The Wisdom of Hair (23 page)

Connor Morris took his hand and turned my face up so that I could see his. I have marveled to this day over that man’s eyes and how intense they were, but not in an anxious sort of way. He smiled at me and told me that Jesus would wash me whiter than snow if I wanted to be baptized. He asked me if I wanted to be a new creature. I couldn’t speak. I could only nod my head and cry, because I did want to be a new creature.

Fifteen of us were baptized right then and there. The teenage
boy who went before me lost his footing when he was immersed in the water and started kicking wildly, which made the children in the congregation laugh out loud. Several of them were most likely pinched for it because some were crying when I stepped into the warm water.

A little girl who was the first person baptized that day came out of the pool just glowing. “That water was so warm, I peed.”

Her mother grabbed her by the arm and marched her toward the changing room fussing all the way. “You better thank your lucky stars you accepted Jesus, young lady. Otherwise you’d get a good spanking for doing such a thing.”

I walked toward Connor, my coarse cotton baptismal gown puffed way up on top of the water. I kept pushing it down around me with one hand and almost forgot to give Connor the handkerchief the lady helping us in and out of the baptismal pool had given me.

“What is your Christian name?” he said so the whole congregation could hear. I didn’t say anything. “Your whole name,” he whispered.

“Zora May Adams.”

“Zora, I’m going to put this handkerchief over your nose and lean you back,” he whispered. “Just hold on to my forearm, relax, and take a good deep breath. You’ll be fine.” I nodded and looked into his eyes that were sweet and brown. “Zora May Adams, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

As he said those words, he tipped me back in that warm water. I guess I was nervous because I forgot to breathe before he dunked me.

“Raised to walk in newness of life. Amen,” he said as he brought me up, coughing and sputtering, full of redemption.

“Amen,” the congregation echoed.

The lady who had given me the handkerchief started to tear up when the first sinner was baptized and made a point to hug each one of us as we came out of the pool dripping wet. She handed out towels, too, and looked like she needed one herself because, by the time I came out, she was as soaked to the bone as the rest of the new creatures.

Normally, the church office mails out a letter with all of the necessities for the big day including a change of clothes and an extra pair of underwear, which is underlined twice. I know this because I saw Jimmy’s letter before he was baptized. I didn’t know you were supposed to keep your clothes on underneath the gown, so while everybody else was wringing wet, the only thing I had on under my gown was my bra and panties. I stuffed them in a little plastic bag the handkerchief lady had given me after the service and avoided shaking the preacher’s hand because it just didn’t feel right without underwear.

When I saw Sara Jane and Jimmy, they hugged me, and Mrs. Farquhar and Mr. Farquhar were so happy they cried. We went home to their place for Sunday dinner, and Mr. Farquhar told me about when he was baptized in the river near his homeplace. He remembered everything about that day and described it in such a way that I wished I had been baptized in a river, too.

After dinner, Sara Jane and Jimmy dropped me at my apartment. I told her that I was ready to meet Jimmy’s friend, maybe even go to one of the engagement parties with him.

I climbed the steps to my apartment and didn’t give Winston
Sawyer a second thought. When I opened the door, I was ready to ask him to leave if he was there and reclaim my own place and my own self. But then I saw a table set for two and a dozen roses arranged in a pretty glass vase.

He walked out of the bedroom with a big box behind his back. “You’re home,” he said, kissing me lightly on the lips and lingering close just long enough to weaken me considerably. “I’m sorry about last night,” he said, kissing me again while I tried to recall my name. “I have something for you.” He handed me a dress box that was wrapped in pretty blue paper. “Go ahead, open it.”

I did hesitate, but not long enough to really count. He watched my face and knew I had forgiven him before the bow hit the floor.

“I was in the coffee shop across the street from the store the day you tried it on,” he said. “I knew you wanted it. You looked so beautiful. Do you remember?”

Of course I remembered. I’d tried on that indigo beaded gown at one of Emma’s fancy little dress shops downtown. I don’t know why I even bothered to go in there. I knew I’d never be able to afford that pretty thing in the window. But I just had to try it. The woman said she didn’t usually do layaways but it looked so good on me, she said she’d make an exception. As nice as she was, I knew it’d take me a year to pay for it, so I said no.

“The woman who owns the store has a kid that was in one of my classes last semester. I got her to go down to the store this morning so I could have it for you when you came back. I wanted you to have something nice to wear to your graduation dinner.”

I ran my fingers over the beads that were not the loud, flashy kind. They were the exact same color as the dress, and they made the dress look like something out of
Vogue
. I could tell he wanted
me to rush into the bathroom and try it on, but I didn’t. The new creature inside me was battling the old creature.

“I saw the invitation on the refrigerator. I want to take you,” he said, as he reached for my hand and held it in his and kissed it, making sure he was truly forgiven. “To the dance.”

I was in and out of that dress in a matter of seconds.

“Baby, is that
you?”

I didn’t say anything at first. I thought about my letter she had scrawled return to sender on and how sick I felt when it came back to me. I wanted to slam the receiver down hard so she could see how it felt, but I didn’t. “Baby?” she said again like I hadn’t heard her the first time.

Mama wanted something all right and wanted it pretty bad because she’d never called me baby before.

“Mama.”

