The Wisdom of Hair Read online

  “Don’t you want to know what’s in there?”

  “You don’t think we should open it, do you?”

  “Hell, yes,” she said, tearing into it like it was Christmas morning.

  The box wasn’t taped shut. When she opened it and pushed the powder-blue tissue paper aside, we both gasped.

  “My God.” Sara Jane whispered, “Do you think that’s why he’s so sad?”

  I couldn’t say a word. I blamed it on the wine and ran straight to the bathroom. Every time I retched, I saw the Serendipity box under the bed just like I had that first time I cleaned that toilet. I retched again and couldn’t stop.

  “Honey,” Sara Jane cooed as she held my hair back. “You’re so slight. You’ve got to go easy on that wine.”

  I sat on the bathroom floor and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Before I could say anything, Sara Jane had wrung out a cold cloth and was dabbing my face like Nana did when I was sick.

  “You okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The baby’s rattle sat on the table for a long time. It was silver with two big hearts engraved on it. A fancy smaller heart linked the two together. The note card inside the box sent me running for the toilet again. “Our love has created something wonderful. I love you. Always, Emma.”

  I told Sara Jane I needed some air, but the truth was I couldn’t stand to be in the same house with that baby’s rattle lying out on the counter. We took our chairs out to the porch where neither one of us said a word for a long time.

  “Zora? Do you think he knew?”

  “Maybe he did. I don’t know.”

  “If she was pregnant, why did she hide the rattle? Why didn’t she just give it to him?”

  “I don’t know, Sara Jane. Maybe she never got the chance. Maybe she did and that’s why he grieves so. Maybe he’s grieving for both of them.”

  Sara Jane and I loved to laugh. Even when we’d had a rotten day, the two of us could always find something to laugh about. But the whole idea of pregnant Emma and her grief-stricken husband squelched all the romantic fantasies Sara Jane and I had conjured up about Winston and me. And if the earth didn’t stop that night, I know the night sounds did. Everything good and sweet about a warm summer night seemed to wonder what in the world was wrong with us.

  I couldn’t take another minute of silence. “What did you want to ask me earlier?”

  “Oh, nothing. It’ll keep. You’ve had enough on you for one night.”

  “Come on.” I tried to smile. “You’re my best friend. What is it?”

  After a few minutes of me pretending like I wasn’t reeling from the thought of Emma carrying Winston’s baby, she decided to tell me.

  “Well, I was wondering, and you can say no if you want to…I wouldn’t be mad, I swear. Could me and Jimmy use your apartment?”

  “Sara Jane, have you already…?”

  “No, we haven’t yet, but we’re so close. You know he lives two doors down from that Doris Erickson, and she’s the biggest gossip in town. I hear she watches her neighbors with binoculars. If we got caught…well, I just don’t think Mama and Daddy are ready for Jimmy Alvarez just yet. And you know Daddy hates everybody, especially Mexicans. I just—”

  “You don’t have to say another word.” I was amazed at how the thought of Jimmy or making love with Jimmy had changed her. I doubt she had ever cared one bit about her parents’ opinion of the other boys she dated.

  “Thank you,” she whispered with a sly little smile.

  I never doubted whether Sara Jane cared for me, but I knew after she went home that night that she truly loved me. Before she left, she put away all the leftovers and the dishes, folded the wrapping paper neatly, and set the closed box back in the silverware drawer. I took it out but didn’t open it again. I put it back on the very same shelf where Emma had first hidden it. From then on, I kept my dinner plates someplace else.

  11

  When I was twelve, Bryda Kay Modean invited me to Bible School at the little Holiness Church down the road from our place. She never told me what to wear and was either too shy or too embarrassed to tell me to change out of my short-shorts and into something more acceptable when she met me halfway between her house and mine. But she did pray, whispering to God, as we walked down that long, dusty road toward the church. I didn’t know what she’d gotten me into; I just thought she was awfully religious for a twelve-year-old.

