The Wisdom of Hair (28 page)

“Burn it.”

“So you’re just
leaving, is that it?”

I hadn’t heard him come up the stairs. He was standing in the doorway; I turned my back to him.

“Don’t go.”

I shoved the wine rack and crystal glasses hard up against the wall and taped up everything that was mine in the pasteboard box.

“I know something happened that night with John because he’s trying to kick me out of the English department. But I don’t know what happened with you.”

He was behind me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body. But I felt nothing.

“Look at me, Zora.” I turned to face him. “Talk to me.”

“I hate you. Get out of my way.”

“Zora.”

“Damn it, stop saying my name.”

“Why?”

“Because you never say it.”

“That’s not true.”

He put his arms around me. My stomach pulsed hard. I couldn’t breathe. My heart beat like a washing machine; the sound had migrated from my center to my head, pounding in my ears.

“Get out of my way.”

“Talk to me.”

I wretched in the kitchen sink and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Get out of my way.”

“My God, what did I do?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t remember.” He touched my face. “Whatever it was, I’m sorry.”

“You did nothing. You always do nothing. It’s too late.”

“Why?”

“If you cared anything about me, you wouldn’t have let that man talk to me the way he did. If you cared, you would have come after me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was so stupid to think I could ever be anything other than a distraction so you don’t have to think about Emma.”

“Emma? This doesn’t have anything to do with Emma. I was just—”

“Drunk. I know your kind because my mama brought home men like you all the time. You know how to drink and screw real fine, but you don’t know the first thing about how to love.”

“Please. Don’t go.”

“Get out of my way.”

“I know you’re pregnant,” he blurted out. “The man at the desk didn’t throw the note away.”

I wanted to kill him. I closed my eyes and tried to hold the words inside.

“Well then, you know that I have to leave. That’s what Emma did. She left your sorry ass so you could drink yourself to death.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Emma was pregnant, just like me. She was leaving you. Wasn’t she? Because you’re a drunk.”

“Shut up. You don’t know that…”

He was so wounded, it was easy to push by him. I went into the kitchen and climbed up on the counter to find that little box and finish him off. It sailed across the room as hard as I could throw it, aimed straight for his head. He dodged the box. It hit the wall and the rattle fell out on the floor by his foot. His hand shook as he picked it up, and it wasn’t because he was hungover. He held it in his hands and closed his eyes.

“All this time I thought you were drinking and grieving over her. I know what it’s like to love somebody like that and somehow that made it okay. But you weren’t grieving, were you? You were a drunk before Emma died, and you’re a drunk now. You’ll never change.”

I made two more trips down the stairs with clothes and shoes while he just stood there like he was the dead one.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, as I started out the door with the rest of my things.

I looked around the apartment one last time and saw my old rag doll, Myrna, lying on a little wicker chest I’d used for a coffee table. Without saying another word, I snatched Myrna up and started out the door. Since the night Mama gave her back to me, it had gnawed at me where Mama had found her. I threw the last of my stuff in the floorboard and the minute I laid Myrna on the seat beside me, it all came back.

The day the police came to tell us my daddy was dead, Mama saw the car pull up in the driveway. She came running out of the house, screaming and crying so hard she collapsed on the ground. The sheriff and Nana took her inside. I was just nine years old; it was terrifying, watching them put her to bed.

Myrna was on the parson’s bench in the hallway near Mama’s room with some other dolls. I picked her up, pressed her against Mama’s chest, and wrapped her arms around the doll. She just lay there, staring out into space, trembling, running her fingers through Myrna’s hair.

I was heartbroken over losing my daddy, and even though Mama had never cared for me, I was worried about her. I didn’t realize the doll was gone until a few weeks after the funeral. I looked and looked for her. Sometimes, after Mama had been drinking, she’d laugh and tease me. “Wonder where that old rag doll of yours up and went?” Then she’d stumble about the house pretending to search for her. “Why, she must be a magic doll because she just up and disappeared.”

I knew it was Mama’s lie about me that made my daddy kill himself, and now I knew she had stashed the old doll to punish me for his death.

The sound of Winston trying to open the truck door brought me back from that place in my mind that makes old wounds fresh. He was crying, begging to me to unlock the door or roll down the window. I took one last look at that pretty face and pulled out of the driveway.

I stood back
and watched the people who loved Sara Jane pamper her day and night, preparing her for the wedding. It reminded me a lot of that old movie Liz Taylor starred in with Richard Burton, how everyone was rushing about, trying to make everything, including Cleopatra, absolutely perfect for Marc Antony’s arrival. I know Nana Adams would’ve had herself a belly laugh at such a fuss being made over a ceremony that, when you got right down to it, amounted to two people saying two words to each other.

Most of the four hundred people invited to the wedding sent their best wishes along with a gift. There were so many wedding presents that Jimmy and Mr. Farquhar moved everything out of the living room and into the garage. The living room looked like a fine department store full of pretty gifts set out on row after row of eight-foot-long tables. Folks came by every day to drop off their gifts and to look at all of Sara Jane and Jimmy’s pretty new things.
They oohed and aahed over everything, especially the grand prize, a Waterford crystal vase that was so big Sara Jane said it would make a good champagne bucket.

