The Wisdom of Hair (13 page)

It was getting dark. I was afraid to stay any longer. I touched his cheek with the back of my hand so slightly; it couldn’t have felt like anything more than a whisper. Then I turned to go.

“Thank you,” he said.

I froze.

“For the dinner. Dinners.”

I stood right by the picnic table and turned to face him in the twilight. I could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t know I’d spent the better part of my nights watching him.

“You’re welcome.” My own voice was so soft I barely heard it
myself. I wanted to say something, something meaningful that would cut though the whiskey and stay with him forever.

“Don’t stay out too late. It’s supposed to rain tonight.” I sounded like a stupid weather girl.

“Oh, God.” He tried to sit up but smiled this sweet drunken smile, then fell back in the hammock. “I can’t get up,” he laughed and moaned, like a thirteen-year-old who had just been asked to roll out of bed early on a Saturday morning.

“Can you help me?”

My heart stopped beating. My breath caught in the pit of my stomach where hope and fantasy pretended I was more to him than a girl from the mountains cooking for my keep. I didn’t answer him. I went to him, leaned over, and put his arm around my neck. As I pulled him up out of the hammock, his hand brushed against my breast, but I don’t think he knew that.

“Just help me get to the door, Zora.”

He said my name. The first fat raindrops splattered on us, a preview of the coming storm. I guided him toward the kitchen door. His head drooped so close to my shoulder, I felt his breath on my neck. His scent made me dizzy. When we reached the door, he leaned against the wall with his eyes closed and smiled. My heart stopped again when his hands touched my cheeks and then disappeared into my hair. He fumbled with the clip until it came undone and leaned forward to smell my hair like it was a pretty flower. Smiling, he picked up a handful, held it up to his face, and breathed deeply. Then he disappeared through the door. I could hear him ricocheting off the walls as he walked down the hall and up the stairs to his bedroom.

I wanted to follow him and make him smile again. As I turned
to leave, I noticed the Styrofoam plate of food I’d set on the picnic table had a puddle of rain on top of the tinfoil. I didn’t think twice about the rules. I didn’t care. I picked it up, poured the water off the foil, and went into the kitchen. When I opened the refrigerator door, my heart broke. There were six or seven meals I had prepared. Some had taken hours to fix, and he had just shoved them into the refrigerator and never eaten them. I wanted to die.

I ran out of the kitchen and stopped just shy of the stairs to my apartment. I thought about Daddy Heyward, my second daddy, and how he passed out on our couch every single night he lived with us. I hated Mama for fussing over him like a new puppy whenever he pissed himself or worse, and hated her even more for not knowing how to love somebody who wasn’t a drunk.

A gust of wind blew the thick, damp smell of summer rain hard across my face. And there was the scent of the moonflower whose very purpose for existing was to bathe the night air with its own love potion. The combination of the two made the last few minutes I’d spent watching Winston snake around in my mind. I saw glimpses of his hand brushing against my breast and his smile when he touched my hair. I closed my eyes and remembered his earthy scent. He was more than Scotch and a pretty face; I would have bet my life on it. The rain came down hard enough to chase anyone with good sense inside. But I stood there as the downpour washed over me and convinced myself I could have him.

I could tell
it really bothered Mrs. Cathcart when the crying girl and her fiancé, Harley, came in that morning, holding hands and inviting everybody in the whole school to their wedding. I’m sure she wished the two of them had just gotten married with the same privacy they had when they’d done the deed. But Harley Dimel was nearly forty, and his poor mama had all but given up hope that he’d ever tie the knot. Now that he had him a fertile young thing, Mrs. Dimel figured it was cause enough to celebrate.

She paid for the entire wedding, right down to the bride’s dress and the cake, which was good because the Prices didn’t have any money to speak of. If they did, I don’t think they would have been cleaning the bank for a living. Harley’s mama had plenty because she’d put money away in a savings account ever since he was a baby.

