by Sarah Bird
The professor stops and listens as if I were one of his favorite students.
“We need money for a taxi to the People’s Clinic. That boy thinks he’s a jaguar and some bastard keeps giving him tattoos that he can’t take care of.”
“Oh. Okay.” The professor stuffs three dollars into the cup just like he is asked every day for money to treat infected jaguar tattoos.
I don’t have time to lower my cup before the next three passersby toss change into it.
If I’d had any idea.
“Get them! Get them!” Nikki whirls me around and thrusts me toward three women hurrying past. From the lack of student denim or faculty fleece on the tailored trio, I peg them as visiting professors in international finance. Maybe architecture but nothing more down-market than that. Giddy from my surprising successes, I decide to wrap this mission up in a hurry with a surefire appeal to female solidarity. I rattle the change and yell, “Help a sistah?”
As the three women stop, I notice two things simultaneously: One, across the street, a huge banner flaps on the side of the monolithic Harry Ransom Center reading, WELCOME, PLATINUM LONGHORNS! SUPPORTING A CELEBRATION OF TEXAS WOMEN OF LETTERS. Streaming into the center are all the key members of the Pee Heights Mafia: Cherise Tatum, Missy Quisinberry, Paige Oglesby, Morgan Whitlow, and the rest of the inner circle. The second thing I notice is that the three women I have just begged for spare change are Kippie Lee Teeter, Bamsie Beiver, and Cookie Mehan.
The instant they see me, Kippie Lee and Bamsie step back, their desire to beat me with tire irons momentarily paralyzed by Southern-girl niceness. Cookie Mehan, with her more Western roots in ranching, however, is only too willing to take off the velvet glove and flex the iron hand. Luckily, she is too surprised to immediately call the police and instead demands, “Blythe Young, what the hell are you doing out here? Are you begging?”
“No. This? Begging? No. I was just bringing this over to…to you! To see if y’all need any change! For parking. Whatever. Help yourself.” I hold out the cup, noticing far too late that it is emblazoned with a leering Chihuahua holding a femur in its mouth and asking, WANNA BONE?
“God, you guys look great. Have you lost weight? Bamsie, you still doing Zone? Cookie, what is it? South Beach. You look incredible. Incredible. Kippie Lee, love those shoes. God, I’d love to catch up with all y’all,” I glance at my bare wrist, “but I’m meeting my crew in five minutes. This”—I wave at the cup, the street kids, my nails, hair, entire squalid existence—“it’s all research. Working on a major documentary on homeless youth. I’ll make sure and put y’all on the list for the preview screening. Comped. Y’all are comped.”
Kippie Lee pulls out her cell phone and begins punching in numbers.
Police or IRS, I’m not hanging around to find out who she is calling. Cursing the damnable shooting schedule that is pulling me away, I beat a hasty retreat and duck into the nearest dark alley. About to infarct from humiliation beyond anything I’ve already experienced, I slump against a Dumpster and try to catch my breath. I smell before I notice the presence of someone sweating off a lifetime of fermented grains. It is Jesse, the beero from Dog Crap Lane. Clutching a grubby pink blanket around his shoulders, he grins his toothless grin at me as he stuffs a dollar into the Taco Bell cup I’m still gripping. “Don’t worry, Chief. Things’ll get better.”
“I hope you’re right, Jess,” I say as he shuffles away. “I hope to hell you’re right.”
Psycho Porker
NIKKI AND KAT move into the minivan. No one in the house protests because Millie goes to each resident and lobbies for the girls and because she keeps my involvement a secret. There are no complaints even when the girls swipe containers of yogurt and monopolize the bathrooms. Nikki and Kat panhandle for a few hours in the morning to raise money for gas, then spend the rest of the day either using up the gas or holed away in the van, painting toe-and fingernails and doing elaborate makeup jobs on each other. Nikki doesn’t mention beauty school again. This annoys me. Intensely.
On the fourth evening of their stay, I pile two dinner plates with salad from the giant bowl someone has made for dinner and a couple of pieces of chicken from the pans cooking in the oven. I add squares of chocolate cake also nabbed from the house dinner.
