Cavedweller

by Dorothy Allison

  “I like ‘Bee’s Bonnet,’ ” she said loudly. “It’s got history behind it. It’s been here forever.” She waved a hand at the peach walls and the white trim. It had been a gray morning, but light was pouring in the window now, steam rising from the coffeepot in the nook by the door and covering the smell of fresh paint and ammonia. If Delia renamed the shop, Cissy would find a way to burn it down.

  Delia looked at Cissy, her eyes bright with gratitude. “Good,” she said. “ ’Cause I an’t going to waste no money repainting that sign.” She stabbed a rat-tailed comb into a jar of blue disinfectant.

  Everybody laughed. The moment when it all could have changed passed. Cissy thumped her hand against the arch and bit her lip.

  The Bonnet’s first paying customer was Gillian Wynchester, Cayro’s excuse for a liberated woman. Gillian was famous for declaring to her bingo group that she could understand the impulse to burn a bra, that she’d rather swing free than squeeze herself into the scratchy, lace-bedeviled contraptions her husband was always bringing her back from his twice-a-year trips to New Orleans.

  “Man goes in those titty bars down there,” Gillian told her friends, “comes home with stuff he saw on them whores, and expects me to wear it for him. Most ungodly getups you ever saw. And look at me—I an’t got nothing up top to speak of. What’s the use trying to make gallon jugs out of teacups?”

  Gillian smirked at the awed shock her words provoked. After that she made a point of telling everyone what a freethinker she was. “You can’t tell what I might not do,” Gillian swore, though the truth was that she had not refused her husband anything since the day she spoke her vows—not even coming to bed in the green satin bustier that just pushed her double-A bosom up out of her baby-doll night-gown, though she did make sure her girl, Mary Martha, was safely asleep before she would put it on. M.T. had predicted Gillian would be one of the first in the shop, but she had called even before the Bonnet was open.

  “I want something new and exciting,” Gillian told Delia as she leaned her head back over the sink. “I was thinking I might even put in some color while I was there, maybe some of them honey-blond streaks you always see on that weather girl on the morning news.”

  “Mmmmm.” Delia ran her fingers through Gillian’s skimpy brown locks. “Might could lighten you up a bit. Change your conditioner. Give you some body so we could do something different.”

  “Different, yes,” Gillian said, sighing as Delia’s strong fingers massaged her scalp. For the next hour she giggled and whispered and told scandalous tales about her husband while Delia murmured and smiled and worked magic with her hands. When Delia combed her out and turned her to face the mirror, Gillian was struck silent for the first time.

  “My Lord,” she said finally, patting at the hair that curved back from her features.

  “You are a good-looking woman,” Delia said, and used the tang of her rat-tailed comb to lift Gillian’s hair a bit higher at the crown of her head. The style was the one Gillian had worn since her wedding, but for the first time it was cut to suit her narrow jaw and soften the impact of those shrewd eyes.

  “I am, aren’t I?” Gillian agreed. In the mirror beyond Delia’s left shoulder, Steph gave a small nod in M.T.’s direction. By the time Gillian had bought a few groceries, picked up her laundry, and mailed a package at the post office, the phone at the Bonnet was starting to ring. By the end of the week the trickle of adventurous customers became a rivulet. By the end of the month it was a steady stream.

  When women came into the shop blushing and dreamy-eyed, talking about getting themselves made over, Delia put a cool, damp towel on the back of their necks and handed them her special collection of magazines, the big spring issue of Vogue with its double-thick wedding section, the fall issue of Mademoiselle with all the schoolgirl haircuts. “You see something you like,” Delia told them, “we’ll see what we can do.” No matter how great the disparity between the ads the women chose and the physical reality, Delia would find a way to narrow it.

  “You haven’t got quite as much to work with as she does,” she would say to a middle-aged woman holding up the image of a sixteen-year-old girl with hair down to her ass. “But we can make that shag of yours look longer, give it a nice light rinse, make it a little fuller.” And somehow she did, or she made the woman think she had.