  Her long, cotton skirt blew about in the breeze the whole way there, brushing up against my legs, reminding them that they were naked. But I was a lot like Adam and Eve before the fall, and didn’t know I was nearly naked in the eyes of the Holiness Church until we got there. There was a whole slew of ankle-length cotton skirts and most every jaw was gaped open at me. Bryda Kay’s mama, who wasn’t the least bit shy, wanted to send me home straightaway, but the preacher’s wife could see that I was about to burst out crying right there in front of everybody. She took me inside the little cinder block building they used for a fellowship hall and tied two long aprons around my waist so that I had a big droopy bow in the front and a big droopy one in the back. The aprons were so long, I couldn’t see the least little bit of leg, much less my feet.

  The only good parts about Bible School were making crafts and eating snacks. We made brightly colored pot holders on little metal looms to take home and keep. I was so proud of mine because it was the most colorful one of the bunch. The Bible lesson that followed craft time was about Joseph who was nearly beaten to death because nobody liked him the way he was dressed, either. I looked at my pot holder and prayed for the first time in my life that I would make it out of that place alive. Luckily, snack time followed the Bible story and Bible Bingo, because the only thing that kept me there to the end was the promise of cherry Kool-Aid and homemade sugar cookies.

  Later on, when Bryda Kay and I parted ways, she said she was real sorry about the way her mama acted. I told her that I was sorry for wearing the short-shorts, thanked her for inviting me, and said good-bye.

  “Zora,” Bryda Kay hollered just before she rounded the creek in the opposite direction. “I don’t think you’re going to hell for wearing them shorts. Honest.” She smiled and waved, then skipped off down the road like she had saved my soul all by herself.

  Mama never cared anything about church, and Nana always said that God is everywhere. After Nana listened to me whimper and carry on about what happened at Bible School that day, she said God was everywhere except the Holiness Church because he had the good sense not to have anything to do with those fool people. While Nana ranted, I pulled at the hem of my shorts with my chin still quivering and swore I’d never set foot in church again.

  One day, after school, Sara Jane’s mama asked me to go to their church and come to Sunday dinner afterward. I told Mrs. Farquhar I wasn’t much of a churchgoer. The only appropriate dress I had, my high-school graduation dress, was packed away in the cedar chest at home, and I knew I couldn’t wear Sara Jane’s clothes, so I told her mother I didn’t have anything to wear. Besides, I’d walked by the First Baptist Church of Davenport a time or two on my way downtown and had never seen so many fancy clothes in my life.

  “You can wear one of Emma’s dresses,” Sara Jane said under her breath.

  “Oh, my, that is a problem,” Mrs. Farquhar said. She was really sweet and was so thankful I was helping Sara Jane with her schoolwork. But I never expected her to go out and buy me a new outfit. It was pretty, though, pale blue, a church dress, as she called it, with little pumps to match. She was so proud of herself.

  “Mrs. Farquhar, I can’t accept this. It’s too expensive and I—”

  “Nonsense. You’ve put in so much time tutoring Sara Jane. Why, if I had bought you every dress in the store, it wouldn’t be enough to thank you properly. Besides, that’s what mamas do.”

  Not my mother. On the way home, I tried not to think about her and the last time’s she’d hung up on me. I still loved her in a distance-makes-the-heart-grow-slightl
y-fonder kind of way; I still cared about her. Mama was such a child, I knew that even with the little bit of time that had passed between us, she most likely still didn’t understand why I had to leave her.

  I stopped by the Red & White, and bought a tablet and poured my heart out to her in a letter. While part of me felt guilty for writing down words so that when she read them, she couldn’t pretend I didn’t love her, the other part of me said Mama didn’t deserve to know how much she’d hurt me. I was sobbing by the time I signed my name and sealed it up but walked to the post office to mail it right then because if I hadn’t, it would have never been mailed.

  I met Sara Jane on the steps of the church at 9:45. We had stayed up late the night before, and both of us were just a teensy bit hungover, but Sara Jane promised me we wouldn’t be the only ones who had enjoyed Saturday night a little too much. It was a fashion show, just like I knew it would be, with women sashaying down the aisles, showing off their new frocks. Sara Jane said that there were women in that church that had never worn the same dress twice, which made me think that if I started coming regularly, I’d have to wear that same blue dress every Sunday.

