The Wisdom of Hair

by Kim Boykin

  One of my Tuesday regulars, Mrs. Clara, was so heavy she’d broken my chair twice. Ronnie was always nice about it, always carrying on about how the chair was defective. But when the repairman came to fix it and I saw him shake his head at Ronnie, I knew it wasn’t the chair’s fault.

  Mrs. Clara came into the salon bone-tired on the afternoon of July 3. The shampoo-bowl chair creaked and moaned under her weight. I shampooed her hair at arm’s length because my belly looked like I was ten months pregnant and about to pop.

  I tried to be quick about it so she wouldn’t fall asleep, and the chair would hold up. Mrs. Clara looked like a sleepy little child when I wrapped her wet head in a towel. Ronnie and Fontaine hoisted her up from the shampoo bowl and nearly buckled under her weight. She managed to walk to my station, breathing like it was a chore. The three of us, and maybe Mrs. Clara, too, held our breath as we watched her bottom pour into my chair like thick cake batter spilling over the sides. She touched down slowly and then put her full weight on the chair and smiled a little when it didn’t make that awful moaning sound it did before it broke. Ronnie and Fontaine looked at me like they were relieved.

  “What’s wrong, Zora?” Ronnie said.

  I didn’t know what to do or say. All I could do was point at the puddle of water around my feet.

  Ronnie screamed and ran to the back to get the little suitcase he’d insisted I bring to work every day for the past few weeks. Even Fontaine, who never got excited about anything, was running around grabbing hairbrushes, cologne, anything he thought I might need at the hospital. He was trying to get a lipstick case that had a little mirror on it off of the display when he picked up the phone and called Mrs. Farquhar to tell her my water had broken. Then Ronnie and Fontaine helped me into their little yellow Doodle Bug convertible, leaving three wet-headed customers behind.

  I was in labor forever and a day. Folks who loved me came in and out of my room like a revolving door. I knew something was wrong when the baby wouldn’t come.

  “Are you Zora’s parents?” the doctor asked the Farquhars.

  “Yes.” They stood on either side of me.

  “Zora, Mr. and Mrs. Adams,” he began and neither of us bothered to correct him. “The baby’s under a lot of stress…”

  I knew that C-sections were done every day, but for some reason I started crying and couldn’t stop. Sara Jane must have heard me because she rushed into the room and she and Mrs. Farquhar latched onto my hands. Mr. Farquhar and Jimmy, Ronnie and Fontaine, and Connie Harmon followed right behind at the foot of the bed, reassuring me all the way to the operating room.

  “You’re going to be fine,” Sara Jane said.

  “And so is our baby,” Mrs. Farquhar insisted.

  They let go of my hands as the gurney passed through the double doors. I was scared to death with all of those machines humming and the nurses getting me ready for surgery. One of them wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm without even looking at me and then turned around to do something else. I know my eyes were all bugged out as I raised up and tried to push my bottom off of the table. I wanted to run like hell. But the anesthesia had made my legs weak and lifeless, so I started crying and hollering for them to let me go. A skinny little male nurse named Don told me not to worry and prayed over me. The last thing I remember is Don asking the Lord to hold my baby and me in the palm of His hand.

  I hate that I had trouble and my family wasn’t there the second my baby came into the world like we had all planned. I don’t remember being wheeled down to recovery or being lifted onto the bed, but I do remember waking up to the faces of the people who love me best.

  “We have a girl,” Mrs. Farquhar whispered with tears running down her sweet face. “A perfect, tiny baby girl.”

  “Gorgeous,” Ronnie added, “absolutely gorgeous.”

  “You did good,” Mr. Farquhar said and kissed my forehead. “I’m so proud, I could bust.”

  “Where is she? I want to see her.” I was still a little groggy and felt sore from the incision.

  “They’re going to get her right now,” Sara Jane said. “I’m telling you, Zora, she’s the prettiest baby I have ever seen. Isn’t that right, Jimmy?”

  “Yeah, Zora, you should’ve seen all of us looking at her in the baby room. Kind of hogging the window. Some lady said something like our baby wasn’t the only baby in the nursery and Sara Jane said as far as we were concerned, she was.”

  When the door opened, the six of them parted like the June Taylor Dancers as the nurse wheeled my baby over to me. Everybody oohed and aahed when the nurse picked her up. When she placed her in my arms, I felt a jolt go through my body. I guess it was the same thing every new mother feels. Love. Pride. Relief. But there was something else, too.

  I heard Ronnie’s squeaky voice say, “She’s so beautiful.”

  Everybody was talking over me and the baby, looking down lovingly at us as they campaigned for their favorite name. Back and forth they went, their voices rising until they remembered the little one in my arms and started whispering again.

  “Jimmy, she is not going to name that baby Katie,” Sara Jane said loud enough to be heard down the hall. “I love Katie, but Zora’s not going to name this baby after our dog.”

  The doctor knocked on the door and could barely get into the room to check on us there were so many folks in there. But I guess he knew better than to say anything. “So what is this child’s name?” he asked as he lifted back the sheet so that nobody could see my incision but him.

