No One Is Coming to Save Us

by Stephanie Powell Watts

  Frank had not come back home the next day. Jay’s birthday passed, the whole summer too, and Frank did not return. Jay kept the twenty in his pocket, money he never told another soul he had. He fingered the once crisp bill to cure boredom, for luck, whenever a stray thought about his father came to him, when he was at loose ends about what to do with his hands. Until one day, even after the hundredth search of his pocket, his room, his house, his pocket again, he had to admit the twenty-dollar bill was long and forever gone.

  28

  Ava walked into her house to the sound of the television in the other room. “Mama? Where are you?” she yelled.

  Sylvia was stretched out across the sofa. She had not bothered to get dressed. For good money she couldn’t have told you the last time she was still in pajamas at eleven o’clock in the morning. “Hey Mama nothing. What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sylvia rolled her eyes at Ava.

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Mama. I just want to sleep.”

  “Oh, you don’t? Well, that’s too damn bad. Where’s Henry? Are you pregnant? Are you laying up with another man while you’re pregnant? Is that the best you know?” Sylvia glanced at Ava’s stomach, flat as ever. “You’re supposed to be smart. This is trashy.”

  “Mama, calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Sylvia said. “Don’t tell me. I tell you.”

  “Look, Mama, I don’t know and I don’t care about Henry.” Ava pressed her temples. The headache would be coming on any minute. “I was at Jay’s. I’m not laying up with anybody. Don’t make it sound disgusting.”

  “Is that all you have to say to me?”

  “Mama don’t do this.”

  “No, I’m serious. That man doesn’t love you. You don’t love him. Can I say it plainer?” Sylvia fought the impulse to pull her own hair. “He’s another sad sack you can’t help. Listen to me, Ava, the hardest thing you’ll do is keep moving forward. Don’t keep looking back. What did that get you the first time? You think there’s nothing out there, but I guarantee you there’s nothing in the rearview.”

  Ava fought the urge to remind her mother about Don’s sporadic presence in their lives. Not today. “Mama, I’m not going to let you bother me. You know what? I’m happy. I haven’t felt good in a long time. I feel okay. I almost forgot how that feels. I don’t want you to think about me anymore.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? So you don’t need me, is that right?”

  “No, Mama, don’t get your feelings hurt. I’m sorry, you did a good job and I’m okay. I release you,” Ava said, throwing her arms in the air like she was blowing a kiss.

  “You release me? Am I supposed to go back to the wilderness now?”

  “I don’t know.” Ava closed her eyes.

  “You been sick, Ava?”

  “I’m fine, Mama.”

  “Sickness or not?”

  “I haven’t been sick. I’m going to sleep and then I’m going to Jay’s.”

  “So you don’t work anymore?”

  “I’m taking a couple of days. I really do know how to handle my business.” Ava tried not to sound as irritated as she felt. Her mother meant well. She wanted to help. Ava wanted her mother to know the happiness she deserved. But god knows if happiness wasn’t in her mother’s reach at least Ava’s own happiness could be a comfort. Maybe her mother would see that the same darkness that seemed to swallow the unlucky and follows you no matter where you are or what you do (different place, same sorrow) was not inevitable. At least not all the time. Though Sylvia was right about so much, this time she could be wrong, and life could hum on a different frequency and in a different speed. Finally, finally and once and for all, Sylvia could witness the miracle, the common magic you know is out there, but you have to see for yourself to believe.

  29

  Lana called the shop Hair-Apy, like therapy for hair, but the name was too strange and confusing, didn’t roll off the tongue. Lana hadn’t wanted the small town country twang of Lana’s as her business name, but nobody ended up calling the place anything but. The salon was in the middle of Pinewood’s nearly deserted main street beside what used to be a five and dime though no new stores, no twee boutiques or coffee houses had moved in. The only remaining businesses were a thrift store full of leftover garage sale junk on the sagging shelves, a vacuum cleaner repair shop that doubled as the owner’s home, and a few storefronts with blacked out windows, empty except at election time. In the coming years, the town hoped to lure tourists into staying a few hours, maybe even overnight on their way to the high country towns of Boone or Blowing Rock. There were plans for festivals, concerts and a whole slate of good feeling days that would distract from the empty parking lots at the furniture mills. Look a band! A parade! Move along folks, nothing to see over there.

