The Wisdom of Hair

by Kim Boykin

  As much as I hated Mama, somewhere inside me there was still a powerful yearning for her to be the way a mother ought to be. I thought that feeling had died a long time ago, but there it was doing battle with the awful truth she’d just spoken. Then I thought about Winston and how going home might not be such a bad idea. If I left, he might straighten up and fly right just like Mama did.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, and she nearly knocked me over hugging me. When she finally let go, she said that she really needed to get on back because she didn’t like to be on those mountain roads late at night. That was news to me, but it was good news. She went in the bathroom to freshen up, and I started clearing the table.

  I heard the car door slam and Winston hurrying up the stairs. He threw his briefcase down by the door, came over to the kitchen counter, and poured himself a full glass of Scotch.

  “Your friend here?” he asked after draining the glass.

  “No. It’s my mother. Are you all right?”

  He didn’t seem to notice I’d been crying. He let the last few drops of his drink drain onto his tongue and poured himself another.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “John fucking Ridgeway,” he said, like I knew who he was talking about, “almighty head of the English department. He’s always on my case.”

  I was smart enough to know that we had so little in common, if Winston and I ever started talking, the illusion of what we had together would be gone. He knew this, too, but was too upset to play our game. Early on, if I forgot the rules, he’d press his fingers against my lips and look at me with those deep blue eyes that hypnotized me into thinking we didn’t need words. So I went to him, put my arms around his middle, and nuzzled his neck.

  “He likes to pick out a student every semester to pick on—no, to fail. This time, he picked a student I had last year. Bright girl. He failed her every test. Gave the tests back for the kids to look at in class and then took them up for good so that nobody could compare answers. She tried talking to him. That didn’t work, so she came to me.” His glass was empty again. He wrapped his arms around me. His breathing was slower now; the Scotch had begun to kick in. He looked at me, suddenly remembered the rules, and kissed me until he heard Mama fumbling with the lock on the bathroom door.

  I guess she must have heard Winston’s voice and knew there was a man about. She came out of the bathroom with her hair down. She’d either pinched her cheeks or used some of my blush in the medicine cabinet. The collar of her blouse was flipped up and it was unbuttoned real low, and she had tied her shirttail tight around her flat, milky white belly.

  She introduced herself to Winston, eyeing him so that I was too embarrassed to look at either one of them. She flashed him a smile, gave me a little peck on the cheek, and said good-bye without another word about Thanksgiving.

  28

  Miss Cunningham called me the Monday before Thanksgiving to see if I needed a ride home. She said she was flying to New York for the holiday but would be glad to come get me after school on Tuesday. I almost said yes just to save myself the $37.50 for the bus ticket, but I was afraid she might take one look at me and know I’d been doing more for Winston than cooking his dinner.

  She told me Deana Malloy scored 1560 on her SATs, which was quite a feat for a small-town school like ours. I listened to the excitement in her voice as she talked about the different colleges Deana was looking at and smiled to myself, happy that Miss Cunningham was finally sending one of her own away to college.

  “How’s Winston?” she said, after we had talked about everything but him.

  “He’s good.” There was a long silence. “He eats good.”

  “That’s great, Zorie; I’m so glad you’re there to look in on him. Hey, listen, I’ve got to get those midterms graded before tomorrow. Call me sometime, okay?”

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Miss Cunningham.”

  I waited a minute or two, swallowed hard, and dialed the number at home. Before the call had a chance to go through, I hung up and got some laundry together. Anything, even scrubbing the toilet and wiping down the baseboards in the apartment, looked good compared to calling Mama. A couple of hours later, the apartment was spotless, and I knew if I fretted another minute over calling her, I’d probably have taken the clean dishes out of the cupboard and washed them all over again.

  “The number you have reached is not in service at this time,” the recording said. “If you need assistance, please hang up and dial the operator.”

  At first I thought I dialed the wrong number, but after two more tries, I knew it wasn’t a mistake. Well, now I was really worried and set about calling every relative I could think of, but nobody was home. As a last resort, I called Aunt Fannie, Uncle Heath’s wife, and held the phone about a foot from my ear.

  “Hello.”

  “Aunt Fannie, this is Zora,” I hollered back because she’s almost deaf.

  “My Lord, child, I haven’t heard from you in a good spell.”

  “I know. Aunt Fannie, I tried to call Mama to tell her I was coming home, but the phone’s been cut off. I just know something’s wrong because she’s expecting me to come home for the holiday. Do you think she’s all right?”

  “Honey, your mama ain’t been right since your daddy died and she didn’t do too good after you left.” Aunt Fannie let out a deep sigh. “Couldn’t nobody help her. But she got better and we was all glad ’til about a week ago when she took to the roadhouse. Got a job waiting tables. You know your uncle Heath’s went over there more than once and tried to straighten her out, but after a while he just give up.”

  Aunt Fannie said that her daughter, Tina, wanted to have Mama committed. Tina was committed when she was just twenty, and she always suggested that whenever there was a problem. I don’t know why because it never helped her much.

