Silver Sparrow (27 page)

She went to Fairburn Townhouses to deliver the money — which she earned from watching that bad little boy and everything went fine until Ronalda went inside to say good-bye to her boyfriend’s mother. While Ronalda was just trying to be polite, the little boy ran out into the parking lot and got hit by a car.
Tapped
by the car, real y. But stil . Police were there in five seconds. Asking Ronalda if Nkrumah was her child.

Her stepmother got there and started freaking out because Nkrumah had this tiny cut on his eyebrow. You would have thought he had been shot or something.

“You can understand that,” my mama said.

Yes, Dana could understand her being upset, but there was no cause for her to act out how she did. Being talked to like that was worse than being spit on. And now Ronalda had to go back to Indiana.

My mama said, “That’s a shame, for everybody. I’l pray for al of them.”

“No,” Dana said. “Pray for Ronalda. She’s the one who needs it most.”

My mother looked up from her work. “I got prayers enough for everybody.”

Dana picked up the edge of her cape and dabbed at her nose. “I am going to miss her so much. And it’s not her fault. She can’t help who her mother is.”

My mother put four or five clips in the Jheri curl and joined me at chair no. 2 and took over the blow-drying. She murmured to Dana the way you would talk to a crying baby that needs help fal ing asleep. As my mother brushed her hair forward, Dana closed her eyes before it covered her face like a shroud.

I finished Dana’s hair wel before the five-thirty rush, but she stayed on, talking to my mother. Her mood had mysteriously brightened as she asked questions like she was a friendly reporter. What did my mother like to eat? Did she think it made so much of a difference where a person went to go to col ege? Could she give her some advice? My mother opened like a flower, laughing at Dana’s jokes and swatting away her compliments. Only one question seemed to hit the wrong note. “Mrs. Witherspoon, would you say you’re a happy person?”

Mama set the curling iron on a wet towel, frowning as it sizzled. She licked her finger and touched it to the hot metal, stil frowning. “I don’t know,”

she said.

“And whose fault do you think it is? Who do you blame?”

Mama looked a little dizzy. To her customer, she said, “Kids these days. They are more sophisticated than we were.”

The customer said, “Nobody is truly happy.”

“But could you be?” Dana said with her eyes on Mama.

“I’m happy,” I offered.

“I’m not,” said Dana. “I think I’m lonely.”

“Oh, honey,” Mama said, and invited her to stay for dinner.

We both looked a little melancholy when Dana said, “Thank you, but I have to go.”

She also refused a ride, so I walked her down Lynhurst to the bus stop.

“Do you get lonely?” she said.

“Sometimes,” I said.

“It’s because you’re special. It’s hard for people to understand you.”

I shrugged because I was as ordinary as scrambled eggs, but I appreciated the compliment. “Is being special how come you’re lonely?”

“No,” she said. “I’m lonely for al the regular reasons.”

We got to the bus stop, which was marked by a concrete pole lumpy with several layers of white paint. “You don’t have to wait with me,” she said.

“I don’t mind. Make sure you tie your hair up at night. Sleeping directly on the pil owcase gives you split ends.”

She said she would try to remember. “What’s the real reason your dad is giving your mom this party?”

Her face was kind, but I felt a chil of fear work its way from my hands up to my elbow. “I guess because he loves her.”

Maybe my face showed her something that I didn’t mean to display, because she reached out and touched me on the arm. “Everybody loves you the most, al your life, and you probably don’t even know it.”

I gave a tense laugh. “I need more than just my parents to love me.”

She whispered, “I love you. Can’t you tel ?”

I didn’t say anything at first. It was as though I was suddenly struck with my father’s stammer, but the words were jammed up in my head, not in my throat. Sometimes I wondered if Dana actual y liked me. She could be sarcastic and even a little mean. Could there be other people out there loving me who had just never mentioned it to me? I thought of Jamal, five hundred miles away in Hampton, Virginia. Did he love me as he studied for his exams, as he pledged his fraternity, as he chased doctors’ daughters, taking them out to dinner, asking them to meet his parents? With the exception of my kindergarten teacher, no one outside of my family had ever claimed to love me. It was jarring, dumbfounding, and very exciting.

