The Wisdom of Hair

by Kim Boykin

  After a long while, he whispered, “I have to go.”

  “Why?” I whispered back.

  He waited for a moment, thinking, I suppose. There was no reason why he shouldn’t stay. He didn’t have anyplace to go other than to bed, alone.

  “Don’t go.” They were the first words I’d spoken above a whisper since he came up the stairs to my little place. He looked at me. I saw that he needed to stay, to lie beside me and feel alive. He settled back down on the bed, put his arm around my waist, and was soon asleep.

  20

  I woke up the next morning and saw Winston picking his clothes up off of the floor. I rolled over on my back, trying to breathe: in, out, in, out, real slow so he couldn’t see the panic bouncing around inside my body, lighting me up like a pinball machine. He slipped his pants on and smiled an awkward smile akin to that “what am I doing here?” look that had passed across his face a few hours before. I smiled back and pulled the covers up to my chin. It was an awkward time. He would give me a little half smile, and I would return the look. Then there was that seductive silence left over from the night before that made it seem like there was a gaping hole in the middle of the room.

  He sat down on the bed, tied his shoes, and didn’t look at me until the alarm clock went off and startled both of us. He looked at me and laughed. “I’ll see you,” he said, as he gave me a quick kiss on my forehead.

  “Tonight?”

  He didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure he heard me, but I was afraid to ask again. He started out the bedroom door.

  “Winston,” I called.

  He looked back into the room, like he was surprised that I’d said his name.

  “I’m going with a friend to Atlanta this weekend.”

  “Okay,” he said, like I had just asked him to take the trash out.

  “Well, I won’t be here,” I was sounding more stupid by the minute, “to cook for you.”

  “Okay,” he said again, like it didn’t matter one way or the other, and walked out the door.

  I fretted over him so that I was miserable at work the entire day. Everybody asked me what was wrong. I just told them I didn’t feel right, and that was the truth. My ten o’clock perm took me forever to roll up, and as soon as I put that smelly wave solution on her hair, I set the timer for thirty minutes and headed to the break room.

  I bought a Coke and some Lance peanuts, pouring the peanuts into the bottle the way Sara Jane had shown me. I sat there wishing I could be more like her because I was sure Sara Jane wouldn’t have felt as helpless and stupid as I did that morning.

  “You got man troubles, girl.” This was not a question. It was a statement.

  Sissy Carson sat down next to me. She propped her feet up in the chair beside me and let out a long, breathy sigh.

  “No, I’m just tired.”

  “No, I’m tired. You got man troubles,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  I remembered one time when Sara Jane’s preacher had talked about the sign of the beast on the evil one’s followers during the last days of the world. Not that Winston was the devil or anything, but I remember wiping my forehead with the back of my hand, swearing again that I was fine. But at twenty-six, Sissy was probably the oldest and the wisest of us all. I was sure that somehow she saw the sign on my forehead and knew I belonged to Winston.

  “You’re too damn private, Zora. You can’t keep everything inside of you. It’ll kill you just like it did Ed.”

  Like Mama, Sissy had married at fourteen. She lost three babies and quit trying because she said the losing part hurt too much. By the time she turned twenty, her first husband divorced her for being barren. He married her sister, and they’d had six kids, so far. Sissy dated a good bit, which some of the girls said meant she slept around a lot, and had a succession of men, of which Ed was one. She had man troubles so much so that she was considered to be an authority on the subject.

  “I’m fine, really,” I said, because if I couldn’t bare my soul to Sara Jane Farquhar, I certainly wasn’t going to tell Sissy Carson anything.

  “Suit yourself,” she said as she rubbed the sole of her foot. “Damn it if I don’t got me another needle hair.”

  “Needle hair?”

  “Those little hairs that get in your shoes and work their way into your feet. Them blond ones are the worst. You can’t see ’em to pick ’em, and you got to pick ’em out with a needle and a pair of tweezers or you’ll go lame.”

