A Natural Woman

by Lori Johnson

  With that, Peaches, who’d been holding on to Aliesha’s arm, had giggled, while a shame-faced Tamara had stuttered her way through an apology.

  Though she’d pretended otherwise, Aliesha had been anything but oblivious to all of the stares, double takes, and sideway glances the happy trio had garnered over the course of their hour-long lunch at the crowded, family-style restaurant in which they’d chosen to dine. Given their obvious similarities as far as body type and skin coloring, Aliesha wondered if most onlookers assumed they were related. Later, after having given the matter some thought, she marveled at how collectively they could all be so visible and yet on an individual, everyday, one-on-one basis remain so ignored, if not virtually unseen.

  Aliesha’s grief over what had transpired between her and Javiel lasted all of one night. By the following Sunday morning, the one she’d spent in the company of Peaches and Tamara, the thick clouds over her head had already begun to dissipate. By that Sunday evening, the clouds had scattered and turned into feathery streaks. Come Wednesday, they’d faded into memory altogether and she’d felt a sense of freedom that bordered on giddiness.

  But when she strutted into Wally’s Cool Cuts that Wednesday afternoon and didn’t spy her new hairstylist in his usual spot, her high sank a little. Damn, I knew I should have called and reminded him, she chided herself as she walked toward the back where Yazz sat, swiveling from side to side and sporting the same goofy grin she’d seen plastered across his mug at the onset of their first meeting.

  “What up, Miz Professor?!” he said. “Your boy just called. He told me to let you know that he had to run a quick errand. Said he’d be along in fifteen minutes or so. You can go ’head and sit in his chair if you want.”

  With Yazz still grinning, spinning, and charting her every move, she walked over and eased herself into Dante’s chair. Determined not to let the young barber rattle her, on removing her day planner from her bag, Aliesha turned the chair so that she faced the shop’s entrance. She opened the planner and prayed he’d get the hint.

  “Aww, now, it’s not like that, is it?” he asked.

  Rather than swerve back around or even glance sideways over her shoulder, Aliesha stared at his reflection in the mirror against the wall. “Not like what?” she asked.

  Yazz stopped grinning, slowed the motion of his chair, and stared back at her. “Look here, Miz Professor, last week I was just being silly. I really didn’t mean no harm. That’s just how I do. You not fixing to hold it against me, are you?”

  “No,” Aliesha said, grateful for what she gathered was his way of apologizing. “We’re cool.”

  “Good,” he said. “’Cause I don’t think D. would ever let me live it down if we weren’t.”

  Before either of them could say another word, Gerald called out, “Yo, Yazz! Man, where them clean towels you was supposed to be bringing us, like half a damn hour ago?”

  Yazz threw back his head and in a loud voice said, “See, that’s why it don’t pay for me to come through here early. These fools act like I’m they errand boy or something.”

  He stood and stretched his long limbs until the joints popped and cracked. “Excuse me while I go tend to my unpaid and unappreciated servant duties, Miz P. Can I get you anything while I’m back there? Soda? Some chips?”

  “No, thanks,” Aliesha said, rewarding the courtesy he’d shown her by actually turning and addressing him directly. “I’m good.”

  He flashed his goofy grin and yelled, “Clean towels coming up!” before spinning around like one of the Temptations or else J.J. from the old Good Times sitcom.

  Aliesha sat back and reflected on Yazz’s statement about Dante never letting him live it down. It suggested they, or specifically Dante, had been talking about her. To her annoyance, she still couldn’t tell if the vibe she was picking up from him was one of true interest or simply playful cordiality.

  Also, this being the second time in a row he’d shown himself unprepared to work on her eyebrows, she’d begun to suspect that doing them was something he either didn’t want or else didn’t really know how to do. She glanced at her watch. While debating on whether to leave or just calm down, relax, and wait, she noticed Dante’s work smock hanging from the coatrack tucked in the corner of his barber’s station. Her gaze almost immediately fell upon the now-familiar paperback that peeked out from one of the smock’s pockets. What is it with him and this book, she wondered? Without thinking twice about it, she rose and removed the paperback from the garment.

