A Natural Woman

by Lori Johnson

  “Please, Aliesha, it’s been a long day. Can’t we discuss that another time? Isn’t there something else we could talk about?”

  “Actually, there is,” she said. “In case you haven’t noticed, I got my hair cut today.”

  “Umm, it looks nice,” he said with his gaze still riveted to the flickering TV screen.

  “Yeah, right,” she muttered. She picked up the drawing he had made of one of her bent knees and tossed it at him before she crawled back to the spot she’d vacated at the end of the bed.

  “What?! What’d I do now?!” he said.

  She grabbed her book and stretched out on her side with her back to him. “Nothing. Forget about it,” she said.

  After a few minutes more of channel surfing, Javiel paused on what to Aliesha sounded like a commercial. “You ever thought about that?” he asked.

  “Thought about what?” she replied without looking up from her book.

  “Coloring your hair?”

  She rolled over and stared at him. “Why would I think about that?”

  “I don’t know. I see women doing it all the time. I just wondered if you’d ever considered it.”

  “So you think I’d look better with a different hair color?”

  “You’re putting words in my mouth. That’s not what I said.”

  “Well, what are you saying exactly?”

  His frown deepened. “Look, Aliesha, stop tripping. I think you’re beautiful. I told you as much the first time I laid eyes on you. I just wondered what you’d look like with your hair colored is all.”

  She sat up and laughed. “Oh, so you’ve wondered that, have you?”

  He resumed his channel surfing and mumbled, “Yeah, a time or two.”

  “Wow!” she said. “Okay, so what color? What color would you like to see on me?”

  He sighed and looked at her. “If you must know, I’ve always thought a nice honey-blond might look great on you.”

  “Honey-blond?!” she said. “You can’t be serious. This is a joke, right?”

  “Why not?” he said. “A lot of stylish African American women wear their hair blond. Take Beyoncé, for instance. I think her hair looks gorgeous. It’s just a look.”

  “Yeah, frankly a look that would translate into a right hot mess on me. In case you hadn’t noticed, dear, I’m like twenty shades darker than Beyoncé.”

  “What difference does that make?” he asked. “Look at the tennis star, Serena Williams. She’s a beautiful, dark-skinned woman and she colors her hair blond all the time.”

  “Great,” Aliesha said. She leaped off the bed and started putting her work away. “I guess while I’m at it I might as well get it straightened, so it can hang down my back and blow in the wind, too, huh?”

  “Why are you getting so damn bent out of shape about this?” he shouted.

  “Because a couple of weeks ago I starting seeing a new hairstylist,” she shouted back at him. “And since then, everyone has been complimenting me on my hair—everyone that is, except you. I don’t think you’ve even noticed, have you?”

  He got off the bed and reached for her. “Look, baby, had I realized it meant that much to you—”

  She held up her hand, like a traffic cop. “Stop! Just save it, all right?”

  “Good idea,” he said, before moving away from her and launching into a pace. “What do you say we just save all of this empty drama and hysterics for something that matters? Because for the past couple of weeks you’ve been picking fights with me over nothing and I’ve had just about enough of it.”

  She followed him with her eyes. “Fighting with you over nothing? Oh, okay, so the things that matter to me aren’t even worthy of your time or consideration?”

  “See, there you go putting words in my mouth again. I didn’t say that. I just think there are a lot more important issues we could be dealing with.”

  “Like what? Go ahead, name one.”

  He stopped in front of her and said in a fierce whisper, “I’m so not having this argument with you, Aliesha, not tonight.”

  “Fine!” she spat back at him. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe we need to take a break . . . a real one this time. Spending a bit more time away from one another just might do us both some good.”

  “What?! You know that’s not at all what I meant. When in the hell did I ever say that?”

  “You didn’t. But I am.” She spun away from him, flopped down on her bed, and buried her face in her hands. “Really, Javiel, I need a break from this . . . from you . . . from us.”

  “I see. Just so I’m clear, you wanna break up with me because what? I failed to notice your new hairdo? Or because I suggested you try a new hair color?”

