The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder

by Rebecca Wells

  “Well, of course, Ricky!”

  “She has almost total hair breakage. Almost the worst I’ve ever seen.” He parted the curtain just enough to show me.

  “Oh, my God, Ricky,” I whispered.

  Now I had seen some pictures in our textbook that you wouldn’t believe, but this sight made my stomach turn. Even from a distance, I could see that the poor thing had had an awful bleach job and that most of her hair had broken off, leaving just a few long, very weak strands hanging here and there. I decided to go out on a limb with Ricky, so I said in my best doctor voice, “Bad bleach job followed by a permanent wave with tension; didn’t get the solution off in time, so her hair broke off where the rubber bands went across the perm rods.”

  “Right on, Calla.”

  “Ricky, was this done at home? I mean, surely this is not the work of a professional?”

  “Calla, I cannot bring myself to use the word ‘professional’ in the same sentence with the name of the person who did this. I’m sorry to report that this was done by a beautician—a very, very bad beautician. It’s enough to make my blood boil.”

  Ricky Chalon was the very definition of cool and calm under pressure in any beauty situation, but his face had turned a dark shade of red.

  “Dear Lord, Ricky!”

  Ricky just put up his hand and continued, “I will not name the person, but I will say that he is known for damage. ‘Hair Hurricane’ is what many of us call him, the baddest of the bad, the Cruella De Vil of the cosmetology world. But enough on that. We have a beauty emergency on our hands. It will keep us here a couple of hours, but Calla, you can learn a lot this evening. And afterward, I’ll buy us muffulettas. Are you in?”

  “I’m ready, Ricky.”

  “Good! Now, you and I have begun the conversation of healing in beauty. It is essential that our client leave here tonight feeling good about herself and how she looks, and ready to follow her hair recovery regimen every day. It is part of our job to make her feel whole again.”

  Then Ricky swept through the curtain back onto the floor with a flourish and confidence that only Ricky Chalon could muster.

  Ricky said, “Erbolene, you are so fortunate that you have a face that looks fantastic with short hair. I was just browsing through this month’s Vogue, and I saw Mia Farrow with her short cut, and you are her spitting image. Now, one of our finest here at L’Académie will be assisting me this evening. This is Calla Lily Ponder. Calla Lily will begin by applying a special deep moisturizing treatment that I have developed especially for this type of situation.”

  “Do you think you can really help?” Erbolene asked. You could just tell by her voice that she had been making bad hair choices her whole life.

  “Help?” Ricky said. “Baby, we’re gonna have you looking like you stepped off the plane from Paris.”

  Ricky kept on talking to Erbolene as he went over to a special locked cabinet to get some ingredients. The cabinet was a source of great gossip and speculation at L’Académie, with everyone just dying to know what all was in there. Ricky came back over and mixed into the basic moisturizer I prepared a couple of his “proprietary potions,” as he referred to them, and then I applied the mixture to her hair. Whooee! It had a pretty strong earthy, herbal smell that was new to me. Then Ricky put on some soft, soothing music and had me just hold Erbolene’s head in my hands for a minute or two, as he’d taught me. Since I’d told him about the warmth coming from my hands, he had been coaching me on how to “move energy,” as he called it, whenever I wanted. I began by lightly holding Erbolene’s head, then breathing deeply and evenly as I drew my palms away. That drew her energy into my hands. Basically what I was doing was washing her energy. When I hold a client’s head in my hands, their energy comes into me and then moves up from me to the Moon Lady, where she washes it in her river of love and goodness and sends it back down through me and back into the client in all its cleanliness. Erbolene’s deep sigh and the look of peace on her face let me know that M’Dear’s and Ricky’s teachings were at work through my hands.

  Then I carefully rinsed out the treatment. I looked at Ricky and mouthed the words, “Filler next?”

  He gave me back an approving nod. The general public doesn’t know about fillers. They’re hair colors without peroxide, which you put on first to fill in the damaged part of the hair shaft. After the fillers, you can put on the regular color that you want to use.

