The Wisdom of Hair

by Kim Boykin

  She let out a little whimper and ran into the house. I didn’t go after her. I got into the truck as Miss Cunningham closed the door behind me. She smiled and pressed her hand against the glass before she walked around and got into the driver’s seat. In the quiet, as we started down the mountain, I wondered if she knew what it was like to leave home without the blessing she wanted and needed. I wondered if she thought I was stupid for helping Mama be so weak and dependent.

  As we neared the place halfway down the mountain where Daddy and Nana were laid to rest, I felt a hitch in my belly that bubbled up from my heart. It settled in my throat, quivering, pulsing hard. If I’d started crying, I would have never left.

  “Zorie, did you want to stop and say good-bye?” It’s bad luck to point at a graveyard, but Miss Cunningham didn’t know any better.

  I rubbed the acorn in my pocket for good luck, once for her and once for me, and shook my head. Leaving was not as easy as I had pictured it. I blinked back tears and sifted through her cassettes until I found the Stones’ cassette tape, Emotional Rescue. I cranked it up and hoped Mick Jagger’s noise would distract me from thoughts of my loved ones and what I was doing to Mama.

  “Do you think I’m bad, leaving her like this?”

  Miss Cunningham turned down the volume and looked at me long enough to make me nervous before she fixed her eyes back on the winding blacktop.

  “You’ve looked out for your mom for a long time.”

  “She doesn’t look crazy, does she?”

  “No, but from what you’ve told me she’s not the kind of crazy you can just pop a pill and be okay.”

  “She was bad after my daddy died, and awful after Nana passed last year.”

  “Where does the Judy Garland thing come from?”

  Miss Cunningham let the silence fall between us the way she did in class when she knew one of her students knew the answer to her question. But what my daddy told me about Mama’s obsession couldn’t have been right.

  He said she was sad after I was born, but it wasn’t my fault. Some women just get that way. He borrowed his brother’s truck and drove almost forty miles to Asheville so she could see The Wizard of Oz at the drive-in. At the time, they didn’t have a TV set and neither of them had ever seen a movie before. So just the idea of going made her perk up a little bit.

  Daddy said the minute Judy Garland filled up the screen, he felt a change in Mama, like the moment Dorothy opened the door in her black-and-white world and there was Oz in living color. He said Mama was happy again and whatever came with that was fine by him. The only problem was Mama didn’t stay sweet and innocent like Dorothy Gale, she latched onto Judy Garland herself, and after Daddy died, she lived the Appalachian version of the tragic star’s life to a T.

  “I’m sorry, Zora. You don’t have to answer that.”

  “I really don’t know why Mama’s that way; she can’t sing a lick. Can’t afford the pills, but she drinks like Judy, has the same luck with men.”

  The way I said it made Miss Cunningham laugh, which was good because if she’d been quiet much longer I would have told her the truth. Mama’s craziness was my fault.

  Near Jocassee Gorge, we passed a scenic overlook I’d gone by a thousand times and hardly noticed. The mountains looked like a giant green goblet filled above the rim with blue sky and foamy clouds. Part of me ached to turn around and stay because I never loved them the way I should have. But they were always beautiful and wild and too much like Mama.

  “People like your mom don’t change, Zorie.”

  “And you’re not mad at me for going to beauty school?”

  “Stop. You’re doing what’s right for you, and that’s enough for me.”

  Miss Cunningham had gone to some high-dollar college up north and had come to the mountain to teach girls like me high-school English and save us from ourselves. I remember she looked shocked, almost hurt when I told her I wasn’t going to college. But how could I tell her about the last straw that sent me to her classroom before the bell rang?

  So I told her I couldn’t afford college. She wouldn’t hear of that; I was smart, she’d said, and had a real chance to make something of myself. I just told her I needed to get away from Mama and be self-supporting as soon as possible and hoped she would understand. I knew she wanted to ask why, but I wouldn’t have been able to put one word in front of the other. The image of coming home to find Mama wrapped around the boy I liked was still too raw.

