The Wisdom of Hair

by Kim Boykin

  “You have nice hair, Mrs. Brown.”

  “Thank you, Zora. I try to keep it up, and my daughter helps me sometimes. You know, I worked at the governor’s mansion for thirty-three years. You had to look real neat every day.”

  “The governor’s mansion.” Mrs. Brown had Clara’s full attention.

  “Down in Columbia, but my daughter lives here in Davenport. She’s the only black female lawyer in town. I’m so proud of her. You know she brought me here so she could keep an eye on me. I’m telling you, this place costs her a fortune, but she says it’s worth it all to be near me. And I’m so glad to be near my grandchildren.”

  Clara rolled the first lock of hair on pink sponge rollers. “Did you ever see anybody famous at the mansion?”

  “I saw Jimmy Carter. Got my picture taken with him. It’s in my room. Would you like to see it?”

  “No, I mean somebody really famous.”

  Mrs. Brown looked at Clara, but she was the kind of lady who wouldn’t chastise anybody, no matter how rude or ignorant they were. I guess she got a lot of practice with that at the governor’s mansion.

  Clara seemed to have lost her fear of Pensacola Brown’s hair, so I went over to check on Ethyl. She was sleeping hard with her head leaned against the front of the hood and her mouth wide open, snoring above the roar of the dryer.

  Sara Jane came over with two cold Coca-Colas. “For God’s sake, don’t wake her up.”

  “You heard?”

  “Most of it. She’s a stitch.”

  Clara strolled over, popping her gum with the most satisfied look on her face. “I can’t believe I’m the one who got the colored woman. Didn’t think I could touch her hair, but I did it. It’s so soft. Not at all like I thought it would be. And no head lice…”

  “Clara.”

  “Zora, my mama told me their hair is just like a Brillo pad, and that they all have head lice. Right before I touched it, and you made me do it, Zora, you know you did, I thought I was going to die. But it wasn’t so bad.”

  “Hair is hair.” When Sara Jane Farquhar made a statement like that, people like Clara just shut up altogether.

  “Are you gonna leave me here the whole damn day? I got a date, you know. Good God, I can’t see Raymond looking like this.” Ethyl started pulling the curlers out of her hair.

  I rushed over to her and carefully unwrapped the rest of them. “I’ll have you ready for your date in no time, Mrs. Ethyl.”

  Her hair was thinning badly on top so I teased it a little and smoothed it over the nearly bald spot. I thought her hair looked nice. After I sprayed it good, I handed her a mirror.

  “I don’t know why I bother with you bunch of know-nothings.” She ripped off the cape and slammed the mirror down on the table. “Looks like hell.” She hoisted herself up and stormed out of the room.

  “It’s a circus.” Mrs. Cathcart patted me on the shoulder. “With its own wild creatures and funny smells. But we do it for the Lord, Zora.”

  I wasn’t upset. After meeting Ethyl, I didn’t think she was the kind to rave over her hairdo anyway, but the rest of those old souls seemed really grateful. They hugged the girls and carried on so about hair that looked like beginners did it, except for Sara Jane’s lady, who looked like she’d stepped out of the senior edition of Vogue magazine.

  Even by mountain standards, the beauty-school clientele wasn’t high class; haircuts were only three dollars. Customers were allowed to tip, but hardly anybody did. Sometimes customers came in drunk or high. One lady even came in to escape the locusts that she imagined were everywhere. But after two or three trips to the nursing home, nobody ever complained about the customers that walked in off the street.

  7

  Love is a strange bird, lighting wherever it pleases, sometimes like a skittish little wren, sometimes like a bold red-tailed hawk. Winston’s love must have been like one of those Canadian geese that choose to wander the world alone after they lose their mate. My feelings for him were more of the wren variety, stealing glimpses of him through lace curtains. Trying to say “I love you” with pot roast alongside creamed potatoes and scratch biscuits, instead of simple words.

