The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (3 page)

“Well, it could be a little warmer.”

“You tell me, Angie. You tell me if everything’s all right, okay?” And M’Dear started washing her hair. I could see M’Dear’s hands just working up against the back of Mrs. Gaudet’s neck, up the sides of her temples, and around her head. And then M’Dear opened her eyes. It was not as if she was looking at the different bottles of hair color on the shelf, Copper Penny or Sparkling Champagne, or as if she was looking at me, or as if I was even there anymore. M’Dear was there but she was also somewhere else. She stared in front of her as she continued to rub Mrs. Gaudet’s hair.

She looked down at Mrs. Gaudet’s hair, and I sensed that something was traveling from Mrs. Gaudet’s heart to M’Dear’s. And it was happening through my mother’s hands. I didn’t really know how long it took, I just know that it happened. I saw M’Dear frown for a moment and tilt her head slightly down, and I could see her take a deep breath. M’Dear kept rubbing and then finally she said, “Ready for a rinse?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Gaudet said.

As M’Dear rinsed, I could see her watch closely as the water from Mrs. Gaudet’s hair became more and more clear until finally it looked clean enough to drink. The frown passed from my mother’s face, and a small smile replaced it. M’Dear began to hum, very lightly, something that I’d never heard before, just a little tune that she’d made up. And then she softly whispered, “How’re you doing, Angie?”

Mrs. Gaudet said, “I’m doing a little better, Lenora. I’m feeling washed clean.”

“Good.” And M’Dear wrapped up Mrs. Gaudet’s head with a towel, up into a turban, and she carefully helped her up and into the beauty chair in front of the mirror and towel-dried her hair, and said, “All right, what should we do with your beautiful mane of hair?”

“How about this?” M’Dear said, when Mrs. Gaudet didn’t answer. “I’ve got a fresh new batch of pink sponge rollers. Haven’t even tried them out on anybody, so they’re not dented in.”

“Those sound good,” Mrs. Gaudet said.

“Well, while I do it, how about I get you another Coke?”

“Oh Lenora, you’re fussing over me too much.”

“No, I’m not.”

And so I got up without M’Dear asking me and I brought Mrs. Gaudet a Coke in a small bottle, icy on the outside because it had been in the Frigidaire in the back.

She took a sip. “Thank you, Calla.”

I watched M’Dear as she began to roll Mrs. Gaudet’s hair in a perfect roll all the way back and then on the sides. All the while M’Dear kept humming until Mrs. Gaudet began to talk, just a little bit, very softly.

“The other side of the bed just feels so empty, Lenora,” she said, her voice all quavery. “Why did they build beds so big?”

M’Dear just nodded and said, “They do, they build them just too big, don’t they? You would think that they’d just automatically shrink to fit to your size so you wouldn’t have to keep reaching over so much.” That made Mrs. Gaudet laugh. And M’Dear said, “I think we could make a living doing that. Because Angie, just think of it. How many people have people they love die, and when they reach over to the other side of the bed, it’s empty.” She paused. “You’re not alone, Angie. You remember Jolene?”

“Yes, I do.”

“That was five years ago, you remember?”

“I do.”

“Jolene comes to the Swing ’N Sway on Saturday mornings, she’s one of the ones that helps us cook gumbo. And she dances up a storm with her nieces and nephews. Time passes, and it heals like nothing else, except for maybe a new hairdo.”

And M’Dear was right. The new style looked very elegant on Mrs. Gaudet, and when she saw herself in the mirror she actually smiled so big it lit up her whole face. She didn’t look quite as tired and sad anymore, she actually looked pretty.

M’Dear was usually worn out after sessions like that. She would go and sit down on the swing on our family porch and just swing, back and forth, back and forth, and I could hear her breathing, in and out, her feet sore, barely touching the floorboards. Sometimes she would reach her hand out and I would go and sit on the swing with her. And we would hold hands. I could always feel the heat in her hands then. And I knew that something was passing, not just from Mrs. Gaudet to M’Dear, but something from M’Dear to me.

When little girls say they want to be like their mothers, I was definitely one of them. I saw that M’Dear’s hands were doing much more than just washing dirt out of a person’s hair. Much, much more. I saw that washing and setting a person’s hair could sometimes change her world. That was something I never lost.

M
y friend Sukey had thick, short, straight black hair. And the largest jewelry collection of any girl I knew. I met her when we were in the third grade at La Luna River School.

M’Dear and Aunt Helen had taken me and my best friend, Renée, to see
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
at the Moon Palace Theater. Renée and I have known each other almost since we were born. We played together every day and had both discovered Nancy Drew. We had secret codes and we knew things that nobody else did. We were so close that each of us had pajamas and toothbrushes at each other’s house.

Before the show Renée and I went to the ladies’ powder room off the lobby, and there was a petite little girl with black hair and very blue eyes standing next to the sink. Her hair was cut short and she had this very cute turquoise satin purse with mysterious things inside, and I couldn’t see what all. There were two other girls standing next to her.