  As the organist played music, folks talked amongst themselves. Then she played a little louder; everyone was quiet as the choir filed in like a green-robed army. The minister was a solemn, wiry-looking little man with salt-and-pepper hair and Coke bottle–thick glasses. Mrs. Farquhar had raved about him and what a joy for the Lord he had, but he didn’t look very joyful to me.

  But the music director looked downright euphoric and would make just about anybody who wasn’t a Christian want a dose of what he had. He talked before every song, and we sang five or six of them, about what the song meant or what it meant to him personally. When that music began, he waved his arms like nobody’s business and shook his head about like he was conducting a great orchestra. Watching him, all I could think about was that I sure would like to give that man a good haircut. He only had about six long, wispy sections of hair that in the beginning were combed in such a way as to try to hide the entire top of his bald head. By the time he was done with the first song his hairs were wild and everywhere, but after each hymn he sat down, took a little black plastic comb out of his pocket, and slicked his hair back across the top of his head.

  Mr. Farquhar loved to sing. He had a big, deep voice, and you could hear him over everybody. He also liked to say “Amen” every five seconds or so when he wasn’t singing. Mrs. Farquhar would smile and nod and say, “Yes, Lord” so softly you could just barely hear her, because I don’t think women were supposed to say “Amen” out loud like her husband did.

  When it was time for the sermon, that little wiry man stood up at the podium and preached against everything known to mankind. Some things I knew were bad, like drugs and running around, but others I didn’t know. TV was bad. Rock music was bad. He even said beach music was bad. I’d always liked those old songs, and I thought it was funny that the rest of the world had pretty much forgotten The Tams, The Drifters, and the like. But those groups seemed to make a good living playing their sinful music at every single beach town up and down the Carolina coast. And if Jesus himself came down and took a poll of that whole congregation, most all of them would have had to admit they shagged on a regular basis, even if it was just in the privacy of their own homes.

  But in the Bible, Job didn’t listen to rock music or beach tunes, and the way the preacher tied the whole message into Job’s troubles it sounded like he did. I guess the preacher wanted us to believe that all of Job’s sins caused his suffering, but it said right there plain as day in the pew Bible that Job was a righteous man.

  After the service, everybody shook my hand. Mrs. Cathcart came clear across the other side of that big sanctuary to tell me she was glad to see me at church. Mrs. Farquhar introduced me to several people, telling them I was just like a daughter to her, which I didn’t know. Mr. Farquhar said that he didn’t want to visit all day like they did most every Sunday because he was hungry, so we slipped out the side door without shaking that preacher’s hand, which was fine by me.

  Back home, when Nana was living, we used to have a family reunion at our house. The men would set up big tables made out of sawhorses and plywood, and smoke deer meat or wild turkeys, sometimes a whole hog. The women would cover the tables with whatever came out of the garden that summer. Even with all that, I had never seen such a spread like the one on Mrs. Farquhar’s dinner table.

  There was fried chicken and mashed potatoes, gravy in a little silver boat, and fancy dinner rolls with butter hardened into the shape of sunflowers. Mr. Farquhar loved vegetables, so we had butter beans, corn, crowder peas, sliced tomatoes, and fried okra. The fine linen tablecloth and little napkins were hand-embroidered with Mrs. Farquhar’s initials, NGF, and the food that wasn’t in china bowls was on engraved silver trays. Mrs. Farquhar got all her ideas from the food section of Southern Living magazine, which Sara Jane pointed out was the other Bible at their house.

  “Now, Zora,” Mrs. Farquhar began as she was serving the dessert. “Sara Jane says you’re just like a sister to her, and, if you don’t mind me saying so, I believe you’re much too young to be off on your own. I just want you to know that I’d be proud if you called me Mama.”

  If she knew what that word had meant to me over the years, she might have just asked me to call her Nettie, because she was nothing like Mama. She was more like June Cleaver or the TV mom I always wanted.

