A Natural Woman

by Lori Johnson

  He’d spent the past several weeks mulling the mystery and had finally concluded that not unlike Gregor, the main character in Kafka’s puzzling literary masterpiece, at some unknown point in time, his cousin Reuben must have awakened one day and found himself changed into something horrible and completely unrecognizable—a monster of some form or fashion. He doubted such a revelation would have made sense to Aliesha. No, it probably would have made her suspect he was a bit touched or possibly a mite unstable, even more so than his quip about the dead not being gone no doubt already had.

  So, again, like the voice in his head advised, he’d held back, except in that one area where neither his will nor the voice’s warnings seemed to have any sway—the music. It wasn’t like he planned any of it. His iPod stayed fixed, as it normally did, on random play. The songs, the ones most befitting of the mood and the moment just sort of happened, as if spun in some alternate universe on an old-fashioned turntable and during the late-night shift of a nameless deejay whose quiet storm tastes mirrored Dante’s own.

  Had she noticed? Or was she too caught up in her own desires to pay the struggle he’d been waging with his the least bit of attention?

  While watching her listen to Benét’s “Pretty Baby,” Dante reflected on the similarities between her and his Big Mama. The blackberry-colored skin, which celebrated their descent from the cradle of civilization and marked them as the original descendants of Eve. The hair, owning the dense and alternating blend of elasticity and resistance his fingers so loved to roam. The royal bearing and stern veneers, which deterred all but the most aggressive and determined detractors and even kept them from scoring direct hits against the soft, tender parts hidden inside.

  But on finding his gaze hungry for more, even as it savored the quiver of Aliesha’s lowered lashes and the twitch of pleasure riding the span of her full lips, he knew the time had come to embrace the truth. The unsettling mix of boyish longing and mannish desire the professor stirred within him was much more aligned with how he’d once felt about another woman. A woman who like his Big Mama had long been a fixture in the center of his world. A woman whose ability to render murky both his past and his present easily surpassed that of Reuben’s. A smart, beautiful, cunning enchantress whose warm body and bewitching ways had, in fact, once come between him and his cousin. A woman named Laylah whose spell Dante was yet uncertain he knew how to break without severing his own heart.

  CHAPTER 21

  Late Thursday afternoon found Aliesha seated behind the desk in her office and discussing by phone a draft of an article Monica had written and asked Aliesha to proof before she submitted it to one of the prestigious academic journals in which her work routinely appeared.

  “Thanks, girl,” Monica said. “Good thing you called when you did because I was fully prepared to send it out ‘as is’ within the next hour or so.”

  “No problem,” Aliesha said. “I would have gotten back with you about it sooner, but I really didn’t get around to reading it until last night.”

  “Wednesday night, huh? Isn’t that the night you and Javiel generally got together?”

  “Yep,” Aliesha said.

  “You heard from him at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “And I can tell you’re not terribly bothered by that fact, either—are you?”

  “Not really.”

  Monica laughed. “Girl, what are we gonna do with you? Okay, so what’s been cooking up between you and the hot stuff barber you dumped Javiel for?”

  “Nothing,” Aliesha said. “Besides, that’s not why Javiel and I broke up, and I really wish you’d stop suggesting otherwise.”

  “Okay, back up,” Monica said. “Didn’t you stop by dude’s shop the other day?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And? Why are you going coy on me all of a sudden?”

  “I’m not,” Aliesha said. “It’s just . . . I don’t know. I’m not sure how to read him. As of late, the signals he’s been sending my way have been mixed, at best.”

  “Hell,” Monica said. “He’s probably gay.”

  “He’s not gay,” Aliesha said.

  “How do you know? Have you asked him? Has he ever said anything about having a wife or a girlfriend?”

  “Monica, I’m sure if he were gay I would have picked up on the fact by now. Don’t you think?”

  “Not if he’s perfected the art of being on the down-low. A lot of brothers out here have, you know.”

  “Sheesh, would you stop with that already?”

  “Okay, fine,” Monica said. “So maybe he’s got a thing for White girls. . . .”