  I remember the day that red-tailed hawk swooped down and ensnared Sara Jane’s heart. She’d had lots of experience with men, but I don’t think she’d ever really been in love before. She dated a lot, but no one could ever measure up to the heroes she swooned over, guys with names like Lance and Derrick who lived between the pages of dime-store romances.

  She was completely unaware when Jimmy Alvarez drove into the yard where we were lying in the sun. I glanced up and saw him get out of his truck. He was the complete opposite of Winston—short, muscular, sun-darkened skin. He rolled the lawn mower off the back of the truck, nodded politely my way but didn’t smile. When he yanked the pull cord, the mower started right up and that was when Sara Jane rolled over to see where the commotion was coming from.

  “Who is he?” She watched Jimmy push the mower around the corner of the house.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before, but I did hear one of the neighbors say something to Winston about the yard last week, said it was an eyesore. I guess he’s hired somebody to cut the grass.”

  “Somebody?”

  “Well, I guess he’s the yardman, Sara Jane.” I rolled over onto my stomach. “Rub some oil on me, please, and don’t forget to shake it up this time.”

  As the warm baby oil and iodine oozed down my back, I turned my face away from the sun and got a good look at Sara Jane, who wasn’t paying one bit of attention to what she was doing.

  “Watch out, Sara Jane. You’re getting that stuff on my straps.” She didn’t say one word when I fussed at her; she just sat there and waited for a glimpse of that boy whenever he turned his mower around at the side of the yard. “My God, Sara Jane, you act like you’ve never seen a yardman before.”

  I’d only been out of the mountains for a few weeks where I grant you nobody had a yardman, and I was already jaded. I would have been mortified if Sara Jane could have seen my shabby life back home; I was living in a better place now, surrounded by good people. I let out a deep sigh and whispered the words so low I don’t think Sara Jane heard me.

  “I’m never going back.”

  The smell of fresh-cut grass mingled in the air with baby oil and the beach music that was playing on the radio. There was just enough of a breeze to make the hot sun feel delicious, like the very first time it’s warm enough to lie out in early spring. Sara Jane had brought over a big Thermos jug full of sangria she made from a recipe a friend of hers got from his high-school Spanish teacher, only the teacher substituted sparkling grape juice for wine. Sara Jane made the real thing with orange and lemon slices. She even brought a jar of maraschino cherries from the Red & White for our drinks. I took another sip of the cold, sweet wine and nipped a cherry off at the stem.

  “Oh, my.” She stared at the yardman, her hand resting on her heart.

  I popped the stem in my mouth and propped up on my elbows just in time to see the yardman taking his shirt off. I worked the stem around as I watched the muscles in his belly and his arms ripple each time he turned the mower. He never looked at us, just kept to his work like we weren’t even there, which kind of reminded me of Winston. I was trying hard not to think about him.

  “You think he’s good-looking?” I showed Sara Jane the perfect knot in the stem.

  “Uh-huh, don’t you?”

  “He’s all right.” She looked at me like I had cussed her mother. “I’m sorry, Sara Jane. I guess he’s cute. I really didn’t get a good look at his face, but he does have a nice body.”

  By the time he got to the side yard, he was cutting his eye around at her every time he turned the mower around in the opposite direction. After that, I don’t think she heard a word I said, and it wasn’t because of the mower.

  Sara Jane had a sultry power about her that was growing with each turn of that mower, so that by the time Jimmy was done, she had
him sipping sangria right along with us.

  “It’s hot.” He downed the glass in a few seconds. “Real hot.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Thanks.” He set the glass down.

  “Want some more?”

  “Better not. I’ve got two more yards to cut.” And then he looked at her sexy little pout. “Oh, what the hell.”

  He included me in the conversation as far as asking my name and where I was from. The rest of the time, he sat at the foot of Sara Jane’s lounge chair. By the time their conversation was over, they had planned a date and he had rubbed baby oil on her back and the backs of her legs. I felt like I was at a peep show.

  “Jimmy,” she sighed.

  “Well, it ain’t Lex or Darren, but I guess he was nice.”

  “You guess?”

