What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day...

by Pearl Cleage

  I was good at it—the cutting and the listening—and some of my clients came twice a week at thirty to fifty dollars a pop. Now, I like to look good, too, but I think it was only half about looking good and the other half about having somebody to actively listen, actively affirm, and actively touch without expecting sex or a home-cooked meal in exchange.

  Most sisters lean into a good shampoo like it’s as welcome as good sex. One of my operators used to say that’s why black beauticians wash your hair so damn hard. They know they’re doing double duty. I won’t go that far, but I know Joyce had the most relaxed look on her face I’d seen there in a while. I worked both hands near her temples and was rewarded by another voluptuous sigh.

  “Tell me about Aretha,” I said. Her face had stayed in my mind ever since Sunday. There was something about her that made you notice, made you wonder, made you care. Even though she looked like most of the other girls around here—cheap clothes, too much makeup, and the worst haircuts I’ve seen in ages!—her eyes were bright and curious and she seemed aware that there was a bigger world available to her if she wanted it. Watching her at the nursery, I found myself hoping she was going to be one of the ones who survived.

  “She’s got a chance,” Joyce said. “Her parents were movement people. Came up here hoping they could find a community of like-minded souls.”

  “An all-black paradise,” I said.

  “Well, maybe not a paradise, but at least someplace where black folks had figured out some things.”

  “We figured out some things, all right,” I said. “How to get the hell on the bus to the city. Lean over.”

  “Why?” Joyce said.

  “Get some blood flowing to that head,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “Who knows?” said Joyce, leaning over and shaking her head of thick, newly washed hair into a fluffy black cloud around her face.

  “Were they at church Sunday?” I said, trying to decide whether to make a continuous circle of braids or a pattern of angles. Joyce has really healthy hair, and once I get her to sit still, she doesn’t mind letting me be creative.

  “They got killed in a car accident. A big semi crossed the line. Aretha had just turned twelve.”

  “Jesus!” Poor people, I thought. What’s that thing about if you want to make God laugh, start making plans? That’s sure the damn truth.

  “They were going to put her in foster care or send her back to Detroit to her grandmother, but then one of her mother’s friends took her.”

  “Nice woman?”

  Joyce shrugged. “She’s all right. She’s usually drunk, but she’s very quiet about it, so nobody bothers her. I do what I can, but Aretha’s independent and proud. She won’t usually admit she needs any help from anybody. She just figures it out and takes care of things. She’s pretty much raising herself.”

  “She seems to be doing a pretty good job of it,” I said. “Is that too tight?” I patted the beginning of the braid lightly.

  Joyce smiled. “It’s perfect. Why’d you ask about Aretha?”

  “I don’t know. She just looked so alive when we saw her on Sunday.”

  “She’s about the only sixteen-year-old who comes to the Sewing Circus who doesn’t already have a kid.”

  “Good for her.”

  “She wants to go to Interlochen.”

  Interlochen was a boarding school for smart, artistic kids a couple of hours up the road. Tuition was steep and scholarships were scarce, even for white kids.

  “Does she have a chance at it?”

  “She’s talented,” Joyce said. “And she’s determined. She applied for a special institute. A month in residence at the end of the summer. She ought to hear something in a couple of days.”

  “You think she’ll get it?”

  “I’ve got my fingers crossed.”

  “That’s not a very scientific approach,” I said, parting Joyce’s hair gently into small sections. The secret of good-looking braids is absolutely straight parts between them.

  “And I’ve helped her with the application and drove her down for the interview.”

  “Okay,” I said, tucking the end of one braid into the beginnings of the next one. “Just wanted to be sure you weren’t falling down on the job.”

  Talking about Aretha made me see why Joyce is doing what she does. I liked the girl’s energy. I guess she reminded me of myself a little bit at her age: alive and well and on my way.