“See?” she said. “You couldn’t even tel .” She shook her head like she couldn’t believe how blind I was. She twisted away at the sound of the approaching bus. “Don’t you feel like we’ve been friends a long time?”

“Yes,” I said, stil reeling with al this talk of love, spinning with the possibility of secretly having been adored al my life.

As she boarded the bus, she looked over her shoulder sadly. “You didn’t say it back.”

“Say what?” I said as the doors closed. She made her way to a window seat, but she didn’t look my way even though I stood on the corner waving like a child.

• • •

THERE WAS NO dissuading my father when he got his mind wrapped around a Big Idea. When he wanted to start Witherspoon Sedans, nobody thought it was a good plan except Raleigh. Miss Bunny, God bless the dead, wanted him to get a job driving for white people. Even my mama was iffy about the plan. She thought that maybe he should go into the army, use the GI Bil to go to col ege and veteran’s benefits to buy a house in Macon. He says he knew in his gut that he and Raleigh were meant to be their own bosses, and now he knew in his gut that my mother desperately wanted a formal party. “I know what I know, Buttercup.”

“But I’m with her al the time,” I said, as we left the stationery store. “When there is a big party coming up, she says, ‘That don’t make no kinda sense.’ And she gets migraines during debutante season.”

My father raised his eyebrows. “Is that so?”

“It’s so,” I said.

“You ever hear of sour grapes?” Daddy said.

He opened the glove compartment and fished out a monogrammed handkerchief. “You’ve got something on your chin.”

I touched the cloth to my face. “She’s not jealous.”

“You got to learn how to listen sideways to what people are saying to get at what they real y mean.” He pul ed up in front of the shop. “Don’t fight me on this. We’l do something for you one day, too.”

“I’m not having sour grapes, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Daddy lowered his window with a smooth electric motion. “I’m serious. You’l get your party, too.” He touched the brim of his hat, and I felt myself smile as the car eased down the driveway.

THEY DECIDED TO spring the news on her on a Monday afternoon as she was sitting on the couch having a Fuzzy Navel and watching her stories.

I’d just come home from school when I heard my name in a stage whisper. I turned to find my dad and Raleigh hiding in the doorway of the guest room.

“She’s in there watching soaps,” Raleigh said. “She doesn’t suspect a thing.”

“I don’t know,” I said, which is the same thing I had been saying to them for the past three weeks. “At least clear the date with her,” I had begged as they plunked down deposits with the caterers, florists, and stationers.

“It’s a surprise, Chaurisse,” they said.

“She doesn’t like surprises.”

“She wouldn’t want a surprise party, but she won’t mind being surprised
with
a party. Trust us. We’ve been knowing your mother a long time.”

The idea was that I was to walk into the family room carrying the roses Raleigh handed to me, wrapped in a paper cone. Daddy would put on music, Stevie Wonder singing “I Just Cal ed to Say I Love You.” No, they assured me, it wasn’t corny. “It’s s-s-sincere.” Daddy wanted me to walk on the beat “like a bridesmaid.” Once I had presented the flowers, Daddy would hand me the invitation, I would hand it to Mama, and Raleigh would snap a couple thousand photos.

“You g-g-got it?” Daddy asked me.

I rol ed my eyes. “I guess. But mark my words, she is not going to like this.”

Raleigh said, “She’s going to love it.”

Daddy said, “Can you change into a dress?”

I did change into a dress, a red and white polka-dot number I had bought with my own money at Lerner Shops. I even slipped on some patent-leather sling backs, but I didn’t bother with panty hose. You had to draw the line somewhere. I looked in the mirror and painted on some lipstick. I looked a little longer and rubbed some foundation on my cheeks to cover up the acne scars. I couldn’t get Dana out of my head, her knowing looks. I was uneasy with the way she talked to my mother. It was a little woman-to-woman, a little daughter-to-mother, a bit student-to-teacher, and maybe even a splash of vice versa. It was like my mother was a newspaper that everyone could read except for me.

Under my feet, the family room carpet crackled. Sil y as it seemed, I tried to walk in time with the music.

My mother was curled up on the couch in baggy clothes. She cal ed these outfits her “prison sweats” to distinguish them from the embel ished running suits she liked to wear to the mal . Mondays, in her book, were “grooming optional,” and on this day she had opted to tie her head up in a greasy satin scarf. At her right side, beside the remote control, was a bowl of M&Ms, because diets were suspended on Mondays as wel .