  Aliesha laughed. “I swear if you’re not as bullheaded and stubborn as Tamara.”

  Beaming as hard as any proud parent, Aliesha passed Tamara’s clipboard full of neatly transcribed notes across the table. “Well done!” she said. “When we get back to campus, remind me to give you a list of journals to start researching. By the end of the semester, you should be more than ready to draft and submit an article or two.”

  A grinning Tamara put away her material and dived into the taco salad on the table in front of her. Their food court lunch date at a mall not far from Wells had been her idea. Besides her ongoing boycott of the university’s cafeteria, she’d been determined to have Aliesha’s undivided attention, something not always possible in the professor’s campus office—where interruptions by students, faculty members, and a ringing phone were common. Beyond Tamara’s expressed desire to give Aliesha a detailed update on the ethnographic research she’d been conducting at a local strip club was her unspoken one to simply hang out with her favorite professor.

  While the smile on Aliesha’s face faded enough for her to take a proper bite out of her turkey sub, the smile she kept housed on the inside stretched even wider. Outside of her tendency to lead by the lip and talk when she should be listening, Tamara had proved the ideal student. From day one she’d shown up in Aliesha’s class on time, always sat near the front, never failed to ask provocative questions, aced most of her tests, and consistently turned in all of her assignments when, if not before, they were due.

  After a bit of digging, prying, and asking around, Aliesha had ascertained that the then senior behaved similarly and performed just as well in all of her classes. Tamara, in fact, had a long history of academic excellence. After having quickly exhausted the limits of her public school’s advanced placement courses and gifted programs, she’d been moved up a couple of grades. She’d ended up graduating from high school at age fifteen and entering college when she’d barely turned sixteen, which helped explain, at least in part, some of the immaturity she so frequently exhibited. In light of her high test scores and her exceptional academic record, she could have gone to school most anywhere. But not wanting to be too far from her mother, who’d been in failing health for years, Tamara had elected to stay in Riverton and attend Wells University. At age nineteen and on the verge of completing her undergraduate course work, but unsure of what she wanted to pursue after graduation, she’d landed in Professor Eaton’s class and shortly thereafter realized she’d found both the calling and the role model she’d long sought.

  Aliesha took seriously the task of steering Tamara in the right direction. She understood that the attention the young girl seemed to crave so desperately, she genuinely needed, if only to keep herself from succumbing to the legions of doubt—both internal and external—primed to take her down.

  “You know what Peaches told me the other night?” Tamara asked. “She said even though the two of you have known each other practically all of your lives, she thinks she still makes you highly uncomfortable. Is that true?”

  Aliesha lowered her sandwich. “When did you see Peaches?”

  “I didn’t. I talked to her on the phone the other night. Remember when we exchanged numbers after lunch last Sunday?

  After wiping her mouth, Aliesha said, “Listen, Tamara, if making a pet project out of Peaches is what you have in mind, I really don’t thin
k that’s such a good idea.”

  “Now why on earth would I want to do that? I happen to like Peaches. We have a lot in common, actually.”

  “Yeah, be that what it may—”

  “Besides,” Tamara said, before Aliesha could finish, “she needs a friend. And if anyone knows what it’s like to want and need a real friend and not have one, it’s me.”

  Rather than argue the point, Aliesha let it go. She wasn’t totally unfamiliar with the social isolation Tamara had no doubt experienced as an academically gifted Black girl in a predominately White environment.

  “Lord have mercy, would you get a load of this?” Tamara said while rising halfway out of her seat and glaring over the railing that roped off the mall’s elevated food court. “Isn’t that Professor Bastard’s wife over there?”

  “Who?” Aliesha said, shocked that Tamara would actually feel comfortable enough to utter the Anthropology Department chair’s nickname aloud.

  “You know—‘Shithead’—ooh, my bad, I meant Dr. Beale. Well, his wife, Mrs. Beale, anyway. Yeah, that’s her. Remember when I told you I’d seen her walking around in Macy’s with those poor babies hooked up on leashes and you acted like you didn’t want to believe me? Well, have a look for yourself.”