  • 21

  eddie scared the shit out of me this morning. I was home by myself since Joyce went into town early to pick up a few last-minute things. She’s bringing Imani home tomorrow and she’s been spinning around like a top for the last twenty-four hours. I’m worn out just from watching her, so once I put the kettle on for tea (although I still prefer coffee even if it is bad for me!), I got out one of those meditation tapes Joyce had, and it sounded like something I might actually be able to do. In fact, it didn’t sound like much more than sitting still for a little while and trying to calm down. The guy on the tape said to think of your mind as a monkey, swinging through the trees, chattering away a mile a minute, and the meditation was a way to catch hold of the monkey.

  So there I was, sitting on the porch with my eyes closed, counting my breaths like the guy said to make sure I don’t get distracted, and I’m feeling pretty silly about doing this at all, but it feels good just to be sitting out here. I almost never just sit anywhere. I’m always talking or working or reading or watching TV or on the phone or worrying.

  So I’m trying to sit there and tell myself that everything feels silly the first few times you do it and not to give up and go make a pot of coffee when I felt a presence. I didn’t hear anything, but you know how you can feel somebody looking at you? At first I figured maybe it was just the meditation kicking in, but it didn’t feel like a spiritual presence. It felt like a person presence, so I opened my eyes and Eddie was standing there in the yard, just looking at me. I had expected to see somebody, but I still jumped. I couldn’t believe he had gotten that close up on me and I hadn’t even heard him break a twig.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.

  “You don’t make much noise when you move around, do you?” I said.

  He smiled at me. “I didn’t see you until I was already in the yard. You weren’t making a whole bunch of noise yourself.”

  “I have my moments,” I said.

  “Joyce asked me to come over and put the crib together.” I could see he had a small toolbox with him.

  “She’s gone to the grocery store,” I said, “but it’s sitting in a box in the middle of the living room floor if you want to get started.”

  “Good,” he said. “I know she wants it ready for tomorrow.”

  “She’s pretty excited,” I said, glad to have an excuse for putting on that pot of coffee and joining Eddie in the living room where he was reading the instructions for the crib carefully and laying parts out methodically in a row so that once he got started he wouldn’t have to be digging around in the bottom of the box like I always do, looking for the crucial four screws that I probably threw away an hour ago.

  “You learn to walk that quiet in the army, too?” I said.

  “Habit,” he said, putting a weird little bracket down next to a set of weird little clamps.

  He opened his toolbox and started looking at the various sizes of screwdrivers, matching them up quickly with the pieces of the baby bed where they would be required. One thing about Wild Eddie, he wasn’t much of a talker. He never seemed to be uncomfortable. He just didn’t talk to fill in empty space like most people do. I wondered if that was habit too.

  I sat there and drank my coffee and he put that whole crib together and never said a word. And it was okay. There was something really quiet about Eddie. I don’t mean just not talking. Something about him was still. When he got through with the crib’s assembly and attached the mobile, we stood back to admire his handiwork.

  “I figured out why I didn�
�t recognize you at the airport,” he said, like we’d been engaged in a discussion about it.

  “Because I grew up,” I said.

  He gestured toward my almost-shaved head. “No. I thought you’d have more hair.”

  “I was in the hair business,” I said, “but when it comes to my own, sometimes I go through periods where less is definitely more.”

  “What business are you in now?” he said.

  I heard myself hesitate, but I played right past it. “I’m between engagements.”

  He looked at me. “I like it.” He took his time before he said it, too, like he was really trying to decide.

  “Thanks,” I said, and picked up our cups to take back into the kitchen so he wouldn’t catch me blushing.

  “I like it a lot.” And he smiled the smile that had been at the heart of most of the Wild Eddie Jefferson stories I’d ever heard involving women. I was beginning to understand why.