  She looked up at him, her face contorted but her eyes clear. “If you honestly think this is about my hair, I feel sorry for you.”

  “Okay, so what?” he said, raising his arms and gesturing with his hands. “Is this about me not wanting to discuss the morbid details of a decades-old, failed relationship, a relationship that truly has little bearing on what’s currently going on between you and me?”

  “No bearing? None whatsoever?” She jumped off the bed and locked her gaze with his. “Well, why don’t you let me be the judge of that? After you first explain to me how she wound up dead.”

  She couldn’t decipher the expression on his face. He appeared trapped somewhere between shocked, scared, and totally dumbfounded. Finally, he blinked and reached for her. “Look, babe, why don’t we just call it an early night and talk about all of this in the morning?”

  She shook her head and in a soft, quiet, but unwavering voice said, “No, Javiel . . . enough already. I’m through.”

  He’d made a relatively quiet exit. No yelling or screaming in protest. No ranting, raving, or calling her out her name. On receipt of his walking papers, he’d simply and silently slid into his shoes, straightened his clothing, and with her trailing a couple of paces behind him made his way to the front door. But before stepping out into the dark, still night he’d turned to her and said, “For the record, Evelyn and I broke up because she wasn’t happy. Not just with me, but with life in general. So, one beautiful Sunday afternoon, she went out into the woods, put a revolver to her head, and pulled the trigger.”

  Suicide. The story Monica managed to siphon from Jesus was pretty much the same. Apparently, Javiel’s fiancée had a bipolar disorder. A couple of weeks prior to their nuptials, she’d told him she didn’t love him and had insisted they call off the wedding. Though she had vehemently denied it, Javiel suspected Evelyn had stopped taking her meds. For months he’d tried but ultimately failed to convince her to reconsider. The day after he informed her of his decision to enter the monastery, she’d disappeared. A week later her decomposing body had been found in the woods, slumped against a tree. The gun she’d used to fire a bullet through her skull had been discovered on the ground beside her.

  “So why would Julia go out of her way to make me believe that her son may have played an active role in this woman’s death?” Aliesha wondered aloud.

  “Who knows,” Monica said. “Didn’t Javiel say his mom was a bit of a drama queen? On the other hand, has it ever occurred to you that Javiel’s mom just might be the real nut-job in this whole scenario?”

  Aliesha laughed. “Why is it you’re so quick to assign someone other than yourself the label of ‘crazy’?”

  “Anyway, now that you know the score, don’t you think you owe the man another chance? Javiel is, by no means, a bad guy. You can’t deny he’s been good to you.”

  “Good to me?” Aliesha said. “So is candy. But it’s not filling and very seldom is it really what I need.”

  It was Monica’s turn to laugh. “Uh-huh, keep on over-intellectualizing it. You and I both know you giving Javiel the boot didn’t have damn thing to do with your needs. No, that slick little move was all about your wants, more specifically your wanting a taste of that Kafka-reading Mandingo who cuts hair over there on Jackson Avenue. As if
that’s liable to last longer than the time required for him to jump in and out of your bed.”

  “What makes you think that’s even where I’m trying to take it? Okay, sure, I’m not denying a rather strong physical attraction to the man. And yes, I do get a kick out of the flirtation and the magic he’s able to work on my head, but—”

  “But nothing,” Monica said. “You know, it’s only a matter of time before he’s working those magic fingers over something other than the knots and kinks in your natural. Hey, I’m not hating. If you’re bored and you’ve got a hankering for something new, go for it. Guys do it all the time. Just understand what you’re giving up and what you’re getting into.”

  “As much as I appreciate your concern, Ms. Ann Landers, I think I can handle this.”

  “All right, Nancy ‘Smarty-Pants’ Drew. Whatever! But wouldn’t it be something if, instead of Javiel or Kenneth, that dream about your daddy kicking ass turned out to be a warning about your favorite new barber? And say, while we’re on the subject of ass-whuppings, for the record, whatever happened with your aunt Mildred and her Mike Tyson wannabe of a hubby? Did they ever end up getting back together?”

