Silver Sparrow (26 page)

“YES,” MY MAMA told Mary. “I have been touched by an anointed preacher. Just one time.”

“This man I got,” Mary said. “He sings. No matter what he’s singing, he’s got God in him. People come to hear him and start crying. They think he is crooning about love between a man and a woman, worldly love, but what he’s doing is making them feel the Jesus. He’s a miracle. We are going to build a ministry together.”

On my pal et, I woke up sweating and confused. I sat up and cal ed for my mother. I cal ed for her with a sound like a frightened question, as

though it was the middle of the night and I was al alone.

“I’m here, baby,” Mama said to me. “Lie back down, okay.” To Mary she explained. “She woke up with a fever this morning. I’ve been giving her aspirin.”

“Ginger ale is good, too,” Mary said. “If you have some fresh ginger, grate some of that in the glass. She won’t like it, but it’l help.”

I cal ed for my mother with a voice ful of tears. She set the hot comb down and walked over to me, but didn’t bend down to hold me. I stood up and grabbed her around the legs.

“Mary,” Mama said. “Can you help me? I’ve been operated on. I can’t lift her.”

“Where’s your husband?” Mary asked, walking over to me.

“If she won’t let you hold her, don’t be hurt,” Mama said. “Sometimes she doesn’t cotton to new people.”

“I love children,” Mary said. “I have three. Two girls, a boy. I miss them. But you got to do what the Lord cal s you to do.” She reached for me and I released my mother’s knees and held out my arms. I was big for my age, but she lifted me easily. “She’s got a little bit of a temperature,” Mary said to my mother. The story is that she held me in her lap like I was a little baby although I was nearly five years old. I just rested my head on her breast, sweating a dark spot onto her pink lapel.

After Mama finished pressing Mary’s hair, she smoothed it with a boar-bristle brush. Mary’s fine hair crackled with static; ghost strands stood up on their own and danced.

“It’s not just lust when we’re together.” Mary twisted in the chair and searched my mother’s face.

Mama said, “I know.”

• • •

MARY DIDN’T WANT the curls combed out, since she was going to have to ride the bus eight hours to Memphis and she needed her hair to be fresh when she got there. She took Mama’s address, writing the street number on a folded index card pul ed from the bottom of her purse. “I am going to write to you when I get everything set up. You’l have to come to meet him. You need to feel that healing touch again. My man is true,” she said. “True as the Word.”

When she was done, Mama didn’t even want to take her money, so Mary tucked the twenty-dol ar bil in the little pocket of my dress. Mama didn’t notice because of al the commotion I caused when Mary tried to leave. She set me down and headed toward the door and I threw a fit. “Don’t go,” I said over and over, grabbing for Mary’s legs. Mama was so embarrassed that she forgot her condition and bent to pul me away. The pain caught her by surprise and she staggered a little bit. Mary picked me up again and kissed my feverish little face. “Jesus loves you,” she said. “And you, too, Laverne. You just have to trust and believe.” Mary rubbed my back in easy circles while I watched my mother from over her shoulder, holding on so hard that Mama felt a little jealous.

Just then, Daddy came into the shop, with Uncle Raleigh close behind carrying a bucket of chicken.

“W-what’s going on here,” he said, reaching for me. He had to pul me away because I refused to unhook my arms. “L-let her go.” He yanked so hard that I started to cry.

Mama was embarrassed. “There’s nothing wrong,” she said. “She was just helping me out because my stitches are hurting me.”

“Good-bye, Laverne,” Mary said. “Don’t let this trouble you none. I’l be seeing you again.”

When the door clapped shut behind her, my daddy leaned to kiss my face, but pul ed back as a shock hurt his lip.

They fought over it, my parents did. Mama complained at the dinner table, trying to eat the chicken Daddy and Uncle Raleigh had brought. “You just don’t want me to have a friend,” Mama said. “Why did you treat her like that?”

“You didn’t see her face,” Daddy said. “There was something wild in her face.”