  “Blind and stupid and mad with lust,” Steph would say as the women went out the door. Steph never talked about love, only lust. “Spring fever,” she would say. “Look like you coming into heat. You can see it in your skin. No joke.”

  “You need to get yourself some, Steph. Perk yourself up,” M.T. would tease. “A little heat wouldn’t do you any harm. Pinks the skin and brightens the eyes. Better than a shot of whiskey or a nap in the middle of the afternoon. Truth is, honey, I think you better get you some or you going to lose the notion.”

  “You can talk.”

  “I can.” M.T. would beam and Steph would blush. Everyone knew M.T.’s reputation.

  “Well, talk to Delia. She’s the one needs some.”

  “Don’t drag me into this.” Delia would wave her hand and laugh. “I’m doing just fine, thank you very much.”

  It was what beauty shops were about—dreams and lust and the approximation of a fantasy. For all the banter, the women of the Bonnet loved the game.

  “You’re love-struck,” they would tell some girl who had barely known what she was feeling when she stepped through the door.

  “He that fine?” M.T. would ask. “He make you sweat just to think about him?” She’d wink at Delia or Steph, and soothe her victim at the same time.

  “Well, a little,” the girl might say. “Makes me think, anyway.”

  With M.T.’s fingers on their temples and Delia’s smile in the mirror, the idea was more exciting than embarrassing. A beauty shop was one of the places where such passions could be acknowledged with impunity. “He’s pretty nice,” they’d say, then add, “And nice and pretty,” laughing openly at their own wit. A woman knew where to go when love caught her up. The women at the Bonnet were priestesses of appreciation and encouragement.

  “Come on, girl, let’s do you up right.”

  “Come on, girl, take a chance.”

  “You got to risk a little to get a man worth the trouble. Come on, girl.”

  Hair could be tinted, layered, frosted, teased, or made over with a permanent wave. M.T. could do nails in any color, lengthen them or round them off with a glistening manicure, even glue on extensions. Steph could demonstrate a new foundation, a moisturizer, or a way to make eyes look bigger in a dim light. Delia would smile and hand over her magazines, nod and advise and reassure. And the next Saturday, when the woman came in again, eyes swollen and skin blotchy with disappointment, Delia would dredge up another piece of hope.

  “Come on, girl, let’s do you up right. I’ve got an idea of something you might like.”

  Every now and again Cissy wondered if that afternoon in the Bonnet giggling and dreaming might not turn out to be the best part of the relationship. The perfume-scented sheen of love’s onset would surpass the mundane reality of a couple of hours of sweaty wrestling in some old Ford sedan. The glowing devotion of the women in the Bonnet could make even heartbreak seem romantic.

  The joke in the Bonnet was that if a woman changed her hairstyle she was almost surely changing her sheets. “Putting on pink satin instead of white cotton,” M.T. said. “Madrigal Whiteman wants a hairstyle to go with satin sheets.”

  “Her?” Delia laughed. “She’s worn that too-long pageboy just about forever.”

  “Well, as of this morning she’s wearing a feathery cap like the picture of that actress you had on the counter.”

  “Uh-huh. Trying to look like a girl again.”

  “She said she wanted something easy to care for.”

  “Easy to wash up without a whole lot of conditioner or bottled stuff in a heavy bag. No bag, no notice. The motel cut. It hides a lot of sin. Wouldn’t think Mad
rigal would take up something like that at her age.”

  “Heard she’s been talking a lot to that assistant manager at the new Wal-Mart. What’s his name?”

  “You mean slick-and-pretty?”

  “Lord, Delia, way you talk.”

  But Delia never changed anything at all. She never altered her look or her sheets. She wore her red-blond hair just to her shoulders, pinned back or up during the day, letting it down only in the evening. She would let it hang down long and loose when she sat on her steps after dark.

  “I like to shake my head and feel it,” Delia said when M.T. told her she should cut it.

  “Easier to wear it short. Long hair is for girls.”

  “I wore it short when I was a girl. Granddaddy Byrd said it was too much trouble to keep after me, and when I got sick in junior high, he had Mrs. Pearlman cut it right up tight to my neck. Wanted me to wear that bubble cut she had on a poster on the wall. He thought that would do fine, the son of a bitch. Wouldn’t listen when I said I wanted it long. Said long hair took your strength out of you.”

