by Lynne Hinton
Maybe you need a soil overhaul. Till in a new compost pile or bags of manure.
Maybe you need some fertilizer. After all, that always delivers a little spice to your beds. Adding a bit is like putting Viagra in your husband’s medicine cabinet. Firm and plump vegetables always make for a livelier dinner.
Try new planting ideas. Rework your borders with stones or straw. Plant something new in an old garden. Switch things around. It might be just the time to surprise yourself with a new spark of life.
10
When Jessie came home bald and without an explanation, James looked up and thought it was Ervin, her older brother, coming through the front door. It took him a minute to try to understand what Ervin was doing in Hope Springs since he had been living in Alabama for more than thirty years. He couldn’t figure out why he was in Jessie’s house, having come in unannounced and without knocking. And then he noticed the dress and the gliding of her hips from side to side and he knew it was his wife.
He jumped up wild-eyed and alarmed and shouted out “Holy!” without finishing the expletive, and then, “Dang, woman!”
The newspaper was thrown in the air, the recliner swung back and forth as if he were still in it.
Then, after a brief pause, he left his stance of surprise and walked closer to her, taking in her round and perfect head.
Finally he asked, “What kind of group are you women?” And he reached up and slid his fingers down along the slope of her scalp.
That was all he could think of to say, that and a sort of sucking noise he made as he drew air in through his teeth.
Jessie closed the front door and locked it, set her purse on the narrow table at her left, and hung her keys on the hook by the framed mirror.
“We did it for Margaret,” she said briskly and without further rationalization.
She walked by him nonchalantly and proceeded to the bedroom where she began taking off her clothes.
James followed close behind her, then stood at the door.
“She asked you to do that?” He still seemed to be in a state of shock.
“No. We just decided to do it.” She yanked off one shoe. “So she won’t go through the chemo by herself.” And she threw off the other one.
James walked into the room and stood in front of her at the dresser, shaking his head as he peered at her bald head.
There was a minute of silence.
“Well, quit staring at me,” she said. “It’s like you haven’t ever seen the top of my head.”
“I ain’t ever seen the top of it looking like that.”
He grinned and folded his arms across his chest. “This is something.” And he made a humming noise that reminded Jessie of old men chewing on fresh news.
He cupped his chin in his hand and just watched.
“You better be glad your mama ain’t here to see you. It wouldn’t have mattered how old you are, she’d have whipped you for that.”
Jessie pulled off her panty hose, shaking her head even though she knew her husband was right. Her mother wouldn’t have seen anything loyal or heroic about this act. She would have been appalled. Hair and its style were of utmost importance to her.
Jessie remembered that as a younger woman, her mother spent a lot of thought and energy on the appearances of herself and of her children. As an older woman, she would not allow anyone in her room without first having the opportunity to comb and fix her hair. When she lost her hair to chemo, she would never go anywhere, not even to the bathroom in her house, without first having one of her many wigs perfectly placed on her head.
And even when her children were old and grown, she would not hesitate to remind them of the latest hair products or what they could do to appear more refined. “I hear Afro Sheen has a new gel that smells like perfume, no more lye,” she’d say while she fingered her son’s curls. Or, “You know, you can soften that with a little baby oil.”
If she were alive and had seen Jessie’s head completely shaven, shiny and picked clean, her daughter out in a public place, uncovered and unashamed, it would have disappointed her beyond words.
“A woman’s hair is her crown” Jessie remembered her saying. And then she would call her daughters in the room one at a time and straighten their hair with grease and a hot iron. It was an exhausting and elaborate affair for the girl children in her mother’s house. And they fought it and rebelled against it, but their mother always won. She was going to tame their unruly hair.
She wanted them to have perfect tresses, unmatted and soft, she would say. “Like white girls,” Jessie and her sisters would complain. But it would not matter. The mother always got what she demanded, and Jessie recalled the long hours of hard and painful work it took to bring her mother’s idea of perfection to the tops of their wild heads.
She’d pull and comb and pull and comb; and then when she wasn’t washing or straightening, burning their scalps with homemade soaps and foul-smelling lotions, she’d wrap their hair up in old panties and pieces of torn pillowcases or cleaning rags. They hid in their rooms most of their childhood, fearful that someone would stop by to visit and see them. And they whined to her every chance they got that none of their friends had to go through such an ordeal. But it didn’t matter; Jessie’s mother never allowed her children to have knotty or natural hair.
When her youngest daughter had come home from college with an Afro standing five inches from her scalp stretched and full, her mother had been more upset about her hair than she was about the arrest record from her activities in civil disobedience or the smell of tobacco on her breath.
Jessie could still remember the disgust on her mother’s face when she walked in the house after being gone for almost a year. She did not hug her or welcome her home. She did not clap her hands or offer up a testimony of praise. She simply stood back from the door, turned her face away, and spoke to her husband like Jessie wasn’t even there.