“That’s it,” the short-haired girl said. “Your time for looking at my royal jewels is over.” One of the other two girls said, “Please let us look some more.”

The girl smiled at Renée and me, and we smiled back. I was glad to have her smile at me, but I would’ve liked it better if her turquoise purse was mine.

“No, I’m sorry,” she said to the little girls. “I have to go. I have people all over town waiting for me.”

I washed my hands, then I edged myself over and stared inside the turquoise purse. All I could see before that girl shut it so fast was that it had a velveteen lining and a little place inside where ladies put their compacts. But she just snapped it shut like that! Right in my face. Not one iota of courtesy in that girl’s body.

“You could’ve snapped my nose off,” I told her.

“Well, don’t put it so close into my pocketbook.”

If I had that pocketbook, I would call it a “purse.” Someone who didn’t even know what to call it should not even have that little turquoise purse.

I just took Renée’s hand, and we went back into the dark theater where M’Dear and Aunt Helen were sitting. We didn’t even give that purse girl a good-bye.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
is about a submarine named the
Seaview
that’s supposed to save the world after a meteor starts a fire in the sky. The fire is making the earth really hot, and everyone will die if the fire can’t be put out. Well, that’s the way it is here in La Luna every summer! Everybody thinks they will die of the heat, but they never do. After a while Renée and I got tired of listening to the movie people talk about the heat, so we slipped out of our seats again and we went back to see if that girl was still in the ladies’ room. She was, and this time she was taking a younger girl’s hard-earned allowance money.

I whispered to Renée, “Nancy Drew!” which was our private code for needing to do something brave. I pushed the ladies’ room door all the way open and said, “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

The purse girl didn’t even look at me.

“Shut up,” she said. “If you shut your big mouth, I’ll show you my treasures.”

She charged us a nickel to open her purse and let us try on her jewels. She had a plastic ring, three Mardi Gras necklaces, a silver dollar, a charm bracelet that was very heavy and smelled like iron, a purple ring with purple and green rare gems, and another ring that was 24-karat gold. “In case you didn’t know,” she said.

Then she pointed to a ring with a big white clear stone. “That diamond used to belong to Elizabeth Taylor,” she told us. When I asked her where she got her hands on all those jewels, she just looked at me and said, “That’s none of your beeswax. I am doing you a big favor just by letting you look at them.”

Renée pulled on my elbow and whispered, “I think we better leave her alone.”

But I said, “How do we know that those jewels don’t belong to someone else? How do we know she didn’t steal that ring from Elizabeth Taylor?”

The girl said, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave this ladies’ room on the double!”

So we left and went back into the theater. But I was bored with
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
. I thought there’d be more sea monsters, but the only thing exciting was when the giant octopus attacked the
Seaview
. I whispered to Renée, “Let’s go back to the ladies’ room again.”

Sure enough, that short-haired girl was still there, and this time she was wrestling with a bigger girl. “Help!” she said, “help me! This girl is stealing my royal jewels!” “Nancy Drew!” I said, and jumped in and helped push the bigger girl away. “Leave her alone! Those are her jewels,” I said.

That other girl asked me, “Are you two in cahoots?”

“No,” I told her. I didn’t know what the word
cahoots
meant, but I wasn’t saying so.

Then that bigger girl pointed to this little green bracelet that the short-haired girl was clutching. “I just got that bracelet out of the machine with my own quarter!” she said. “And this little pipsqueak jumped up and grabbed it out of my hands. Do y’all know how long I had to work to get that quarter?”

She took another big swipe to try to grab the green bracelet, but the short-haired girl jumped up on the sink, just
jumped
right up there before you could blink! Ping! Easy as that, like a bunny.

“No!” she was saying, “it’s mine! This is my emerald bracelet! Mine! Help me, please, these are my special treasures. Mine and mine alone.” She was almost crying then.

“How do I know you are telling the truth?” I asked the bigger girl.

Just then, the short-haired girl jumped down from the sink and skittered out the door.

“Do you know her?” the big girl asked me.

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“Well, she is a dirty rotten thief!” she said, and headed out the door. Renée and I were right behind her, wondering who the girl with the jewels really was.

One warm afternoon a week later, M’Dear stopped at the library to pick up a record that she was going to use in our next recital. As she and Aunt Helen chatted with some friends, Renée and I checked out some more Nancy Drew books. Then we walked on home, went into the backyard, and sat down under our old chinaberry tree to read them. Little daffodils and crocuses had sprouted up and dotted the grass around us with bright yellow and purple, and all the air smelled sweet. Suddenly, a girl dropped down on us, right out of the tree! Like a coconut!

It was the short-haired purse girl. “Thank you for helping save my rare treasures,” she said. She was wearing a little green top and shorts. You could just tell she was pretending to be Peter Pan.