  Ricky took out some color charts and showed me what he was thinking. He then explained the color choices to our client, talking about her complexion and asking her about her favorite colors to wear. He didn’t turn her toward the mirror to look at herself, which is something Ricky usually does while he is working on a damaged case like this one.

  We got the color done, and then Ricky gave the woman the cutest, smartest little cut—he really was as brilliant a cutter as everybody in New Orleans always said. When he got his special made-in-Germany cutting shears in his hands, he could move over a head of hair like greased lightning! And the soft strawberry blond tint he chose was so natural on the woman and so perfect with her skin and her little spray of freckles.

  Ricky waited until he was all done to turn the woman around to the mirror. She put her hands to her cheeks and started crying again. Except this time, they were tears of joy.

  Ricky was as good as his word, and he took me out for muffulettas at a little place down the street. We were laughing and joking the whole time—in part, to relieve the tension of the last couple of hours. When we got back to the salon I turned the conversation back to beauty. “Ricky, I would never have thought that you could make that woman look so good.”

  “We did it together, Calla. It was a team effort. And I saw once again what I have been suspecting for some time. You’ve got the touch to be not only superior at the craft of cosmetology, but also a true and sensitive practitioner who can raise the craft to be a healing art.”

  “Oh, Ricky—”

  “After you graduate, I’d like to invite you to work with me. You could finally quit working at the Camellia Grill and do hair full-time. Because I think that you have the hands—not only the hands, but the heart—to help heal damaged hair, to really help people.”

  “It’s what M’Dear—my mother—began teaching me when I was a teenager. She taught me that the heart and the head are cousins to each other. How hair is right there at the spot where the head meets the world, so it’s important for things other than looking pretty—although that is always a healing aspect all its own.”

  “Tell me about her,” Ricky said. How sweet for him to care.

  I closed my eyes, and saw M’Dear’s face.

  “She had her own shop, the Crowning Glory Beauty Porch, and I could have just taken it over when she died, but she wanted me to experience the world outside of La Luna, to learn more about doing hair as a healing, happy thing—to really learn my craft well.”

  And here I was, with a great opportunity. Well, I was just beside myself. “Ricky, it would be an honor to work with you.”

  Ricky gave me a hug. “I’m your guy,” he said, twirling around a pair of scissors like a cowboy.

  “And I’m your girl,” I said, grabbing a blow dryer and, in an attempt to twirl it, knocking a few items off the counter.

  “Right,” Ricky said, chuckling at my clumsiness. “Okay, so now you’ll be working directly with me as an apprentice for about a year after you pass your state boards. We will be going into areas unknown by the standard beautician.

  “To work together in this way, I’ll need to show you some things—trade secrets that you must hold in utter confidence. There are hairdressers in this town who would do just about anything to get at the cosmetological discoveries I have made over the years.”

  “Ricky, you can trust me two hundred percent!”

  “Calla, lean close,” Ricky said. “I’m referring to the ingredients in the locked cabinet. We’ve talked flower essences; we’ve talked vetiver root, we’ve talked dried orchid
s from the bayou. But, Calla, there is an ancient woman in Bayou Gaudet whose only clients are voodoo practitioners except for one—me, Ricky Chalon, the only hairdresser to go there.

  “And that’s where I get my secret, secret ingredients. Calla, here in New Orleans, spells are still a commonplace occurrence. Think of my secret potions like protective spells. Did you know that in the colder climates, ninety percent of the body’s heat is lost from the head? Well, the reverse is true with spells. Ninety percent of the spell goes in through your hair and your head.”

  I was getting the chills, listening to Ricky talk.

  “A true hairdresser pushes the bad energy out and knows how to replace it with good energy. And also when to walk away from certain energy, because a good hairdresser must know how to protect him or herself as well. The inspiration that a beautician—a true beautician—can bring to a person, that person in turn can bring into the world.

  “Calla, it is no accident that beautician and magician sound so similar.”

  I thought and thought about that. I was so grateful for Erbolene’s emergency that drew me closer to Ricky, and so thankful that he was sharing his gifts with me. I’d given up on loving him romantically, but I felt that he was teaching me a different kind of love and healing. I knew that I was lucky to have his attention, so I continued to stay late at the Académie now and then, just in case another lesson came my way.

