Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle

by Reinhardt, Susan

  “I need to get started on Mrs. Arrowood first and get Mrs. Gentry out of the dryer and comb her Farrah ’do out. You go on and show off your hair and come back a little later.”

  “Thanks, Dee. We still going for that beer tonight?”

  “If I can get done here. I think four or five more are wanting their hair makeovers today.”

  “Let me know if you need me to pay ’em off to come another day.” And with that she was out and down the halls, high-kicking and stepping like a majorette, hooting for everyone to “Come see the new me!”

  Mrs. Arrowood was the steel-wool woman, a chubby curly top who seemed to be completely out of it, either zonked by medications or years on the planet. She let me do anything to her and didn’t flinch when the hot water accidentally came rushing out of the faucet. I asked her what she wanted and she never said a word. I’m not even certain what propelled the woman to come to the salon in the first place.

  At the station, I kept her in the wheelchair and worked from there, removing the towel, wondering what in the world I could do with her hair, stiff and unyielding as a Brillo pad. That hair had its own agenda, I’m telling you. When I couldn’t get a comb through it, I had an idea. First, I needed to get Mrs. Gentry fixed, and then I’d return to this wooly booger.

  “You ready, Mrs. Gentry?” I asked, taking her from the dryer and helping her to the chair.

  Just as I was trying to placate her and assure her I wasn’t after Frank, Theresa Jolly popped in and said I had an urgent phone call. My heart stopped. I thought of my children. Fear encircled me and I felt dizzy from a combination of anxiety and chemical vapors that weren’t well ventilated in this small room.

  “Here’s the number. Use my cell.” Theresa handed me the scrap paper and her phone. It was Aunt Weepie’s number. I wondered what kind of emergency she could possibly have. She answered on the third ring, but it was hard to hear her because Mrs. Gentry was saying we all wanted Frank and “his thingamabob.”

  “He’ll only set them roving eyes on me, Farrah Fawcett Majors Gentry,” she shouted.

  “Aunt Weepie? You all right?”

  I heard great sniffles and gulps of air. She sounded like an upset 8-year-old whose doll had broken or turned up missing.

  “What is it? Calm down.”

  “I’m coming over there, Prudy. Tony is a . . . a . . . he’s nothing but an ass.” She hissed the word. “Can I stay with you tonight?”

  “Well . . . yeah.” I wondered what he had done.

  “Listen, I’m going to get under my bed for a while just to calm down and have a martini, then I’ll stop by the Top of the Hill.” I pictured her crawling under her four-poster and into the nest of blankets, books, Vermouth and mini bottles of gin. The only thing she’d have to bring was the ice and the olives.

  “I may have to take Annie Sue for a beer first.”

  She paid that comment no attention. “Your mama has sided with Tony on this issue, this horrible thing they’ve cooked up, and I’m not speaking to her. I’ll be over at 3. I want you to work me in. I’ve got something planned for that shit brain that’s going to teach him the biggest lesson of his sorry life. You just get the Silver Fox hair dye ready. Get me that blue-tint look and make me look 108.”

  “Good Lord, Aunt Weepie. What happened?”

  “He’s an ass is all I can say for now. I’m too upset to rehash his HighnASS’s shenanigans but I’m in ‘Total Recoil.’ I’ll tell you more about it later when you’re turning my hair gray as a goat’s.”

  “I’m not about to turn your hair gray.” I said, wondering what had gotten into her. She’d always been a redhead. Always. She dreaded gray like a dog dreads the vet.

  “Your mama’s all mad at me, too. You know how she can be. She got all hopping mad ’cause I talked up Croc Godfrey, and she said she’d found you someone better who had some meat on his bones and sense in his head. We had a big old fight. I don’t have anybody in the world who loves me. I belong in one of those rooms at Top of the Hill, so at least I could have me a roommate, and maybe her groaning and carrying on would keep me company.”

  “I love you. Plus you have your children, your grandkids.”

  “They hadn’t liked me in three years,” she cried. “Since that Christmas I got all mad when they ate the ornaments off my tree.”