  “I don’t know anything about needle hairs,” I said.

  “Well, something’s worked its way under your skin, Zora Adams. Come on now, you can tell ol’ Sissy. What’s his name?”

  I heard the timer go off at my station and excused myself without telling her my problems, and she looked at me like I had just refused free money.

  The perm didn’t take for the woman. When I told her there was no charge and that I’d try again in a couple of weeks, she said it was okay, that she’d never had one take, and she’d been trying on and off for twenty years. At that point, I should have just thrown up my hands and given up, because the rest of the day was slow, three haircuts and an upsweep.

  Looking at the magazine picture that the upsweep lady brought in, it was every bit of ten years old. At first I didn’t think I could do it. But when I was done, her hair looked all right, and she was pretty happy with it. She tipped me a dollar and said she’d tell all her friends about me. It took me so long to fix her hair; I hoped she would just keep it to herself.

  I was tired by the time I got home and just grilled a couple of pork chops on the hibachi. Two baked potatoes and a little tossed salad made a nice dinner, but then there was the dilemma as to whether I should put Winston’s dinner on the picnic table, which might make it look like I was trying to keep him at a distance. If I set two places at my little table, it might look like I was expecting too much. I decided to wait until I saw him drive into the driveway. Then I would poke my head out my door and casually ask him if he was ready for dinner.

  I took my place on the couch and fell asleep, around nine o’clock. Just after midnight, I woke up and looked out the window. The MG was not in the driveway, the house was dark, and the food was cold. I couldn’t have eaten anyway because I was all stirred up inside. I was sure something horrible must have happened to him, so I left my door unlocked, hoping that if he was okay, he would come upstairs and let me console him, but he didn’t.

  I woke up the next morning with that same sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Every light in the gingerbread house was on, a sure sign that Winston had come home drunk and had gone back to his own bed. What did that mean?

  I couldn’t go to Atlanta, there was too much at stake. But I thought about Sara Jane and her mother and knew I had to go. I rushed around throwing things in that worn-out old American Tourister suitcase and was brushing my teeth when Sara Jane tooted the horn at eight o’clock sharp.

  I grabbed my bag and slipped the key into the door to make it look like I was locking the place up and then turned the doorknob to make sure it wasn’t just in case Winston didn’t have a key. As I started down the steps for the car, Mrs. Farquhar got out, hugged me, and insisted that I ride in the front.

  “Zora, doesn’t that teacher live there? Isn’t he the one whose wife died a couple of years ago?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I wanted to stand on the hood of the car and declare my love for the man who’d made love to me the night before, not the stranger that I woke up with that morning. Mrs. Farquhar would have been mortified, but Sara Jane would have jumped up there with me and celebrated because she knew how much I wanted Winston and that I believed that wanting was love.

  “I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen that man around town,” Mrs. Farquhar said. “He never comes into the store. Poor thing. You know he has to eat.”

  “Mama, you sound like the man hasn’t eaten in two years.”

  “Well, Sara Jane, as far as I know, he hasn’t.”

  We
all laughed, which must have been a cue for Mrs. Farquhar to start telling her stories. She told us all about her fancy engagement parties and her wedding, and how she nearly had to elope with Mr. Farquhar because her daddy thought he was a nobody. She told us about the groomsman who passed out during the ceremony right before the vows were exchanged. Everybody thought it was because the church was so hot, which was partly true. The fact that he had been taking a nip or two didn’t help matters, either.

  “And at a Baptist wedding. Have you ever heard of such a thing in all your born days?” she asked.

  Neither of them hushed the whole way to Atlanta, which made me think that nobody would ever share their family history if it weren’t for long car trips. Not that I had any firsthand knowledge of this. We didn’t have a car to go anywhere to speak of, and nobody wanted to rehash our family history, except for Nana, who only told the good parts on the porch late at night.