The wedding director and owner of the Bridal Barn, Tiny Ellison, got her panties in a knot when she found out that Sara Jane’s dress was bought in Atlanta. But Mrs. Farquhar smoothed everything over by ordering the bridesmaids’ dresses from Tiny and asking her to direct the wedding, which was the biggest one in Davenport that summer and maybe the biggest one ever.

Tiny was no stranger to big weddings, having directed the governor’s son’s ten years ago. She made out like the governor himself had sought her out, but the truth was that Tiny happened to be the bride’s favorite aunt. So that was her credential to direct the biggest social event in Davenport and one that she reminded us of constantly.

Tiny would say, “we did this at the governor’s mansion” and “we did that at the governor’s mansion” all the time. Sara Jane and I got sick of her flaunting that around, but we didn’t say anything. Tiny insisted on bringing the bridesmaids’ dresses by Sara Jane’s house for us to try on because she didn’t want anyone to walk into the store and see them before the wedding.

“There are those,” she said looking up at me with straight pins in her mouth, “who’d come by my shop for no other reason than to get a peek at these dresses. Lord knows, I’ll do whatever it takes to guard the integrity of this wedding.”

There were seven bridesmaids in all, me and Sara Jane’s cousins from North Carolina. All of us gathered at the Farquhars’ the Saturday before the wedding to try on our gowns that Tiny had altered. She swore it was a bona fide miracle that we even had
dresses because they had been shipped to her store in Christmas red when they were supposed to be emerald green and had to be reordered just three and a half weeks before the wedding.

We all giggled and whirled around in those satin gowns that made swishing noises as we walked down the aisles in the living room between the gift tables. I didn’t know anything about being pregnant, that I wouldn’t really start showing until about midway through the fifth month, and I was sure my dress would be too small. It was a little tight up top, but other than that, it fit perfectly.

Tiny left around five o’clock with those seven dresses locked away in Bridal Barn garment bags and a look on her face like she was on a mission from God. She said that she and her most trusted assistant, Myrtle, would have the alterations done by Wednesday and to call her at home if anybody wanted her to open the shop special for them because the Bridal Barn was always closed that day for the midweek prayer meeting.

Although they were cousins, none of the bridesmaids were anything like Sara Jane. Two of them married into some religion that believed in having lots of kids but didn’t believe in dancing, and the other four were in college. I was glad when they all headed back to their respective homes, which left just Sara Jane and me.

“Are you gonna take me out or what?”

“Oh, gosh, Sara Jane, I’m sorry. I didn’t think about throwing you a bachelorette party.”

“Come on, let’s go someplace, just for a little bit. We’ll tell Mama we’re going over to Jimmy’s.”

“The doctor said that I can’t drink,” I said as I put on my coat.

“Well, then, I’ll have to drink for both of us.”

We drove to Myrtle Beach because we wanted to go to Shag
Daddy’s. It was on a street near the beach with rows and rows of bars. But Sara Jane must have seen something she liked on the sign, because she whipped the car right into the parking lot of Jimmy Mack’s. There was a line of girls a mile long, which didn’t appeal to me at all.

“There’s never a line. What in the world is going on?”

“Strippers,” Sara Jane said with a wicked grin.

“Sara Jane. I never—”

“Well, neither have I. Come on, I’m getting married next week.” She made the pouty smile, which always makes me say yes to her. “Jimmy’s buddies took him out tonight to the Discotheque Lounge, and you know they have naked girls there. Let’s just go in and see what it’s like. I promise if it’s awful, we’ll leave.”

“Any brides tonight?” A skinny little man with no shirt on and a tuxedo walked through the sea of women.

“Right here.”

“Sara Jane.”

“I just want to look, I’m not going to buy anything.”

“You the bride?”

“And this is my maid of honor.”

They let us in for free and put us at a special table up front near the stage.

“Come on, ladies,” the announcer hollered as women actually ran to get a good seat. “The men aren’t ready just yet. You’ll have to get loud and let them know you’re ready.” He pumped up the crowd with dirty jokes and promises of who would be performing. Everybody there seemed to know who these guys were, and they definitely had their favorites, especially “Blaine, Blaine, the man who puts Fabio-o-o-o to shame.”

When the bass started pumping, the whole place throbbed with excitement. A series of male strippers came out and did their thing, but I wasn’t impressed, and Sara Jane said she wasn’t, either. The jungle guy was okay, but he was greased up with baby oil and bad cologne, and was so close to us the smell made me nauseous. The police guy danced a little too well, and you could tell he wasn’t really looking at any of the girls in the crowd. He just did his dance, looking over the tops of our heads, toward the back of the bar, but he still had those girls stuffing money in his gun belt like crazy.

I was glad they didn’t take everything off, but they didn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination, either. One of them came up and started dancing around me. I don’t think he liked it when I got grossed out by the sweat he was slinging all over me, because he moved on to some of the other girls who seemed to like it.

I guess we’d been there an hour, maybe a little longer, when we both looked at each other and decided to go. The minute we started to leave, a spotlight hit each of the five bride-to-be tables.

“And now, for those girls who are going to spend the rest of your lives with the same…old…guy…for Sandy Deaton, BeBe Elliott, Sara Jane Farquhar, Barbie Harvey, and Jane Wilson, here’s the man of your dreams, the anatomically correct Ken doll for your viewing pleasure, Derek!”