  But even that only made me talk about leaving. As bad as it was on my birthday when Mama walked through the door with Bob, looking back, he was the best present she could have given me.

  We were almost out of the mountains, and I hadn’t seen the first bluebird. I should have been nervous, but the truck was headed toward the Carolina coast. I had a government check in my pocket to pay for my schooling, and Miss Cunningham had found me a place to live for free until I got on my feet. I didn’t need a bluebird to be happy. I tossed the acorn out the window and cranked the music up again.

  Miss Cunningham smiled and nodded. She beat on the steering wheel in time to the music and belted out the lyrics, drawing out the words in that funny way Mick Jagger does. At least he has a way about his singing, even with that ugly face, that comes across as sexy. Between Miss Cunningham’s thick New York accent and being tone deaf, she was just plain awful.

  The closer we got to the coast, the flatter the land became. Without the mountains to compete with it, the cloudless sky seemed bigger, bluer. There wasn’t a white pine or a scarlet oak in sight, but the palm trees were a real wonder. Even the air was different. Thick, almost musty, but pleasant. Dozens of billboards coaxed people to Myrtle Beach with advertisements for free nights at motels, restaurants where kids eat free, and a gift shop called the Gay Dolphin.

  My heart beat like a record album played too fast. I wasn’t pushing the river anymore, wasn’t trying to save someone who didn’t want to be saved, and it felt good. By the time we reached Davenport, the blanket of sadness I’d worn down the mountain left me, and I was excited about starting a new life.

  Back home we didn’t have a car, but in Davenport, it seemed everybody had two or three and drove them all at once. The town’s main drag had its fair share of junk shops full of five-dollar T-shirts and outlet-quality beach towels, whatever those were. Liquor stores and party shops advertised their wares with huge black and yellow signs. Marquees on bars seemed to taunt the thirty-one flavors of churches on every street corner with promises of Drink and Drown night and wet T-shirt contests.

  Miss Cunningham looked at me and smiled as we turned into the driveway of a neat old Victorian house with friendly gables and fancy white gingerbread. It looked like the kind of house you’d see in storybooks or on TV where the mothers lived for their children and baked cookies all day long.

  “This is it, Zorie, your new home.” She nodded toward the apartment over the stand-alone garage as we got out of the truck.

  My legs acted like they’d forgotten how to walk on land with no pitch to it, so I stayed put while she knocked on the back door of the gingerbread house. When there was no answer, she tipped a clay pot full of sad-looking geraniums just enough to pull out a little brass key. For a second I was puzzled. Back home, folks didn’t lock their doors, but the sight of that key dangling in front of me made my heart race and we sprinted up the stairs over the garage.

  Both of us squealed and rushed into the main room. I spun around and plopped down on my very own couch while Miss Cunningham walked around the place checking things out. She pointed out the stain on the kitchen floor and how the threadbare couch should be the first thing to go. I nodded like I was taking notes in my head on how to make the apartment livable and pretended the apartment didn’t make my homeplace look shabby.

  “Oh, there’s Winston now.”

  She pointed to a man in jeans and a faded blue shirt. He didn’t seem to notice the truck sitting in his drive because he walked with his head down, like he was reading a
book, but he wasn’t.

  “Winston.” She grabbed my hand and we started back down the stairs.

  He turned around to face us. The first time I saw a picture of Robert Redford, I gasped out loud because I never knew a man could look that good. When I looked at Winston Sawyer, I gasped on the inside and probably would have gotten down on my knees and worshiped him if my teacher hadn’t been there.

  He was beautiful, tall with broad shoulders. And that hair, thick and brown, long and dark, pulled back in a ponytail so that I could see his eyes. Sad blue eyes that would haunt me forever. At first I thought it was Winston’s looks that charmed me so, but it was his own blanket of sadness—one that matched my own—that drew me to him.

  “Hi, Lizzy.” He smiled at Miss Cunningham like he had forgotten how.