“The child’s been dancing with the devil,” she had said, as if the length of Jessie’s hair, the style or lack thereof, had given full evidence that she had fallen headlong and unprotected into the arms of evil.
Jessie smiled, remembering her mother’s discontent. “Oh, she’d understand.” And she lay back on the bed, spreading out her arms, knowing it was a lie.
“She wouldn’t understand that,” James replied.
And Jessie knew the truth had been spoken.
He sat down beside his wife and she leaned against him. He laughed at what she had done and then began scratching her scalp. It felt good to Jessie because her head was dry and already itching. She lifted and turned, resting her neck across his lap, so that he could massage every spot on top and all along the sides. She closed her eyes, loving how his hands felt upon her.
It reminded her of years long past when they would lie together, the whole family, a bed of children, taking turns rubbing and scratching each other’s heads. It had been the Jenkinses’ familial means of affection that they had shared with each other. The late-night ritual that unburdened them from the day of trouble, unleashed them from the tight restraints of the unfair world, eased them into the night of safe rest and perfect dreams.
It was the faultless combination of finding love and sharing love. And the only way any one of them could receive a massage was to give one. You scratched and you got scratched. And it was generally accepted that you got only as much as you gave.
“Baby, you’re making this too good.” She turned to the other side. “I’ll be too sleepy to pay you back.”
“Well, we can put it in a rain check,” James said as he sat against the pillows. It pleased him to see that his wife was relaxing.
“Where are Wallace and Lana?” she asked, suddenly noticing that the house was unusually quiet.
“They took the baby and they all went to stay with Janice tonight. Something Wallace has to do early in the morning about school, I think.” James couldn’t remember exactly what his grandson had said.
“So, it’s just us here by ou
rselves?” Jessie opened one eye when she asked.
“I think that’s about right,” James replied as he began to move his hands down along Jessie’s neck.
“Been a long time for that.”
He tickled her under her chin and agreed.
“You know, you’re kind of sexy bald,” he said as he studied the honey-colored flesh, the smooth curve of her skull dipping into her neck.
And Jessie laughed, enjoying her husband’s interest. “Yeah, well, you’re kind of sexy bald too.”
James glanced up in the mirror realizing that it was true, he had lost most of his hair. He turned and examined his own appearance, thinking he didn’t look quite so bad himself, even though he was old and thin-headed.
Jessie sat up and situated the pillows behind them both, then lay beside James. She knew they needed to talk some more about what they had started the night when she had left to go to Margaret’s. But she was hesitant, anxious that what she feared might come to pass.
She worried that he was already packing his things, already filling the car with gas; and the thought of his leaving hemmed in her desire to know for sure. She almost preferred not talking about it, not discussing it, just coming home one day, unknowing and unknown, to discover his departure, having things happen as they did the last time. No conversation or wishes conveyed. Just a note on the table and the house suddenly still.
She took in a deep breath against her better wishes and asked, “What did you decide about the move?”
She was straightforward but nervous. And she sat up completely.
James noticed the shift in her body, the tightening of her brow and spine. And he paused and took his wife’s hand into his, their fingers folding over one another and interlacing.
“I didn’t decide anything,” he said reassuringly, pulling both of their hands up to his mouth, softly kissing hers.
“I thought I’d call Cleata later this week and check on the house. See if anybody else has made an offer. See what she thinks about us waiting.”
Jessie inched closer to him, loosening up a bit.
“But then, I don’t know, I thought about it and maybe we shouldn’t live that close to family. Maybe we should search around other places some.”
He kissed her wrist and moved his lips up her arm.
Jessie appreciated the attention she was receiving and liked the thought that for the first time since James’s homecoming they were staying in the house by themselves. For the first time in many years her house was quiet, but not lonely; the door to the bedroom, open and welcoming, with someone already in.
And now for the two of them, together after such a long time apart, there was no fear of being discovered or interrupted or silenced. It was just them.
“Maybe we should just stay here and spend all our money on a very long and expensive trip,” he whispered to her.
She was drawn to his suggestion.
“We haven’t got to abide by the old dream,” he said as he began pressing his lips along the outside of her arm and up across her shoulder.
“We can make a new one.” And he reached up and unzipped Jessie’s dress.
She felt his hand slide inside her dress, and she positioned herself so that she could come out of her clothes more easily. And then something odd began to happen.
The night began to feel like past nights, like sweet nights when they were young and passionate and in love with the world and each other. The moment, as he began to unsnap and unbutton, began to pull her back into a time long gone when she and the man she married were the only two people in the world, when how they touched and kissed and moved together, this dance of love, had been all that mattered.
She lay down beside him, gently.
And he began to dream.
He whispered into her ear about the breeze blowing near them, calling them, leading them into a faraway place, a long and foreign adventure. He said that the old way had passed but that a new one lay ahead of them.