  Aliesha peered over the railing and quickly spotted the trio traipsing along the mall’s lower level. She shook her head at the sight of the two cute, biracial little girls who were straining against the harnesses strapped around their tiny torsos.

  Tamara tossed her napkin onto the table. “I still say somebody needs to say something to her about parading around here with those babies on choke chains and leashes, like they’re rabid dogs or something. And where in the world is she taking them to get their hair done? Over to Don King’s? If she’s not careful, she’s liable to walk into the wrong place at the wrong time and one of these street corner militant types is gonna give her a not-so-nice piece of his mind.”

  “Don’t forget, she didn’t grow up here,” Aliesha said, hoping to defuse some of the outrage she heard gaining strength in her young student’s voice. “Where she’s from, it may not be all that unusual for children to be harnessed when they’re taken out.”

  “Yeah, well, ole girl is in Riverton now.” Tamara seized her napkin and began twisting and wringing it as if it were full of water. “And if she doesn’t know any better, that sorry excuse for a brother she’s married to dang well oughta.”

  “Careful. Bring it down a notch,” Aliesha warned, deciding the time had arrived for her to take advantage of both her seniority and position of authority.

  “Come on, Dr. Eaton! We can’t just sit here!” Tamara said, her voice caught between a whine and a shout. She stood and shouldered her backpack. “Let’s go say something to her.”

  “I’m sorry,” Aliesha said with a slow shake of the head. “It’s not our place.”

  “Since when?” Tamara asked. When Aliesha didn’t budge and went back to eating her sandwich, Tamara dropped back into her seat, leaned forward, and said, “Who was it who said, ‘If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination. . .’”

  Aliesha readily recognized the quote as one by Mary McLeod Bethune and, at the end of it, couldn’t help but laugh. However inappropriate, the girl was attempting to take the words of one of her own personal sheroes, and use them against her.

  “Okay, we’ll go,” she said. “But please, let me do most of the talking.”

  Aliesha had hoped in time her issues with Dr. Shelton Beale, the only other African American professor in the Anthropology Department, would pass. Instead they had only intensified. Shelton’s assumption of the department’s chairperson position had occurred after Aliesha’s hiring but shortly before her arrival at Wells. She suspected that had he already been at the helm he would have done everything within his power to prevent her from ever having come on board in the first place.

  Shelton had no real reason to be jealous of her. After all, as he was so keen on proclaiming to all those willing to listen, he was the one who held the highly esteemed Ivy League degrees and the much-coveted tenure. And try as she might, Aliesha had yet to pinpoint what, if anything, she’d ever said or done that might have warranted the intense animosity he so routinely hurled in her direction.

  According to her friend and colleague, Pat, who’d known and worked with Shelton for a number of years, “Shelton’s always been something of a jerk and all-around rat bastard. He hates and looks down on just about everybody, and in turn most everybody hates and looks down on him. Don’t waste your time trying to take it personally.”

  However, increasingly, Aliesha had become more inclined to align herself with Monica’s way of thinking. “The problem with a fool like Shelton is, not only does he want to be viewed as the bright, shining example of the exceptional Negro, he wants to be the sole representative of such. You showing up on the scene messed up his whole program, not to mention his warped image of himself.”

  Aliesha didn’t know a lot about Shelton’s wife, Kristen, other than she hailed from Norway and wasn’t too much older than Tamara. Rumor had it the couple had met overseas one summer and during the course of some research project in which Shelton had been involved. Shortly after meeting, they had embarked on a very much frowned-upon May–December, student–teacher type of romance. In the two years she’d taught at Wells, Aliesha could only remember having seen Kristen a couple of times, and on both occasions she’d been struggling to keep up with the adorable wild-haired children with the creamy peanut-colored faces and the shockingly sky blue eyes.