Since Nina was already pregnant, the Holiness Church she
belonged to refused to marry her and Harley, so the wedding and the reception were held at the VFW Hall. On the big day, Mr. and Mrs. Cathcart and I walked into the hall together. Judging from the look on her face, I don’t think Mrs. Cathcart could have wound herself any tighter. It was a simple wedding with the chairs arranged in a little horseshoe and ferns with sprays of daisies in them all around the podium. Half of the chairs were metal with vfw stenciled on the back. The other half were wooden folding chairs from Mr. Platt’s funeral parlor.

The organist must have only known two songs, because she played “Cherish” over and over again. But she did know “The Wedding March,” and when we all turned around to see Nina coming down the aisle, everybody smiled and laughed. In the entire history of weddings, there has never been such a tear-streaked bride. But there she was with her mascara running down her face and onto her dress. Still beautiful.

After the happy couple left the reception, a bunch of us sat around and talked about graduating in just a few short weeks. We wondered where the time had gone and laughed about our first days of school and how everything was new and scary. Then Jeanetta Smith, who always made fun of Nina, sometimes to her face, started in all loud and drunk.

“Oh, my God, to you remember how you’d hear that sound, almost like a siren far off and it would build and build?”

Jeanetta tried to mimic the sound. Some of the girls thought it was funny and laughed right along with Jeanetta, and the others had a look on their faces like they’d better laugh, if they knew what was good for them if they didn’t want her making fun of them.

“And why in the world did that girl even bother with mascara? Do you remember the time—”

I’d seen girls like Jeanetta before and had always tried to be invisible around them. But with Mama flitting around as Judy Garland, I was easy pickings. Those girls just seem have a radar for people like me who silently pray they won’t be the butt of their jokes, and they’re more than happy to use it. Nina’s mother was looking over at our table. I’m sure she wondered what was going on. As loud as Jeanetta was, she probably knew.

“All I can say, Jeanetta Smith, is that you can laugh all you want at Nina Price-Dimel, but she just left the VFW in a limo, with the man of her dreams, and you are still here.” I didn’t say it ugly. I just finished my drink, got up from the table, gave her a little smile that said, “No harm done,” and walked home.

*

After Nina’s wedding
, Sara Jane couldn’t have waited another day to tell the whole world she loved Jimmy Alvarez. I believe if she had, she would have split at the seams from that intoxicated grin she wore across her pretty mouth. The only problem was that the whole world included her mama and her daddy.

She had fretted for weeks over what they might say, but only because they were almost as important to her as Jimmy was. But the time had come, so she invited Jimmy to church and Sunday dinner, which I told her was a big mistake. I said she should let her folks get used to Jimmy in small doses. However, I did think the idea of a public place was good to prevent the temper tantrum I was sure her daddy would throw.

It was hot that day, real hot. I stood there waiting on the church
steps for a while but didn’t see them. I thought they’d probably chickened out, but just as I turned to go inside, I caught a glimpse of Jimmy’s white truck easing down the street as he looked for a place to park. I could tell when Sara Jane got out of the truck, she was a little miffed about riding in the Toyota, but when he opened her door and she stepped out of the cab, he gave her hand a peck and said something.

Sara Jane laughed the way she always did when he was around. I called it her “Jimmy laugh” because I never heard her laugh like that any other time. She could never stay mad at him for more than two minutes, and truth be told, I’m sure she would rather have come in that pretty red Pontiac Firebird her daddy bought her for her eighteenth birthday. But I think it was important for Jimmy Alvarez to come in his own truck, on his own terms.

“Hey, y’all. I thought you’d never get here.”

“Hey, Zora,” Jimmy said. “Are you here for the barbecue?”

“Hush, Jimmy.” Sara Jane smiled as she took him by the hand.

“They’re having barbecued Mexican for dinner at Sara Jane’s,” he said as he passed through the door and into the church.

As soon as Jimmy entered the sanctuary, he had a reverence about him that I had never seen before. As we walked down the left aisle, Jimmy looked up toward the choir loft and saw the huge cross suspended from the ceiling there and instinctively crossed himself. Several people gasped.

When we sat down, Sara Jane quietly filled Jimmy in on everything he needed to know about a Baptist service. When she told him Baptists never cross themselves, he looked at her like he didn’t believe her. I opened my eyes just long enough during the opening prayer to see Jimmy watching the congregation to see if Sara Jane
was right. Poor boy, every time we prayed or the preacher read Scripture, I noticed he would squeeze Sara Jane’s hand and sit up extra straight, like the urge to cross himself was potentially lethal.

I know Sara Jane’s daddy saw Jimmy, but he didn’t look our way the entire service. He definitely wasn’t his usual smiling-with-the-joy-of-the-Lord worshipful self and didn’t sing a note when the congregation sang. Mrs. Farquhar whispered to him every now and then and patted his hand the way she did at the dinner table the first day Sara Jane brought me home with her. She looked over at us and smiled several times, and Sara Jane squeezed my hand because it seemed half the battle was won.

Thank God we had a visiting preacher that day because if Jimmy had had to sit through one of Reverend Lynch’s marathon sermons and Sunday dinner, he might have walked out on Sara Jane no matter how much he loved her. During the benediction, right before the preacher ended his prayer, Jimmy crossed himself quickly so no one would see. I shouldn’t have been looking, but I was. Sara Jane must have known he did it, too, because she smiled. As soon as the preacher said “Amen,” Jimmy let out this huge sigh.

Miss Lucy Mae Brown nearly knocked some poor lady over trying to get to us before we got out of the sanctuary. Just when it looked like we might slip out the side door, she hollered, “Sara Jane. Is that my yard boy you’re with?”

Well, most people would have just turned around and told the old biddy where she could go for hollering such a thing in the middle of a crowded church, but Sara Jane didn’t.

“Now, Miss Lucy Mae,” Sara Jane said with that silky voice of hers, “you know good and well that this is Jimmy Alvarez. He’s my beau.”

“You don’t say,” Miss Lucy Mae said with the most amazed look on her face, like Jimmy couldn’t do anything but rake leaves and cut grass. “Sir, you are one lucky man to have found such a fine girl, and, if you don’t mind me saying so, you are an excellent yard boy.”

“No, ma’am,” Jimmy said, “I don’t mind you saying so. I know I’m a lucky man.”

Sara Jane looked at me as we walked to the parking lot and breathed a heavy sigh. “Round one,” she said under her breath.

Jimmy’s Toyota was just big enough for him and Sara Jane, so I rode to the house with Mr. and Mrs. Farquhar. I would gladly have walked the six or seven miles, but Mrs. Farquhar insisted. The tension in the air of that great big Lincoln made it feel as crowded as a clown car, but nobody was laughing. Mr. Farquhar’s face and neck were bright red, and it had been that way ever since Sara Jane sashayed down the church aisle with her fiancé. He looked like he might explode at any moment. I know Mrs. Farquhar was a little miffed, too, because she had been kept in the dark over the whole Jimmy thing, but the two of them were so proper, they were trying not to say anything about it in front of me.

“What did you think about the preacher, Mr. Farquhar?” I asked, to break the silence before the poor man burst right there in the car.

“Not enough bite in his sermon, if you ask me,” he said.

“I did miss Preacher Lynch today.” There was no doubt that Mrs. Farquhar was trying hard to figure out a way to make peace out of Sunday dinner. Even her voice was different, more soothing than usual, the way you might talk to a frightened animal. I remembered hearing that same tone in Sara Jane’s voice when I was
sick over the baby’s rattle and she was dabbing my face with the cool washrag.

“I can’t believe—” he started.

“Jerry,” his wife said, for my benefit and for his. “This is not the time or the place.”

His breathing was deep and angry. He ran a stop sign, which I don’t think he knew, and neither did Mrs. Farquhar, because she was putting all of her energy into keeping him from breaking loose and doing irreparable damage to their family. As he pulled into the driveway and looked at the woman he loved, he surrendered.