Silver Sparrow

by Tayari Jones

  Despite the little tags that said “Keep off,” young people sat on top of them while they waited on their rides and ate frozen yogurt.

  “Let’s sit down,” the silver girl said, walking to one of the muffins. With her strong arms, she hoisted herself up. I knew how to get up there, too, but I had never mastered the smooth silvery motion, so I just stood beside her. My eyes were about on the same level as her bustline. This close, I could see that her polo shirt wasn’t a real Izod, after al .

  It was hot out, but that was to be expected in July. Her baby hair curled at her hairline, and I could feel the water gathering under my arms. We were both wearing stretchy jeans, which were al but fused with our skin by now.

  “You have a job this summer?” she wanted to know.

  I shook my head. “I was supposed to work at Six Flags, but just four days in my supervisor started getting funny with me, so I had to quit.”

  “What happened?”

  “It didn’t get out of hand, but he was making reasons to touch me al the time.”

  “You tel anybody?”

  “Told my uncle, who told my mama, who told my dad.” I tried to laugh. “Living in my house is like playing telephone.”

  “So what did he do?”

  “Who?”

  “Your father.”

  “He was so mad he couldn’t get the words out. He has a stammer and it gets real y bad when he’s riled up. I thought he was going to kil somebody. He jumps in the limo . . .” I paused, waiting for her to say, Wait a minute! A limo?

  She said, “Then what happened?”

  “I wasn’t there, but my mother told me that he raised so much cane that they had to cal security.” I smiled a little bit, because I liked that part of the story.

  She pul ed her fingers through her hair. I did the same, but augmented hair is for looking at, not for touching. The strands were unbending against my fingers.

  “Be real with me,” I said. “Does it look bad?”

  “No,” she said. “It looks nice.” There was a little bit of a downward slant in her voice, like she was talking to a little kid.

  “Okay,” I said. “Be real with me again.”

  “Okay.”

  “Is that your real hair?”

  “Yes.” She said it like I had asked her whether or not she believed in God.

  “You sure?” I said. “I thought we were being honest with each other.”

  “It’s my real hair,” she said, bending double from her perch on the concrete muffin. The crown of her head was in line with my face, the add-a-beads swung to her nose. The cigarette odor was as insistent as love.

  Human hair gives when you push it. I pressed a few strands between my fingers. “It’s real al right.”

  “I told you,” she said, unfolding herself. She extended her hand toward my head. “Can I?”

  My hand made its way to my face again. It smel ed like her hair, sweet with oil sheen. I looked up at her hand, which hovered right above my head like I was a dog she wasn’t sure she should pet.

  “Yes,” I said, softly. “You can touch it.”

  The silver girl pushed her fingers into my scalp, exploring with her fingernails. “What’s that? Feels like a ridge.”

  “That’s where my mama sewed in the weft. She’s a cosmetologist.”

  I started overexplaining, tel ing her that this new process was technical y cal ed “hair integration,” but for short, people cal ed it a weave, and that my mother was one of only twenty hairdressers in the city who knew how to do it. I bragged that it was the next big thing. I jabbered on as her careful hands explored my whole head. Passersby, even the other silver girls, noticed and turned toward each other to talk about us. Old people gave a quick look and swept their eyes away the way they do when they catch people kissing on the MARTA train. It was excruciating, real y, imagining the feel of my synthetic hair to her real hands. It’s the way you feel when you go too far with a boy you don’t know so wel . It stops feeling good, but you’ve done too much to tel him to stop.

  Final y, she pul ed her hands away. “Sorry,” she said.

  I laughed to try and sound casual. “So what’s your name?”

  She reached again for her add-a-beads.

  “You shouldn’t do that. You’re going to break the chain.”

  “I know,” she said. “I had to have it soldered twice already.”

  “So what’s your name?” When she didn’t answer I spoke up.

  “I’m Chaurisse.”

  She nodded.