Mama wiped her eyes with the cheap paper napkin from the chicken place. “I need to take a pil . I don’t feel wel .”

Uncle Raleigh got up to find her a glass of water. Daddy said, “You can’t take codeine on an empty stomach. Eat your dinner.”

“The doctor said no fried foods. I told you that.”

“I’m sorry, Verne,” Daddy said. “Do you want me to fix you a sandwich?”

“I just hate the way you treated her,” Mama said. “How often do I get to have a friend?”

ABOUT THREE WEEKS LATER, Daddy came home early on a Wednesday. He walked into the shop while my mama was trying to do three heads at once. Somebody was holding me, but Daddy didn’t pay it any mind.

“Laverne, can I talk to you for a second?” he said.

My mama wasn’t in the middle of any chemical procedures, so she went outside and sat with Daddy on the porch. “What is it? Is Miss Bunny okay? Raleigh?”

“Nothing like that,” he said. “I was just wondering. That woman that came in late that night, the one in the pink?”

“Mary,” Mama said. “Mary was her name.”

“I saw her picture in
Jet,
” Daddy said, handing my mother the folded-back page. “She was the one that threw hot grits on Al Green. I told you she was crazy.”

Mama looked at the article, tracing the words, moving her lips as she read what happened in Memphis just one night after Mary left our shop.

“What did he do to her?” Mama said.

“What did he do to her? She threw a pot of hot grits on the man when he was getting out of the bathtub and you want to know what
he
did to her?”

“Oh, Mary,” Mama said.

“Black women,” Daddy said. “Y’al know y’al is crazy when you don’t get your way.”

“Oh, Mary,” Mama said again. “Oh, girl.”

This is not a story my mama tel s often. To her, it’s not just gossip, it’s something closer to gospel. One late night Mama was fixing up a girl who was half bald on the left side from snatching at her own head. She opened her mouth to show Mama where she clamped her jaw so tight that she busted one of her molars. While Mama rubbed Magical Grow in the bald places until her naked scalp shone like it was wet, she shared the story of Mary.

“You listening, baby?” Mama said. “When you love a man that much, it’s time to let him go.”

19

UP A NOTCH

AFTER RUTH NICOLE ELIZABETH’S Sweet Sixteen, my father and Raleigh became obsessed with the idea of a party for my mama. Speaking across the radio waves, Lincoln to Lincoln, they used words like
soiree
and
salon.
On Saturday morning they got themselves al gussied up in their three-piece suits and headed to the Hilton to find out how much it would cost to rent the Magnolia Room for the evening of June 17. After they’d gone my mother asked me, “Where are those two headed looking like a couple of undertakers?” They told the events manager at the Hilton that they wanted whatever Harold Grant had ordered for his daughter, only “up a notch,” which translated into premium catering — miniature crab cakes, a roast-beef station, and four hours of open bar. Waiting at the airport for fares, my father flipped through bridal magazines, pul ing out pages that he liked, tucking them into the inside pocket of his uniform coat.

The invitation, they decided, would say “semi-formal.” Yes, “after-five attire” sounded classier, but they didn’t want anyone to be confused. “And,”

Daddy said, “irregardless of what we tel other people to wear, me and Raleigh are going to have on tuxedos with morning coats.”

I flipped through the sheaf of pictures he had cul ed from
Modern Bride.
The dresses were al part princess, part Renaissance hooker — deep necklines, pinched waists, and very dramatic skirts flaring over stiff crinolines.

I went through the stack twice, searching for something that looked like a dress somebody’s mother could wear. I didn’t even comment on the stock photo of Lady Diana Spencer. “You have to let her pick her own dress.”

“You’re right,” Daddy said. “She’s going to need to try it on, or what have you. We’l show her these photos as a suggestion, just to let her know the sky is the limit.”

DANA CAME TWO Wednesdays after Ruth Nicole Elizabeth’s party, ready at last for her wash-and-set. I lowered her into the shampoo bowl, careful to cushion her neck with a folded-over towel. This close, I could smel her perfume. Today she smel ed like my mother, White Shoulders.

