“Mmm mmm mmm.” Hannah watched Chandra climb into her car and drive away. “You do know how to pick them, Noel.”
“We don’t get a choice.”
“The Orangutan Lady was better.” Lance shut the door behind my friend, and with her inside, he set the door alarm and fastened the latch so William would have a harder time getting out. We had learned the doors and windows were all we needed to keep armed to prevent Will from leaving without our knowledge. Although Will hadn’t met a lock he couldn’t pick, we still got plenty of warning to stop him when he periodically decided to explore.
“How’d you get this one, instead?” Hannah asked.
Lance and I both shrugged. “Beats me,” I said. “We saw her the other day when Will vanished.”
“Merry resigned,” Lance explained. “Ann said something about her health.”
The image of her sallow face back when we lost Will flashed into my mind. “I hope it’s not serious.” I felt a rush of guilt for all my nasty thoughts about the woman.
“It sounds serious,” said Hannah. “I’ll make sure I key this one’s car next time she shows up in my shop looking for those neckerchiefs she keeps tucked in her front.”
“You will not!”
“But if you do, call me up so I can see!” said Natasha, rejoining us.
“What was the deal with the spider?” I asked her.
“She got assigned to me when Jane was out on maternity leave. Gran and Granddad had a couple of run-ins with her. We all called her the Iron Lady. She’s got a real thing about cleanliness and bugs. I figured she didn’t need to know we store food on the ceiling around here. And I wanted to creep her out with the spider.”
Hannah snickered. “All right,” she said. “I hear there’s a young lady here who wants twists.”
Sara, who had seemed to be playing her game, completely oblivious to us, leapt up to stand on the couch. “Yes!”
“Did you get the supplies, Noel?”
“Everything on your list.” And it had certainly cost a pretty sum. Among the many things I hadn’t anticipated when adopting our children was the significant difference in their hair texture.
Natalie hadn’t saved me from myself there; Hannah had. All Natalie had advised was “Their hair’s dry. You wash it every day, and you’ll give them a good case of dandruff. Once a week is plenty. Less maybe.” I liked this solution because the twins hated showers and only enjoyed baths when nothing got dumped on them from above and they weren’t required to lie back and dunk themselves. Natalie had given us scalp moisturizers and instructions on their importance, but she’d never had time to style the twins’ hair herself, especially since neither of them could hold still for more than a few minutes, and both hated to have their hair pulled. I had already discovered the only way to get soap in or out of their hair was to brush it in and out again, but the process was long and tedious; they were a pair of tender-scalps.
When Hannah met them, with their unruly mops and hopeless tangles, she said, “No, honey. No. You are not even going to start out this way. You leave their hair wild much longer, and people will start thinking you don’t love your kids. You need to cut his short if he won’t let you style it, and she needs braids.”
“Why would people think I didn’t love my kids because they have curly hair?”
“White people might not notice,” she said, “but the black ones sure will. Hair matters to us, and you need to learn how to do it up front.”
But William ran screaming at the mere mention of clippers, and Sara clamped her hands over her head and put on her most stubborn expression when Hannah told her about braids. Here, I thought, was one of those situations my sister had mentioned, where I was going to have to carve my own path instead of letting someone else parent for me. Hannah, who kept her own hair braided tight against her scalp and wore extensions down her back, might know about black hair and culture, but she didn’t know squat about autism.
“Fine,” I told her. “You convince them it needs doing, and we’ll get it done. But I’ll tell you up front their uncle shaved Will nearly bald right before he gave up custody, and he left the kid’s scalp all nicked up. He’d barely started letting Natalie comb it without a fight when we came along.”
“Okay. Then we start with Sara.”
Hannah was patient, coming over to sit on the couch and pretending to browse a hair magazine several Saturdays in a row. It showed a variety of different braids. It bothered her to know I was putting my little girl on the bus every morning with wild hair. Sara didn’t say anything about the magazine, but I saw her darting glances at it from time to time while Hannah ostentatiously thumbed through it.
Then, one day, Hannah “forgot” the magazine, and Sara picked it up for herself in my friend’s absence. She turned the pages thoughtfully, touching each one as if the smooth paper might hold a texture she could stroke. At bedtime, she announced without any segue, “See, here’s the thing. I know what you guys are up to in there.” I couldn’t tell what she meant or if she was echoing. It sounded like she might have been repeating some past scolding she had received. “But I guess it’s okay if you don’t pull.” Then, she trotted out, retrieved the magazine, and informed me, “I want this one.” By a miracle, it looked like something simple, something I might be able to master without paying to have it done weekly by someone else.
“Braids, braids, braids,” she chanted now.
“It’s a twist,” Hannah said, as Sara jumped on the couch and squealed.
“How come you know so much about hair?” the little girl asked.
“I learned on my little sister and kept up my skills on her kids.”
“You know how to do it without pulling?”
“Scout’s honor.”