  So I was there late after class, sweeping out the work stations, on the night Sukey came by for a visit.

  “Sukey!” I said, “what are you doing here?”

  “Well, you’ve been here for months now. I wanted to see where you work,” she said.

  But then her eyes fell on Ricky, and she strutted right past me.

  “Oh, you must be Ricky!” she said, pecking him on the cheek. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  All I could think was, Ugh! Sukey, you don’t even know him!

  But there she was, just standing there in her knee-high white patent-leather boots and a little outfit that showed her belly—a tight little top and totally red vinyl hot pants.

  “Sukey,” I said, “this is Ricky, my teacher. And Ricky, this is my girlfriend, Sukey, whom I’ve known all my life.”

  Ricky said, “Sukey, how fabulous to meet an old friend of Calla’s. Who has been cutting your hair?”

  “Julia.”

  “Oh, Julia,” Ricky said. “Hmm. Well, turn around.”

  And so she did.

  “I like it,” Ricky said, tapping his finger to his lip. “I like the look on you.”

  “It could be tapered a little bit more toward the neckline,” I said.

  And Sukey just kept on flirting with him—God! All she’d ever done was flirt, flirt, flirt, since the day she was born, I swear.

  Then Sukey complained to Ricky that he was working me so hard that she hardly ever got to see me.

  “Well,” Ricky told her, “let’s just the three of us go out right now. What do you say? Let’s grab some cocktails in the Quarter.”

  So we took the streetcar down as far as it went and then walked on over to the Napoleon House, one of my favorite places. When you walk in, you can just feel how ancient it is, with its peeling paint walls and floors, small rooms and little tables, and bartenders who’ve been there forever. I mean, I wouldn’t know, since I’d never been, but you could almost think you were in Europe!

  “Ah!” Ricky said, seeming to catch the European idea in my mind. “Isn’t it a shame that they outlawed pure absinthe?”

  Sukey said, “Oh, yes! It is.”

  And I thought, I’m not sure I like the two of them together.

  To change the subject, I piped up with, “Now, Ricky, we need to talk about that woman who’s coming over from Natchez to discuss those antebellum ringlets.”

  “Uh-oh, shop talk,” Sukey said. “That’s my cue to go to the bar.” She came back and listened to us for a while, then said, “Excuse me just a minute, I have to go to the bathroom.” She came back with yet another drink, and then all three of us chatted some more.

  Then Ricky said, “Hey, the two of you are something else. I can tell that you’ve known each other forever, just the way you look at each other.”

  I laughed, but then I looked at Sukey and suddenly noticed a kind of tiredness and fragility around her eyes. “Suke,” I said, “Ricky’s right. Even though we have different schedules, we’ve somehow got to get together more.”

  Sukey answered me with a little slur in her voice. “Calla—” but then she stopped herself. She just took my hand and gave me a short kiss on the cheek and a long one on the lips, right there in the middle of everyone. And I could smell bourbon on her, so strong!

  Sukey must have seen me grimace, since she said, “I met a friend earlier today, and we had a little quick nip of bourbon—you know, just a shot. This guy, Skip, I swear he’s crazy. He said, ‘Bring my girlfriend a jigger of bourbon.’ So I drank it to make him feel good.”

  Ricky raised a questioning eyebrow at me as Sukey continued, “But I had to say, ‘Look, Skip, I’m a working girl. I have to go to work tonight.’ And I do, y’all. So I’ve got to go now.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Ricky said. “Calla, I’ve been wanting to have you over. Why don’t the two of y’all come for brunch in the New Year. Calla, it’s time for you to meet Steve, my man of five years now. You two will love each other. What do you say?”

  Sukey said, “We would love to!” And all I could think was: Wow, I can’t believe he’s been with Steve for five years.

  “Well, I’m off,” Sukey said. “Calla, it was real good to see you. I love you, baby.” She gave me a big hug, and it struck me again how tiny she was.

  She whispered, “I feel like a squirt next to your long-legged self.”