  • 22

  it was another pretty day. I’m making pasta for dinner tonight and I wanted to get some decent red wine to go with it, so I decided to drive to Big Rapids in search of Chianti. I borrowed Joyce’s car, treated myself to lunch at a pretty little restaurant with outdoor café seating that looked like it had just dropped in from Paris for the afternoon, and found a liquor store with a huge, if dusty, selection of wine. I was poking around, to the complete disinterest of the bored owner, when the door opens and in walks Reverend Anderson. Well, he doesn’t really just walk in. He kind of creeps in like he doesn’t especially want anybody to see him in a liquor store in the middle of the afternoon. He didn’t see me, so I just watched him.

  “What’ll it be?” said the owner, folding his newspaper and looking put upon.

  “A fifth of Jack Daniel’s and a pint of peach brandy,” the Rev said, pulling out his wallet.

  The owner rang up the sale and grimaced at the brandy as he bagged it up. “My wife likes this stuff, too,” he said. “I don’t see how they drink it. Too sweet for me.”

  “Thank you,” said the Rev, folding the bills the man handed him and striding out quickly.

  I took two bottles of passable Chianti to the cash register and looked out the window in time to see the Rev pulling away from the parking lot. His companion, a young man who looked about fifteen, sat as close to the door as he could without riding on the roof. He was probably on his way to a lecture from the Good Reverend about some sin or another, and he didn’t seem to be looking forward to it one bit.

  Well, I thought, that’s an interesting idea. Combine some youth outreach work with a trip to the liquor store.

  “You ever drink that sweet brandy?” said the owner, feeling more kindly now that I was actually buying something, I guess.

  “No,” I said. “Too sweet for me.”

  “Exactly,” he said, double-bagging my wine and smiling now like he was pleased to see I shared his opinion. “That’s it exactly.”

  As I got back in the car and turned back toward Idlewild, I kept seeing that kid’s shoulders hunched up around his neck like he was trying to retract his head like a human turtle. Too bad, I thought. If he’d been to church on Sunday, he’d know: no hiding place down here.

  • 23

  imani arrived this morning. She is the quietest baby I’ve ever seen. It’s almost like she knows her family history and is just glad somebody cared enough to take her home. She isn’t about to make any waves. When the social worker handed her to Joyce, she was wide-awake and looking at everything with this real serious expression on her face. The social worker, who turned out to be a former co-worker of Joyce’s, said she didn’t make a sound the whole drive down.

  “Be great for you if she stays that quiet,” the woman said. “Some of them scream bloody murder the whole time they’re awake.”

  Them. The way she said it made me feel sorry for Imani. She was already part of a group nobody wanted to deal with: crack babies.

  We looked at Imani, who looked back without blinking as if to say: can you imagine me acting a fool like that? No way.

  When the social worker left, Joyce sat down on the couch and held Imani on her knees so we could look into her face. She was a thin, cocoa brown baby with long, skinny legs and big, dark, old-lady eyes.

  “We have the same stylist,” I said, running my hand lightly over her perfectly bald head. It was warm and smooth.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Joyce said, and leaned over to kiss the baby on both cheeks and smile into her face. Imani watched her intently without a trace of a smile back. She was also the most serious baby I had ever seen. The idea of chucking her under the chin or tickling her ribs was out of the question.

  “I’ll bet she has plenty to say,” Joyce said. “Don’t you? But you have to get someplace safe before you tell your secrets, isn’t that right? I think that’s right.”

  Imani’s eyes never left Joyce’s face.

  “Do you want to hold her?”

  I hadn’t really thought about it, but when Joyce asked the question, Imani turned toward me like she was waiting for the answer, too. What could I say? Joyce put her in my arms and went into the kitchen to see what the social worker had brought from the hospital.

  “Well,” I said, wondering why there is such a strong urge to talk gibberish to babies. I resisted it. “You made it, huh? Got born anyway.”

  She looked at me with her old-lady eyes like it had already been quite a trip. I was glad that she had landed here with us and hadn’t had to go with her angry aunt Mattie and her crazy uncle Frank. You don’t get to pick your family, but sometimes it’s good to have options.