  “She met some truck driver. He come through here with his own rig, a pretty one, too, had pictures of wild horses on the side. Heath said that man looked like one of them ZZ Top fellows with one of them long, stringy beards, and Lord if he didn’t have her name painted above his on the door there. Well, they say she took one look at that and jumped in the truck. They headed down the mountain ’cause he had a load to haul clean to Texas. Your mama ain’t got no luck but bad with men. I ’spect she’ll be calling any day now for us to get her back home soon as this don’t work out. Maybe she’ll call you.”

  I thanked her for telling me, but it was a hollow kind of thanks that set my head to spinning with all kinds of blame because I hadn’t packed up and gone the very night she begged me to come home. I was so busy wallowing around in guilt that I didn’t hear Winston come in, and I wasn’t sure how long he’d been listening to the conversation. He didn’t ask me any questions, just lay down on the bed and held me.

  He pushed my hair to the side and kissed me. “Let’s go away for the holiday.”

  I turned around and looked at him. I didn’t smile or melt like I might have if he’d said it a minute or two earlier. All I could think about was the fact that I’d never been away from home for a holiday in my life.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “I—”

  He put his fingers over my mouth. I kissed them and took his hand and pressed it against the side of my face.

  “We’ll drive up to The Homestead in Virginia. It’s a nice place; you’ll love it. You can wear your new dress to Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “Okay,” I said, not able to turn loose of the sadness then. But I loved him for trying to make me feel better and loved him even more because we were finally going someplace special like a real couple.

  In the back of my mind, I truly believed Mama would call. She’d ask me if I wanted sweet-potato pie or pumpkin pie, because they were all the same to her. Every year, Nana would just shake her head at the thought of Mama even asking such a question and set about peeling the sweet potatoes.

  Mama hardly ever cooked, but when she was a little girl, she learned to make a real good pineapple upside-down cake
and had made it every year since for Christmas and Thanksgiving. I missed the way our house smelled during the holidays, like baked goods and smoked ham. I ached for these things so that I closed my eyes and went right to sleep.

  *

  When I woke up that morning, his suitcase was packed and sitting by my front door. I knew good and well Winston went into his place for clean clothes and liquor. Sometimes I wondered if it bothered him to go into his house or if he just got what he needed without giving it much thought. He looked up from his newspaper, took a sip of coffee, and smiled at me. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning. Mmmm, coffee,” I said as I kissed him on the cheek like we were making a commercial. He poured me a cup out of a little carafe, something else he brought over from his place. “What time is it?”

  “About seven.”

  I finished my coffee, jumped in the shower, and was packed and ready to go before eight. He jammed my suitcase into that tiny trunk and hitched his to the luggage rack with a couple of wiry red bungee cords. Then we got in the car together and left as if we did that every morning.

  By the time we reached the foothills, some of the spell of playing house had worn off. I felt strange, like something important was missing. These mountains looked the same as my mountains, but I knew they were different and it made me ache for home. Winston pulled off the road at places marked Scenic Overlook. We got out of the car three or four different times along the way and stood by the guardrail, looking out over God’s country.

  He hugged and kissed me in front of God and everybody. He slid his hands up under my sweater and didn’t stop when a car whizzed by. He always had a way when he kissed me of nearly taking my breath away, along with my good sense, so I didn’t flinch, either, even when a big semi drove by. I guess folks up that way were used to seeing lovers like us stopped alongside the road, because they didn’t slow down or honk their horn.

  Another big semi passed by and I wondered if Winston brought Emma here, too. Had he stopped along the way to touch her breasts and kiss her the way he had me? The higher we went into the mountains, the more he wanted me. He stopped one last time but I’d been thinking too much, so when he started to kiss me I turned my head, which wasn’t at all good because he could always find that little sweet spot at the base of my neck. His breath was hot, and he whispered in my ear.

  “I want you.”

  I kissed him, then slipped out of his arms and ran to the car, which excited him all the more. He drove so fast; the next thirty miles were a blur. I knew how crazy that was in the mountains, but by that time I didn’t care. I was a bundle of wanting him, but most of all, wanting to check into that fancy hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Winston Sawyer.

  I could tell he got a kick out of the look on my face when we drove up to the place. I’d never seen anything like it before, massive, redbrick, intimidating. I’d seen some rich folks’ chalets back home, places they came to a few days out of the year, if they came at all. The Atlanta Hilton was elegant, and Connie Harmon’s house was, too, but they all paled in comparison to The Homestead.

  We parked by the front door, and the bellboy looked disgusted when he saw the MG, knowing there couldn’t be enough bags for us to need assistance. Winston slipped his suitcase off the rack, got mine out of the trunk, and handed the valet the keys. We walked into the lobby and right up to the desk.

  “Can I help you?” The woman behind the desk eyed Winston like I wasn’t even there.

  “Sawyer, Winston Sawyer,” he said.

  “Let’s see,” she said, flipping through some papers. “Winston Sawyer and—guest,” she said as she smiled at me.

  She looked him over more than once as he signed whatever it was she put before him. I knew he was a good-looking man, but I thought it was right tacky of her to make over him like that. He took the key from her and put his arm around me as we walked down the hall together. Looking back over my shoulder, I flashed her a little smile, but she didn’t smile back.