  Everybody stopped their campaigning and looked at me. He nodded and lowered the sheet. “You can’t take her home until you give her a name.”

  “Sara,” I said looking at Sara Jane, who was tearing up. “Sara Grace Adams.”

  “It’s perfect,” Fontaine said and kissed us both on the forehead.

  Grace came to me, not just as a tiny bundle nestled in my arms rooting around for food. It came in the form of love and mercy. For the first time in my life, I understood Mama and how scared she must have been. Barely fourteen, with me in her arms, a mother whether she knew how to be one or not. She was all by herself with a sweet husband who drank too much. It must have terrified her just to look at me.

  Even now when I look back, I’m so ashamed of the way I hated Mama for living her life like it wasn’t worth anything unless she had a man under her roof, because I went and did the same thing. But then I think about Winston Sawyer, and I’m thankful for Grace and the lesson he taught me about love. Love isn’t having a man. It’s loving myself enough to accept love from good people in my life. It’s about loving myself enough to forgive.

  Readers Guide to

  THE WISDOM OF HAIR

  Throughout the novel, Zora fears becoming her mother. To what extent do you think she has inherited her mother’s traits, or do you think she has successfully escaped following in her mother’s footsteps?

  Dressing up as someone else is a common theme. For example, Zora’s mother dresses up as Judy Garland, and Winston first notices Zora when she is wearing Emma’s dress. Do you think this signifies that the characters are striving to be something more than they are, or is it simply a sign of their insecurities?

  Zora and Winston have a chemistry that doesn’t require conversation or having anything in common other than each other. Do you think they ever really loved each other, or is it only infatuation?

  Zora says that the reason she leaves Winston is because he doesn’t defend her when John Ridgeway alludes to her being “mountain folk.” How much of her leaving Winston then, do you think, is about his actions, and how much is about the actual comment?

  Zora straddles two worlds: her life in the mountains and her life in Davenport. How much of a person’s character is shaped by his/her upbringing, and do you think it is something that can ever be truly left in the past?

  When Zora is pregnant, she has a dream about Daddy Heyward, who tells her, “If you ever want anything powerful bad, it’s okay” (p. 262). What do you t
hink it is that Zora wants “powerful bad”?

  Mrs. Farquhar and Zora’s mother represent extremes in motherhood. Mrs. Farquhar is a picture-perfect mother, and Zora’s mother is an alcoholic who offers little love or guidance to her daughter. Zora is a product of these two extreme motherly figures by the end of the novel, and becomes a parent herself. What effect do these two parenting styles eventually have on Zora?

  Zora says that she notices how the women who come into the hair salon “want something different, a change. They want to be happy” (p. 177). After enrolling in school, Zora, unlike the other girls, doesn’t constantly change her hair. What does this say about her?

  The novel is filled with lasting female bonds, and Zora refers to Mrs. Farquhar and Sara Jane as “the sisterhood.” How do these strong female characters and their relationships with one another compare to their relationships with the men in the novel?

  When Zora’s mother comes to visit her before Thanksgiving, she says she is sober and has come to make amends for what she has done in the past, which includes confessing the real reason Zora’s father died. Do you think she is sincere in her desire to turn her life around, or do you agree with Miss Cunningham when she says, “People like your mom don’t change, Zorie”? Do you think people have the capacity to make drastic changes in their lives, or are they always trapped in their old ways?

  Zora and Emma share more than one similarity. What are these similarities, and how do you think they impacted Zora’s relationship with Winston?

  Alcoholism is a constant presence in the novel. In what ways does Winston’s reliance on drinking feed his relationship with Zora, and in what ways does it pull them apart?

  When she thinks about Sara Jane’s happiness with Jimmy, Zora wonders if her “time would ever come” (p. 133). Do you think that by the end of the novel she has found “her time,” in her own way? How so?

  Several characters in the novel pretend to live different lives, including Mother Hannah, who believes she received a brooch as a gift from Florenz Ziegfeld. However, Zora is guilty of living in a fantasy world with Winston. To what degree do you think living in a fantasy is harmless, and when does it turn dangerous?

  Ethyl Ladson seemingly hated Zora when she first came in to get her hair done, but then requested that Zora style her hair when she knew she was about to die. In what ways does something as simple as a haircut impact both the customer and the stylist? What, to you, is “the wisdom of hair”?

  We never fully learn Winston’s history with Emma, but we know he tries to drink the pain of her death away. Do you sympathize at all with Winston, as a victim of a tragedy, or do you think he’s weak and unable to move on with his life?

  Zora says it is in her nature to keep things to herself, and Sissy Carson says to her, “You’re too damn private, Zora. You can’t keep everything inside of you. It’ll kill you just like it did Ed” (p. 150). Has there ever been a time when you haven’t told even your closest friend an important part of your life? Do you agree with Sissy that you can’t hold everything in, or do you think it’s okay to keep certain aspects of your life private?