I once heard my father joke to a young man we were driving from the airport. He looked sort of nerdy, clutching a skimpy bouquet of Gerber daises to give to his fiancée. The young man told us that he was meeting his future in-laws for the first time.

“Smart move,” my dad joked with him. “You never want to marry a girl before you see the mama. You need to know what you’re getting.” My dad laughed and the young man in the backseat stared into the flowers, worried about what sort of magic mirror he was about to look into. I took in my mother sprawled exhausted on the couch and I wondered if this was what I was going to grow up to be. If that nervous young man in the back of the limo were to see my mother standing on the front porch waving him in, what would he think?

I goose-stepped toward her with the bouquet of roses and she looked alarmed. I glanced over my shoulder back at Daddy and Raleigh. Here we were trying to do something nice, and we scared her.

“Chaurisse,” Mama said, “what you got there? Somebody sent you some flowers?”

I looked again at my dad, as we hadn’t real y prepared ourselves for dialogue. Raleigh waved his hand, so I forgot the medium tempo of the song and hustled toward her with the roses outstretched.

“They’re for you.”

The rest went almost as choreographed, although I forgot and set the flowers on the coffee table next to the remote, when I was supposed to hand them to her. Daddy looked a little bothered, but he handed me the envelope with the invitation and I forked it over. Mama opened the outer envelope and giggled upon finding the smal er one tucked inside.

“What is this?” she said, grinning as Raleigh snapped her photo.

When she made it to the tiny square of tissue paper that was packaged with the invitation she said, “Ooh, expensive,” and not in the snide voice she used when opening the invitations that clients gave her, but with real appreciation. Then she read it and let out a little yelp.

Miss Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon

Requests the honour of your presence

At a soiree to celebrate her mother,

Mrs. Laverne Vertena Johnson Witherspoon,

On the Occasion of the Twentieth Anniversary

of

The Pink Fox Salon

June 17, 1987, at 7:00 p.m.

She stood up from the couch and hugged me to her in a firm grip. Her body shook against me as she cried on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure what was happening. I returned her hug, patting her back as she mewed like a newborn kitten. With the party invitation in her hands, she couldn’t get enough of the feel of us. She let me go and then reached for Uncle Raleigh and cried a wet spot onto his white shirt. Then it was Daddy’s turn, and she grabbed him like she had just won the Showcase Showdown on
The Price Is Right.
Then it was my turn again. “I never had something nice like this before,” she said. I didn’t say anything back, struck dumb by the energy of her startling embrace.

It’s funny how you think you can know a person.

20

BLOWOUT

NINETEEN EIGHTY-SEVEN was the Year of the Party. First there was Ruth Nicole Elizabeth’s Sweet Sixteen in February, which showed everyone how it was done, and then there were a couple others which were almost as swanky. It got to the point where a person didn’t even feel right having a party if it wasn’t going to be catered. Bucking the trend, Marcus McCready came home from Hampton in April and decided to throw a spring break jam, not formal but
Animal House
—style, except that just about everyone that was invited was in high school. The bash was going to take place on the shore of Lake Lanier, about an hour and a half north of Atlanta.

Dana was so excited about that she didn’t go through her usual wishy-washy I can–I can’t routine. She said yes when I mentioned it and on the day of, she was waiting for me at the back parking lot of Greenbriar, on time and bearing gifts — two identical tube tops that would show everyone that we were best friends. It’s what she used to do with Ronalda, she said, as we changed in the backseat of the Lincoln, trusting the tinted windows to guard our privacy.

Ninety miles isn’t so far on the odometer, but you know the old joke: “Be careful when you leave Atlanta, because you’l end up in Georgia.”

Marcus’s family had bought the house on Lake Lanier after his father, a country boy from Mobile, remarried a woman from New York, who insisted that she needed a “country home.” Egged on by a real-estate agent who insisted that Lake Lanier was going to be the Martha’s Vineyard of the south, Marcus Senior made the purchase even though my daddy personal y warned him against it. “Forsyth County ain’t nothing but a clump of sundown towns.”