  Lana was a good hairdresser, and she had a steady flow of clients—most of them older, since she refused to learn to crochet braid or any new weave technique. Let them go to Charlotte or Raleigh for all that, she said. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. She cared about her business and her customers and she’d done what she could to Oprahize, as in be like Oprah, to entice her clients into coming back. In the eighties she bought black lacquer mirrors and painted the salon walls a royal-looking purple with black trim. On every wall she’d hung posters she had framed of white women with flipping wings of hairdos, fuzzy feather duster head shots she was sure made the place look modern. The uptown feel would not be complete without soft music, a cart with crystal-seeming glasses and tea or wine (perhaps) and while you wait, might you be interested in a homemade mix tape? Doug E. Fresh, Michael Jackson, Frankie Beverly and Gladys Knight side by side at last, all for the bargain price of three dollars apiece. She’d even hired a palm reader, but some church people objected. Spiritism they said. The same people who looked for signs and portents in the flight of birds and put red pepper in their shoes before any long trip had the nerve to call her out. Lana didn’t care about church. She was done with that long ago, but she did care about money. In the nineties she’d amassed a lending library of black-authored books. She charged only a dollar per loan, but pretty soon her stock was low and she couldn’t fine, scold, or harass her customers for the missing books that she had bought secondhand herself. In recent years, she considered for a quick minute selling the Indian and Korean hair so many women used for their weaves and extensions. But she couldn’t and wouldn’t. The sight of those see-through plastic bags of hair, 100% human, the sticker boasted, sewn into a weft with the occasional gray hair in the black or brown track, reminded her that a real woman not yet old enough to gray more than a few fine strands had sold the hair off her head. The whole business, the whole idea of the business depressed the hell out of her. But like one of her customers told her, she had hair, she could afford to be depressed.

  Lana had not wanted the salon to be like the utilitarian, ugly places that looked more like a back of the grocery store more than a spa. She had had enough of spare, dark rooms that screamed ugly poverty and frugality from her childhood. She was done with absolute necessity and no beauty just to delight the eye. Her mother never had the time or energy to think about how their space looked. The poor must make do, that was to be expected, but Lana wanted the calm of spending time somewhere with aspirations, somewhere that wanted to be better. That meant no yelling, no cursing and no cheap food in her establishment. In some salons the women know the McDonald’s menu by heart and order their breakfasts and lunches by memory get me a number eight with no mustard. If Lana got her own Wendy’s or McDonald’s she ate it when the shop was empty and in the back office in a room no bigger than a broom closet.

  You might think that a place, a room, a house can’t save you, but don’t believe it. When people tell you that, they either don’t know better or don’t want you to know. In your own space that you arrange and brand with the yellow comb and brush set you set out for show, the soft off-white curtains you love to see billow out into the room, a spirit entering, the bathro
om paint you spend a weekend deciding on (Crescent Moon or Churned Butter?). These are not just things, of course not, but totems, a reckoning, a low level mathematical equation a young child could do that proved what you’ve amounted to, the sum of everything.

  The shop was closed on Mondays, but Lana spent the day cleaning and paying bills. But not tonight. All she had been able to manage that evening was staring into space into the dark void of Main Street. Lana heard a scraping and then a turning lock in the front door. She’d been so fixed on the void, she hadn’t even seen Sylvia approach. Lana heard Sylvia’s heavy steps coming down the hall and she almost called out to her. She could count on one hand how many times Sylvia had used the key she’d given her years ago.

  “You look so pretty sitting there in the window,” Sylvia said.

  “You need some sleep. My pretty days are gone. Sit down.” Lana pointed to the couch.

  Lana was not young and not young-looking, but she was changed, not in a twinkling though it felt that way at times. Some older women would not accept looking like the middle-aged and old women they were. Not Lana. She was not brave, but she had no idea how not to look old. Under no circumstances would she stiffen her face with surgery, and she sure as hell wasn’t doing the clowning of makeup some of her peers chose. It was no bargain to trade looking old for looking plastic like some ventriloquist’s dummy.

