The hairdresser turned and walked toward Marie with a jumpy awkward bounce. “What can I do for you?” she asked. “You got a fine head of hair. Don’t look to me like you need coloring. You want a trim? A set? I bet it gets curly in the damp. I can make it hang straight as a plumb line.”
“I like it curly.”
“But I can do something with it. Nobody’s wearing it like that, all loose like a medicine-show Indian. lean fix it—”
“I like it loose.”
“Then if you’re so beautiful you don’t need me. I bet you got the nicest sugar daddy in New Orleans. How come you’re wasting your time here?”
“I want to learn the business.”
“What?” Sister Delilah’s shrill voice leaped an octave.
“I want to learn hairdressing.”
“Hah!” Sister Delilah cackled and slapped her bony knee. “I can’t teach you. It’s got to be in the blood. I got my blood from my mama and grand mama. Where’d you get yours?”
“From the same island,” said Marie. “We’re practically sisters. Your grandmama, Old Marinette, was my mama Delphine’s hairdresser. Remember? She used to bring you by the house. We were born the same year. I remember you asking me if I was really a witch’s baby, if witches really sucked my nipples at night.”
“That’s not blood. That’s business. If that’s blood, every lady in this city’s my blood sister. My grandma took me everywhere. She had a big business.”
“I’ll pay you to teach me.”
“You couldn’t pay me enough. I’m a hairdresser, not a teacher.”
Marie walked forward until she towered close above Sister Delilah. “Your eyes look awful,” said the hairdresser, squinting up. “I could sell you a little face powder to hide that rash.”
“Doctor John likes them red,” Marie said deliberately. “He wants me to be the best red-eyed hairdresser in town.”
Sister Delilah’s clawlike hand grasped the satin upholstery. “Sit down,” she said. Standing behind the chair, she looked over Marie’s shoulder into the mirror. “Doctor John your sugar daddy?”
“Let’s just say he’s helping me. And let’s just say he wants me to learn the hairdressing business.”
“All right.” Sister Delilah sighed grumpily. “I’ll tell you a little bit. I’ll give you a trim and talk for however long it takes. But that’s it.”
“Doctor John’s no friend of mine,” she said, picking up a pair of silver scissors with mother-of-pearl handles. “I think he’s in business with the devil. And that white woman of his, that Sweet Medicine—she’s bad for my business. When my ladies see her, they just want to stop trying and giVe up. I ain’t doing favors for Doctor John, that’s for sure. But I ain’t crossing no voodoo man. I’ve heard stories ’bout fixes he’s put on people—my neighbor got a bellyful of lizards from one of his clients. I don’t believe in voodoo myself. But sometimes it just works—there’s no explaining it. And I don’t want Doctor John fixing me.
“So I’ll help you ’cause you dropped his name. But you better be careful ’bout dropping his name, girl. You’ll drop it once too often, you’ll drop it on your own self.”
She held the scissors a few inches from Marie’s head like, a painter approaching a fresh canvas. Then she made a quick decisive cut. A thin slice of hair fell to the floor. “The first thing,” she said, “is to act like you know what the ladies need. Even if it’s not what they think—you know better. So you better know. You got to look hard at your clients. That’s why I like working in their own houses where I can see how they live. You got to watch them looking at themselves in the mirror, watch for that first second they catch themselves and adjust their faces to look just so. That split second is the key to how they really want to look.”
Recalling Marie Saloppe’s crazy talk about mirrors, Marie decided that Sister Delilah’s ideas made a lot more sense.
“The rest is easy,” the hairdresser was saying. “Any fool who can cut her own toenails can cut hair. That’s my iron over there—curling’s easier than pressing a shirt. Hungary Water’s good for washing. Solomon Water for holding a curl, a drop of Beautifying Oil in some Spanish Rosewater to make it shine. When the older ladies’ roots start getting a little light—that’s the time for antimony powder mixed in a cup of black coffee. And there’s henna for those ladies who ain’t really ladies.”