  Aliesha went on to tell Monica how after her aunt Mildred had seen her off to college, she’d quit her job, sold her house, moved to Cleveland, and reunited with her uncle Frank.

  “Damn!” Monica said. “You mean to tell me that after all those years they still got back together and ended up living happily ever after?”

  “They got back together, all right,” Aliesha said. “But happily ever after? I think not. A couple of years after she left, my aunt Mildred ended up perishing one cold winter night in a house fire that was later ruled to be arson. My uncle disappeared and far as I know was never heard from again.”

  “Dag, girl, that’s messed up,” Monica said before changing gears in the conversation and charging off in a different direction.

  But over and beyond the buried memories of her aunt Mildred’s sad and untimely end, the point Monica had raised about Dante stayed with Aliesha for the next couple of days. Was Dante someone she needed to keep at arm’s length, if not avoid altogether? The possibility was one that had never even occurred to her.

  She’d been so sure of her interpretation of the nightmare. What else could it have been besides her father’s way of warning her—that there’d be hell to pay if she chose to stay in a particular relationship? She’d readily marked the relationship in question as her troubled one with Javiel. But what if she’d been wrong? What if the trouble she feared wasn’t right next to her or even behind her, but instead loomed straight ahead?

  She knew of only one living person capable of providing meaningful insight to those kinds of questions. And by Friday evening Aliesha had become resigned to the fact that she’d have to do what, shamefully, she’d been putting off for weeks now—make arrangements to see Peaches.

  CHAPTER 19

  Peaches was Aliesha’s old hairstylist’s only child, at least, the only child of the five Miss Margie had given birth to that the local DHS had seen fit to let her keep. Rather than handicapped or disabled, Peaches was what most who knew her politely referred to as “special.”

  Hairless, blind, and said by some to be blessed with the gift of discernment, all from birth, Peaches was only a couple of years older than Aliesha. But it might as well have been a hundred as far as the latter was concerned. Everything about her bald contemporary—from the pinched-shut eyelids with the dark, sunken sockets to the clicking sounds she employed when navigating around objects and the unexpected truths she was in the habit of whispering—had long spooked the hell out of Aliesha. While Miss Margie knew Aliesha’s hair, Peaches seemed to know Aliesha better than any mere mortal should have.

  The blind woman’s gift was no secret and appeared tied somehow to her handling of an individual’s hair. Some actually sought her out for that very reason, but Aliesha had never been one of them. When Miss Margie finally confessed to Aliesha that she lacked the energy required to continue doing her hair on a regular basis, a reluctant Aliesha had asked Peaches to pick up where her mother had left off.

  All had gone well, until near the end when Peaches had leaned over and whispered, “Aliesha, I don’t mean no harm, but I’ve gotta say this. That man you seeing, the one at the church? He’s a good man . . . a good man hell bent on doing a bad thing.”

  To Aliesha’s shock and horror, within days Peaches’s prediction about Kenneth had proven true. Much too rattled to seek her out for a return visit, Aliesha had slunk back to Miss Margie and practically begged her to cut her hair.

  Even though Miss Margie, as was her habit, had laughed off Aliesha’s unspoken desire to keep plenty of space between herself and Peaches, Aliesha couldn’t help but feel a considerable amount of embarrassment and shame. Eager to redeem herself, when a gravely ill Miss Margie had finally become bedridden, not only had Aliesha readily assisted in the dying woman’s care, she’d made her a promise to do even more.

  “You and Peaches is all the love I got left in this world,” is what Miss Margie had told her. “I need to know y’all gonna at least try to watch out for one another.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We will,” Aliesha had assured her, even as she’d wondered where she’d ever find the courage and resolve to do so on any type of consistent basis.

  In the days following Miss Margie’s funeral, Aliesha had thrown herself into the task of making good on her vow. She’d called Peaches at least once a week and visited her either at the beauty shop or at home. But having so little in common, and with Aliesha being at a complete loss for how to gracefully hide or erase her feelings of discomfort, the conversations had been strained and the visits awkward.