  On returning to her seat and peeling open the pages, she discovered a photo wedged inside. Based on the strong resemblance, she initially assumed the two little boys she saw in the picture were Dante’s offspring. But within seconds, she realized the larger and darker of the two, smiling youths was actually Dante. Her gaze then turned to the petite, middle-aged woman seated between the two boys. On noting the proud tilt of the woman’s head, her naturally styled hair, and the undeniable twinkle in her eyes, Aliesha took an instant liking to her. She smiled and tucked the photo back into the book. But her face soon wore a puzzled expression on her discovery of the words scribbled on the paperback’s inside front cover: “Property of Reuben Reese.”

  Who was Reuben Reese? A friend? An acquaintance? Or simply the book’s previous owner? If so, how did Dante come to possess his book? Then again, maybe Dante had picked up the book secondhand—possibly at a used bookstore or a yard sale.

  She’d taken leave of her seat again when Yazz reappeared with a tall stack of folded towels. “Curiosity got the best of me,” she said, feeling the need to confess before shoving the book back into the pocket of Dante’s smock.

  “D. won’t mind. There’s plenty more where those came from.” Yazz sat down the towels and opened the tall, freestanding locker in the corner opposite the coat rack. On every shelf sat a tight row of both softback and hardback books. Yazz opened up a cabinet beneath the counter and showed Aliesha more of the same. “Here’s where he keeps most the kids’ books.”

  “Kids’ books?” Aliesha said.

  “Yeah, you know, for all the lil’ shorties who come in here, like Sam Junior’s two. Sometimes to keep ’em quiet while they’re waiting for their turn in the chair, D. will give ’em a handful of comics or a book.” Yazz pulled out an oversized children’s picture book and handed it to Aliesha. “Sometimes when it’s slow and the kid’s young enough and cutting up tough enough, D. will even sit down and read to ’em. And this here is just a drop in the bucket. Dude’s got loads more back in the laundry room.”

  Aliesha nodded and passed the book back to Yazz and watched as he returned it and refastened the cabinet doors. But before she could properly absorb and make sense of it all, the bell over the shop door clattered and Dante strode in with a backpack slung over his shoulder. He nodded a greeting at Wally and Gerald.

  “You got a customer waiting on you,” Wally said, sounding none-too-pleased. He looked back and gestured with his head toward Aliesha.

  “Yeah, I know,” Dante said, picking up his pace. “My apologies, Ms. Professor. I had every intention of being here. But I’ve been waiting for the past couple of weeks for this guy to call me about a headstone.” He tossed his backpack aside and reached for his smock. “How about, in addition to taking care of your eyebrows, I make it up to you by throwing in a free shampoo, condition, and style?”

  “Oh, I don’t really think that’s necessary. You didn’t keep me waiting that long.”

  “What?!” Dante said, feigning shock. “You turning down one of my shampoos? I could have sworn the main thing bringing you back was my Big Mama’s lavender-scented creek water.”

  Yazz laughed, grabbed up the towels, and said, “Man, you a trip!” He bumped fists with Dante before heading up front.

  Forgetting all about the books and feeling like the butt of some private joke, Aliesha fell silent. They had been talking about her.

  After Dante washed his hands at the small sink on the counter of his workstation, he
removed a pair of tweezers from a drawer and moved toward her. He made a few adjustments to the chair and its headrest before instructing her to lean back. When he ran his fingers over her brows, rather than close her eyes or even give in to the urge to bat her lashes, she stared blankly ahead.

  “You just want them cleaned up, right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He lowered his hands and stared at her until she finally steered her gaze his way.

  “I’m sorry I was late and I’m sorry if my teasing offended you,” he said.

  “It’s fine. I’m not upset,” she said.

  “No, it’s not. And yeah, you are,” he said as he brought the tweezers to her face and began plucking at the stray hairs. “And because of that, I’m going to let you in on a secret. My Big Mama wears her hair like you do—in a natural. And whenever I go see her and stay for an extended period of time, guess what ends up happening?”