How was Sara to know Hannah and I dropped out of scouts together as kids? Still, Hannah didn’t pull, and she showed me how to hold the hair in one hand and comb with the other, so I was never yanking on Sara’s scalp as I detangled, a process she had hitherto resisted, and how to part and twist the hair.
The only hitch came when William plopped down beside his sister on the couch and proclaimed, “William’s turn is next, and next is now.”
Though I had grown accustomed to watching him out of the corner of my eye, and I had a rather close eye on him this morning after the pudding adventure, I had not noticed he was flipping through the catalog, rather than playing trucks on the floor by Sara’s feet. “Those are cornrows, buddy,” said Hannah. “Those are going to take longer than twists.” Longer? We were only halfway through Sara’s head, and it had already been two hours.
Lance popped in on his way out to the center. He had finally returned the rhesus enclosure to the volunteer who was normally responsible for it, but we both still liked it best if one of us could be around to make things flow during the day and be sure the locks clicked at night. Chuck might later break himself out and undo all our hard work, but it was comforting to know we’d done everything in our power to prevent him. “You need anything before I go?” he asked.
“Nope. But remember I’m doing the poetry thing with Tasha tonight, so you need to be home right after you close things down.” After he had gone, I said, “There is no way I can learn to do cornrows.”
“Of course you can.”
“Hannah, this two-twist thing . . .”
“Isn’t as simple as you thought it was going to be, right? You’ll get the hang of it.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Listen, Noel. When I moved out for college, I was within a deuce of never coming back. You want to know what I hated worst about being the only black family in town?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “It was having to go to school with white hair. We straightened, chemicalled, and otherwise destroyed my head so I could fit in with every other kid. I came back when I realized Ironweed U had finally started bringing us some real diversity, and I could be part of a real black community in the town where I grew up. Now I am not, and I mean not, going to sit
here while my best friend adopts a couple of biracial kids and let her act like they’ve got white hair when they don’t.”
“Cornrows,” said William. “Grow some cornrows!”
“Okay. Cornrows, then.” Pick your battles.
“It’s a name for a type of braid, not a food,” Hannah warned.
William flapped and squealed, “Grow some eating cornrows!”
Understanding clicked into place. I placed a quick call to Lance. “Honey, pick up some frozen corn on the way home. I think we may have found another vegetable William will eat.” Unless he had to have it on the cob. Then, he’d probably have to wait until next summer, when his permanent teeth filled in the gap at the front of his mouth.
“You finish up over there with her, and I’ll get him started,” Hannah instructed, though thanks to Sara’s squirminess and my general ineptitude, she wound up doing his whole head.
Of course, Sara couldn’t sit still for an instant, even when Natasha came through taunting, “I got my mother’s hair; it’s so much easier to style,” and popped a nice safe cartoon into the DVD player.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t look half so pretty,” Hannah shot back. She and Tasha had developed a teasing relationship both of them seemed to enjoy. I worried one day one of them would launch a barb the other couldn’t laugh off, but so far, my fears had been unfounded. “Now if you can do two things at once, Noel, keep twisting and watch what I’m doing over here. See, I part the hair and detangle it. His hair is thinner than hers, by the way.”
“I noticed when I was washing it. It looks like it’s thick because it’s so curly.”
“It means this won’t take as long as doing the same thing on Sara might.” She seemed unperturbed by the way Will kept rocking while she worked. “See, watch. I start at the front, and then it’s nothing more than a tiny French braid.” Great. A tiny French braid. Maybe she can teach it to Margie and Margie can come down from Cleveland once a week to do her nephew’s hair.
“How often does it need fixing?”
“Depends on the kid. Usually about once a month. With them, I’d say wait maybe three weeks, then fix a little each night.”
“Could be worse.”
We worked side by side, taking breaks as the children demanded it. Finally, she said, “All right, Señor Wigglebutt, you’re duded out.”
William hooted laughter. “Wigglebutt. Wigglegut.” He cackled. Thanks, Hannah.
Then she turned to Sarah to help me finish the twists that should have been the easier job. Nonetheless, by the time Lance got home, and I threw my purse over my shoulder, we had two well-groomed children.
“You ready, Tasha?” I called. We had a little extra time tonight, since I wouldn’t be dropping her off to ride with friends, but would be taking her myself. But I didn’t want to be hunting for this place after dark, and I wanted to know what kind of place she thought she could pass off as a poetry bash to invite me so easily.
“On my way.” Make it three well-groomed children. Natasha, who normally let her dark hair hang loose around her shoulders, had pulled it back in two braids along either side of her head that met in a glossy ponytail. “Let me borrow your phone.” She rooted in my purse before I could grant or deny permission, then she took a selfie with the twins. Ha, she texted Hannah. I’ll show you half so pretty.
Sara darted back to the living room and her video game as soon as she’d seen the picture. But William took Natasha’s hand and led her to the door like a boy headed out on a date. “Natasha,” he said, “is ready to grow duded cornrows with William.”
I met Natasha’s eyes over his head, and I could read her frustration. She wanted to get going. She wanted me to come. She wanted family around her. But she didn’t want Will there causing disruption.