“Hey, there. How you been?” she asked like we were picking up not where we left off but from a long, long time ago when things were just okay between us.

“Fine.”

There was a long silence. I could hear the alarm clock ticking away the seconds. I lay down on the bed and twirled the phone cord
around with my fingers, first one way, then another as she went on about a grease fire at my uncle Heath’s fish camp and how Simpsonville had gotten their own Dairy Queen.

“So how’s school?”

“Fine.”

More silence.

“Dody Haskins shot and killed Miss Bertha’s dog last week and caused a big stink with everybody taking one side or another. I’m telling you, it was a real mess. I told Cindy Bates that I…”

“Mama?”

“What, honey?”

“You sent my letter back.”

No answer.

“When I tried to call, you hung up on me.”

Still no answer.

“And now you just call me up and start talking like we do this every day?”

“Zora May,” her voice was shaking. “I ain’t had a drink in six weeks and no man neither since Butch left.”

I’d hated her for so long that it was hard to hear her talk like that and harder still to think of things changing. “I’m sober,” she said again, which set my heart to hopscotching across fine lines that had the mama I’d always wanted on one side and the mama I hated on the other. “And Butch, well, he’s gone,” she said like I hadn’t heard her the first time.

I didn’t know who in the hell Butch was, probably just some man she’d taken up with since I left. I thought about the others that came around our house and how she lived for them, the way she ate up their attention like it was good and sweet even when it
wasn’t. I remember watching her make over them like they were the end all and wondering why she couldn’t do that for me, not even once.

“What do you want, Mama?”

“I want you to come home.” She choked up a little bit. “I know we got things we got to get straight, things I got to make right, and I’m wanting to do that, Zora May, I am. Your uncle Heath’s going to loan me this truck so I can come down there, on your day off, and we could have a little bite to eat, talk things out. I’m different now. Better. I know Nana’d be proud. I know I didn’t give her much to be proud of when she was living, and you know your daddy…”

She said his name and broke down completely. It had been ten years since he died, but sometimes the wound was still fresh and deep.

“Mama, don’t cry. Listen, I’m off Wednesday afternoon, you can come then.”

“I got a surprise for you,” she said with that little hitch she gets in her voice whenever she cries.

“You don’t have to bring me anything, I’ll see you Wednesday.”

“Okay. Zora May, I know I said Nana’d be proud of me, but I know for sure she’d be proud of you going to school.”

I couldn’t breathe. I felt like someone was standing on my chest and if I heard another word about Daddy or Nana or the new and improved Mama, I was going to die. “I have to go now. Bye.”

“Bye, baby.”

I hung up the phone and felt awash with guilt because I knew Nana would never be proud of what was going on between Winston and me. I remember her shaking her head over every stray
man Mama brought home, but Nana never said a word because she knew our souls were crushed the day Daddy died, especially Mama’s. I think in a way Nana felt sorry for Mama because she was so desperate to find a man to take my daddy’s place.

Mrs. Cathcart didn’t say anything when I was late for work that day. Mama had messed with my mind and my heart so that nothing went right that morning. I mixed the wrong color three times in a row and was ready to just give up. Then my customer said she’d wasn’t real sure she’d look good as a blonde and that she thought it was the Lord’s way of saying so. So I gave her a cut and set, and she tipped me two dollars.

I stayed pretty busy most of the day. It must have been a school holiday or something because we had so many little kids come in for haircuts. The only bright spot of the day was when Nina came in and brought the wedding pictures, which were beautiful, but some of the girls thought she brought them by just to rub their noses in her wedded bliss.

“How are you feeling?” I asked as I leafed through the photos.

“Good, real good. You’d think nobody’d ever had a baby before by the way they treat me. I can’t lift a finger around Harley or his mama. They’ve been so good to me.”

“I think it’s a boy,” I said, because Nana had always said if you carry them low and out front, it’s sure to be a boy, and Nina was definitely out front.

“I don’t care, long as it’s okay. They say I’m due the end of February, so we’ll find out soon enough, I reckon.”

Nina didn’t stay long. I watched her as she went from booth to booth showing her pictures and talking to the girls. Somebody
asked if she was going to work after the baby came. She said she couldn’t imagine leaving that baby all day even if her mama kept it.

I loved the way Nina stroked her big belly and giggled when that tiny baby tossed about inside her, and the way she glowed like a new bride and a new mother should. Seeing Nina made me think a lot about my own mama, thoughts neither Daddy nor Nana ever allowed me to think about because they loved me so good. The one question I kept coming back to over and over again was, why didn’t Mama ever love me that way?

It was two
o’clock on Wednesday afternoon when I came home from school to find Mama sitting there on the steps to the apartment. She’d always fussed over herself so that she never looked anywhere near her age, but that day she looked plain, dressed in an old pair of jeans and a white cotton blouse with the shirttail out. Her thick chestnut hair was pulled back in a simple knot and she didn’t have a speck of makeup on.

She got up, dusted off her fanny, and then wiped her hands on her pants leg like she might shake my hand. Before either of us could say anything, we had our arms wrapped around each other, and I held her while she cried. Her hair smelled like baby shampoo instead of honky-tonk smoke. My heart beat a little faster because somewhere in me the tiniest fiber of hope for her to be a real mother was still alive.