While she spoke, Sister Delilah kept cutting, fluttering around Marie’s head, ^t last she stepped back to consider her work. Looking in the mirror, Marie couldn’t see any difference from the way her hair looked before. But Sister Delilah was smiling with pride.
“There you go,” she said. “I’ve told you everything there is to know about hairdressing plus I’ve done a good job on you. All those dead ends are gone. Your hair’s healthy as a child’s. Now it can grow like you want it. Like, people say, you’re lucky. You’re lucky you came to Sister Delilah’s House of Beauty.”
She lifted Marie’s hair so that it fanned out around her shoulders. “You ain’t got it in you to be a hairdresser,” she said. “You ain’t got the looks for it. I told you—the ladies want to see themselves looking beautiful in that mirror. When they see themselves next to you, they won’t feel beautiful at all. They’ll feel short and squat and ugly like they do when they see that Sweet Medicine. They’ll just want to give up. No, you couldn’t be a hairdresser if you tried.”
“I’m going to try,” said Marie. “But you’ve got to tell me more.”
“Sorry. That’s all I’m going to say. I ain’t got time. I don’t care if Doctor John makes all my customers’ hair fall out. I got another appointment in five minutes, and I got to clean up.” She knelt down and began to sweep the clippings into her cupped palm.
Marie grabbed her shoulder and pulled her up. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I’m taking that hair home with me. I want it for myself.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Sister Delilah. “You suspicious? You scared I’ll do something with that hair? You been picking up some ideas from that Doctor John?”
“I’m not suspicious. But I know what I know. I know what runs in my blood. I know that my hair is magic. It gives me luck in love and gambling. I can use it to call orange parrots out of the jungle, make them fly in my ...”
Shuddering, Sister Delilah knocked on her wooden cosmetic case. “Whoa,” she said. “You have been picking up some tricks from Doctor John. How did you find out about that dream?”
“What dream?”
“That old dream of mine about the big orange parrot following a lady into the jungle. I never told anybody.”
“I have that dream myself,” said Marie. “But it’s not just a dream. It’s a fact—a story your grandmama told you about the two of them and Makandal and the blood feast.”
“My grandmama never told me that story,” said Sister Delilah.
“Then I will,” said Marie.
Sister Delilah shook her head. “Your hair could use some work,” she said at last. “I’ll give you another appointment.”
Marie had a regular appointment at Sister Delilah’s House of Beauty. Every Thursday at three she threaded her way through the maze to the room with the huge mirror. For a dollar an hour, Sister Delilah trimmed Marie’s hair, tweezed her eyebrows, polished her nails. For a dream of an orange parrot, Sister Delilah taught her what she knew.
She taught her the secrets of the earth: Mud packs to clean the skin. Almond oil to soften it. White lead to lighten it. Lemon juice to brighten the hair. Wolf’s blood to make it grow. Belladonna to dilate the pupils. Geranium petals to dye the lips. Kohl and green malachite to tint the lids and lashes.
She taught her the secrets of water: Ambergris. Rainwater washes. Cucumber juice to shrink the pores. ’Gator glands to remove wrinkles. Powdered pearls to brighten the teeth.
She taught her the secrets of fire: Hot irons. Burning astringents. Charcoal to darken and sunlight to bleach. And the secrets of air: Musk. Patchouli. Pomander balls. Spells and
moonlight baths to restore the lost beauty of youth.
She taught her about the beauty which came from blood and birth: The fine bone beneath the eyebrow. The corners of the mouth. The bridge of the nose and the curve of the neck. The earlobe and the ankle.
She taught her about the beauty which came from experience: “That’s why those white Creole ladies are a losing battle,” she said. “You can kill yourself trying, but their magic’s draining out of them fast as you can slap it on. You can spend six hours fixing their hair, but when their men don’t look twice, you might just as well be digging pits in their skin all day. You can’t make ’em look good no matter what they pay.
“Yellow girls are better business. They’re always in love—working some scheme or some scandal. They’ve got to stay pretty to keep their men. They’ve always got the fever—it puts color in their cheeks. With a little work you can really make them look beautiful—”
“Who pays better?” asked Marie. “White or yellow?”