  He opened the door to our suite and let me walk in first. It looked like something out of one of those decorating magazines I like to leaf through at the Red & White and made me feel like I ought to tiptoe with bare feet—clean bare feet. And all of those pretty lamps and knickknacks, well, they were just to look at, way too nice to touch. I was so in awe of the place that I didn’t even notice Winston on the phone.

  “Room 307,” he said, and then he hung up the phone and looked at me. “I ordered some champagne.” He kissed me. “I think there’s a Jacuzzi in the bathroom. Why don’t you go start the water?”

  There was pristine white tile everywhere in the bathroom and crystal light fixtures with dangly prisms that made rainbows on the walls and the ceilings. A great alabaster tub with a swan for a spigot was sunk into the floor like a little swimming pool. Not knowing any better, I turned the Jacuzzi on before the jets were covered and water went all over the place. When I screamed, Winston came running.

  We laughed and sopped up the water together and Winston added some extra towels to our room service order. By the time he got back from answering the door, the floor was almost dry. He put the clean towels on the little bench by the shower and that pretty silver bucket beside the tub and opened the bottle. There was a loud pop as the champagne poured out of the bottle like it had a mind of its own. He filled two glasses full and handed one to me.

  He saw the look on my face after I tasted it. “Ever had champagne before?”

  I shook my head and took pretend sips of the stuff because it didn’t appeal to me at all. He’d take a drink and undress me a little bit. Then he would have another drink and take off a little bit more until all my clothes were on the floor. By the time I stepped into the hot, steamy water, he’d had two glasses of champagne and finished mine. Champagne really got him going. He did a sexy little striptease while he finished off the first bottle, then he opened up another one and turned on the Jacuzzi. God, that water felt good, like the hot spring back home only better.

  I finished the half glass he’d poured for me, and he finished the bottle. Somewhere in between all that we made love twice, sometimes splashing more water on the floor than the Jacuzzi had. I don’t know how long we stayed in that tub before Winston said it was time to get out and dress for tea. He did that for me, I know, because he was pretty tight by then and would have chosen happy hour over tea any day.

  I didn’t know what to think about going to tea because the only tea parties I’d ever been to were the ones me and Daddy had with Myrna at home in the backyard. We would laugh and sing songs. He’d always fill his teacup full of liquor when he thought I wasn’t looking. I loved that strong, sweet smell back then.

  Now I felt silly, drinking hot tea out of little tiny china cups, and the spoons they gave us looked like they belonged in a dollhouse. I watched the other women there sitting like they had a cane pole up their backs, sipping and nibbling cookies and fancy little sandwiches. No matter how fancy this was, no matter how many times Winston looked at me to see if I was impressed, I still felt silly.

  I was glad when we changed into some comfortable clothes after teatime and went for a walk. We hiked a good ways from the hotel and sat on a ridge where we could see the world, the way I used to see it up on the mountain.

  “Are you cold?” he said.

  “No.” I smiled. “I’m from the mountains. I don’t get cold too easily. This place reminds me of where I come from. That stream down there looks just like the one at home—the pass between Turtle Dove and Hitchcock Mountains. I never thought I’d miss that sight like I do. It’s so flat in Davenport.”

  “It is beautiful here,” he said, and looked out on the same horizon like he was missing something, too. Neither of us said anything as we watched the sunset color the November sky. “We’d better get back. We have to dress for dinner.”

  We ate in the grandest dining room, where Thomas Jefferson himself once dined. I remember wishing I had a whole case of champagne when I first met Winston, because after he finishe
d another bottle during dinner, his tongue was loosed and he began to tell me all kinds of things. For sure, liquor made him dark and mysterious, wine made him want to take me straight to bed, but champagne made him horny and downright talkative.

  “The first time I had champagne,” he began, filling his own glass to overflowing, “I was eleven. My parents had a New Year’s Eve party and the stuff was everywhere. There was even some kind of champagne fountain. My cousins and I went around the room finishing off glasses the guests had left sitting around. A couple of times the glasses were full, and we’d laugh whenever the guests stumbled around looking for their drinks. Everybody was so drunk, including the grown-ups, that nobody noticed us at the fountain, pounding down the stuff.

  “The four of us got really drunk, and right as the ball dropped on TV, I threw up on the living room floor.” He laughed. “My mother said she would never forgive me for that, but she did, of course.”

  Winston had never told me anything about himself. Although I’d wondered about things like where he grew up and what his job was like, I didn’t dare ask. So when he shared a little bit of his own history with me, I was taken aback. Then I thought about my own mother, who, no matter what she said, I knew had never forgiven me for leaving her. “My mother got mad when I left home. It’s not the kind of mad you were talking about. I mean really mad. I thought maybe you figured out that something had happened with me and her when you met her that day she came to the apartment.”

  When we spoke it was always about general stuff like coffee and sex, so he never really knew how to talk about things like this with me. He nodded and pretended to be interested. When the waiter went by, he ordered another cognac and asked for the check. I helped him back to our room and undressed him because I knew he’d fall asleep the minute his head hit the pillow. I took my clothes off and nuzzled up beside him.

  “I love you,” I whispered as I lay behind him. “I love you so much. I think—”