The Wisdom of Hair (12 page)

That did it. Mrs. Cathcart jerked the chair around hard so that the old woman faced the mirror. She put her hands on Mother Hannah’s shoulders, and lit into her.

“Look at yourself, Mama. You’re just an old woman who was a substitute in a chorus line for two nights, Mama. All these years you’ve romanticized those two lousy nights into a whole career. My God, you never even met Florenz Ziegfeld. You only saw him once, across a crowded theater, so there’s
no way
he’s my daddy. Buddy Hannah was my daddy, Mama. He was a sweet, decent man who died when I was eleven. You’re the one who can’t take the truth, Mama. You ran away from home when you were seventeen, and when your daddy found out where you were, he went to New York, tanned your hide, and drug you back to Davenport where you raised six kids on a hog farm. And if I hear you so much as breathe the word Ziggy one more time, I swear I’ll…I’ll…Oh, for God’s sake, Mama, just let it go.”

Every bit of truth that spewed out of Mrs. Cathcart’s mouth was like venom. One minute Mother Hannah was a feisty, vivacious Ziegfeld Girl and the next she was a nobody. The old woman stroked the brooch that I later found out she had bought at J.C. Penney and looked at me. She was pitiful.

“Those were the best two nights of my life,” she whispered through the tears.

Mother Hannah got up, walked out the front door of the Davenport School of Beauty, and never came back to the school. She died two weeks after that. Mrs. Cathcart grieved so. I know she thought she killed her own mother. I don’t know, maybe she did. I guess Mrs. Cathcart just couldn’t stand those silly stories another minute any more than her mother could force herself to live and die in the real world.

I felt so bad for Mrs. Cathcart, because I felt the same way about Mama. I knew Mrs. Cathcart’s trick of looking anywhere
but at the embarrassment in front of her, hoping it would pass. I used to pretend Mama was normal and not a poor replica of Judy Garland. I acted like I didn’t want to crawl under the ground and die when she went on and on about how men were drawn to her like yellow jackets drawn to sweet tea. I remembered being red-faced when she showed up drunk in front of the few friends I had, and then I shut those good people out of my life because I was embarrassed. Ever since I could remember, I wanted to snatch my own mother into the real world, but I don’t think she could have existed there any more than Mother Hannah.

After the funeral, Mr. Cathcart put that J.C. Penney brooch on my station when he thought no one was looking. I held it in my hand for a moment, thinking about Mother Hannah and all those wild stories she told me before I slipped her dream into my pocket.

“Florenz Ziegfeld.” I said it out loud. I said it for her.

*

Mrs. Cathcart was
out a good while after the funeral. Her sister-in-law Doris, who was a licensed cosmetologist, taught our class. Mr. Cathcart handed out the appointments until he found that Swenson girl to do it. Both of them did it fairly, so no one complained.

Sara Jane Farquhar never had to worry about anybody doling out customers to her. She could have been busy from the time the doors opened until they closed if she’d wanted, but she was in love with Jimmy Alvarez, and that took precedence over everything, including school. She had herself a D+ average before Jimmy came into her life, but it just went to hell after that. Still, she had more clients than she could do. More than half of the customers who
walked through the doors requested her. What she did for them, she did out of pure natural ability, D+ average or not.

I’m telling you, she could transform the mousiest or the trashiest-looking customer into someone as elegant-looking as her real-life heroine, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Most all of them looked the part, until they opened their mouth to pledge their undying love to Sara Jane, the miracle worker. The rest of us were glad she was there because even Sara Jane could only do so much.

Nearly all the walk-ins who asked for her ended up with one of us. Some of them were happy with their hair, and some of them marched themselves over to that appointment desk to make an appointment with Sara Jane right in front of the poor girl who hadn’t done their hair just right. I speak from experience when I say that was just about the most embarrassing thing that could happen.