  When we pulled up in front of the downtown Hyatt, I tried to act like it wasn’t my first time staying at a hotel. The place looked like a palace, or at the very least, a mansion. But it was surprising to me that our rooms were so plain compared to how fancy the lobby was. After we unpacked, I looked inside the smallest refrigerator I’d ever seen and saw Coca-Colas and a dozen tiny liquor bottles. I ran my hand across the bedspread and pictured Winston with a bourbon and water, stretched across the king-size bed, wanting me. Not Sara Jane sprawled out on her side of the bed going over our itinerary.

  We ate at The Varsity, which is the most famous hot dog joint in the whole world. From the name, I thought it might be an expensive restaurant, but the food was good, and Mrs. Farquhar declared that everybody who set foot in Atlanta had to eat there before they left town.

  When we got back to the hotel, she announced from her adjoining room that she was going to bed early because she wanted to be at Rich’s Department Store when the doors opened. All greased up with pink Merle Norman cold cream and dressed for bed, she hugged and kissed us good night and told us to go on to sleep even though the store didn’t open until ten o’clock.

  “Good night, girls.” She turned out the light. “Get some rest now, because we’re going to scour the entire city until we find the perfect wedding gown for my bride-to-be.”

  “Good night, Mama. Love you,” Sara Jane said.

  “Good night, Mama,” I said without being reminded.

  I could barely see Sara Jane, but I could feel her lying there in the dark, trying to figure out whatever it was she had to say to me. A couple of minutes passed. The only sound in the room was the hum of the heater and an occasional car horn from the city street below.

  “You all right?” she asked.

  I wasn’t all right. I had lured Winston Sawyer up to my place with a few biscuit crumbs, and short of locking him up, I didn’t have the first idea of what to do with him. Even worse I had no idea what I was going to do without him.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Zora…Jimmy has a friend.” She paused. “Look, I know you have the hots for Winston Sawyer, but this guy is real nice and good-looking, too.”

  I still didn’t say anything.

  “Anyway, if you decide you want to meet him, we’d love to fix you up.”

  “Thanks.”

  We were quiet for longer than we had ever been since we met. “You know I love you, Zora, and I want you to be happy. But I’ve got to ask you, what are you holding out for?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and it was the truth. “I’m thinking of changing my hair.”

  Sara Jane was quiet. Everybody at school, including her before she quit, used to mess with their hair all the time when they didn’t have any customers. They cut and colored and fixed each other’s hair like they were fixing their lives. Except me. I’d thought about it before, but after the night Winston picked up a handful of my hair and breathed it in, I was afraid that if I changed it, the spell would be broken.

  Now I wanted something different out of Winston. A few highlights and a trim couldn’t hurt.

  “Don’t cut it,” Sara Jane said definitively. Even in the dark I could feel her smiling, hopeful. “We can do foils, just a few tiny streaks of ash blond. Like a reverse frosting, but it’ll look natural. Just leave it to me.”

  21

  As we stood in front of Rich’s in downtown Atlanta, watching the store manager on the other side of the door walking toward us, a wicked wind swirled around the building. The cold, damp air cut through us as we huddled together, watching that man who didn’t seem to be the least bit hurried. He fumbled a big bunch of keys about, trying to find the right one, and dropped them once just for spite, according to the lady behind Mrs. Farquhar.

  When the door opened, a handful of bargain hunters pushed past us and were already gliding up the escalator to the second floor before we got to the cosmetics counter.

  “A woman’s wedding gown should transform her,” Mrs. Farquhar announced, as she took off her leather gloves and stepped onto the escalator.

  “Into what?”

  “Royalty, my dear Sara Jane. Royalty.”

  “You are too much, Mama.” Sara Jane looked at me and rolled her eyes, but I could tell she liked the fact that her mama wanted to turn her into a princess. I guess any girl would have wanted that, even me.

  “You think I’m kidding, but you will know when you slip into that perfect dress. Before the buttons are buttoned and the veil is on, you will know it is as right for you as the man you are marrying. It’s the exact same feeling.”

