The Wisdom of Hair (27 page)

“I am mountain folk.” I said it and walked out into the night.

Thank God I
had the presence of mind to change clothes and put on some good walking shoes before I left because I wouldn’t have gotten very far in high heels and a sequined dress. I must have been a sight, walking down that country road crying like I was, with my suitcase in one hand, the contents of the mini bar stuffed in a shoe box. The closer I got to the main road, the harder I cried. When I finally reached the highway that hugged the side of the mountain, I threw those tiny liquor bottles as far and as hard as I could. Most of them went tumbling down the mountainside; the rest scattered in pieces across the pavement.

I remember the moon being nearly full, and I could see a little house in the distance. It wasn’t my home, but then it was, not the same exact home I had left, but a mountain home. I couldn’t tell how far away it was or exactly how to get there. All I knew was that I felt like I was going to die if I didn’t get to that house.

I started walking faster toward the light and would have run all the way if it weren’t for that blame suitcase. It took about an hour before I finally stumbled up the steps. There was a commotion inside as the porch lights suddenly came on and a hard-looking old woman opened the door.

“My Lord, child.”

I couldn’t say a word. I just fell into a heap on her porch and cried so hard, I almost passed out. She hollered for her husband to help get me inside, but the words were muffled. I was inside of a cocoon; the whole world was far-off and distant to me as they wrapped me in blankets and smothered me with mountain love.

Still, I couldn’t speak. All I could do was cry. She must have recognized me as one of her kind because she held me close and rocked me in her arms. Her husband made some warm milk and handed it to her to give to me. She held the cup up to my mouth, making me take little sips when I could.

“Drink it now, child. It’ll help you sleep.” Then she pressed her lips together and looked like she didn’t want to ask the question that was on her mind. “Did somebody hurt you?”

Well, that was all it took, and I went to sobbing again.

“Should we call the sheriff?”

When I shook my head, she knew it wasn’t that kind of hurt. They stayed up with me until I finally stopped crying.

“Rachel, I’m going on to bed. Are you going to be all right with her?”

The old woman reached out, touched her husband’s hand, and smiled at him in such a way that it made my heart ache.

“I been sick with the flu,” he said. “Ought not to be around
nobody with this old fever. I didn’t think about it when I was helping you inside, sure hope you don’t get this mess.”

I nodded, and she smiled at him like a young thing and waved him on to bed.

“Do you want to call somebody?” She pulled the telephone over to where I was sitting.

“It’s long distance. I can pay you.”

“I don’t care, and you ain’t paying nobody nothing.”

She dialed the number, and when I heard the person on the other end, I started to cry again. As the woman took the phone from me, I could hear the worry in the voice coming from the receiver. “Hello? Hello?”

“Ma’am, this is Rachel Blevens. I’m calling from Ashwood, Virginia. I got your girl here. She’s hurting bad.”

“Sara Jane?” I heard her cry out.

I shook my head.

“No ma’am, your other girl.”

“Zora?” she said, loud enough for me to hear.

The woman looked at me, and I nodded.

“Yes ma’am. She’s all tore up about something and showed up at my doorstep. Me and my husband been caring for her.”

They talked back and forth, but I couldn’t tell you what was said because by that time I was so exhausted, I could hardly hold my head up. I lay back down on the little settee and was soon asleep.

There is so much in this world I’ll never know, that I’ll never understand, but one thing I know for certain, there is a bond of sisterhood and friendship that overrides all things. It came to me before sunup the next morning as a ready-made rescue with tears
and hugs that drew me in, almost suffocating me with its warmth and safety. It came with a knock at the door, after I’d been asleep for a good while. The woman peeked out the little window and opened the door. Sara Jane and her mama came into the room like a whirlwind, with their coats over their bathrobes. They had not even stopped to dress.

We all stood there huddled up, crying, although they had no idea as to exactly why. They were crying for me because I hurt so badly, because they loved me and would never let me bear the pain I felt alone. The sisterhood had driven two hundred and twenty-five miles to my rescue in no time flat, and not even the Rapture itself could have kept them from getting to me.

“Thank you for taking care of my girl,” Mrs. Farquhar said.

“I told you she could stay the night. This sweet one’s no trouble. Ed’s harder to nurse with that old flu than this pretty young thing.”

“I just couldn’t stand the thought of her hurting and me and Sara Jane not being with her. Thank you for letting us come at this late hour.”

“It’s near three o’clock. We don’t have but one other bed and the settee; you all are welcome to it.”

“Thank you, but we’ll head home. We stopped at a quick shop on the way here, and Sara Jane went in her bathrobe, of all things. She got us both a huge cup of coffee, so we have enough caffeine in us to last us all the way back to Davenport. But thank you so much. You’ll have stars in your crown when you all get to heaven for taking care of my girl.”

Sara Jane wrapped me in her coat and was standing there in her
bathrobe. She put her arm around me. “I love you,” she whispered. “We’re here now; everything’s going to be all right.”

We got into the car, which was still warm. It felt good. They didn’t ask me what happened right off. Mrs. Farquhar and I sat in the back and she laid my head in her lap and let me sleep. I guess we were about an hour from Davenport when I woke up. I was ashamed for all of the trouble I’d caused them, which made me close my eyes and start crying again.

“Now hush, child,” she said. “I love you so. You’re mine, just like Sara Jane. There was just some terrible mistake somewhere along the way and it took a long time for you to come to me. But you’re here now, where you belong, and I swear I’d rather die than to see you suffer like this.”

“Did he hurt you?” Sara Jane said as she looked up in the rear-view mirror for my reaction to the question. “If he laid a hand on you, I swear Jimmy will beat the shit out of him.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “There was this man…and he said…I don’t know, awful things…and Winston just sat there, drinking…and drinking…not saying anything to him…Oh, God, he doesn’t love me.”