  “She begs you to wash her hair?”

  Dante stopped plucking and shook his head. “Nope. Believe it or not, I’m the one who ends up doing all of the begging. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always enjoyed washing her hair.”

  Aliesha smiled. “And I thought I was strange.”

  He smiled back. “No, you and I are fine. But my boy, Yazz, on the other hand—”

  They both laughed.

  When Dante finished a few minutes later, he said, “All done!” and passed her the mirror.

  She held it up, turned her head from side to side, nodded her approval, and said, “Excellent.”

  “Good,” he said. “So, do I get the additional pleasure of washing your hair?”

  “If you insist,” she said. She followed him to the back and positioned herself on the bench in front of the bowl. Before he draped and fastened a cloak around her, he positioned a towel around her neck to keep the water from running into her clothes. While he worked, she stole a glance at the cabinets fixed against the wall above the washer and dryer and the ones between and above the two large sinks.

  “Something wrong?” Dante asked when he moved in front of her. With his help, she stretched out on the bench and eased her neck against the curve of the bowl.

  Unable to keep her mind off the book in his smock, she said, “I was just wondering. That woman, the one I saw in the picture you keep in your book, that’s your Big Mama, isn’t it?”

  “Wait a minute,” Dante said, while reaching for the sprayer. “A brother can’t be a few minutes late without folks using it as an opportunity to snoop through his stuff?”

  The film reel in Aliesha’s head spun backward until it found and flashed a few minutes worth of an angry Javiel’s similar accusations. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Really and truly, I didn’t mean any harm. It’s just—”

  “Miz Professor,” Dante said with a grin. “It’s okay. Why are you so sensitive?” He turned on the sprayer and worked the jet streams over her head. He used one hand to guide the water and the other to part, stroke, and manipulate her hair.

  By the time he finished and turned off the water, she’d relaxed and her alarm had been replaced by embarrassment. “I’m not usually—hypersensitive, that is,” she said, picking up where they’d left off.

  He nodded. “Well, your fascination with this book is starting to remind me of Reuben’s.” He slapped his hand against the pocket that contained the paperback. “And before you ask, he was the little light-skinned kid with the glasses you saw in the picture with me and my Big Mama.”

  “Is he your brother?” Aliesha asked as Dante worked the shampoo into her hair.

  “For all practical purposes,” Dante said. “Our Big Mama raised us both, but we’re actually cousins, and technically she’s our aunt.”

  Aliesha fell silent again. Several minutes passed before she allowed her natural curiosity to resurface. “So, why is it you have his book, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  Dante shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess in a way I’m looking for clues. The Metamorphosis is something I first noticed him reading right before he took off for college. For years, every time I saw him after that—when I went to visit him or he came home—he’d have the book with him or else somewhere nearby. Just recently, I found out he owns at least seven identical copies. I’m saying, what’s up with that?”

  Perplexity seized her freshly shaped eyebrows. “Why don’t you just ask him?”

  Dante frowned. “I could, but even if he told me, I probably wouldn’t understand him.”

  Aliesha chuckled. “He’s that deep, is he?”

  Dante paused for a moment and, on resuming the motion of his hands, looked away from her and laughed. “In a manner of speaking, Miz Professor, I guess he is. But it would probably be equally accurate to say—he’s dead.”

  Dante turned on the sprayer again, forcing Aliesha to spend a few minutes pondering his last statement. She waited until he’d finished rinsing her and had begun toweling her dry before she said, “You do realize the whole time you were talking about your cousin, not once did you ever speak of him in past tense?”

  Dante sighed. “I thought you said you’d spent a lot of summers down here with your Big Mama? Didn’t she ever teach you that just because a body has died, that doesn’t necessarily make them gone?”

  Before they vacated the utility room, Aliesha had meant to ask Dante about the other books, the ones Yazz had shown her and ones he hadn’t. But after Dante’s peculiar reference to the dead, she’d become distracted and wrapped up in trying to figure out if she’d stumbled upon a fully sighted and hair-having, male version of Peaches.