“Your father and your uncle are throwing a birthday party for the Pink Fox?” she said.

“No,” I said. “For my mother. The anniversary is just the occasion.”

“Why?”

“For al the hard work she does.”

Dana sat up from the shampoo bowl and watched my mother as she eased ammonia onto a customer’s roots.

“My mother works hard,” Dana said, “but she never had a party or anything close to it. Do you know that?”

“Lean back if you want this shampoo,” I said, smothering the urge to defend my father’s crazy idea. “And keep your voice down; it’s sort of a surprise.” She leaned back and I turned the water on and squeezed the sprayer. “How does that feel?”

“Good,” she said, but the cords of her neck were stil stretched tight.

“Relax,” I said. “I know what I’m doing.”

I squirted shampoo into my palm and rubbed it into her thick hair, using my nails on her scalp until she moaned.

“Feel good?”

Relaxers are good for business, there’s no doubt about that. Back when everybody got a press-and-curl, they would come to the shop only when they had money. Everybody had a hot comb tucked in the kitchen drawer, and in a pinch you could iron out your own naps. But the relaxer needed to be done by a professional to get the hair bone-straight without processing it right off your scalp. Even my mama was unable to handle the back of her own head. I worked it in for her, forcing the crinkles flat with my gloved fingers. Stil , we both missed the days of the press-and-curl, just for the transformation factor. Used to be when you washed a woman’s hair, it went back to its natural state, the way it was even before she was born. She sat up in your chair with plaits in her head, showing you the way she was when she was smal and used to sit between her mother’s knees. There was magic in taking them from where they were, to where they wanted to be. It was a miracle every time.

Now, you get them under the hose and the hair gets nothing but wet, and you have to content yourself with just a glimpse of the roots. You just reach your hands down under the processed stuff like a blind man trying to figure out if he’s in love or not. Dana’s roots under the pads of my fingers were kinky, strong like ground wire.

“I’m getting wet,” she said.

I whispered. “When we have this party, you’re invited.”

Dana shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“What if you could bring your friend Ronalda? The invitation says you can bring a guest.”

She sighed. “You know I can’t hardly get out of the house.”

“Wel , bring your mother.” Dana’s head jerked in my hands, so I made the water cooler. “Is that better?”

“Chaurisse,” she said with a shaky voice. “I just can’t come, okay?”

“Why?”

“For one thing, Ronalda wil be gone by then.”

“Gone where?” I helped Dana sit up and wrapped a clean towel around her cold, wet head.

“Gone back to Indiana,” she said, and told everyone in the shop what had happened. Ronalda, it seemed, had taken Nkrumah on a quick errand and the little boy was hit by a car. Not bad enough for him to spend the night in the hospital, but bad enough for the kid to scream and hol er so bad that you would have thought he was dying. Somebody cal ed the police, and one thing led to another. Ronalda’s father and her stepmother were having the biggest, most complicated fight ever. And the little boy wasn’t even hurt. That’s the thing Dana couldn’t get over. But her stepmother was completely hysterical.

“Fairburn Townhouses can be a little shady,” Dana admitted, “but only at night. And that’s where Ronalda’s boyfriend was staying, so that’s where she had to go. You can’t explain that to Ronalda’s parents because they are real y bourgie people, you know what I mean?”

My mother said she knew.

What was Ronalda supposed to do? Leave Nkrumah by himself in the house? So, Ronalda didn’t have any choice but to carry him with her. “They used her like a maid, you know what I’m saying? You never saw her without that little boy on her hip.”

Ronalda loved this boyfriend and was having some problems and she couldn’t just ignore him. “He was in need!”

According to Dana, the parents claimed that they didn’t like the boyfriend because he was twenty-four and in the army, saying that he was too old to be going out with a high-school girl, but the truth was that he didn’t have enough education for them. And besides, the boyfriend was having serious, serious trouble and he needed a friend and fifty dol ars. Nobody could accuse Ronalda of being fair-weather.