But Sara Jane was in love, and no matter what anybody said or thought about it, the fact was there was no undoing what she felt. And Jimmy was the hardest worker you ever saw, working seven days a week—that is, before he met Sara Jane. But he was in love, too, so Friday and Saturday nights were their nights, and Monday and Tuesday afternoons and every single rainy day were their days. Sometimes I sat in the sun while the two of them carried on up in my apartment. Sara Jane looked so happy when they floated down those stairs, and I loved the way Jimmy wrapped his arms around her as best he could and gave her one last kiss before he had to leave.

“God, he’s good,” she said one day, still glowing with afternoon passion.

After Sara Jane and Jimmy started their little rendezvous, I got
the best tan I’ve ever had in my life. “Sara Jane.” I smiled as I turned over. “You are so crazy.”

“Crazy in love, Zora. Crazy in love,” she said as she plopped down in the lounge chair beside me. “How ’bout you?”

Sara Jane hardly ever spent an evening at my place anymore, although whenever her mama called, I told her she’d just stepped out for a minute or two. After a while Mrs. Farquhar quit calling. I guess she figured her daughter was up to something and I was covering for her. But I don’t think she really wanted to know what was going on because she never once asked me to have Sara Jane call her back.

Most evenings, I sat on my porch, watching Winston all by myself. Before, when it was Sara Jane and me, we called it “Rear Window,” after the Alfred Hitchcock movie. The two of us watched the drinking room show with the same interest Jimmy Stewart had watching his neighbor after he murdered his wife. The only difference was that I watched all by myself now, and instead of burying Emma in the courtyard, Winston was trying to resurrect her in the drinking room.

“Oh, he’s about the same,” I said when Sara Jane asked. “It’s not as much fun as when you’re here to give your running commentary.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that, well, you know…”

“I know,” I said, because I did.

Having that kind of unspoken understanding was nice. I loved Sara Jane enough to want to see her happy, even if it didn’t include me, and I knew she felt the same way.

“Jimmy’s saving up for a ring.” Her voice grew higher and higher with every word until the last word was a shrill squeal.

“Oh, Sara Jane,” I said, pulling my bathing suit straps back onto my shoulders as I got up to hug her. “I’m so happy for you. When’s the wedding?”

“This Christmas. Jimmy doesn’t work much during the winter, so he said it’d be the best time for it. We’re going to Mexico for the honeymoon and to visit his mama.”

“Won’t she come for the wedding?”

“He says she won’t be too happy if he tells her before the wedding, me not being Mexican and all. He says it would be a whole lot better if he just shows up and says, ‘Here she is, Mama.’ That way we can have a big wedding here, and I don’t have to worry about Daddy embarrassing my in-laws. Jimmy’s the one, Zora. He really is the one.”

I knew Jimmy was a good man, and I knew Sara Jane loved him more than anything. But I also remembered times at the Sunday dinner table when Mr. Farquhar talked about the “wetbacks” who lived in the migrant camps just outside town, how they would come into the store and buy pounds and pounds of jalapeño peppers.

“Wetbacks ain’t got no sense,” he’d laugh. “Wonder what’re they gone do with all them peppers?”

“Maybe they’re going to make jelly,” Mrs. Farquhar would say and look at Sara Jane, smiling in such a way that I decided she must know what was going on. “I just love pepper jelly, don’t y’all?”

Sara Jane never said a word when Mr. Farquhar got off on the migrant workers. But I noticed she always breathed a heavy sigh of relief when he moved on to another minority. She was certain she was going to marry Jimmy and have his children. She said they wanted lots of them, and it would just kill Jerry Farquhar for his
daughter to marry a Mexican. But I was sure when that sweet, tiny culmination of Jimmy and his daughter came into this world, he would forget all that. Mrs. Farquhar would see to it.

Sara Jane had been so excited to share the news about her and Jimmy getting married, it was kind of odd when she was suddenly quiet. I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t.

“What’s wrong, Sara Jane?”