  “Well, they were candy. Did you say awhile ago that my mother had someone picked out for me?”

  “Found you some boy y’all used to know. I can’t talk about it now,” she said, crying again, hiccupping gulps of indignation she claims were brought on by her fourth husband, the sweetest man I’d ever met. “I need to focus on me.”

  She hung up without any further trailing and lingering of the conversation. It typically takes us 10 minutes just to get all the goodbyes out.

  Now, where was I? Whose head was I working on?

  I turned back to Mrs. Gentry, took out her curlers and combed her hair, stiff and broken from the bleach and the heat. I flipped and teased, used the curling iron on her here and there and finished it all off with a blast of heavy-duty hairspray. The fumes of the room had me coughing and red-eyed. When we were done, she most certainly had Farrah hair. She looked like Farrah at age 95. It was quite frightening, but she smiled for the first time all morning and handed me a quarter, “for a tip,” she said.

  “Thanks. I’ll let you know what I buy with this. I hope you like your hair.”

  “It’s what Frank likes that matters. You sure look awful standing next to me in this mirror. Frank’ll dump you permanently this time, Lizzy.”

  “It’s Dee.”

  “Suit yourself.” She wheeled away, blonde straw trailing behind her. Then from out of nowhere, Mrs. Arrowood moaned these haunted-house-like noises, and I’d almost forgotten about her sitting there with her wooly ram’s head.

  “I’ve got an idea for you,” I said, trying to beat back all that thick hair. “We’re going to give you some beautiful cornrows. I’ve got some beads, pearls I believe, and you’ll have the Bo Derek hair that’ll be the envy of all. Remember how pretty it looked that time on Miss Annie Sue.”

  “She’s a whore,” the woman said, the first and only words out of her mouth that day or for any day I could remember.

  It took me 1 ½ hours to braid that mess, and when I was done, I tried hard not to laugh but couldn’t help myself. I know it’s mean and not very Christian-like, but I had to excuse myself to the restroom where I giggled for three entire minutes, tears streaming down my face. My sides were aching. Oh, Lord have mercy. Poor woman. I’d left her to face herself in the mirror. She hadn’t said a word except Annie being a whore in the two hours she’d been in the beauty shop.

  I returned, fairly composed, and put on a big cheerful act. “Look at you. Pretty as a movie star.” Her ears stuck out like a mule’s and her features were magnified and enlarged from the severity of the hairdo. The corners of her lips turned down and her mouth opened, then closed.

  She slowly swiveled around and fixed her wobbly eyes on mine.

  “I . . . I . . . I look like a jig,” she said, reaching with a trembling arm for a braid.

  “That’s not very nice,” I said. “There are just as many beautiful black women as white, and if you ask me, they age far better than we do and have much more personality, by and large.”

  She had nothing more to say, and I quickly wheeled her back to her room and tried not to snicker with the nurses who were doubled over with laughter as they passed us in the halls.

  “I think you’re going to like these braids,” I said. “They are all the rage in Rio. Easy to maintain.” She wailed and two assistants helped me roll her back into bed where she pounded the mattress with her fists, screaming about looking like “a jig.”

  When I got back to the shop, four more women were waiting
for new hairdos. This was going to be a long day.

  At lunchtime I met Kathy in the breakroom. She ate her usual tuna sandwich and Ruffles, three baby carrots and a pickle. I promised I’d help her with baths and beds after my last hair appointment, which just so happened to be Aunt Weepie, breezing in wearing the tightest outfit the law would allow without arrest, and enough perfume to fumigate six nursing homes.

  She reeked of gin, Beautiful perfume and nesting materials. She smelled like something dragged from under a bed and then dunked in Estée Lauder as an afterthought.

  “Prudy,” she said, slurring her words. “Make me look wretched.”

  I stared without speaking. The world was cracking up. At least I wouldn’t be alone.

  “Let’s hear it, Weep,” I said, shampooing her loose head, shed of any muscle tone thanks to strong martinis. “What did Tony do to get you in this state?”