  I don’t think she noticed he went rigid when she hugged him. She was too busy going on about people they’d gone to college with. When he didn’t say much, she asked how his parents were and if he liked his job teaching freshman English at the junior college any better. His answers were short and didn’t leave any room for discussion. Miss Cunningham, being like she is, tried even harder to draw him out. And I was beginning to feel invisible.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I’m terrible about introductions. Winston Sawyer, this is Zora Adams.”

  He let out a tired sigh and kept glancing at his wristwatch and then at his kitchen door. Finally, Miss Cunningham quit the small talk and went over the arrangement. I would cook dinner for Winston, and in return, I could stay in the garage apartment.

  “You really don’t have to do that.” He talked to me but was looking toward the house.

  “But I want to.” I didn’t think it was possible to sound even more desperate for him than I was.

  A breeze kicked up, stirring the air between us. A piece of hair that was too short for his ponytail blew across his face. I imagined tucking it behind his ear. A jolt of electricity flashed through my center, and I could feel my face blushing hard.

  “Okay, then. Here’s some money for groceries. I get home around six; you can just leave the plate on the picnic table by the porch.”

  I nodded, thinking that if I could just find the right words to say, he would suddenly see me, all young and beautiful, and invite me into the gingerbread house to live happily ever after. Before I could get up the nerve, he excused himself and disappeared through the back door he’d been eyeing since Miss Cunningham introduced us.

  While we unpacked, she reminded me at least ten times to look in on Winston.

  “Cook for him, even if he tells you not to. And he loves lasagna but hates cheese.”

  I was too busy wondering how Miss Cunningham knew so much about Winston to worry about finding a recipe for cheese hater’s lasagna.

  “We lived together in college, but I was totally wrong for him. Not Emma. I remember when they met, they weren’t aware of anything except each other.”

  I plopped down on the bed beside Miss Cunningham, wishing she’d noticed that same kind of reaction when Winston shook hands with me.

  “What happened to her?”

  “It was raining hard; there was a truck stalled on the highway. She didn’t see it. She died instantly.”

  Died. Instantly. That’s what the police had said about my daddy, like that was a comfort.

  “At one time, I thought he might—” She looked at me and then fingered one of the baby blue nubs on the chenille bedspread. “Let’s just say he was really depressed for about a year. But he’s better now.”

  Her words planted a seed of hope in my heart, but my head knew the truth. When someone you love is snatched away from you the way his wife was from him, the way my daddy was from me, you never get over it.

  “He still hasn’t let anyone in the house. His only rule, and he was adamant.” She kissed me on the forehead and held me close. “It’s getting late. I have to go.”

  I nodded and promised myself I wouldn’t cry.

  “Do you have enough money?”

  In my lifetime, there had never been enough money, so I was good at making do with next to nothing. I had a little over three hundred dollars to last me six months, a government grant for school, and Nana’s ruby brooch I’d die before I pawned.

  “Yes,” I said. She raised her teacher eyebrows. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I love you, Zorie. I hope you know that.” She hugged me. Her smell was different from Mama’s, faint, like store-bought perfume and lemons.

  After she drove away I noticed a light on in the old Victorian house. The curtains were open in Winston’s living room; he was sitting in an overstuffed chair with a glass in his hand. He tipped it up, stood, and went to a small table with several crystal bottles. He poured a drink, sat back down; a few minutes later, he was studying the bottom of the empty glass.

  As much as I loved my daddy, I knew early on he was a funny, sweet drunk, but he was still a drunk. I remembered the feeling of his scruffy face on mine and the sweet smell of sour mash bourbon on his breath when he kissed me good night. I was sure all really good daddies were just like him.

  I never asked him why he drank, and I didn’t have to ask Winston to know why he did. I felt his pain all the way across the courtyard; his sadness rippled in the faint breeze that stirred the thick night air. I knew by the way he moved across the room that it wouldn’t be long before he passed out. Somehow that didn’t bother me the way it had when I’d helped Mama off of the bathroom floor or when Daddy had been resting his eyes for too long.