  I ran my hand over her little head again and she snuggled against me in a way that made me feel a surge of what I guess was maternal protectiveness. Imani had already kicked a drug habit cold turkey and outrun the HIV her mama was sending special delivery. She was stronger than she looked, and somehow that made me feel stronger, too.

  “You go, girl,” I said. “With your bad baby self.”

  All of a sudden I heard Joyce burst out laughing in the kitchen, but before she could explain, Eddie pulled up in the yard. Joyce stopped laughing long enough to introduce him to Imani. I handed her to him and he held her easily, like it was a perfectly natural thing to do. I liked that. It always pissed me off when men would go all thumbs if you asked them to hold a baby. Eddie even knew how to support the head. Imani gave him the same unblinking consideration she had bestowed on us while Joyce showed us what was so funny.

  At the bottom of the bag the social worker had brought with bottles, diapers, bibs, and teething ring was a sort of harness thing that lets you pretend you’re breast-feeding when you’re really not. Supposedly some brother wanted to experience the joys of breast-feeding and invented this bib with tubes to simulate that. Eddie and I agreed this is not a brother that either one of us has any interest in getting to know. Bottle-feeding is one thing, but trying to fool the kid into thinking the milk is coming from inside you when it’s really cow’s milk seemed a little weird. Joyce said we’re just scared to open up to new experiences and that when Imani gets older, she’s going to tell her how we acted.

  We all laughed, but in the middle of it, I realized I’m probably not going to be around for much of Imani’s life. Two days ago I wasn’t even sure I wanted to spend the summer with this kid, but now I’m starting to really feel sorry for myself, picturing Eddie and Joyce witnessing her first steps without me. Going to her dance recitals and softball games. Taking snaps at her high school graduation. My brain went through a fast-forward of Kodak moments where I was conspicuously absent. I almost started crying at how much I was going to miss, then I thought fuck it. I’m well right now and I’m not going to make myself sick worrying about what’s going to happen next.

  So I took a deep breath like they keep saying on this meditation tape and tried to focus on being right in this room, right in this moment, and I actually felt better! It was amazing. I dragged that scared part of myself kicking and screaming into the
present moment and it was so good to be there. I started grinning like an idiot.

  I hope I can remember this feeling next time I’m blubbering into my pillow because I can’t count on the next thirty years. One day at a time. I ought to have that shit tattooed on my forehead. One damn day at a time.

  • 24

  i knew there was going to be trouble when Joyce came home with four packages of juicy jumbo hot dogs and six boxes of latex condoms, but I don’t think any of us had any idea how much trouble until Gerry walked into the fellowship hall and saw Aretha unrolling a very slippery lubricated condom over a jumbo juicy that, to facilitate matters, had been mounted straight up on a chopstick like the hard-on from hell.

  The evening started off calmly enough, considering that most of these girls had not only never used a condom, they had never seen one, except in drugstore displays with smiling white couples on the front and the mysterious thing itself well concealed within. The words safe sex were not a part of their erotic vocabularies any more than birth control entered into their family planning options.

  When Joyce introduced the Wednesday night session, which she had assured Gerry would focus on nothing more controversial than scheduling nursery workers for Sunday morning, by saying they were going to talk about AIDS, one of the older women in the group, which put her at about eighteen, snickered and rolled her eyes. I thought she was the one who had told Aretha at the nursery everybody knew she ain’t got no sense, but her hair and makeup were so different, it was hard to tell. Apparently the fairly ordinary upsweep she’d favored for Sunday morning was of no interest during the week. She had added badly braided extensions, which were gathered on top of her head in a tall, gold-toned comb and still hung well below her shoulders. The braids were clearly new and still pulled so tight her eyes now had a distinctly unnatural slant that wasn’t being helped much by the frosty blue eye shadow she was wearing. Add the deep plum lipstick, and homegirl had a look that was uniquely, and thankfully, all her own.