  I tried not to gawk over the store, but it was hard. Rich’s was the most incredible place I had ever seen, and Mrs. Farquhar said it was the place to shop, short of going to New York City. I couldn’t imagine a finer store anywhere.

  The Bridal Room was set in a corner of the store with a mannequin bride and six fancy bridesmaids at the entrance. Another sleek mannequin in a black sequined gown was perched on top of a baby grand with her head turned toward the plastic wedding party. There were several artificial bouquets in a big wicker basket at the base of a pedestal, and just about every issue of Bride magazine from the past few years was in another basket beside a half dozen chairs upholstered in pink satin.

  “Good morning,” a woman with big hair drawled as she adjusted the chain attached to her eyeglasses. “And how are y’all this morning?”

  “We’re fine, thank you, just fine,” Mrs. Farquhar said. “We’re from out of town and we’ve come in search of the perfect wedding dress.”

  “Well, congratulations. I can tell you, you came to the right place. We do all the really big weddings in Atlanta, you know, and, of course, those darling debutantes wouldn’t think of going anywhere else to order their dresses. Let me see your ring, honey,” she said as she reached for Sara Jane’s left hand. You could tell she wasn’t impressed. “Where are y’all from, now?”

  “Davenport, South Carolina.” Mrs. Farquhar beamed. “Right close to Myrtle Beach.”

  “Oh,” she said, as she tried to steer Sara Jane over toward a rack of samples that were on sale. “We just put these on clearance this morning. And let me tell you there are some nice dresses here, half off of what you see on the ticket, and if you see a little mark on ’em or a split seam, we’ll knock a little more off the sale price.”

  Mrs. Farquhar looked peeved by the big-city saleslady who had written the three of us off as country bumpkins. But before she could say anything, a smartly dressed older woman walked into the department with her skinny, redheaded daughter who looked absolutely miserable, and Darnel, as her name tag said, left us to ourselves. I couldn’t help but notice the way she made over that ugly girl and brought out dress after dress for her. Darnel did everything but kiss the girl’s bony butt and that huge diamond ring on the girl’s finger.

  Mrs. Farquhar saw a young saleslady walk through the department and stopped her.

  “Excuse me, Miss. Could you please help us?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ll try. I don’t usually work in this depart
ment. This is Darnel’s domain, but it looks like she’s busy. What can I do for you all?”

  “We are looking for the perfect wedding dress,” Mrs. Farquhar began again.

  The woman didn’t ask to see Sara Jane’s ring or talk snooty to us. She showed us all kinds of dresses before excusing herself to check on something in the stockroom. None of the dresses she showed us were fitting right; none of them were making Sara Jane feel like a princess.

  “This is going to be a long day,” Sara Jane said, as she sat down in a big pile of white fluff.

  Darnel walked by us a couple of times but was too busy nipping at the heels of that miserable redhead to notice us. It made me wonder why Mercedes, as her mama called her, was even there. I don’t think it was for love.

  A little boy came zooming through the department into the dressing room looking for his mother, who also happened to be the mother of the redhead. He had too much energy for all of us, especially Darnel, who looked nervous as he raced about. But she was determined to make a big sale, even if she had to bite her tongue until she got it.

  “When I get married, my girlfriend is going to wear a frog suit,” the little boy hollered as he dove under the skirt of his sister’s dress and hid.

  “Damn it, Alexis,” Mercedes cussed her own mama. “Do something about him.”

  “Of course, dear,” the woman said, like that ugly girl really was a princess.

  It took her a while to drag Jeffrey out from under all that taffeta and crinoline with his sister still on the pedestal, and by this time I’m sure poor Darnel had to be thinking the country bumpkins from Davenport were looking pretty good. Alexis pulled the little boy onto her lap and wrapped her long, slender arms around him in lieu of a straitjacket.

  “Now, Jeffrey, you must settle down.”