  “Some of the old people say that. Say you got to cut a child’s hair when they run a fever more than two days. Say the hair pulls energy you need to fight a fever. Girls wore their hair long and braided till they got sick or took to being sassy. People said you cut a girl’s hair, you tamed her wildness. Silly superstition.”

  “Granddaddy Byrd believed it, I bet. Surely wanted to tame me.” Delia smoothed a few stray hairs up off her neck and threaded them into her twist. “Wanted to leave his mark, I think, prove he had the power to say what was what. Had my hair cut off even though I cried and cursed him for it. Never felt like myself until it grew back.”

  “There was a time when girls would cut their hair off to show they were grown. Or wild.”

  “Well, I never needed to cut my hair to be wild.”

  “No, you didn’t. Didn’t need to do a thing.”

  Reverend Hillman was exasperated. Louise Windsor had agreed that Delia could visit the girls, but she kept saying she needed more time to prepare her heart. Would he come and read the Bible with her on Saturday afternoons so she could study up on forgiveness? At first he was delighted; it was more than he could have hoped for from that stiff-necked old woman. He called Delia at the Bonnet and asked her to be patient a little longer. After a few weeks of endeavoring to focus Louise’s attention on John 8:7, it became apparent that the woman was in no hurry. To everything he said, she had a ready reply. “Yes, but ...” or, “What about ...” She bombarded him with fire and brimstone, verses on the subjects of adultery and loose women, the whore of Babylon and the harlot who would walk before the Antichrist.

  “I don’t think she is sincere about letting Delia see her girls,” Reverend Hillman told his wife.

  “Just occurred to you, did it?” she said, and blushed when she saw his stricken expression. “Don’t let her wear you down. Mention the lawyer again. She hates lawyers.”

  Reverend Hillman did as his wife suggested, but went her one better, searching out every biblical reference to lawyers he could find. There were a surprising number and most of them quite daunting. After ten minutes of that, Louise Windsor looked at him as if he were a snake.

  “Fifteen minutes,” she said, getting to her feet and tucking her Bible back into its place on the top shelf. “Next Saturday, she gets fifteen minutes and not a second more.”

  Gillian Wynchester was just coming to the raciest part of a long story about her husband’s last trip to New Orleans when Reverend Hillman walked into the Bonnet. Delia turned at the sound of his voice, and Gillian covered her mouth with one hand. “Reverend,” Gillian squeaked. “It’s so nice to see you. Excuse me,” she said to Delia, and ran for the bathroom, her ears as pink as the towel around her neck.

  Delia stood with her scissors in midair while the minister spoke to her so softly no one could make out his words. But when he paused, she whooped and threw her arms around him, almost stabbing Stephanie, who had stepped over to try and hear what he was saying. “Thank you! Oh, thank you,” Delia kept saying while Reverend Hillman walked backward toward the door.

  “Glad I could help,” he said, nodding once to M.T. and then to the unrecognizable woman in the chair in front of her. The flush on his neck was approaching the color of walls.

  Delia spent the rest of the week in a daze, using all her free time to drive over to Beckman’s and shop for gifts that might please her girls: lace doilies for Amanda, hair barrettes for Dede, a blouse and a scented candle for each. “I don’t know what to get them,” she told M.T. “I figure Amanda might like this high collar and Dede might want the lace. And candles should be all right, but I don’t know. Everything seems so impersonal.” She ran a finger over a lace doily, her eyes shifting uncertainly.

  M.T. put her hand on Delia’s. “It will be fine,” she said. “You know this isn’t what they are going to care about. You’re the only thing they are going to see.”

  “Dede took sick,” Grandma Windsor said when Delia came to the door. “Been sick to her stomach since last night. Amanda’s not feeling so good either. I think Dede’s bug is coming on her too. Another day, perhaps.” She said it with a smile. There were years in those words, years of old heat and old grief, of bravely held tears and late-night sobs, years of sorrow past and pain yet to come. Small revenge it might have been, but Grandma Windsor took it in full measure.