She poured me some of her special sangria. “I’m not going to pass. I’m going to quit like Daddy did.” She looked at me with those sad green eyes and said, “I feel like I’m letting you down.”

“No, you didn’t let me down. I’m proud of what you’ve done at school and I’m proud you’re getting married and I…”

“But you worked so hard with me,” she said.

“I know, but I did that because I love you. I didn’t want you to go through life being a shampoo girl someplace because you couldn’t get your license. Whether it’s Jimmy or fixing hair, I want for you what you want for yourself because I love you.”

Sara Jane’s skills never suffered because of the passion that consumed her. She could still outdo all the girls at school and most any beautician in town, but the truth was, her heart just wasn’t in it anymore. She was too busy living out her own sweet romance with a man who loved her more than he loved himself.

Every night I
tried to tell Winston I loved him the only way I knew how. Since I never had any real contact with the man, I had to make sure that the message was clear, right there on his plate. Sometimes I baked a cobbler using blackberries that grew in the woods behind the garage. I scored tiny new potatoes into red hearts, making V-shaped knife marks on the tops before whittling the bottoms into a point. I learned a lot about fancy food from Sunday dinners at the Farquhars’ house and even tied green beans into little bundles with spaghetti-squash bows. Those never made it out of my kitchen because they reminded me of the rattle Emma had left behind.

I was alone again on Saturday night. Sara Jane and Jimmy had gone to the beach for the day. With nothing to do, I spent all day in the kitchen making dinner absolutely perfect. I’d just taken scratch biscuits out of the oven and set them by the window to cool when I noticed Winston in the hammock with one leg on the
ground and one slung over the other side. I seriously doubted he could’ve eaten anything that night. I could tell he was already numb.

Then the thought crossed my mind: What if he never ate any of the meals I made? What if he was too busy drinking to live that he never even noticed the love right there in front of him on his dinner plate?

I shook off the thought and put roast pork and green beans on the plate alongside heartfelt mashed potatoes. I spooned the cobbler into a little coffee cup and covered everything with tinfoil and dashed into the bathroom. I checked my look in the tiny medicine chest mirror while I brushed my teeth. My hair was skillfully mussed; my glossy lips looked wet and inviting like Cover Girl swore they would.

I put on a pair of short-shorts and a white eyelet peasant blouse Mrs. Farquhar had bought me to go with a church skirt. Looking in the mirror, I cocked my head to the side, unhooked my bra and pulled it out of the front of my shirt. There. I twisted up my hair in a sexy little knot, and forgave myself for being braless and desperate.

Winston didn’t stir when the screen door slammed shut behind me. The stairs creaked, and my flip-flops slapped the bottoms of my feet, but he didn’t stir. I set the plate on the table then and sat down on the picnic bench, watching him sleep. I’d only been close to him once before, the day we shook hands; even then, he kept a distance between himself and the rest of the world that couldn’t be measured in feet or inches. I was close enough to reach out and touch him, but content to just watch him sleep.

The wind blew from behind me and I could smell the heavy
scent of a moonflower vine Jimmy had planted beside the garage. It was sweet and sexual and made me want to breathe it in deep, holding it in like a drug. The wind shifted around some more, mingling the smell of Scotch whiskey on his breath with that flower’s fragrance.

His breathing was quiet and peaceful. His face looked pained but solemn. I wanted to stroke his hair the way Nana stroked mine when the world was against me. I thought if I could do it just right, his heartache might take to the breeze, mingle with the sweetness of that warm summer evening, and free him from his terrible sadness forever. But I didn’t dare.

I watched his chest rise and fall. I lay my hand on my own chest and matched my breathing to each deep, slow breath. Sara Jane had taken his pulse once; I wanted to feel it, too, so my heart could beat in time with his. His skin was pale, slightly olive, his cheeks a little flushed from the whiskey. Twice I reached out and nearly touched him. Twice I pulled away. Finally, I touched a few strands of hair that dangled through the holes in the hammock. They were soft and so precious that I nearly cried.