  “He and your mother decided I needed nursing home insurance,” she said. “Your mama and daddy have bought their fancy cemetery crypts, and then last week they go and sign theirselves up for nursing home insurance. They are so damned gung-ho on shriveling up and heading down the Interstate of Death.

  “They got Tony all excited about this business of taking care of things before he strokes out or busts a heart valve. So he invites this giblet woman over who asked me all these damned nosy questions, and when I said, ‘Why? What are you asking me if I drink or smoke or have anal sex for? What’s it to you?’ she goes on to say, ‘We have to have this pertinent information in order to process your application for long-term coverage.’ And I said, ‘What long-term coverage you talking about?’ and she gets all fired up and says, ‘Winifred, your husband has signed you up for a policy in case you need care in your later years.’

  “I said, ‘Are you talking about a nursing home?’ and she got all defensive and nervous, her glass of tea sloshing away, and she said, ‘Your husband was trying to look out for your best interests.’ I stood up and stuck my chest out at both of them, and I said, ‘Do these look ready for the home?’ and I shook my big old titties at them. Then I cut a perfect split, not one leg bent, and I said, ‘Does this split look like it’s ready for the home?’ and they just sat there in shock, so I went ahead and did a front flip and topped it off with some nice walking on my hands and a back walkover.

  “Once I finished my routine, I proceeded out the door. I told that woman, ‘Stick your nursing home insurance up your own constipated fanny and his, too,’ and I pointed right at Tony.”

  Weepie was in such a state that if I didn’t agree to color her hair gray, she could very likely end up doing something much worse. “Ugly me up and then we’ll go drink with that walking corpse you been talking about lately.”

  Within an hour, Aunt Weepie was a “blue hair,” and she loved the new look so much she washed off all her makeup and clicked out her partial so that her mouth caved in where plenty of teeth were missing. She also removed her bra, so that her 38-D breasts hung like dead carp.

  “I’ll show him somebody ready for the nursing home,” she mumbled, having a hard time talking over the missing front and side teeth.

  Annie Sue met us in the hallway, and Aunt Weepie gasped upon seeing the ancient woman’s jet-black pixie and bright orange circles of rouge, along with the outfit she was wearing. Annie Sue had taken a pair of her stretch slacks and cut the legs off, creating a pair of short-shorts that she paired with Control-Top suntan pantyhose, the dark girdle part showing beneath the ragged hem. She teetered on a pair of high heels and had hoisted her ground-sweeping breasts and stuffed them in a tiny black T-shirt that said, “Hottie,” in giant letters, a birthday gag gift from one of the nurse’s aides.

  “I’m ready,” she said, looking in our direction. She pointed directly at my aunt. “Is that old woman next to you coming with us?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Up and At ’Em, Prudy: Being happy-go-lucky around a person whose heart is heavy is as bad as stealing his jacket in cold weather or rubbing salt in his wounds. Proverbs 25:20

  Mama’s Moral: My heart is heavy and to lighten it you will at least meet this man I’ve found for you. You won’t be sorry. My load is heavier than you know. Now that you are a semi-celebrity with your radio show, I wish you’d up and quit cleaning other people’s excrement.

  New beginnings are often harder than painful endings. The unknown vs. the familiar. It is along about the second or third week away from their abuser that the majority of women cannot tolerate the sobriety of life without him, cannot survive the unmerciful ache that bears down upon them. This is when they will risk suffocation or a fractured skull for a little of that love they crave, that poisonous crack cocaine of the heart. It happened to Kathy, who went back three times before the bullet tore through her skull and lodged into her left brain.

  It is certain that in the beginning the victim becomes overwhelmed by thoughts of what lies ahead: the loneliness, the courts, the battles, the struggles of single motherhood and working to put food on the table and fillings in kids’ teeth.

  It is no wonder they go back. I shudder to think had I not come so close to dying, would I have returned?