  Delia hugged the bag of presents in her arms.

  Grandma Windsor said, wiping her hands on the skirt of her apron, “I know you must be disappointed. But after all this time, what’s a little more?”

  Delia looked down into the bag. Sunlight glittered on the wrapped presents. “Sick?” she started, but Grandma Windsor gave her no time.

  “Next week,” she said, her face a study in satisfaction. “Maybe.”

  In the car, Delia’s mouth worked but no sound came. Her hands on the steering wheel convulsed. Grandma Windsor watched from the porch while Delia sat there, unmoving, and the sun rose higher in the cold blue sky. Finally Delia relaxed her grip on the wheel and started the engine.

  “Another day,” she said, looking out the window at Grandma Windsor. She rubbed her neck, pulled air in, and drove back to the Bonnet.

  “She didn’t let you see them!” M.T. could not believe it.

  “Oh, she’s cold,” Steph said.

  “Cold, yes.” Delia had left the package of presents in the car. She should have left them, she thought, but it was entirely possible the old woman wouldn’t give them to the girls.

  “Well, I think we ought to drive right out there and have a talk with her.” M.T. wiped damp hands on her smock. “Go out there and show her what’s what.”

  “Think we might want to wait before we do something like that.” Stephanie turned to Delia. “Clint has quit working. He is sick, seriously sick, and he isn’t even coming in to Dr. Campbell’s office anymore. His nurse, Marvella, was here and said you wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him. But nobody sees him now anyway.”

  “She’s right. The Reverend Myles told Sally he’ll be dead by Christmas.” M.T.’s face was flushed and uncertain. “Said it’s cancer of the spine, or bone cancer anyway. Horrible. Said he can’t hardly walk and Grandma Windsor is carrying meals over to his house. She’s looking for some colored lady who’d be willing to go out there and help him, but it sounds like everyone’s been turning her down. She an’t got no money, you know, and always has been cheap besides. And God knows what he really looks like.”

  Delia leaned back against one of the sinks. Her mouth opened and her eyes widened. “God,” she said.

  “Yeah.” Steph nodded. “This proves it, huh? That there is a God.”

  Delia shook her head. “Cancer? I thought somebody would kill him. I thought he might kill himself. But cancer? I never thought that.”

  “Delia?” M.T. spoke carefully. “What’s done is done. Can’t do nothing about it now. But you need to think about this, honey. If Clint
dies while that woman is keeping the girls, you’ll never get them away from her in this life.”

  “I know,” Delia whispered. “I know.”

  “Well, you got to do something, honey.”

  “I know.”

  “Another day.”

  Every time Delia went out to see her girls, she heard the same words. Grandma Windsor’s eyes glinted black and proud like shale in the sun. Every weekend when Delia appeared, those eyes turned on her. Coming on, suspected, a slight fever or a mysterious chill, the two of them were sick or, oh sorry, out of the house, every time Delia came in the yard. Some days she thought she saw the curtains move, a shadow pass on the other side of the screen door. Once, she was sure Amanda looked through the window at her. But Delia never got past the porch, and they never came out to her.

  Every time there was another story, another bland apology, another cold smile, some reason one or the other could not go.

  “Dede is in no shape to drag off in the heat of the day. We’ll have to think about doing this some other time.”

  “If she’s lying down, I could just say hi.” Delia considered forcing her way in, but she didn’t want to frighten Amanda and Dede.

  “That wouldn’t do.”

  Blank eyes. Black heart. Amanda had a cold. Dede had her period, “and she gets it bad, you know.” Upset stomachs, runny noses, migraines, and sprained ankles. And no, one could not go without the other. They were so close. You have no way of knowing, the old woman’s eyes said.

  “Oh, if you knew the girls, you’d understand.”

  Every time Grandma Windsor spoke, Delia’s neck became more rigid, her head more perfectly straight. She was as stubborn as any old woman.

  “I need the girls to help me with the garden. Another day.”

  I need. They need. The girls need. Something. Anything. Not their mother.