  Sylvia dropped into the sagging couch and put her feet on the glass-top table. A stack of hair magazines slid to the floor while both women watched.

  “What are you still doing here? You did the Perkins today?” Lana had started doing the hair for the old lady cousins a couple of years ago on her day off.

  “I’m gonna quit seeing them,” Lana said.

  “You’ve been saying that for years.”

  “I probably have, but it doesn’t take an hour to do both of them they’ve got that much hair,” Lana snapped her fingers, “and what they’ve got is like cotton candy. That’s going to be us in a few years.”

  “In a few years,” Sylvia smirked.

  “Let me have my delusions,” Lana said. “What brings you out at nighttime? Witchcraft?”

  “What kind of mind do you have?” Sylvia pursed her lips but she was amused. “I’m wasting time like usual.”

  “Bobby Womack died. Did you know that?”

  “That’s been awhile. I told you that when it happened. Where have you been?”

  “You might have told somebody but it wasn’t me. He was seventy. About your age. Many, many years older than me.” Lana nudged Sylvia on her shin, hoped to get a reaction out of her with the old joke. “A lot of black people are dying young. Famous ones, I mean.” Lana started counting on her fingers. “Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, Bernie Mac, Greg Hines.”

  “That hurt me. I loved Greg Hines,” Sylvia said.

  “Who didn’t? Rick James, Lou Rawls, Whitney Houston and her daughter, I forget her name. What was the little boy’s name? What you talking about Willis?”

  “I know who you mean.”

  “I don’t think he was much over forty.”

  “He was sick, Lana. He wasn’t supposed to live that long.”

  “He’s still dead ain’t he?”

  Sylvia sighed and rolled her eyes. She was glad she stopped to see Lana. She’d driven to Hickory to shop, not shop really just to look at a bunch of merchandise useless to her but calming for its order and sameness. Once she got to the mall, parked in a faraway place, watched a few people trek inside like into an ant colony, she’d lost the heart to go in herself. What the hell for?

  “You remember that boy the kids said died from break dancing?”

  Sylvia nodded. “I saw him on a show. Dancing with the Stars maybe. I guess he’s not dead.”

  “Not entirely,” Lana said. “Is Danny Glover dead?”

  “Why are you talking about this?”

  “I’m feeling cheerful today.” Lana picked up a bunch of dirty towels and tossed the heap into a hamper near the bathroom door. “I was really trying to find myself a pet on the Internet and saw one of BB King’s kids.”

  “Stay off the Internet, Lana. There’s nothing for us on it.”

  “Maybe not for you, but I’m living in the twenty-first century.”

  “I better not hear about you using that Twitter,” Sylvia said.

  “Look here.” Lana fumbled in her purse and held her phone out for Sylvia to see. “Puppies for You. So many cute ones.”

  “You and a pet? Don’t do that to a little creature.”

  “Ha. You know animals love me. I’m going to Hickory tomorrow and get me a dog to carry around.”

  “Say you’re joking.”

  “Who’s joking? Won’t I be cute?”

  “When did you start liking dogs?”

  “I never said I like them. I need something to keep me company at the shop.”

  “Well if anyone can get away with having one of those mutts, you can. But don’t bring him to my house. I hate those yappy things.”

  “I’m not getting a yappy dog. I want a German shepherd I can carry on my back.”

  Sylvia’s laughter came in a burst that even she didn’t expect. “I don’t know why I try to have a conversation with you.” Sylvia sighed, her first moment of real relaxation in days. She reached to the floor for a magazine. “Is this Beyoncé?” The woman on the cover was all but naked with her lips parted in a way men must find sexy, like they were about to say something but decided to keep it to themselves after all. She looked like a dummy mouth breather to Sylvia.

  “You know they’re not all Beyoncé don’t you?” Lana shook her head like Sylvia was beyond help.

  “She looks like her. What does that giant Afro mean? Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “They’re all doing it. I was in Walmart and some teenager says to me, ‘team natural.’ Team natural! I always have natural hair.” Lana laughed. “Kids think they invent everything. You know how much time and grease-relief it takes to get a natural hairdo.” Lana twisted her lips. “You can go on the Internet and find, I don’t know how many videos about the hundred steps you do to get your natural look. Well you can’t find it, but most people can.”