In the backyard, my little minivan seems happier now that it is occupied. I tap on the door. Kat slides it open and takes one of the plates. “Chocolate cake. Awesome.”
Nikki, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the van, watches me like an animal in its lair.
“You want this?” When Nikki doesn’t answer, I put down the plate and a piece of paper next to it. “That’s the number of the closest beauty college, Académie de Beauté. They’ve got classes starting next week. They have this deal with a couple of salons in town where you can work as a shampoo girl to pay for tuition. Call them or get out of the van.”
Nikki doesn’t touch the number. “I know why you’re helping me.”
“Really?”
“It makes you feel good to help someone you think is a bigger loser than you are.”
“You could be right.”
“Well, fuck you very much, but I can go to cosmetology school on my own without help from you or anyone else.”
“I told them you’d come in tomorrow at ten for an interview.”
“I already talked to that place. You can only do the shampoo girl thing if you have previous experience. So forget that.”
“Gosh, Nikki, a girl like you, I’m sure you could just walk in there and charm them with your bright and positive sunny attitude.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you, bitch.” I want to punch Nikki in the face. Instead, I shove the plate of food toward her. “You should eat this before the chicken gets cold.”
“Blythe!” Millie rushes up, waving a note. “Look what I found taped to our door!”
I recognize Juniper’s printing. Product of the Texas public school system, she never learned cursive.
Before I can take it, Millie reads out loud, “‘Blythe—’”
“Not ‘Drug-addled Cunt’? I must be making progress.”
Millie shushes me and goes on, “‘Danny Somebody called.’” She presses the note to her chest and squeals, “Danny called!”
“Could you just read the note?”
“Okay, okay. ‘Be in town next Friday. In studio right now. Can’t call. Will send car—’” More squealing. “He’s sending a car!”
Nikki interrupts this time. “Read the fucking note!”
“‘Will send car to pick you up at seven.’”
“Friday?” I am stunned. “That’s less than a week away? That is not possible.”
“A week? Why is that not possible?”
Millie’s question is touchingly innocent. Nikki and I both ignore her. Nikki stares at me, taking in hair, skin, clothes, and calculates. “You’re right, one week is not possible. You need two weeks. Minimum.”
Nikki’s ER-serious tone convinces me that the girl understands the true dimensions of the looming disaster. “We don’t have two weeks,” I wail.
Nikki touches my hair and winces. “It’s hopeless.”
“No, not hopeless,” I plead. “You’ve got to help me.” I am panicking and imploring Nikki to save me: The girl is showing impressive natural Swami talent.
“Okay, first, I’ll do a cut on you that’s not so Junior Leaguey.”
“My hair has never been Junior Leaguey!”
Nikki drops my limp strands. “Have it your way.” She puts the earbuds of her iPod in.
I grab her hand. “No, fine. You’re right. What about makeup?”
She tilts her head from side to side, looking me over. “Is this guy at all hip or is he like you?”
“Like me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s a record producer,” Millie informs her proudly.
“Right. What kind of music? Classical? Accordion? Polka?”
“Blythe’s friend wo
rks for a company called Archive Records.”
“Archive?” Nikki repeats, incredulous, and turns to me. “You’re crazy. There is no way someone with a label that hip is calling you.”
“Notify Ripley’s, because, apparently, that’s who he works for.”
“Oh, wow. We have a lot of work to do.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” It is a relief to have someone truly understand. “I need at least two weeks for hair reconstruction alone—”
“Three unless he likes straw.”
“Then my face. Oh God, my face—”
“Elephant Man.”
“Shut up! You’re supposed to disagree. The dream, of course, would be a series of peels. Some microdermabrasion, a little bit of laser work. Photo facials. Loads of fill. Botox or whatever the latest neurotoxin is. Failing the preferred, yet impossibly high-priced options, I need a full month for the complete facial series, starting with serious exfoliation. Three weeks of extractions. Cool mist and deep cleansing ten days before. And, of course, the nails.” I hold my hands up. Not a single nail has survived my stint as Sanjeev’s scullery maid. I drop my hands. They land on my stomach and make a hideous discovery:
“Flab! I have a stomach!” I pinch and poke the roll of fat mushrooming over the waist of Olga’s jeans.
