The Wisdom of Hair (4 page)

The box was from a little shop in town called Serendipity. There was a layer of dust on the top of it, and not thinking that I’d just spent all morning cleaning, I blew the dust into the air. My nose stung like someone had swatted me. I sneezed twice and got on with my plundering.

The box opened easily, like Pandora’s must have. The receipt was on top of the prettiest dress I have ever seen. I have to say I felt guilty going through a dead woman’s things, but that didn’t stop me from taking the dress into the bathroom and locking the door. I’d never touched silk before that day. I drew it up to slide my arms in and let the slippery fabric ripple over my body. The dress was the color of the sky at sunset, a perfect fit that felt like a whisper across my body.

I looked in the tiny medicine chest mirror, but not in the primpy sort of way I had earlier. It was more like the fearful expressions of those bwanas in the old Tarzan movies when the jungle drums suddenly stopped beating. I took that dress off, wadded it up in a ball, and sat on the toilet in my underwear.

After a while, I folded the dress up and put everything back the way I found it. The receipt had fallen into the bottom of the box.
$194.56. Even today that would be a lot of money to pay for a dress, but in 1982 it was a fortune. Before I was done cleaning, I found several more boxes from other stores, all full of pretty things Emma had bought and squirreled away for herself.

I left everything where I found it. I’d caused myself enough trouble just by trying on that dress. But I did step out for a little while and walked to a hole-in-the-wall of a grocery store on Main Street. Along the way, I passed three of the shops Emma liked to frequent and felt myself blush hard, like somebody might look at me and know what I’d done. Some boys about my age were sitting outside the pool hall. One of them whistled at me, trying to turn my head, but I’d seen their type with their smokes in their T-shirt pockets, looking like they hadn’t bathed in a week, and just walked on.

I had twenty dollars in my pocket but didn’t buy anything more than a little boiled ham and some loaf bread. Tomatoes were too high to touch, so I settled for a small jar of mayonnaise, figuring that when times were tough, I could just eat mayonnaise sandwiches. I spent a little over nine dollars of my own, so I splurged and bought myself a Coke.

I put the groceries away after lunch, rinsed off my plate, and dried it with a little checkered dishrag from home. I tried to put it on the top shelf of the cupboard but it wouldn’t go. I tried again, shoving it so hard it’s a wonder it didn’t break; finally I climbed up on the counter to see what the problem was. Another hidden treasure. Now I did hesitate with this one because it was wrapped.

I took the box down carefully. It was small, no bigger than my hand, maybe three or four inches deep. The wrapping paper had sweet peas on it, pink and blue ones intertwined, making little
hearts as they met. The Scotch tape had yellowed and looked like it might come undone if it wasn’t handled just right. I sat there, turned it from side to side, shook it a little, and listened to the odd sound it made.

All at once, my senses came about me, and I threw that little box of Emma’s into the silverware drawer. I slammed that drawer shut and sat down at the kitchen table, red-faced with shame. Still, I tried to fool the side of me that wasn’t too far gone by saying there was no harm in taking a little peek inside. Then I thought about Mama and how pathetic she was over the men in her life. I was a part of her. As much as I hated the fact, her weakness made me look at right and wrong like they were identical twins I couldn’t tell apart.

I opened that drawer three or four times, then slammed it shut. Once I nearly slammed my hand in the drawer. I was sure that was Nana speaking to me from the dead. I could just see her and Winston’s wife, Emma, perched on the same cloud.

Nana would shake her head while she pleaded my case. “You know, Zora really is a good girl.”

“Well, she must not be too good. She tried on my new dress, and look at her now. She’s thinking about opening my present.”

According to the
brochure, beauty school was supposed to be “The Beginning of an Exciting Career That Will Last a Lifetime.” But the first thing that caught my eye when I walked through the front door of the Davenport School of Beauty was a sign on slick white poster board beside the cash register. A bubble over a pair of legs said,
NO MORE THAN THREE ABOVE THE KNEE
. Looking down at my uniform, I didn’t need a ruler to tell me that I was out of line.

I pulled at the sides of my uniform, trying to lengthen the hem like a lot of the other students. I could just picture us all after school let out, sitting around our respective homes with scissors, big red tomato pincushions, and spools of white thread scattered about, undoing our hemlines.

Nobody looked anything like the proud, confident blonde on the cover of the brochure, except for one girl. She was the only one
not worrying her dress. