The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (32 page)

A
s soon as the Crowning Glory was open for business and I got my schedule down, I was able to go out to St. Mary’s Home one afternoon a week to do the old people’s hair. I took Fred Astaire with me because the old folks just loved to pet him. Sometimes Nelle would come with me just to visit with the folks and try and cheer them up. With Bertha and Cleveland at the Shop, Snack ’N Skate, she had more time to herself. We made a point to ride at least twice a week, and I was in love with her horse, Mister Chaz.

We both enjoyed our time at St. Mary’s.

St. Mary’s used to have a staff beautician, but she insisted on smoking because it was her constitutional right. According to Nelle, who heard everything, Sister Claire told her, “You go exercise your constitutional right somewhere else.”

When word got around that I was back in La Luna, Sister Claire asked me to take over the position of in-house hairdresser. But I told her that I was up to my ears in my own practice.

“Oh, my,” she said. “I suppose we should pray to Mary Magdalene, patron saint of hairdressers.”

I was so surprised that she knew that. But, of course, nuns know exactly how to get their way.

“Tell you what, Sister,” I said. “I’ll come every Wednesday afternoon as a volunteer. It’ll be my donation, okay?”

Between my volunteer work and the salon, I was busy as a Mexican jumping bean. I started getting clients from Claiborne. Beth Owens was one of them. The first time she arrived she was dressed chic as the day was long, with a French manicure, which I appreciated because I was exhausted with all the foot-long fake scarlet-colored nails I’d been seeing.

“My daughters have raved about you,” she said. “And I just had to see who was giving them such smart cuts.”

“That would be me,” I replied.

She smiled and started admiring the art on my walls, including the new painting of Sukey on the boat I’d just hung.

“That other painting, the one of the woman with long red hair,” I said, pointing to it, “it was done by a woman who lives in the French Quarter. She’s never had any formal art training. She just loves to paint people that most folks don’t consider saints—not yet anyway.”

Underneath the painting, I’d put a plaque reading “Saint Mary Magdalene, Patron Saint of Hairdressers.”

“You do know about Mary Magdalene, don’t you?” I asked her.

“Well, yes, I mean, she was a sinner. I know that,” Beth replied.

“Indeed she was!” I said. “History’s most famous reformed harlot. I am devoted to her. I mean, any woman who washed Christ’s feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, anointed his toes with perfume, and also enjoyed sex has my vote! She’s the one who was with Christ when he died, and she helped bury Him—not to mention she was the first witness to the Resurrection. Saint Luke wrote, ‘Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.’”

I caught myself and slapped my hand over my mouth. “What a way to welcome a new client! I’m standing here acting like this is catechism class.”

Beth said, laughing, “Lord knows, I need forgiveness, for I have sinned a helluva lot myself.”

I laughed. “Oh, I think you might be a daughter of Mary Mag.”

“Mary Mag! That’s hysterical. And to think I’ve spent my whole life trying to be a good daughter of the other Mary.”

Suddenly, my new client burst into tears.

“I’m awfully sorry,” she said, “I
must
, I just can’t seem to—you must think I’m deranged.”

“Who isn’t deranged one way or the other? It’s how we dance with the derangement,” I said, leading her to the massage chair.

“Now, before I wash my clients’ hair, I like to give them a scalp and neck massage. How’s that sound to you, Beth?”

“Delicious.”

“Then just lean back, and let your head rest in the cradle. You’ve had massages before, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “But not as much as I crave them.”

“Okay, now, just breathe.”

“I’m not good at just breathing,” she told me. “My mind is always too busy.”

“Well, pretend this is your to-do list for the afternoon: (1) Breathe in. (2) Breathe out. (3) Breathe in. (4) Breathe out. Count up to a hundred that way and see what happens. Let me do the rest.”

Then I took a deep breath myself and began to massage her scalp, rubbing circles around her temples. I remembered watching my mother do this with Mrs. Gaudet, years ago, when the woman was grieving for her husband.

Beth’s head was heavy in my hands. I moved down to the base of her skull, rubbing every little point in her ears. She breathed more deeply, exhaling little puffs of tension. As I massaged the different points, I felt her fear.
We all have our fears, some that are known, and others that are unknown
. I let her fear come into me, as the large black lady in the gospel tent did for me.

I massaged the crown of her head and then the sides. Slowly, I worked my way to her shoulders. That’s when I heard her heave a huge sigh of relief. I kept kneading her shoulders, but not too hard. Her shoulders sank and relaxed.

I finished the massage by placing both of my hands on top of her head, holding them there for a moment. I waited a beat. “Okay,” I asked, “are you ready for your wash? Come on and get up, slowly.”

I led her over to the part of the shop where the sink and shampoo were, and leaned her back in the chair. I carefully lifted her neck to put a rolled-up towel underneath it.

“Your neck feel okay?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said. “I’m still floating from the massage. You could do anything to me.”

“Well, for now I’ll give you a wash and a good conditioner, and then we’ll talk about a cut.”

When I was done shampooing, I took Beth over and sat her in the beauty chair and pumped it up so that I could work comfortably.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I’m in your hands, Calla Lily,” she said.

“Then I’m going to sneak up on you and just give you a little trim. Texturize a tiny bit in the front, take a little off the back, but keep it feminine. Nothing big this time. Okay?”

“That sounds perfect.”

I began snipping carefully on her hair. I studied the lines of her face to see what would accentuate her eyes. “So, what brings you to La Luna?” I asked.

“My oldest recently got married, and my younger daughter flew in from New York, where she lives. The entire time she was here, she kept pointing out all the Claiborne ladies who she thought were really
très élégante
, and she found out they all got their hair cut by you.

“I couldn’t believe your shop was in La Luna.” She laughed. “I mean, I hadn’t crossed the bridge for years. I loved the name of your salon. Anyway I called the Crowning Glory, and I was shocked to hear that it took weeks to get an appointment. But then you said, ‘Once you’re in, you’re in.’ And here I am!”

I stopped trimming and asked, “Do you have any special hair concerns?”

“My natural blond hair,” she said, “which, of course, has absolutely nothing natural about it. It’s so thin that I’m scared people can see my scalp.”

“But what wonderful hair you have, so soft,” I told her. “And your complexion, oh girl, peaches and cream, peaches and cream! You’re so lucky.”

“Really? Tell me, is Calla Lily your real name?”

“Yes, ma’am. My mother and father loved calla lilies, and they named me for them.”

“Well, it suits you beautifully.”

I pulled her hair up to weigh it, and then I snipped some more.

When I was finished, I spun her around to face the mirror and said, “What do you think?”

“Ooh, you make me feel like I ‘clean up good,’” she said, beaming. “I love it, especially the bangs being a tad bit uneven.”

Oh, I do feel good!
I realized, as Beth left, that she had never explained why she burst into tears. But I knew she had left here feeling a little bit healed anyway.

Every Friday since I opened, Miz Lizbeth and Aunt Helen came to the Crowning Glory to get their hair done. They’d show up together around eleven.

First I’d give Aunt Helen her massage and wash, set her hair with brush rollers on the top and on the sides around her face, then blow it dry.

Miz Lizbeth preferred an old-style bubble dryer I kept in the salon for my older clients. The older clients also loved their Aqua Net. No self-respecting Louisiana woman of a certain age felt that her hair was truly “done” without a good shellacking of Aqua Net.

Then Aunt Helen would insist on helping to clean the shop, and Miz Lizbeth and I would go out on the patio. Since she had the best garden in La Luna, Miz Lizbeth would go around checking on all the flowers in the beautiful wooden planters that Sonny Boy made me. She’d tell me, “These coleus should get less sun,” or “I’m going to pull those little weed shoots out of your planter of pink calla lilies.”

When we were done reviewing the garden, we’d wash our hands and set the table for lunch, which Miz Lizbeth always brought. Some days it would be cold fried chicken with cornbread and tomato salad. Other times it might be ham sandwiches on Miz Lizbeth’s homemade bread. But whatever she brought—even her tuna fish salad, which had some of her homemade sweet pickle relish mixed in with just enough Miracle Whip—it was delicious. And, of course, Miz Lizbeth was never one to skimp on dessert, so there was always a special treat—like her pecan tarts or her pineapple cake or her fudgy peanut butter brownies—to end the meal.

Those Fridays with Miz Lizbeth and Aunt Helen were just so loving and warm. I was glad to have the chance to give something back to these two women who, along with Olivia and Nelle, had been second mothers to me. Of course, M’Dear had given me a good foundation for learning how to become a woman, but all of them had shown me how to grow up and become myself.

H
ow I love October in Louisiana! It is, hands down, the most beautiful time of year. Even though we know that another week or so of heat can still sneak in and blast us, in October, a happiness breezes in. The cotton is being harvested—you can see the combines in the fields—and the big cotton trucks leave a scattering of bolls that looks like white snow along the roadside. Some people get angry as all get-out when they get stuck behind a cotton truck, but I don’t. If a fluff of cotton falls onto my Mustang, I consider it a sign of good luck. When M’Dear was still alive, we’d gather up bolls of cotton, glue them to thin pieces of rope, and hang them around the dance studio, strung with Christmas lights. M’Dear said, “Bébé, you got to celebrate every season, not just Christmas and Easter. There’s beauty in every day of the year.”

People who think that Mardi Gras is Louisiana’s only celebration—well, little do they know! Almost every small town in Louisiana sponsors an annual festival dedicated to its best product or favorite pastime or dish. Louisianans love to party and look for any excuse to sing and dance, invite friends to spend the weekend, and celebrate with good food and drink.

Of course, the best festival themes are snatched up by the towns that are the most publicity-minded. Sometimes I can’t believe that there are actually
two
crawfish festivals, one on each side of the Atchafalaya Spillway. There are celebrations of jambalaya, frogs, swine, rice, gumbo, strawberries, and more. I guess you’d have to say that the annual Shrimp and Petroleum Festival in Morgan City is in a category all by itself.

In La Luna, naturally, we have our moon festival. During the festival parade the queen gets to sit on a little bench carved into a crescent moon painted violet blue with tiny silver stars. The queen and the moon get carried through the streets on the back of a flatbed truck decorated with pastel-color Kleenex flowers.

But my favorite festival is held in the little town of Opelousas, which celebrates the harvest of its big local crop with the Yambilee on the last weekend of October. I love it because the ugly heat of summer is pretty much over. And because Tuck brought me here.

Events are held at the Yamatorium, and the festival’s royalty are named King Will-Yam and Queen Sweet Potato. In addition to the usual cooking and eating contests and a parade, there is a fun street festival and an auction of sweet potato products. Children get to do a Yamimals contest in which they create characters, in Mister Potato Head style, out of construction paper, toothpicks—and of course, yams.

I hadn’t been to Yambilee since Tuck took me in high school, so when Sukey and I saw it advertised in the paper, we decided to go. We asked Ricky and Steve to come up and make a weekend of the festival. We packed up a big cooler with sandwiches, chips, cookies, and Cokes and then put four lawn chairs in the trunk of my Mustang. When we got to Opelousas and were looking for a spot to sit and view the parade, I was shocked. The town had changed!

“Wow!” I said to Ricky and Steve. “I was planning to play tour guide for you, but I can’t believe that there’s a chain motel here now, and even a Burger King.”

It turned out that the motel was where the festival queen and her royal court were staying. “Let’s set up our lawn chairs near the motel,” Sukey said. “That way, we can get a look at them when they’re fresh at the start of the parade.”

We didn’t have to sit there long before the queen and her attendants came out, all decked out in ball gowns with skirts inflated by crinolines and hoops. “Oh, my God,” Ricky said. “Will you look at those dresses?! I think I’m having a flashback to the 1950s!”

“Oh, Ricky,” I scolded, “don’t suck all the beauty out of those girls! You have no idea of what they have to suffer.”

“Yeah, like those hairdos!”

I had to admit that they all had hair that was teased and shellacked within an inch of its life. “That’s the style I call ‘Cajun Girl Stir-Fry!’” I told him. “But think about it. All of us want to be kings and queens of something.”

The parade was an interesting combination of white Cajun and local black culture, and worked a few indignities on its royalty. Opelousas is a town of fewer than 10,000 people, so convertibles are in short supply.

“Looks like only the queen herself is getting to perch above the back seat of a top-down car,” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Ricky raved, “her twelve less-lucky attendants look like they’ve had to settle for any transportation they could get. Look at them precariously seated on sunroofs, their legs inside the car and their skirts pouffed out around them. It makes them look like doilies with heads!”

Others had to contend with actual car hoods.

“My goodness, y’all,” I said, “those girls risk slipping off, in slick taffeta gowns, and being crushed under the wheels!”

“I bet those hoods are hot!” Sukey said, then took a big sip of Diet Coke.

“Oh, my God!” Ricky said, “look at them! Those poor girls are having to rock from side to side, trying to cool off the right cheek while they lean to the left. That is just butt torture.”

“That takes skill, y’all,” Sukey said.

“No kidding,” I added. “I’ve heard one year an attendant’s pantyhose melted—actually fused to the hood of the car. Think of what
that
did to her behind.”

We all started laughing hysterically, holding on to the arms of our lawn chairs. “There’s a lawsuit somewhere in there,” Steve said, barely able to talk.

As the festival royalty passed, the folks who were lined up on the sidewalk flung candy at them. A man walking in Earth Shoes picked up some of the candy and pretended to feed it to the statue of the Infant of Prague that he was carrying in a basket.

“Uh-oh, I hope the baby Jesus doesn’t get a case of the chewdalooskas,” Sukey said. That’s what her mama used to tell us we’d get if we ate too much candy.

Of course, that set the four of us off into more fits of laughter. Then we watched the parade for another hour, and headed to the Yamatorium.

As we walked down the residential streets off the main parade route, there was a nip in the air. Sweater weather. Enough to make you feel alive with a new season.

All of a sudden, I ached to have Tuck next to me, holding my hand as we walked. I remembered when he’d taken me to this festival all those years ago. It had been the day after he’d made two touchdowns for La Luna High. I can still remember the crowd yelling, “Go Snake Boy! Bite ’em, Snake Boy!”

The memory of that made me giggle a bit. My friends turned to me. “Do you know a secret that we don’t?” Ricky asked.

“No,” I said. “Still thinking of the parade. Why don’t the three of y’all head on over to the Yamatorium, and I’ll meet you there.”

“But Calla,” Steve said, “you’ll never find us. Not with this massive crowd of yam fans.”

“Oh, leave her alone,” Sukey said and looked at me. “Meet us back at the car, Calla. It’s easy enough to find.”

Then I walked along the streets by myself, with the memory of Tuck’s hand in mine. The smell of his leather letter jacket, the way we’d stop and kiss every ten or twelve steps. All that we’d already been through at such a young age made something like a yam festival silly, fun, and precious.

I stopped abruptly for a moment at the sound of a distant car horn. It pulled me out of my reverie, and I felt such a complex weave of grief, guilt, love, and longing that I could barely stand. I found the nearest place where I could sit on a curb.

I’m sorry, Sweet. I miss you, I want you, I would give anything if you were still alive. Forgive me for this longing that I still carry like a stone in a beautiful basket. I still want him. I still want Tuck. How does that feel to you, now that you are on the other side?

I stood up and resumed my walking. It felt good to move my body, to feel its muscles and bones work together. I felt myself moving into a dance.
Du plus profond de mon coeur
, from the bottom of my heart. I was in my own world when I heard a little boy say, “What is she doing?” I opened my eyes to see a towheaded five-year-old wearing very small cowboy boots. His hair was blond and curly. A combination, I thought, of what Tuck’s and Sweet’s hair might be if they were combined. And that longing for a baby rose back up in me so strongly I had to wrap my arms around my waist as I forced a smile toward his mother.

Had I lost my chance to have a child? Would I ever love someone in that way again? I watched as the mother and her little boy walked off, the sight of his small cowboy boots staying in my mind.

I’m sorry, Sweet, but I know now that I’m still alive and I still want. And the one I want I may never ever see again. But at least now I have admitted it to myself, and to you.