  Winston took one long last look out the window. But not up at me. Even drunk, he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

  3

  I woke up that next morning with Winston Sawyer on my mind and started cleaning. I wiped down the countertops and cabinets good. The steamy water full of pine cleaner cleared my head but had a tough time cutting through years of greasy dirt on the hood over the little stovetop. I flicked the switch on the fan back and forth to see if it worked, but it didn’t. Then I heard his car door open. He started the engine up.

  I used an old cloth with some scouring powder I found under the sink. The thought of Winston with his hands on that steering wheel made me scrub around the burners so hard that a little piece of enamel about the size of a quarter rubbed off. I stood there fingering the spot, while his engine revved louder. When I peeked out the window, he was raising the hood. I went over to the stove one more time and wiped it down again like I was minding my own business. Then I pulled some old pots out from the little drawer under the stove to keep busy.

  I tried hard not to think of him bent over that little black sports car, with tools in his hands that would make it do what he wanted. God, I wished I’d had some sense and a little piece of steel wool that day. Maybe things would have been different.

  I took a swig of sweet tea out of a glass I’d brought from home, marched myself into the bathroom, and scrubbed the toilet twice. The old tub was a sight with I-don’t-know-what stuck in the drain: hair, dead bugs, dust, and dirt. A bunch of old Glamour magazines were stuffed in a basket; one was opened to the “Dos and Don’ts” page. I flipped through the May issue from four years ago and tried to twist my hair up like the model’s on page fifty-three, but it didn’t look good.

  I took an armload of those magazines into the living room and arranged them on the coffee table by the couch before I started on the tub. After a while, the bathroom looked nice, except the floor looked like the toilet had overflowed at one time. A piece of the linoleum was torn off, and there were wavy lines in the exposed plywood. I got down on my hands and knees to see if it was as bad as it looked, thinking maybe I could find a little secondhand chenille rug to cover it up, maybe a blue one to match the walls that looked like they might once have been the color of robins’ eggs.

  It was hot for early June. Between cleaning and getting myself all revved up over Winston, I was tired. I turned my face in the direction of the box fan wedged in the bedroom window, and closed my eyes. The bree
ze blew across my face and ruffled about under my shirt.

  When I opened my eyes, I noticed a box hidden under the bed. It wasn’t a pasteboard box like you might store winter clothes in when you were sure spring had finally arrived. It was crimson with fancy gold letters across the top that were slick to the touch.

  I don’t know how I knew it was Winston’s wife’s, I just did. I also knew it wasn’t right to even think about looking inside, but I couldn’t help myself. So I closed my front door that was propped open to air out the musty old place and pulled down the shade on my solitary window before curiosity killed me.

  The box was from a little shop in town called Serendipity. There was a layer of dust on the top of it, and not thinking that I’d just spent all morning cleaning, I blew the dust into the air. My nose stung like someone had swatted me. I sneezed twice and got on with my plundering.

  The box opened easily, like Pandora’s must have. The receipt was on top of the prettiest dress I have ever seen. I have to say I felt guilty going through a dead woman’s things, but that didn’t stop me from taking the dress into the bathroom and locking the door. I’d never touched silk before that day. I drew it up to slide my arms in and let the slippery fabric ripple over my body. The dress was the color of the sky at sunset, a perfect fit that felt like a whisper across my body.

  I looked in the tiny medicine chest mirror, but not in the primpy sort of way I had earlier. It was more like the fearful expressions of those bwanas in the old Tarzan movies when the jungle drums suddenly stopped beating. I took that dress off, wadded it up in a ball, and sat on the toilet in my underwear.

  After a while, I folded the dress up and put everything back the way I found it. The receipt had fallen into the bottom of the box. $194.56. Even today that would be a lot of money to pay for a dress, but in 1982 it was a fortune. Before I was done cleaning, I found several more boxes from other stores, all full of pretty things Emma had bought and squirreled away for herself.