  I whispered back, “You make me feel ten feet tall. What else is new?”

  We’ve said this for years.

  Then she went, “Ta!” and was out of the room before I knew it, leaving me with my worry.

  Chapter 22

  1974

  On Fat Tuesday, the last day of the Mardi Gras season and the highest of its festivities, Sukey and I headed over for brunch to meet Steve, Ricky’s boyfriend, for the first time. Ricky and Steve lived in an upstairs apartment in an old building with high ceilings and slow-turning ceiling fans. Steve was so gracious and kind from the moment he opened the door and gave Sukey and me big welcoming hugs. He won my heart right off the bat.

  And their place was beautiful. The floors were old cypress planks, and as you looked around the living room you could see places where the old wallpaper of magnolia flowers and leaves showed through the paint, highlighted by lamps with tiny lights behind crystal tear-drops.

  “Oh, Ricky, I love this!” I said. “What do you call how this apartment is fixed up?”

  “Well, Calla,” Ricky explained, “it’s Old Louisiana meets Cubana meets Parisian.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Yeah, wow,” Sukey said. Then she asked, “Can I use your bathroom?”

  “But of course,” Steve said, and led us down the hallway. The bathroom had old fixtures and an extra-long claw-foot tub. Once we were alone in there, I couldn’t help but jump around and say, “Isn’t this just wild?”

  “Yeah,” Sukey said, putting a pill in her mouth and swallowing it. “I have a headache.” She gave me a wink. You just had to wonder.

  Ricky and Steve’s kitchen was much larger than mine, so we had plenty of room to stand around and talk while they were cooking. I took the time to take a good look at Steve.

  Steve’s complexion was as olive as Ricky’s was fair. Ricky was the taller of the two, and while he was lithe and sleek, like a tawny cat, Steve was more muscular in build. And unlike Ricky, the flamboyant one always dressed in the latest style, Steve’s navy slacks and blue polo shirt were subdued, though no less impeccable. I liked the two of them together.

  Ricky got out a big copper skillet and placed it on the stove. “That’s
gorgeous,” I told him.

  “You won’t believe it, but I got this for five bucks at a garage sale.”

  Ricky then uncorked a bottle of olive oil, poured just a splash in the skillet, then added a pat of butter. He quickly peeled and chopped a few cloves of garlic, tested the oil by flicking in a drop of water, then added the garlic to the pan.

  “Ricky, you’re just like a ballet dancer, only with kitchen utensils,” Sukey said, and we all laughed.

  Then Ricky grabbed two little chili peppers, split them down the middle, removed the seeds, and tossed the pepper halves into the oil, along with the garlic. Next he threw open the icebox door to see what the food gods had left him. In short order he pulled out a carton of eggs and a hunk of sharp, hard cheese that he called Asiago, which he handed to me along with an antique-looking grater.

  “That was my dead aunt Bettye Kaye’s,” he said. “My dad always called her ‘a piece of work,’ said that she was addicted to Hollywood. But I loved Aunt Bettye Kaye, and I think of her every time I use this grater.” Ricky was full of colorful stories.

  He instructed me to grate the cheese while he finely diced a little stubble of leftover chorizo sausage, along with a red bell pepper. I was used to being Ricky’s helper.

  On the counter was an odd-looking mixing bowl. It was cream colored on the inside, but the dark reddish brown outside looked like someone had tapped it all over with a ball-peen hammer, making little round indents. I turned it over and saw “Kla Ham’rd” stamped on the bottom. “Is that bad or just poetic spelling?” I asked.

  “Another Aunt Bettye Kaye relic,” Ricky said. “She was known in three parishes for her cooking.”

  When I set down the bowl, Ricky broke eight eggs into it, using only one hand. Then he just whipped up the eggs with his wire whisk, adding a touch of cold water and fresh-ground white pepper. Then he plucked the little chili peppers out of the skillet and poured in the eggs. In no time, the deliciously sweet and savory smell of peppered oil, egg, and garlic filled the room. After swirling the eggs around the pan for a minute, Ricky added the chorizo, the grated cheese, and the diced red pepper.