“Jimmy ought to beat the shit out of him anyway.”

“Zora,” Mrs. Farquhar cooed, “your family loves you so. Please don’t give this sorry excuse for a man another thought.”

“But—” I began.

“But nothing,” she said. “Everything’s going to be all right. We’ll make it so.”

I shook my head and turned my face away. “But I think I’m pregnant.”

*

Sara Jane and
her mama didn’t take me to my little apartment. They took me home with them. I stayed in the guest bedroom with a homemade quilt Sara Jane’s great-grandma had made for my bedspread and pillows Mrs. Farquhar had embroidered with little fall leaves. They brought me meals on a silver bed tray, and I ate food that a sick person might eat, like grits and dry toast, chicken broth, and Jell-O. For some reason, they gave me lots of ginger ale to drink. I reckon I was so sick inside my heart over the whole mess with Winston, they thought this kind of food would be good for me. And then there was the baby.

I’d missed my period two weeks ago, but didn’t give it much thought because it was a lot like Mama—painful, just showing up whenever it had a mind to. I didn’t even let myself wonder if I was pregnant, and if I had, I would never have told anybody. Nana always said it was bad luck ’til a woman was through her first three months. I can’t say I was surprised; as often as Winston and I did it, I was bound to get pregnant. We never used anything and he never asked me if I was on birth control, so I figured it was all right by him.

I wasn’t real sure how I felt about a baby. I wasn’t thrilled, but I wasn’t upset. I thought my feelings would be determined by Winston’s reaction, which isn’t the way things should be at all. Maybe in some sad way, I thought the baby might make up for the baby he lost with Emma, and the three of us would all just live happily ever after.

Mrs. Farquhar had her family doctor come by the house and
check me. He told me he hadn’t made a house call in ten years and hadn’t done obstetrics in twenty, but that he could never say no to Nettie Farquhar. He was nice, talked a lot, tried to make me feel comfortable while he examined me. I answered his questions in a voice just above a whisper and never looked at his face.

I could have just used the home pregnancy test Mrs. Farquhar put on the dresser; there was no reason for him to come. The way Sara Jane and her mama fussed over my broken heart made me feel like I needed a doctor, but doctors don’t heal that kind of hurt.

“Well, Zora, you’re healthy, there’s no doubt about that, and you’re pregnant, too, there’s no doubt about that, either.” He took his specs off and rubbed the bridge of his nose, then folded his hand under his elbow and looked at me. “I know you’re not married, and you know, these days you don’t have to have a baby if you don’t want to.”

Now I thought that was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. It wasn’t the baby’s fault that I made my bed with a man who could never be a daddy. Even though I wasn’t real crazy about having this baby alone, the thought of doing away with it never crossed my mind. I was just pregnant, and hadn’t given any real thought about life nine months down the road.

Mrs. Farquhar was in the room the whole time he examined me. When I didn’t answer his question, she sat down on the bed and stroked my hair. “Zora, honey, how do you feel about this baby?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered where only she could hear, “but I’m not doing away with it if that’s what he means.”

“Don,” she said, “Zora’s fine?”

He nodded.

“She wants this baby.”

“She’s a young girl. I only brought it up because I thought I should. No offense intended.”

“None taken,” Mrs. Farquhar said, and she thanked him for coming and walked him to the front door. She returned a few minutes later with more ginger ale and a giddy look on her face. “We’re gonna have a baby.”

She hugged me, and I think she was relieved that I didn’t know any other way than to let the life inside me just be. I puffed up a little and started to cry. I did that a lot in the beginning, just like the crying girl. Everybody blamed it on hormones, but a part of me grieved for what Nina and Harley had and how happy they were about their baby.

“My daddy died when I was nine, and I know what it’s like growing up without a daddy…it’s just…awful.”

“This baby,” Mrs. Farquhar said as she crawled in bed beside me and put her arm around me, “will have family, real family, who will love him as much as a body can possibly be loved. Or her. This child will be so loved because you are loved.”

She sat there with me and told me about her pregnancy with Sara Jane. She also told me about when she lost the twins and how important it was for me to take good care of myself. About that time, Sara Jane came in with some lunch, solid food—turkey noodle soup made from the Thanksgiving carcass and a grilled cheese sandwich.

Mrs. Farquhar had missed the Day-After-Thanksgiving sales on my account. She told Sara Jane and me that she was going to run to the mall for just a little while, which meant she’d be gone for at least three or four hours.

After she left, Sara Jane and I talked about everything except Winston. She told me the bridesmaids’ dresses had come in, and that her dress would come from Atlanta just five days before the wedding.

“Mama’s counting on you moving in with them.”

I hadn’t given any thought as to where I would go or what I would do. “Sara Jane, I can’t do that. You all have done everything for me. I just can’t.”

“She really believes that you and the baby are going to live here,” she paused. “Come on, Zora. You need a place to stay, and Mama and Daddy will need you after the wedding. You know how she loves to do for us. It’ll break her heart if you say no.”

I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t just lie there anymore like I was sick. I had to get up and make some decisions for my baby and me.

“All right,” I said. “But I’m gonna work and pay my own way. The State Board’s next week, and I can probably still get that job at Ronnie’s if I want it.”

“Do you want me and Jimmy to go to the apartment and get your things?”

“No, I will. It might take me a while, but I’ll go. I’ve got enough clothes to last three or four days in my suitcase.”

“Mama took your things out of your suitcase to wash them. I saw the dress,” she said, looking like she wasn’t sure she should have mentioned it. “I know it must have been beautiful before you ripped it up. What do you want me to do with it?”