“William,” I said, “We aren’t growing cornrows. We’re . . . reading poetry.” He didn’t move.
Natasha gave it a shot. “We’re pretty . . . stark,” she said.
William still didn’t move.
“Boring,” I suggested.
He crossed his arms.
“I had to get special permission from the group for Noel to come, Bud,” she tried. “I didn’t ask them about any little brothers.”
Neither cajoling nor bribery could coax William from her side. Ultimately, it came down to a question of whether this was worth a meltdown, and we left that answer up to Natasha. Finally, she said, “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I grabbed the headphones he often wore to cancel out noise and a handheld electronic game before we left.
Hannah texted back. I didn’t bother to read it, but passed over the phone to my foster daughter as we got in the minivan. (We had hoped to take the convertible.) Natasha snorted. “She says, ‘Pretty is as pretty does.’ ”
Leave it to Hannah to get the last word in with a teen.
CHAPTER 19
Dear Nora:
My life is a torn page.
Ripped
Dear Ripped:
I suggest tape.
Nora
As I had suspected she would, Natasha directed me to a place on campus. Not a bar, where I would have called foul on the whole operation, but to the large central building housing the college bookstore, a food court, and half a dozen conference-style classrooms. I was a little worried when she led us around back, because there was a student pub in the basement, Ironweed having dodged the “dry campus” trend by banning all fraternities and sororities instead. But our destination turned out to be the closed bookstore.
When Natasha knocked on the employee entrance, the door opened immediately, and we joined a group of teens at a series of beanbags and folding chairs arranged around a microphone. It was Tasha’s therapy group, convened in a location other than the rather sterile psych building. It made sense now. This was the closest thing the group could get to a social setting without going off campus, and yes, these were kids who might well do poetry.
Technically, this psychologist was a graduate student who worked under the supervision of a licensed professional, and it gave Tasha access to some of the newest therapy techniques available. It helped dramatically with her anxiety. Plus, it was how she had connected so quickly with others her age after June left her in such a bad position.
The therapist welcomed the visitors (William and me) and explained the rules, largely for our benefit. These were high school students using poetry and storytelling to exorcise their strongest demons. The emphasis was not on factuality, but on emotional depth. Everything shared was private and not to be repeated elsewhere. I wondered how it would play out with William’s echolalia but nodded my agreement so they could begin.
The students went around the circle sharing painful stories of abuse and mental illness. There was poetry of the teen angst variety, only these teens had more cause for anguish than some of their other age peers. The poems followed a similar pattern, with a lot of rhyming and verb–noun juxtaposition. I’ve never been much for poems and stories, so I concentrated on the words’ importance to avoid seeming bored.
When Natasha’s turn came, she dug a piece of paper out of my purse. Most of the poems had been presented from memory, but a few of the teens, especially the storytellers, read from pre-prepared manuscripts. Natasha held her paper up in front of her face and picked up the microphone. Generally, this had been an unnecessary addition, as the circle was small, and most of us could hear the central speaker well.
But Tasha was soft-spoken, unusually so as she began to read.
“Soulful Eyes”
Soulful eyes
Let them say what
they will they know not your heart
Strong arms are a safe haven
from an emotionally troubling world
Your soulful eyes breathe life into me
when I look at you, I see a savior
one that thought more of me than I did of myself
Capture this breath with the wind
and toss it back to me with your carefree smile
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Dance with a devil-may-care freedom
It matters not that they do not understand
The world fades into melodic blur when you take my hand
Walk with me down this path
My “person of the forest”
By the time she sat back down beside me on the uncomfortable beanbag chair where William roosted in my lap, her whole body was shaking.
“Are you all right, Natasha?” the psychologist asked.
Some of the students had explained their stories afterward and gotten ideas and coping strategies from the group and its leader. “Yeah. I’m okay. I’ll be fine. I don’t want to talk about it, though.” Tasha leaned into me, and for the first time ever let me wrap an arm around her and rub warmth back into her shoulders. “Thanks for being my friend,” she all but whispered.
“Thank you for being mine.”
William wiggled over into her lap. He had been listening raptly the whole time, rocking gently. Unlike me, he hadn’t needed to force interest in everyone else’s words. I doubted he could have done so. At the end of the session, the psychologist joined us. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked Natasha.
“I’m good. I’m . . .”
The microphone gave a squelch of feedback and the stand crashed. “It is William’s turn next,” a small voice informed us, “and next is now.”
“I’m so sorry.” In the seconds we had been speaking, William had scurried into the center of the ring and captured the mic, which the last speaker had left turned on.
The exiting people stopped and turned around to look at the tiny six-year-old and his cornrows. I was suddenly grateful for Hannah’s braids. Even as oblivious as I could be about appearances, I knew I would have felt even more self-conscious if he had looked in the least bedraggled under so many gazes.
“It’s fine,” the psychologist assured me. “He isn’t hurting a thing.” To William, he offered the same introduction he had given to the other members of the group. “What would you like to share?”
The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) Page 18