  Sylvia stood in front of one of the two shampoo bowls and raked through her hair with her fingers. “God I got old. Look at me.” Sylvia didn’t imagine herself a teenager or even fifty but she didn’t think of herself as an old lady usually. She wanted to ask some stranger how old she looked. As tempted as she was to find out she thought she wouldn’t survive the answer.

  “I’m not looking at you,” Lana said.

  “Why not? Am I that bad?”

  “No more than usual. But you get mad too quick. Here, make yourself useful, help me pack up this stuff up so we can get out of here.”

  Sylvia adjusted her chin-length bob back into a ponytail. She sucked her cheeks. “Everybody else says I look good.”

  “They don’t say young, do they?”

  Sylvia cut her eyes at Lana. “JJ thought Marcus was my boyfriend.”

  “Hmm.” Lana laughed. “I should just keep my mouth closed.”

  “I’ve got too much on my mind today. I feel like I’ve wasted my life.” Sylvia glanced up a Lana to gauge her reaction. She had not meant to say the exact thing she was thinking.

  “Well stand outside. The last think I need is bad juju.”

  “I can’t tell you nothing can I?” Sylvia snorted. “The Simmy’s light was still on when I rode through town. You going before they close?”

  “I haven’t been in that nasty place for fifteen years and I see no reason to end the streak.” Lana peered out the window. She had to crane her neck to see the lit sign. Years ago when Lana was young, she stood with her mother at the Simmy’s pick-up window. Even from their vantage point outside the building they could see the white diners inside, the cheap Formica-topped tables, the glint of silver napkin holders and ketchup bottles visible through the commerce in the kitchen. “Did somebody die, do you know?” Lan
a asked.

  “Who knows what the real story is. The kids don’t want to do it. Too much work. I don’t go in there anyway.” Sylvia couldn’t remember the last time she wanted to go into Simmy’s.

  “What do you care then?”

  “I don’t. I’m just making conversation. I don’t care,” Sylvia said, but she couldn’t put into words that she was glad to have outlasted the place. Not managing to die had become a triumph.

  “I sure as hell don’t. It looked like a fifties whore in there as worn and tacky.” Lana said.

  “A fifties whore? Do you even hear yourself?”

  “You know what I mean. Places today can’t look nasty, but back then we just made do. Reused everything. Somebody would hand you a chipped plate in a minute. Can you imagine if you went to a restaurant today and got a chipped anything?”

  “How did I get this started?”

  “You know I’m right,” Lana said. “But you know what? They don’t want me and I don’t want them. I know it was a long time ago, but I don’t go where I’m not wanted.”

  Sylvia laughed, “That doesn’t leave you many places does it?”

  “You know I’m right,” Lana chuckled.

  “I have to agree or die so I agree.”

  “Don’t be right, heifer. That’s up to you,” Lana said.

  “End of an era. But you know what they say? You can love a crippled mule if it stays around long enough.”

  “Nobody says that but you, Sylvia.”

  The past had started erasing behind Sylvia like in a cartoon. Her life as a girl; the lives of her parents; her son; all disappearing as if they had never been. Giving up the pain and exclusion and meant also losing years of her life. The trick was cutting out the bad like a tumor, hoping the nasty had not spread into the rest of your thinking. Cutting it out, but somehow managing to survive. Isn’t that always the trick? “Mama used to love Simmy’s. You remember that. She wanted one of those big burgers when she was dying, but I don’t think she took more than a bite or two. I’m the one had to go get it.” In a small town your dead mother haunts nearly every corner, turning up in a thousand places you don’t expect. At first she scared you, her face, her smell, a memory of her at the laundromat, at the post office. But soon you delighted in her presence. You remembered her kind moments and her happiness. But in time, as the years progressed you recalled her in the meat of her life, in her ordinary days, the ways she normally existed. You remembered her anger, every-ready, that she gripped like a lifeline. You remembered her ability to ignore you, her pleading child, ignore you and your pain completely.