  I loved the way she made ordinary things special and the way she made me feel like I was family without even saying so. But most of all I loved her because her whole life was gathered around that dinner table. This might have suffocated some women, but she looked at her work as beautiful and valuable, from giving her husband a reassuring pat on the hand when he teared up talking about his late mother, to buying a girl like me who didn’t have anything a church dress.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Yes, Mama,” she echoed.

  “Yes, Mama,” I said.

  Until that Sunday, I guess I never realized how much I missed family, real family, the kind that loves you up good, whether you need it or not. The kind that teases you about silly things you did growing up and makes you feel like you have a place in the world. I loved the Farquhars, but I missed the history I had with my own family.

  Sara Jane and her family didn’t know about times like when Nana and Aunt Fannie were washing all the little grandkids, trying to get them ready for Santa Claus to come. There were eleven or twelve of us standing in a row like an assembly line with our clean pajamas in one hand and a washcloth in the other. Two by two, we got into the tub. Nana scrubbed us down good; then Aunt Fannie dried us off, dressed us, and put a little dusting powder on the girls.

  I was just three years old and wasn’t paying the first bit of attention to what I was supposed to do. So when Nana picked me up out of the tub and set me on the floor, I toddled off before Aunt Fannie was done dressing my cousin Carol. I don’t remember anything that happened before I sat on the grate of the floor furnace. All I know is, before anybody could get to me, I had a checkerboard burned onto my wet bottom, not bad, mind you, just enough that it looked like somebody drew on my butt with a red marker. Aunt Fannie called me Checkers until I got mouthy at eleven or twelve and told her not to, and to this day, I’ve never heard the end of it at Adams family reunions.

  The next day I woke up with Nana on my mind. I’d dreamed about her. It was a sweet dream, not like the ones I used to have right after I moved into my apartment. She was always angry with me in those dreams. Sometimes she’d just look at me, shake her head, and look away like she did when Mama was falling down drunk and strutting into our house with another man.

  When I walked into the beauty school that morning, Mrs. Cathcart took one look at me and asked what was wrong. I told her it was just Monday, but she’d been teaching long enough to know a homesick girl when she saw one. She stood at my station while I finished my first appointment
and told me she was sure I’d snap out of it real soon. When we heard the door chimes, both of us looked to see a police officer walking into the foyer. Mrs. Cathcart excused herself from the little pep talk she was giving me and walked toward the sheriff, who was at the reception desk with his hat in his hand.

  I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but when both of them walked toward me, I was sure Mama was dead or maybe Winston. I fumbled with the curling iron and dropped it twice trying to get it into its little stand, and then I stood up as straight as I could and smoothed my uniform for some reason.

  “Zora Adams, this is Sheriff Danforth,” Mrs. Cathcart said with the most solemn expression on her face.

  “Miss Adams,” the man said, and nodded politely, but he didn’t smile.

  I know I must have looked like a frightened deer. I could feel myself trembling.

  “Zora,” Mrs. Cathcart said softly, “Ethyl Ladson passed away last night.”

  “I told the folks at the nursing home I was coming over here to get a haircut,” Sheriff Danforth said, “and they told me to ask you if you wouldn’t mind too much doing her hair. Actually, the nurse said that Ethyl told her she was going to die that very night. She told the nurse to make you do her hair.

  “Well, you know old people. They say all sorts of crazy things all the time. She didn’t think anything of it, but when she was closing out her shift, lo and behold, the old woman had passed on just like she said she would. Now, Miss Adams, ain’t nobody gonna make you do anything, but the nurse got spooked over the whole thing and figured she’d better do as she was told.”

  I was so relieved that it wasn’t Mama or Winston, I was actually smiling.

  “So you’ll do it then?” the sheriff said. I’m sure he misread the relief on my face as a sign of agreement.

  “Oh.” I came to my senses. “I don’t know if I can do a dead woman’s hair.”

  “Oh, Zora, this is the highest honor any of us can ever really hope to have,” Mrs. Cathcart said, “to be the last thought on a customer’s mind right before they pass from this world. An awesome responsibility.”