She closed her eyes and listened.
He stroked his fingers across her while he talked about flying to find it and sailing to feel it and driving down highways and country roads and city streets to reach it.
“Out past state and border,” he said as he stretched her arms above her head.
“Beyond usual talk and common schedules.” And he pulled off his own clothes, lying beside her, body touching body.
“Far from ordinary.” He felt her lifting herself for him.
“It’s a new way.”
And slowly, easily, knowingly, he talked of a land of long, narrow grasses and white burning sands. He spoke of low streams and wide, deep rivers that they would rest themselves near, cool themselves in, and listen to as they followed where they flowed, gliding toward the dream that rested at the lip of an ocean, a faraway ocean that had bathed the visions of lovers from long ago.
He whispered to her of women who walked with broad golden baskets on their heads, sisters tall in grace, men with long, taut legs and voices deep as thunder. He talked of lions and elephants and slender yellow giraffes.
He spoke of wild painted horses that ran freely on open plains and water animals, slippery and gray, that grew as big as the lakes. He talked of lush green jungles and miles and miles of nothing but pulsing, living, sacred space.
He talked about places she had never heard him say, names on maps she had thought only she had touched with a fingertip, places she had envisioned but that they had never discussed, new places, different places.
Places in the motherland, her motherland, places from long ago in her hidden memories, places she had dreamed of herself so many years ago that she had only thought of them as pretend, imaginary. Places she held on the tip of her tongue but never claimed, never spoke, never declared.
But when he called their names, like old, forgotten friends, Kenya, Nairobi, Zambia, and Lusaka, she rose up to hear them, rose up to meet them, rose up to speak them, as if she had landed in a place of home.
A place that spoke to her so deeply, reached within her at such a depth, she drew him closer to her, pulled him on top of her, opened herself to receive him just so she would hear him say the names of towns and villages she knew but had not remembered. Family she had heard of but never met.
He lay upon her and filled her with a different dream, an ancient longing, a forgotten imagination. And she took it all inside her, all of him inside her. And for the first time in a very long time, that which was old became new and the thing that was new had suddenly become as old as life itself.
They were going to Africa.
The lovely dream, the new dream, was now no longer a means to escape the world they lived in. It was no longer a way only to silence the cries of hungry children or soothe the lawless longings that haunted fading youth.
This dream was the merging of many dreams, the blending of going away and coming home, the mingling together of hope and promise, of steadfast assurance.
And Jessie’s heart was bathed in the warmth of confidence, a quiet rhythm of expectant gratitude.
James was home to stay.
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 11
Hope Springs Community Garden Club Newsletter
BEA’S BOTANICAL BITS
Keeping Your Garden Growing
Ladies, gardening friends, no matter what kind of garden you grow, you need to provide continuous and proper care. Gardens are like relationships: to keep them healthy, you have to stay involved. You have to show a little interest.
Bulbs should be separated. Trees must be pruned. Weeds have to be pulled. Mulch has to be added every year, and crops need to be rotated.
Suitable irrigation, ample light, protection from the extreme heat or cold, these are all imperative.
You want to keep growing beautiful plants, don’t you? You want to be the envy of all your gardening neighbors, right? Then, sisters, get out there and get to work. The garden is always waiting.
11
Charlotte had an appointment with Marion the
day they were all going with Margaret to the doctor to hear the surgery findings and get the schedule for her cancer treatments. She had managed to work it out so that she could leave the therapist’s office and meet them at the doctor’s.
After several sessions, she was feeling better about her decision to talk with someone. Over that brief period she had begun to develop a deep respect and appreciation for the woman who listened to her. And that was mostly what Marion did, just listen. She offered only an occasional bit of counsel or helped Charlotte form a framework to understand her feelings and her longings.
The young woman had spoken about her parents, her disappointing childhood, the responsibility of taking care of her younger sibling, her grief over her death, and the lack of real opportunities or permission to play.
“Too serious,” Marion had said and questioned if Charlotte had ever taken a class or gone on a trip that was meant only to be fun. Her assignment for this session was to think of something she wanted to do, a fun thing, a playful thing, and they were to discuss it as a viable option for the near future.
Charlotte had thought quite a bit about the idea and was actually considering adding something different in her life. A vacation or going back to school, something or someplace that would bring a spark into her life.
When Charlotte got to the office door, Marion waved her in without noticing her. The pastor walked beside her and sat down on the sofa.
“Just finishing up a note to myself,” she said, still focused on the pad of paper in her hand.
Charlotte didn’t speak.
Marion got up and moved around the desk. She did not look at Charlotte. Then she walked to where she normally sat. When she did finally see her client, now completely bald, Marion fell into her chair.
“Oh my God, you joined a cult!”
Charlotte laughed. She was starting to get used to the stares and odd comments because it had been a week since the women had shaved their heads.