“Yeah, I wondered if you realized what a porker you’re turning into.”
“Nikki, stop that!” Millie orders. “Blythe is still far too thin. She’s just not dangerously emaciated anymore.”
“Even if I have my stomach stapled tomorrow, there’s not enough time to lose this, this…” I jiggle the micrometers of alien flab. “That’s it. I can’t do this.”
“Stop freaking out,” Nikki barks. “If you’re gonna be a porker at least don’t be a psycho porker. Go upstairs and wait for me.”
Up in Millie’s room, I study myself in the mirror. Nikki is right. My hair is Junior Leaguey. I have to figure out a way to get a really good cut. Nikki barges in carrying towels and beauty products. I recognize Juniper’s face scrub, Doug’s volumizing conditioner, and a tube of something with Cyrillic writing on it that must belong to Olga. Kat follows with a steaming teakettle.
“We’ll begin with a moisturizing facial.” Nikki dampens the towels with hot water and wraps my face like an old-time barber with only the tip of my nose sticking out, then starts brushing my hair.
“Leave my hair alone,” I yell. Muffled by a wet towel, my words come out, Ree muh rair aroe.
“Don’t worry. I’m just going to trim off some of the split ends. Now shut up and moisturize.”
Some snipping ensues. Then some more. Then still more. Too much snipping. I start to rip the towel off my face. “What are you doing?”
Nikki grabs my hand. “Relax. It only sounds like I’m cutting a lot. I’m just being really, really careful to only trim the very, very ends.”
I ease back into the chair. “Okay. But just the ends.”
Kat starts rubbing olive oil into my cuticles and hands and I drift off. The towel is gone when I wake up and it feels as if my face has vacationed in some soft and dewy land. It is velvety and has a slight minty tingle. My nails shimmer with a rosy glow they haven’t had since grade school.
“Wow. Let me see.”
Nikki presses the hand mirror against her chest and crosses her arms over it. This makes me so nervous that I lunge forward and rip the mirror from her hands. I take one look, grab Nikki by the arm, drag her downstairs, and shove her in the passenger seat of the van.
Kat gets in the back. “I think it looks good,” she squeaks.
I stick my hand out. “Give me the keys.” Nikki tries to sull up on me. “Give me the keys!” I thunder, and she hands them over.
We drive in stony silence. The atmosphere inside the van could have been measured barometrically, like an approaching storm.
“I think it looks good,” Kat tries again.
“You. Shut up.” To Nikki, “You did not have permission to cut my hair.” I park in front of the Académie de Beauté and order both girls inside. Nikki responds surprisingly well to murderous rage.
The “académie” is like an alternative high school, a place for all the oddballs who couldn’t make it on a regular campus: the chubbies, the gays, the transgendered, the terminally alienated, the too cool for school. They all wear white smocks and are giving haircuts to the senior citizens who patronize the place for the discount rates. The old ladies, draped in plastic capes, clutch plastic handbags on their knees. An instructor, a six-foot redhead with dyed hair ratted high into an impossible updo, a pink chiffon scarf over her Adam’s apple, and a charm bracelet clanking against a man wrist, moves from chair to chair, critiquing each student’s work. A cloud of hair spray and happy chatter hangs over everything. Kat and Nikki start to edge away, but I yank them back.
A woman who is about ten months pregnant comes to the front, holding a half-eaten container of blueberry yogurt with a spoon sticking out of it. The name tag on her blue smock reads, MRS. BRIDWELL.
“Are you the manager?”
“Why?”
I point to my head. “Do you see my hair?”
Mrs. Bridwell takes a small step back.
“She cut it.” I push Nikki forward.
“We have no liability. She isn’t one of our students.”
“Well, she should be. Although she did not have my permission, this is the best haircut I have ever received. Do you see this?” I swing my head around and feathers of hair tickle across my face. “My hair has never done this. And see all these little flippy deals?” I touch the places where my hair arcs up in perky curves. “It’s never done that either. I didn’t even know it could do that. No mousse, no gel, no rollers. She just cut it and made it do that.”