  Before long, Aliesha began to resent the toll on her psyche, even more so than her time. While she didn’t completely renege on her promise, the number of days and weeks between her calls and visits increased. Feeling guilty about having fallen short of her own expectations, one day shortly after she’d started dating Javiel, Aliesha had stopped by Miss Margie’s old house to say hello to Peaches. During the course of their visit, Peaches had touched Aliesha’s hair and asked, “Are you all right?”

  Aliesha’s neck had stiffen, as her blood had slipped into a deep freeze. “Far as I know, yeah,” she’d said, unable to keep anxiety and fear from tumbling out with her words. “So, if you’re getting ready to tell me something different, I really don’t want to know, particularly if it has anything to do with me and Javiel.”

  Peaches had tilted her face upward and twisted her head from side to side, a mannerism that Aliesha had long associated with blind musical geniuses like Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles. “Javiel?” Peaches said. “Is he your new boyfriend?”

  “Yeah,” Aliesha had responded in a flat voice.

  “What’s that like?” Peaches had asked with an innocence so pure it had cut through some of Aliesha’s angst. “Having a boyfriend, I mean.”

  Though the question had caught her off guard, Aliesha had always known Miss Margie to keep her daughter on a short leash. On more than one occasion Aliesha had heard her say, “Peaches being bald, blind, and ugly as all get out ain’t hardly a deterrent to a lot of these rogues. But I tell her all the time, fooling around with one of these old knuckleheads is only bound to make her life that much more difficult.”

  Had Aliesha not been so tightly tethered by her own apprehensions, she might have used Peaches’s inquiry as a genuine first step toward a more meaningful bond. Instead, her primary thought had been getting away from Peaches as fast as possible, but not before giving voice to a sentiment that Miss Margie, no doubt, would have approved. “A boyfriend? Trust me, in the long run you’re probably better off not knowing.”

  Unlike Wally’s Cool Cuts, no more than a couple of the ten to twelve heads at Sister Beulah’s Beauty Boutique bothered to cast a glance in her direction when Aliesha walked in that Saturday with several large bags containing cartons of Chinese food. The beauty shop’s owne
r, Jill, had been among the few. Jill had taken over the business from her mother, Beulah, whose name still appeared prominently on the business’s marquee, even though she’d long since retired her curling irons and hot combs to spend her days tending to her roses, keeping up with her favorite TV judge shows, and spoiling her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

  “Hey girl! Where the hell you been keeping yourself?” Jill said on recognizing Aliesha as one of Miss Margie’s longtime regulars.

  Aliesha readjusted her purse and bags of food in order to give a friendly hug to Jill, a short, solidly built woman who probably weighed a good 300 pounds or more. “Oh, I’ve been around,” Aliesha said. “Just tied up with work, church, and life in general.”

  “Humpf,” Jill said. “That must mean you got yourself a new man.” She laughed at her own joke while conducting a thorough visual assessment of Aliesha’s head. “You know I ain’t never been too partial to them afros, but whoever hooked that up for you did a really nice job. ’Cause, honey, let me tell you, the last time you come stepping up in here, your head looked a right hot mess.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Aliesha said, pretending to take the teasing in stride as she stepped around the stout woman, who’d launched into another round of raucous laughter.

  Aliesha knew her less-than-positive feelings about Jill had been shaped by all of the negative things she’d heard from Miss Margie over the years. “Lord knows I’ll never understand Sister Beulah’s decision to turn her shop over to the likes of this big, lazy heifer. Jill ain’t never been of the proper mindset to do no hair, much less run a damn business. This used to be a classy joint. Now folks ain’t trying to clean up in here like they used to, ain’t showing no respect for other folks’ space, equipment, or customers. We got a couple of sinks damn near ’bout to fall off the wall and three to four dryers don’t halfway work. And hell, most times, it be more riffraff up in here trying to sell shit than customers. But you think Jill care? Shit, ’bout all that fat heifer know how to do is collect booth rent, run her mouth, and eat. Had me and Sister Beulah not worked out a deal years ago that allows me and Peaches to work up in here for the half the price they charging these other trifling heifers, shoot, we’da been gone.”