometimes he just break down and cry out of nowhere. Sometimes all of us at the same time be missing that old lady," she said and then she howled like something was wrong with her stomach and tears came belching out so fast she was choking on them.
"Ruthie!"
"I don’t know why I should be cryin’. All that time I kept prayin’ to God to make her go away and then she went and now I swear if I could have that old lady stinking of baby powder, smothering me with the smell of Shalimar, I would be so grateful."
Ruthie broke down then and just sagged on the bench at the bus stop. I didn’t know what to do so I just stood there watching people watch us, shrugging my shoulders like a fool.
"Hey, girl! People are staring at us!"
"How come I didn’t know, Punkin?"
"Know what?"
"How much I’d miss that old woman?"
"Huh?"
"...we used to whisper in the dark."
"Whisper what?"
"Silly things. Girls things. She say it was the way of women things."
"Like what?"
"She used to tell me stories about when Daddy was a little boy and all kinds of stuff about the way girls should act when they’re around boys. Sometimes we’d be giggling so Daddy would have to knock on the door and tell us to settle down cause we both had to get some sleep."
Ruthie smiled then. "And we both liked sour prickles. Remember, I used to buy two?"
"I thought you was just being greedy."
"Naw, she loved’em. Our lips be all puckered up. Me and her both be stinkin’."
"She loved you, you know," I said.
"I was mean to her. I said such a lotta mean things."
"Ain’t nobody Jesus," I said sitting down next to her and raking my sweater sleeve on her face . "He died. The rest of us in just wrestlin’ the devil to get to heaven."
The bus drew up and opened its doors but I waved it away.
"It’s the craziest thing," said Ruthie swiping her face. "I can still remember some of them stories she used to tell."
"Me too."
"Like the one where-"
"Yeah, that’s the one about the old man that used to eat onions and-"
"That’s the one!"
We just started laughing. And soon we were walking toward home again with the sound of jump ropes cracking like whips against the cement pavement while girls jumped double Dutch in rhyme. We skipped pass boys thundering by with balloons trapped in their bicycles wheels, and watched the sun dancing off the chrome of automobiles and zig zagged our way pass overworked daddies loping up the Boulevard like weary elephants, their happy children yanking at their calloused hands and dragging them the rest of the way home.
We talked about Ruthie’s grandmother all the way, remembering her stories, skipping and smiling and singing that old lady songs. And I tell you she missed that old woman all her life.
　
　
copyright 2009 Venice Johnson