  Unlike so many other children of mixed heritage, whose locks leaned decidedly toward the straight and wavy, the gene pendulum for Shelton and Kristen’s two had evidently swung in another direction and landed in some yet-unnamed territory. Wiry, willful, defiant, and bypassing the uniformity of most afros, their jet black hair stood up every which-a-way on their heads, giving them the appearance of frightened porcupines.

  Aliesha knew most Black women, mothers in particular, couldn’t help but wince when they caught a glimpse of the pair, if not get hit by visions of either dancing hot combs, stiff brushes, jars of smelly hair oil, or cheap no-lye relaxer kits.

  Hoping not to startle the ruddy-cheeked blonde, who appeared to be losing the battle to keep her toddlers from charging off like a couple of ill-trained Eskimo sleigh pups and dragging her, their ill-equipped driver, through the mall, Aliesha approached them cautiously and with a smile, “Hi, Kristen. How are you?”

  When the young, harried mother looked up with a frown, Aliesha said, “You may not remember meeting me, but I’m Aliesha Eaton. I work in the same department as your husband.”

  “Oh yes, Dr. Eaton,” Kristen said. Her expression softened. “Of course I remember you. How could I ever forget? Shelton talks about you all the time.”

  Aliesha wasn’t sure how or if she even cared to interpret that last odd kernel of information. “And this is Tamara Howard,” she said. “She’s a graduate student and research assistant in our program.”

  Even though Aliesha could tell that Tamara was raring for a chance to charge off on a verbal rampage, the youth managed to contain herself long enough to step forward and exchange pleasantries with Kristen.

  “Looks like you’ve got your hands pretty full,” Aliesha said as she watched the harnessed children circle in opposite directions around their mother and, as a result, bind the poor woman’s legs together. “I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but near the main entrance of the mall they have these double-seated strollers with nice-sized compartments attached, which allow you to store your bags and keep your hands relatively free.”

  “Yeah,” Tamara said. “’Cause unless you all are headed to or from a Snoop Dogg video shoot, those leashes you’ve got on your little girls are SO NOT cool. And pardon me for saying it, but what’s up with their hair?”

  The smile on Aliesha’s face held steady, in spite of her desire to treat Tamara to a royal chewing out.

 
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kristen said. Her eyes skittered between the two Black women standing before her, as if afraid to settle for too long on either the natural-haired Aliesha or the perm-sporting Tamara. “It never even occurred to me that keeping them in tow like this might strike anyone as offensive. And their hair, again, you’ll have to forgive me. I really didn’t feel like hassling with it this morning. I’m afraid I haven’t exactly figured out a way of dealing with it that doesn’t leave them in tears and me at my wit’s end.”

  Before Aliesha could interject, Tamara said, “You ever thought about taking them to somebody’s hair salon?”

  “You don’t think they’re too young?” Kristen said, sounding thoroughly embarrassed and confused.

  “Well, you might not want to subject them to anything harsh or chemically based just yet,” Aliesha said, grateful that Tamara allowed her to get that much in.

  “So what would you recommend?” Kristen asked. “I’ve thought about taking them somewhere to have their hair braided. You know, like that gorgeous singer, Alicia Keys? From what I understand, she’s a child of mixed heritage, too.”

  “Ooh! Ooh! And I know just the perfect person for the job,” Tamara said.

  Aliesha shook her head and prayed, Oh, please God, no. Don’t let this child open her mouth and say what I think she’s about to.

  “Yep, our good friend Peaches. I’m sure she could do wonders with their hair,” Tamara said, sounding right proud of herself.

  Aliesha nodded politely but didn’t say a word. Of course, on the inside she was letting loose with her best Florida Evans imitation: Damn! Damn! Damn!

  CHAPTER 22

  On her subsequent visit to Wally’s, Aliesha got lucky and wound up having Dante all to herself. No other customers ahead of her or behind. No grinning, big-mouthed Yazz with whom to contend. Just pure, unadulterated Dante. Of course, she hadn’t thought of it in those exact terms when she’d walked in and spotted him seated alone at his barber’s station with a stylish cap pulled down over this brow and the ever-present book clutched tight in the dark, smooth capable hands she still longed to know better.