  “Well, Sara Jane, he said ‘Hey’ to you and it was all over after that. It was like I wasn’t even here.”

  Some clouds rolled in like there might be an afternoon shower, so we decided to go inside. Between the time we pulled up our bathing suit straps and packed up, she said five, maybe six words to me and she hadn’t looked at me once. I stored our lounge chairs under my bed.

  “I’m sorry, Sara Jane. I know I’m jealous. You see a man, offer him a glass of sangria, and the next minute you have a date with him. I want Winston so bad and slave over a hot stove to prove it, and he doesn’t even know I exist.”

  She gave me that sexy little all-knowing grin. “Maybe you need to offer Winston something sweet.”

  8

  Sara Jane made a D+ on the next test. Both of us were proud, like she had just won the Nobel Prize for hair. I’d figured out a way to help her memorize facts she thought she could never remember, like the names of frontal facial muscles, by turning anatomy into a trashy romance. One muscle was the heroine, another the hero, and nerves and sinus cavities were the villains. Smaller, less significant muscles were the servants or animals. I swear, if Mrs. Cathcart had written that test the way Sara Jane learned it, I know she would have made an A+.

  She brought some steaks over and some more Boone’s Farm Apple Wine, which had kind of become our drink of choice. Actually it was the only one we could buy at our age, except for beer, which was only good for boiling shrimp. I baked three potatoes and tried to roast sweet corn on the little hibachi, but I forgot to soak it first. Neither one of us was watching the grill and the silks caught on fire. I beat them with an old wet dishrag, threw the smoldering ears in the trash, and put some salad in cereal bowls. It was a great dinner. Sara Jane said Winston would probably march right over and say so himself.

  It was nice out that night. Windy. Not too hot. We sat out on the landing after dinner in our lawn chairs and opened a second bottle of wine.

  “Look.” She nudged me, and I shushed her because her voice does carry so.

  Winston was in his drinking room. Judging from the way he looked, he was pretty far gone. He accidentally knocked a picture off the little table beside his chair and then picked it up two or three times because it didn’t seem to want to stay on the table. He went to a cabinet with the liquor canisters on it and poured his drink with one hand while he held the wall up with the other.

  “Oh, honey, you don’t need any more of that medicine,” Sara Jane whispered.

  “We ought not to be watching this, Sara Jane.”

  The way he teetered about the room was suspenseful, like watching a high-wire act at the circus. Neither of us could budge from our seats even if we had wanted to. I was embarrassed for him, but mostly I was embarrassed for myself.

  “He’s just got to get over her. I’m telling you, if he doesn’t, he’s gonna drink himself to death. Look at him. He’s pitiful.”

  “He is not.” I knew she was right. “He’s…he’s…well, he’s gorgeous, for one thing.”

  “He may be gorgeous, but I can guaran-damn-tee you he couldn’t get it up if his life depended on it. I bet he’s got permanent whiskey dick.”

  “He does not.”

  “Oh, just look at him, Zora. You know he gets that way every night. You could do a whole lot better than him.”

  The tiny sliver of moon in the sky made just enough light for her to see me all red-faced with tears running down my cheeks. She knew I wanted Winston and wanted him more than she wanted those men in her books to come and sweep her off her feet.

  She laughed. “Oh, what the hell do I know? I’m dating the yardman.”

  After pouring me another glass of wine, she told me about their first date. Jimmy had taken her to the home of some rich guy he did yard work for. It was right on the ocean. They actually rode horses on the beach in the moonlight. Everything sounded so perfect, at first I wondered if she’d made the whole thing up. I also wondered how Jimmy knew just the right things to do to win Sara Jane’s heart, but the truth was that he had won it the very first time they laid eyes on each other.

  “I pretended we were Dominique Devereau and Beaumont Belliard in Castaways of Love. I even told him so. He smiled and told me I could imagine whatever I wanted to as long as he was a part of it. Zora, I think I’m in love.”

  It was obvious she was love-struck by the way her voice quivered when she said Jimmy’s name, the way every tiny thing he did was so amazing to her. I tried not to sound jealous, but I couldn’t believe her luck. “Sara Jane. You don’t even know him.”