  “My real name is Bunny — don’t ask — but I go by Chaurisse.” She didn’t laugh like most people did. Entire homerooms had broken into guffaws during rol cal , but this silver girl winced.

  “I was named after my grandmother.” Grandma Bunny’s memory rushed at me, blinding me like a camera flash. My throat tightened and the beginning of a headache made a knot behind my eyes. “I miss her.”

  Twisting her finger in her necklace, she said, “My name is Dana.”

  “Dana,” I repeated.

  “Dana.”

  “Let me give you a card,” I said. “My mama has a beauty shop. Cal me and I’l do you a wash-and-set. On the house. Or maybe we could hang out again?” She took the card from me and zipped it into her handbag. I took out another card. “You can write your number on the back.” I rummaged around for a pen, but al I could come up with was a navy blue eyeliner. “I guess you have to write with this.”

  She looked at the brand. “This is expensive.”

  “It’s my mom’s, she won’t miss it. You want it?”

  She turned the eye pencil over in her hands. “For real?”

  “No,” I said. “For play-play.”

  She looked confused and maybe even a little hurt.

  “No,” I said. “You can have it.”

  She put it in her purse and gave a firm little nod.

  “But write your number down.”

  “I can’t give my number out. We’re unlisted and my mom doesn’t like for people to cal the house.”

  “Oh,” I said, not sure whether to believe her. I had only known two people who weren’t al owed to share their phone numbers. One was Maria Simpson; her deal was that her parents were very old. The other person was Angelique Fontnot, and it made sense because her father was a city councilman or something.

  “I’l cal you,” she said. “I swear to God.”

  “Okay.”

  “I have to go,” said the silver girl. “I’ve been here too long already.”

  “Don’t run off,” I said. “Wait with me until my ride comes. You ever rode in a limousine before?”

  “No,” she said. “I can’t do that.”

  Then, like Cinderel a, she was gone.

  15

  GIRLS ARE TOO MESSY

  BEAUTY PARLORS, IN GENERAL, are confessional spaces. A place like the Pink Fox is even more intimate than your average salon because it’s a business that’s also part of our home. If a client needs to go to the toilet, she uses the same bathroom where I take my shower in the morning. If she has an emergency, she might lift a panty liner from underneath the sink. Not to mention that there are customers who have been coming to my mother since before I was born.

  The Pink Fox, with its two pump chairs, shampoo bowl, and three hooded dryers represented a generation’s worth of progress from the days when my mama sat hol ering on the front steps rounding up customers for her own mama. “Miss Mattie is pressing hair today. Two dol ars!” By 1967, my mama was making decent money renting a chair at a salon on Ashby Street, and Witherspoon Sedans was turning a good profit. There was money enough for my parents to put a down payment on a house, and Uncle Raleigh figured it was time to try living on his own. The Peyton Wal was long gone, Mayor Al en had said he was sorry, and black folks were moving in while white people were hightailing it to the suburbs.

  Mama and Daddy had their pick of several houses, as the market was flooded. They drove the Lincoln slowly up and down Cascade Heights
like they were browsing the kennels at the pound, looking for the perfect puppy. Daddy was leaning toward a new house because he didn’t want something that had been “ate off.” Mama didn’t care about new, she just wanted central air. Our house, 739 Lynhurst, a three-bedroom ranch in the middle of a busy block, near the bus stop, was reduced even further in price because the garage had been converted into a two-station beauty salon. A wooden sign staked in the yard read chaurisse’s pink fox.

  Nine years married, with no high-school diploma and no baby to show for her efforts, my mama was not a lucky person. Blessings were rare enough that they caught her attention when they showed themselves, and she had good sense enough to snag a good thing before it could get away.

  “Do you take walk-ins?”

  The real answer to this question was “sometimes.” The Pink Fox was a smal operation. I served as shampoo girl. In a pinch I could give a wash-and-set and a few other nonchemical procedures while my mother kept her hands busy with the women who book their appointments as much as three weeks ahead of time.