Sister Delilah laughed. “White,” she said. “And they don’t want to know you’re doing business with yellow.”
Marie and Sister Delilah grew close as sisters. For all they knew, they were blood relatives. Neither of them could prove it but they liked to speculate about whether both their grandmamas had been Makandal’s women.
“He didn’t call my grandmama his voodoo priestess,” said Sister Delilah.
“Mine didn’t dance at the blood feast,” said Marie. It was the first time Marie had had a friend her own age. The friendship pleased her. It seemed steadier than the shifting alliances of the convent school and the quadroon balls, the uneasy truces liable to be broken over one look from a handsome man. She liked Sister Delilah’s sense of humor, her birdlike energy, her quirky eccentricity, her competence, her pride and the good sense which made her hide that pride behind a veil of timid apologies.
Sometimes she wondered what Sister Delilah saw in her. She liked to think it was honest friendship—the pleasures of their conversations, their shared views. But the discovery of Marie Saloppe’s alliance with Doctor John had made her suspect, everyone—even Sister Delilah—of secretly being in his service. After that first appointment they never mentioned him. She never told Sister Delilah about her occasional visits to the voodoo man. She never mentioned his strange hold over her, the power that kept her going to see him and doing what he said. She never explained why he’d wanted her to become a hairdresser, never alluded to the secrets or the blackmail.
In these matters Marie and Sister Delilah kept a respectful distance. And their friendship flourished.
Marie began spending more and more time at the House of Beauty until neither she nor Sister Delilah could remember when her regular appointment was supposed to be. A locked door meant that Sister Delilah was off working in some rich woman’s home. Often the door was open but Sister Delilah was busy with a customer—usually a yellow or immigrant white girl too poor to afford a house visit. Once Marie learned her way around the maze, she could watch them from the corridor through a secret mirror. She noticed that Sister Delilah rarely spoke; her customers did all the talking and she just listened, studying their reflections in the mirror.
Mostly, though, Marie and Sister Delilah sat in the kitchen and talked. Like Marie Saloppe, Sister Delilah concocted her secret products in a kitchen full of jars and bottles. But while Marie Saloppe’s bottles had been dusty brown and green. Sister Delilah’s were brightly colored, full of perfumes, fragrant oils, and paints. Her kitchen was stocked with blue ceramic dishes, shiny copper pans, oranges, green peppers, and ripe red tomatoes thoughtfully arranged to catch the sunlight on their bright skins.
Little by little, Marie told Sister Delilah about her family, about Marie Saloppe, Father Antoine, and Jacques Paris. Whenever they got to the more bizarre parts—her parents’ death, the baron’s visit, Jacques’ disappearance—Sister Delilah would cross herself and whistle. “Whoa,” she’d say. “That’s serious business.”
“What do you think?” asked Marie. “Do you believe the spirits can mark you?”
“I don’t know,” said Sister Delilah. “I'm no expert. But I sure wouldn’t like those things happening to me.”
Sister Delilah considered herself a woman of great common sense, wisest on the subjects of business, beauty, and men. She told Marie about her customers—the pretty ones, the ugly ones, the rich, stingy ones who went six months between appointments and never tipped. She repeated stories she’d heard from her mother and grandmother, stories about a governor’s Peruvian wife who’d been so spoiled she’d tried to make Old Marinette trim her hairs one by one. Sister Delilah complained about the price of avocados and the cruelty of men—who claimed to love her for her personality and never let her forget she wasn’t beautiful.
“They’re always joking about my name,” she said. “They tell me I’m weakening their knees like Delilah did to Samson. But I know what they’re thinking. They’re thinking Samson would never have lost his power for a face like mine.”
“No,” said Marie, startled by the bitterness in her friend’s voice. “They’re thinking Delilah’s a strange name for a hairdresser.”
“It’s not my real name,” said Sister Delilah, cheering slightly. “My mama called me Baby Marinette. But I changed it to Sister Delilah ’cause I knew my customers would love it. I knew they’d love to see their husbands turn pale when they told them my name.” Sister Delilah grew quiet. “You know,” she said after a while, “hairdressing’s serious business. Hair’s got magic—you’re getting close to people’s heads. Not everyone should mess with it. In fact, I don’t think I’ll tell you any more. With a history like yours, girl, I wouldn’t go near it ...”