“Your old cut was just so sucky, it killed your natural wave,” Nikki says.
“See? No one ever found my natural wave before. So, I’m telling you, you should let this girl take classes and you should put her on your work/study program.”
Mrs. Bridwell rakes her fingers through my hair, pulling strands up, and watching the way they fall. “Nice cut. Who did you study with?”
“No one,” Nikki answers. “I just always watched when I got my hair cut and copied what worked.”
“She also does nails and makeup,” Kat adds.
“So, both of you want to enroll?” Mrs. Bridwell asks.
“Yes!” Kat answers. “We have our own transportation.”
“I’m not making any promises, but Kindest Cut of All is looking for someone to sweep up. Maybe shampoo. Come back tomorrow and I’ll check you out before I send you over. We’ll talk about classes then, too.” She holds up the yogurt. “I’ve got to finish this and get back on the floor.” As she walks back through the big room she calls out to the instructor, “Jackie, these girls are coming in tomorrow. Girls, tell Jackie your names.”
The girls look at each other. Nikki submerges her excitement beneath a mask of cool, but Kat is openly euphoric. Jackie takes their names, then twiddles her fingers at us as we leave. “Hasta lumbago, girls!”
“Hasta lumbago!” both Nikki and Kat trill back.
For the next few days, Nikki slathers me in sunscreen before I go out with Millie, and my burn turns into the first tan I have had in a decade. That combined with Nikki’s daily facials leaves me with a plumped-up glow that no amount of professional ministration has been able to achieve in the past. I look better than I have for a very long time. Considering that I am drug free, sleeping, eating, and exercising regularly for the first time in nearly a decade, I can only chalk the effect up to health.
Health—if I’d known what a beauty bonus it is, I might have tried it earlier.
By Thursday hair, skin, and nails are as good as they are going to get, but wardrobe remains a major concern. Millie says I am welcome to any of her cotton shirts and stretch-waist jeans, but I don’t think Scrapbooking Mom is the exact right note to hit with Danny. I try various combinations of Olga
’s jeans and my Zac Posen jacket. Buttoned, unbuttoned, sleeves up, sleeves down. All the variations call Miami Vice to mind. Besides, the shiny intimidation jacket doesn’t go with my feathery new haircut.
I am trying to build up my courage to wheedle something wearable out of Olga when Nikki bangs into my room. The salon has made her remove most of her less savory piercings and cut way back on the makeup. There is nothing now to cover up how flat-out beautiful she is.
“No, please, Nikki,” I say as she bursts in. “Don’t even consider knocking. I insist that you just barge right in. Why are you taking your clothes off?”
Nikki sheds a pair of gigantic homeboy jeans and a sloppy top. Beneath them, she has on a silk ensemble of low-rise pants with a matching top that is a cat’s cradle of loops and ties. The color is somewhere between bluish silver and dove gray.
“God, that’s a beautiful outfit. You should be on a runway somewhere. Seriously.”
Nikki strips the outfit off and hands it to me. “Here, this’ll look good with your tan and it complements your coloring.”
The outfit floats into my hand, feathery as my new haircut. Tags with the name of an exclusive shop on the Drag dangle from the armpit. “Did you shoplift this? I can’t let you shoplift.”
“Okay. No worries. I’ll take it back right now.”
I try to give the silvery fantasy back to Nikki, but something has frozen my extensor muscles, and the outfit remains clutched to my bosom. “Or you could take it back Saturday?”
“I could do that. Try it on.”
Nikki adjusts the ties. “Check it out.”
I step in front of the mirror on Millie’s closet door and wonder how I could have spent so much money and so many hours procuring clothes and never found anything that looked half as good as something a street kid shoplifted.
“Nikki, it’s amazing. You’re amazing.”
Nikki cocks her head from side to side, sizing me up. “I guess you’re the least sucky you’re gonna be.”
“I am. I’m the least sucky I’m gonna be.”