  She slipped so deep in thought, she didn’t think to make any additional inquiries until after Dante had finished with her hair and walked her outside. “So, how long ago did your cousin pass?” she asked as they stood out in front of Wally’s Cool Cuts.

  “’Bout a month ago,” Dante said.

  “You have my belated condolences,” she said. “I suppose all those books Yazz showed me behind your barber’s chair were his, Reuben’s?”

  A glaze descended over Dante’s dark eyes. “Yeah, I don’t guess a big, black strapping buck like me would look much like the type who’d get caught spending money on books, much less reading them, huh?”

  Taken aback by the bitterness and unwarranted hostility she’d heard in his voice, especially after the pleasantries they’d just shared and the door he’d voluntarily opened into his world, Aliesha said, “I don’t think I said or implied anything of the sort. Who’s being overly sensitive now?” Rather than wait for an answer, she walked away and had stepped off the curb when she heard him call to her, “Say, Miz Professor?”

  A part of her wanted to keep on walking and pretend as if she hadn’t heard him. Given all of the traffic noise, she probably could have gotten away with it. But she stopped and turned.

  Wearing a hint of a smile, he said, “You forgot to ask me what I was listening to.”

  Fighting against the urge to tell him she didn’t rightly give a damn, she strolled back toward him. She took the buds he’d wiped clean for her and inserted them into her ears. She’d been fully prepared for yet another selection from what had been her mother and father’s extensive R & B collection. But what she heard instead was a song by a more contemporary musician, Eric Benét, singing “Pretty Baby,” a stunningly beautiful song that Aliesha had always assumed Mr. Benét had penned in honor of his former wife, the actress Halle Berry. On recognizing the tune, Aliesha closed her eyes and listened longer than she had on either of her previous two occasions.

  On her return of the earbuds, Dante said, “You like?”

  “Yeah, I do,” she said. “Hurricane, the CD that particular song is from, is actually one of my favorites.” What she didn’t tell him but wished she could have was that the CD was one she’d listened and cried to for days on end in the aftermath of her breakup with Kenneth. “‘Pretty Baby’ is nice,” she said, trying to will back the melancholy she felt coming on. “But to be honest, I lik
e the thirteenth cut, ‘I Wanna Be Loved,’ even better.”

  In a quiet voice and wearing an expression she wasn’t able to read, Dante said, “So, should I pencil you in on my calendar for the same time next week?”

  “Yeah, I guess you could do that,” she said.

  He hadn’t meant to snap so hard when she’d mistaken his books for Reuben’s. She had no way of knowing about his sore spots, the wounds he constantly nursed, though they never seemed to fully heal. She’d unintentionally stumbled upon two. Hard, fast assumptions, whether about his intellect or his aspirations, had never ceased to annoy him, and those that granted Reuben a claim to what was rightfully his incensed Dante the most. Even from his grave, it seemed his cousin owned the uncanny ability to outshine his light and cast shadows of discord and doubt where none ought be.

  With that sole exception, Dante hadn’t minded Aliesha’s inquiries. He’d readily taken them as a sign that she’d found him worthy of further exploration. A certain part of him longed for her to know that he, too, possessed a curiosity about life and the world, a curiosity that went beyond sports, sex, food, politics, and the concrete terrain outside of his dirt-streaked windows. But given the circumstances, he couldn’t be sure how or if such revelations would benefit either of them.

  Why put yourself in the position of courting temptation? Hasn’t the girl already told you she’s spoken for? So what if you feel an odd twinge, ache, or pain here or there whenever she comes around. What evidence suggests it’s anything other than a weakness of the flesh—one you know is subject to lead you both astray if you let it?

  Unable to argue affectively to the contrary, Dante resigned himself to staying in brake mode. While he’d spoken openly with Aliesha about his deceased cousin and Reuben’s odd fascination with Kafka’s Metamorphosis, he’d stopped short of revealing his own theory about the matter or how a certain woman fit snugly into the picture—if not between the two cousins and in much the same manner as their Big Mama in the picture Aliesha had found inside of the book.