“Well, I just hope that really
was
your green bracelet and that you didn’t steal it.”

“I did not steal a single thing. I only came here today to show you my jewels. If you’re going to accuse me of stealing, I will just leave right now.”

“No, please. Show us what you have.”

“Okay,” she said. “Because y’all were so nice to me, y’all can try them on for two cents. I won’t charge you my normal price of a nickel. You get to view them for only two cents! A very big savings and bargain to y’all for one and only one day only.”

She opened her turquoise purse, pulled out a handkerchief, and laid everything out on it. She told us that the bracelet the big girl was trying to get was truly a ceremony bracelet, found only on small islands far away.

“The only reason that I even have it,” she said, “is because my father was a prince, but he died. He left my mother the jewels of his kingdom to show his love, and my mother allowed me to keep some as my very own.”

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

She rolled her eyes up. Her eyes were huge. You could skip rope inside them. “Sukey,” she said. “My name is Sukey.”

“I have never heard that name before. Where does it come from?”

“From a kingdom far away and long ago.”

Renée was reaching back and straightening her ponytail, taking it in and out of its barrette, something she always does when she is nervous. “Renée, that’s not good for your hair,” I told her. “You’re going to break off that outside part and have short hairs all over your head.”

“You sure act like you know a lot about hair,” Sukey said.

“M’Dear—that’s my mother—is the beautician at the Crowning Glory Beauty Porch, and she knows everything there is to know about hair, that’s a known fact.” I reached out to touch Sukey’s shiny black hair, but she jumped away.

“Sukey, what’s your last name? Where did you come from?” I asked. “Where do you go to school? Who are your parents? Why haven’t we ever met you before?”

“You better stop asking me all those questions or I’ll take away my jewels and you’ll never see them again. Then I’ll hit you on the head.”

Well, I figured she was bluffing, like Sonny Boy does when somebody tries to make him afraid. And besides, I was bigger than she was.

“I was just
asking
,” I told her.

“My royal mother, whose name is Queen Sally, and me came here from another town, and we live in a very big castle over there.”

She pointed in the direction of Pearl Street, toward the part of town where most of the Negroes live.

“There’s no castle over there,” I said.

Sukey started closing up her little turquoise pouch of jewels, and she began to cry real tears, not alligator fake ones.

“Welcome to our town,” Renée said quickly, trying to distract her. “My name is Renée Jeansonne. I am in third grade at La Luna River School. My daddy is the pharmacist at the La Luna Drugstore. His name is Mister James Jeansonne, and my mother’s name is Mrs. Anita Jeansonne. I like welcoming new people such as you to town. We don’t get a lot.”

Sukey looked at her like she was shocked that Renée was being so nice. All she could say was “Oh.”

I felt so bad for asking Sukey all those questions when I should have been nice like Renée. So I told her, “I am Calla Lily Ponder. M’Dear’s name is Lenora Ponder, and my papa’s name is Will Senior, and they have Will and Lenora’s Swing ’N Sway Dance Studio. You can come and dance with us sometime.”

“Well,” she said, “my name is Sukey Signette and my mother’s name is Sally, and we just moved here from Shreveport, and Hot Springs, Arkansas, before that, and Beaumont, Texas, before that. But La Luna is where Mama grew up. Where she and—um, well, he wasn’t my real father, but my mama’s first husband—they both grew up here.”

“I guess that makes you a princess, huh?” I said. “But your real father was the prince, right?”

Sukey started rubbing her face in her hands. “Kind of,” she said, so softly I could hardly hear her.

“Well, we’re glad you came to live here with us,” Renée told her.

“Okay,” Sukey said to Renée, and she lifted her hands from her face. Her face was all blotchy. I watched her as she gathered her jewels piece by piece, the ones that really looked like Mardi Gras necklaces, the emerald bracelet, her silver dollar, the rings of purple and green rare gems, the solid gold one, and the big white Elizabeth Taylor diamond that glinted in the light coming in through the canopy of the chinaberry tree.

Back at home, helping M’Dear peel and chop up potatoes to boil, I told her about the emeralds and rubies in the ladies’ room, and about Sukey. “Scrub those potatoes good, you hear,” she said to me.

I asked her, “With all those jewels, why do you think Queen Sally and Sukey live over there in that part of town?”

M’Dear turned to me and told me she knew Sally, Sukey’s mother, from when they were little girls through the middle of high school, when Sally left La Luna.

“So is it true, M’Dear? Was Sukey’s father a prince, and are Sukey and her mother royal?” To think that I had a new friend who was a princess!

M’Dear told me, “Sukey is royal. I’m not so sure the jewels are real, but all people are royal, Calla. They don’t need to own jewels. That’s better, really, because then nobody can steal them.” M’Dear plopped our bowl of peeled potatoes into the pot of boiling water. Then she reached over and caressed my cheek.

I could hardly get to sleep that night. How could I sleep after just finding out that we are all kings and queens, princes and princesses?