Marie flinched. “Hey,” Sister Delilah babbled on to fill the uneasy silence. “That reminds me. How come you stopped talking about becoming a hairdresser? I thought you and Doctor John were going into the business. What happened?”
“I gave up,” said Marie.
“Why? ’Cause of what I told you about being too pretty?”
“No. It wasn’t that. It was getting to know you, seeing how hard you work, how good you are. You’re the best hairdresser in town. The rich ladies love you—you’ve got the market cornered. I’d never stand a chance.”
“Thanks,” said Sister Delilah.
“That’s all right,” said Marie. “I just wanted to explain. I didn’t want you to think I’d give up ’cause I was scared of serious business. I’ve faced plenty of serious business in my life.”
“Life goes on,” said Sister Delilah. “Business keeps getting more serious.”
One January night, almost a year since her first appointment with Sister Delilah, Marie looked in the mirror and saw that her hair had grown twelve inches in the last twelve months. It was thicker and more lustrous than ever, reaching to her thighs, covering her back like a cape, straight and smooth in the dry night air.
She knew that if it rained during the night, she’d wake up with a mass of knots and kinky ringlets. She decided to brush her hair. She blew out the lamp and opened her window. The light of the full moon flooded her room. She sat down beside the window, picked up a thick strand of hair and stretched it out before her across the moonlight. She ran the brush through her hair with long, even strokes.
All that night Marie stayed awake staring at her hair. She saw' the strength of Samson, the power of Eve, the death of Absalom, trapped in a web of his own hair, Mary Magdalene drying Jesus’ feet with hers. She saw a woman cursed with a mane of twisting snakes, a man crowned with ivy, the world threatened by a flood and saved by a giantess soaking up the waters with her hair. She saw a girl leaning out of her window, letting down her hair so her man could climb it like a ladder; she saw the lovers in bed beneath the luminous blanket of hair which would keep him climbing back to that high room.
She saw a woman lying in a crypt, a rigid corpse whose hair kept growing, lining the coffin with a soft black shroud. She saw a baby born with a thick shock
of dark hair, the midwife crossing herself and praying the demons would leave the child alone. She saw women washing their hair in deep mountain pools, black men with matted hair like eagles’ nests, people with their hair stretched out on high frames, wide umbrellas to shield them from the rain.
She saw hair which kept secrets, mysterious eyes half-hidden by hair, the faces of men who watched her on the street, turning to stare at her hair. She saw a man and woman making love, her hair hanging down on his chest while he gazed up through it, reading its secrets, reading the answers in her face. She saw Delilah with her arms around Samson’s strong back, running her hands through his hair, saddened by her own desire.
Looking at her hair, Marie saw it changing color, length and texture, keeping and revealing secrets. She saw it as a magic substance with mystery and power.
At dawn Marie sat down in front of the mirror and began to fix her hair.
It was Shrove Tuesday, the last night of Mardi Gras. The streets were jammed with kings and queens, devils, dandies, skeletons, gorillas, Chinese emperors, Zulu chiefs, gypsies, Spanish dancers, masked bandits, emerald dragons, lions, tigers, ghosts, magicians, gods and goddesses, Indian princesses, monkey men, Turkish sultans and their concubines. Musicians played on every comer—fiddlers, banjo pickers, blind guitarists. Angels and demons jigged to the beat of drums. Gigantic floats inched through the crowds on Royal Street. Ladies threw clouds of rose petals and confetti from their balconies.
Since the start of the carnival season, twenty-one duels had been fought in St. Anthony’s Garden. Five children had been run over by drunken horsemen. A famous quadroon beauty had succumbed to an overdose of opium. Two of Father Antoine’s novices were spotted in a Gallatin Street brothel. A masked woman won ten thousand dollars at the roulette wheel. The wife of a prominent government official eloped with her husband’s deputy.
Marie Laveau Page 14