  It was early in November and we were slammed like it was New Year’s Eve. Between the Sigma Gamma Rho debutante bal , Clark Col ege homecoming, and the encore of The Wiz, we had customers stacked up to the ceiling. Although my dad would have a fit if he knew, I took the day off from school to help my mother with the crunch. It didn’t matter; I was a senior. The clock over the no. 2 chair said three forty-five. Mama was doing a blow-dry in the best chair. I was leaning over the shampoo bowl, giving relief to a pregnant girl who had scratched her head the night before, even though she had known she was getting a touch-up; the force of the water on the chemical burns made her screw her eyes shut.

  “I’m almost done,” I said, looking up at the would-be walk-in, and who did I see but Dana, my silver Cinderel a.

  “Hi,” I said. “I can’t believe you came to see me!”

  My mama said, “No walk-ins today, baby.”

  “But maybe you can come in tomorrow?” I said. “I’l be here.”

  “It’s okay,” Dana said. “It’s not a big deal. I am thinking about cutting it al off. I guess I can just go to a barbershop.”

  You would have thought that she had just promised to stick her head in the oven. Al conversation in the shop shut down. The pregnant girl in the sink raised up to get a look at Dana. The old lady in chair no. 1 frowned so hard it was like her face was folding. Only my mama kept it together.

  “Now why would you want to do that, baby?”

  Dana said, “I just want to cut it off. Long hair is a hassle. I’m tired of living like this.”

  My mama looked hard at Dana. I think she was trying to figure out if Dana real y was thinking about cutting off al that gorgeous hair. Even caught up in a high ponytail, you could see that it was waterfal hair, wild, tumbling, slick, and beautiful. Lord knows it isn’t fair how nature parcels out the goodies.

  My mother said, “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen. Seventeen and a half. This is my half birthday.”

  “You are too young to mutilate yourself. Come back in six months if you want to fol ow through with that foolishness.”

  “Can I sit down?” Dana said. “I won’t stay long.”

  “Chaurisse, when you get through rinsing her, put on a protein pack and then take this young lady upstairs and pour her a Coca-Cola.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Keep in mind that this was midway through the first term of my senior year of high school. People at my school were going places and couldn’t stop talking about it. My school, Northside High School, was a performing-arts magnet, like in the movie Fame. Back in ninth grade, when I was accepted, I thought I could flute and piccolo my way into something remarkable, as if that were possible, even for people with talent. Three and a half years in, no one had suggested that I apply to col ege to study music. My counselor encouraged me to apply to the women’s col eges, saying it would be good for my self-esteem. She had gone to Smith and said maybe they were trying to diversify. With her help, I put in applications for the Seven Sisters, plus Spelman Col ege. “The stepsister,” she said with a wicked grin.

  My mother had her heart set on my attending Spelman, because it had been her dream to study there. Her home ec teacher al those years ago, the one who reminded teenagers to “remember your dignity,” was a Spelman lady, dazzling my mother with snapshots of black girls with hard-pressed hair wearing chrysanthemum corsages.

  I pretended to be bored with the idea of a girls’ school, and a little bit above it al . “I don’t like to hang out with girls.” I also made a big deal out of sending in an application to FAMU in Tal ahassee. But the truth was that I was terrified and also thril ed at the idea of attending Spelman Col ege.

  When I explained why I wasn’t interested in having friends, I complained that “girls are too messy,” but it was a lie. The messiness was what I craved. I wanted to tel someone everything I knew. I wanted to name names and tel the whole story.

  When I met Dana that time at SupeRx, I didn’t know yet if she could be that girl, if she would understand my place in the world, because girls with looks and hair move in different circles than ones like me. Just having the thought, I could hear my guidance counselor in my ear talking about Smith and self-esteem, but I wasn’t crazy. I have eyes. I know what I know.