  “You don’t have to know somebody to be in love with them. You just are.”

  We both turned back to the scene in the drinking room. Winston was at the liquor cabinet again, teetering from side to side. I guess he was trying to keep the room from spinning long enough to pour himself another drink.

  He teetered too far to the right and fell. I was sure he was dead by the way his head snapped back when it hit the coffee table. We sat there on the edge of our seats, waiting for him to get up. I pounded my fist on the railing like he was a fallen prizefighter.

  “Get up. Get up.” As he lay on the floor, I prayed like crazy that he was only coldcocked by the whiskey.

  “Oh, my gosh. You don’t think he’s…”

  “No. He’ll get up.” Sara Jane’s voice was steady. We sat there for half an hour, but he didn’t move. “He’s just dead drunk.”

  Dead drunk. It was the term I had used most of my life to describe Mama and the men she lived with. The way the sheriff described my daddy.

  “We ought to do something, even if it’s just put him to bed.”

  “It’s his rule, Sara Jane. We can’t go in there. He hasn’t let anybody in the house since Emma died. Look, I know this all seems wildly romantic to you, but if I lose my apartment, I’ll have to move back home.”

  “Well, what if he’s hurt or dying?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that.

  “What if I go? Then you won’t get in trouble.”

  I didn’t answer her right off. I sat there watching and waiting for some small movement that would let me know he had just passed out and wasn’t in a coma or worse. I begged for another five or ten minutes, which seemed like hours, but he didn’t stir an inch.

  “Okay. Just go in, see if he’s okay, and come right back out. Promise?”

  She nodded.

  “And, whatever you do, don’t try to wake him up.” She was halfway down the steps before I finished my sentence.

  She knocked at the back door and looked up at me. I shook my head at her because he hadn’t moved. She opened the door and disappeared inside the house. An eternity passed before I finally saw her tiptoeing into the drinking room. She inspected him closely, and I nearly jumped out of my skin when she picked up his wrist to check his pulse. She gave me the okay sign as she waved at me with his limp hand, before she tucked it in close to his chest.

  I knew for sure there’d be trouble when Sara Jane picked up the picture of Emma that Winston held all the time and gave me a funny look. I was up out of my chair, waving like mad for her to get out of there, but she would just pick something else up, look at it, and
laugh or just point to it, like I could see through her eyes.

  I thought I would die when she started up the stairs. Pretty as you please, she went into his bedroom, turned the light on in the closet, and stayed in there for at least a hundred years, stepping out from time to time to flash one of Emma’s frocks up so I could see it. I was sure this was God’s way of getting back at me for plundering a dead woman’s things.

  Finally, she went back downstairs. Before she left, she threw a little white crocheted blanket over Winston and came back to the porch.

  “He’s fine. He’s just drunk,” she said, real nonchalant.

  “I’m gonna kill you, Sara Jane Farquhar. I can’t believe you went in there and took the man’s pulse.”

  “Oh, Zora, he’s so drunk I could have sat on him and pretended to ride him down the beach, and he never would have known it. Boy, he’s tall.”

  “You almost gave me a heart attack going through his things. You know I told you what would happen if you got caught.”

  “First of all, the man couldn’t wake up even if he wanted to. Second of all, we needed to make sure he wasn’t dead or anything because you promised your teacher you’d look out for him, and I think she would call this looking out for him. And third of all…don’t you want to know what I found?”

  I was so keyed up over the whole life-and-death thing and the possibility of getting caught that the thought had not even occurred to me. But as soon as she said those words, I had to know what was in that house.

  “Let’s see,” she said, knowing she had my full attention, “where should we start? Well, the kitchen looks like nobody lives there except for the unwashed glasses in the sink, good crystal glasses. Waterford. I turned them upside down and looked. There’s hardly anything on the counters and the only thing in the refrigerator was an old box of baking soda his wife probably left there.”

  She laughed when she saw my eyes roll over her detailed inventory of the kitchen.