  ***

  I couldn’t get Croc out of my mind, wondering why he hadn’t called, if he had thought my butt was too large or did the scars scare him? This had been my first date in years, since meeting Bryce, and I surely deserved a callback. Do men not fully understand what the newly divorced and half-dead go through? That it’s been so long since we’ve been repackaged and redistributed, put back on the shelves of love, we aren’t sure how to act or what to do?

  Maybe I didn’t exactly need scorching sex, but a phone call would have at least taken the sting out of this pain, and a vase of Gerber daisies, icing on the cake.

  I don’t get it. I’m at least a solid 7, even an 8 on some days, and he came rustling in from the past as a 4.5 at best. Maybe less. Forgive me once more, dear God, for my mean comments. If he calls I’ll bake some old woman a macaroni pie. Or at the least I’ll bump him up to a 6 in the looks department. Please, God. I can’t take any more rejection. Let him call.

  ***

  I drove into my mother’s circular drive, canopied with oak trees that seemed to bow like gentlemen. It was around 11 a.m., and Miranda and Jay were already in the pool, the final stages of summer evident in the darkness of the trees’ greens. Mama was sitting under the cabana sipping a Diet Pepsi and watching them play. She wore a long blue-jean dress, straight fitting, and a pair of strappy blue-jean sandals. She looked right adorable. She smiled at me for the first time in a week. Even Jay seemed happy, taking off and springing into the air, firing human cannon balls and jackknifes from the diving board while Miranda stayed in the shallow end, bobbing along in her orange water wings and warning Jay about the dangers of hitting his head. Little mother. That’s Miranda.

  “Hello,” Mama said rather coldly, the smile disappearing. She was still upset I’d gone out with Croc and that I’d told her I would under no circumstances date anyone she’d plucked off the streets. “He’s not off the streets,” she’d said. “You know him. But I’m not telling you who it is unless you say you’ll go out with him.”

  We were gridlocked, neither saying much to the other. Aunt Weepie had called and wanted us all to try a new restaurant, having grown tired of funeral food and the Red Lobster.

  She rang me yesterday at work, thanking me for housing her for two days. She’d slept the first half of the night in Miranda’s bed, both of them nestled under the canopy; then along about 2 or 3 in the morning, I’d awakened to find Aunt Weepie in my bed, hogging the covers and snoring a song. I swear, she didn’t just snore plain and regular like most folks, she added a tune and rhythm to her nightly breathing.

  She said Tony had finally apologized and bought her a diamond tennis bracelet instead of the nursing home policy. �
�I told him to go ahead and keep his half of the policy ’cause I wasn’t about to change his dirty Depends,” she said.

  She was also, much to our delight, back to wearing her partial, and her hair was once again the knockout shade of red she refuses to share with anyone interested. “My secret,” she says, not wanting another woman on the planet to copy that trademark red color.

  On the phone she reminded me about the new restaurant. “Oh, Prudy. Fresh Country Food, it says here in the ad. It’s called ‘Ma & Pa’s Fresh Vittles’ so you know it’s gotta be good. I am missing a funeral to go to the grand opening tomorrow and was wondering if you and your frigid mama would join me. I believe it’s kid-friendly.”

  “Why aren’t you going to the funeral?”

  “Heavens, Prudy. I got to thinking and the deceased is from a long line of horrible cooks. They will no doubt have a canned ham, canned green beans and those God-awful rolls that taste like the stuffing in a bad pillow.”

  We had planned to meet at Mama’s at 11:30 to beat the noon crowd. I helped the kids out of the pool and got them dried and dressed while Mama sat there pouting and drinking her Pepsi until time to come inside. At 11:40, late as usual, Aunt Weepie pulled up in her Mercedes 450 SL, oozed out like a movie star and entered the living room like the Queen of England. When Mama’s eyes were on her, she twirled around three times so we could all get the full view of her canary yellow pantsuit hugging every well-placed curve. She had the top four buttons open, revealing a gold lace camisole.

  Diamonds glittered along her suntanned wrist. Her shoes shone gold and matched the buttons of her pantsuit. Everything was perfect. All accessories down to her . . . what in the world was she toting for a purse?