  Dana was the same shaky-scared she’d been at the mal as I led her up the concrete staircase that connected the rest of our house to the Pink Fox. Mama and Uncle Raleigh constructed those stairs themselves, when I was about ten years old. They worked on Mondays for the whole summer, drinking tiny cans of beer and mixing cement in a wheelbarrow. Dana paused at the top of the steps. She pressed her hand to the base of her throat and then touched her own forehead, as if checking for fever.

  “That door is open. You can just walk in.”

  She hesitated and wiped her hands on her jeans. “You sure?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Just open the door.”

  She pushed the door open and walked into the kitchen careful y, as though she was walking on a just-mopped floor.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  “Is this where you eat dinner? In the kitchen? Or do you have a dining room?”

  “You don’t have to whisper,” I said. “We eat in the kitchen.”

  “Where do you sit? How come you have four places set? Who eats with you?” She ran her hands over a chair and picked up a checkered place mat.

  “Are you okay?” I said again.

  “Where does your father sit?”

  I pointed to the chair nearest the window. “Right there.”

  She sat herself in that seat and set her hands on either side of the place mat. She nodded, in a satisfied-seeming way.

  “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you want a Coke?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Can you pour it in a glass?”

  I poured the Coke over a handful of ice cubes and handed it to her. “So what’s the deal?”

  I talked to her like we were old friends, another trick I’d learned from boys. Talk familiar and you’l get familiar. This was different from what I felt even for Jamal. This thing I felt for Dana originated under my scalp and stretched itself behind my ears, snaking down the back of my neck and down my spine. Girls like us, the ones who have been found out, our nerves are on edge like broken teeth.

  “You told me to come,” she said. “You gave me your card.”

  “You don’t want to have short hair, trust me,” I told her.

  “I thought I might like to have an Anita Baker cut. Low on the sides and fluffy up top.”

  I shook my head. “Short cuts are for people who can’t grow hair.”

  “Where’s your father?”

  “My dad?” I shrugged. “Working the line at the airport. What difference does it make?”

  “Doesn’t make a difference.”

  “Okay, so what’s up?”

  I wanted her to admit that she was curious about me. I know how people ac
t when they have an interest. When boys do it, my dad cal s it “sniffing around.” I heard him say to Raleigh, “I never thought it would bother me so much, al these hard legs sniffing around my daughter.” It’s a good way to say it, capturing that animalness of people. But it’s not just boys. Girls do it, too, when they want to know more about you.

  She didn’t say anything, she just looked around our kitchen like she had never seen one before. She stood up and opened the drawers, picked up a spoon and frowned at her reflection. “Can I open the fridge?”

  I shrugged and she pul ed open the door, taking a long look, like she was counting my mother’s cans of Fresca lined up on the door racks. She shut it and opened the freezer side. “No ice maker?”

  I shrugged, but I felt embarrassed. “Ice trays make good ice.”

  “Y’al have al new appliances? Electric range?”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “My mama is the only one that cooks.”

  “She cooks every day?”

  “We go out to dinner sometimes. Al of us. Red Lobster. Piccadil y.”

  “Did he ever take her to the Mansion?”

  “Maybe, on their anniversary. Now sit back down. Stop trying to get me off track. Tel me why you came over here.” This was a trick I used with Jamal. I made him say exactly what he wanted.

  “You don’t want to know,” she said, returning to my father’s chair. She sniffed the air like a rabbit. “I smel cigarettes.”

  “My dad smokes like its going out of style.”

  Dana whipped her head toward me. “You mother lets him smoke in the house?”

  “There’s no letting him do anything.”

  Underneath us, I knew my mother was wondering where I was. On busy days, my job was to get the clients into the shampoo bowl as soon as possible. A woman with a dry head can walk out if the wait becomes unbearable, but if she’s dripping wet, she won’t go anywhere. I wanted to get Dana back downstairs. Get her in the shampoo bowl and make her my hostage.

  “Are you going to let me give you a wash-and-set?”

  “I haven’t decided. I have a lot on my mind. I’ve been trying to tel you that.”

  I looked at her careful y and turned my head to the side. “Are you pregnant?” I whispered.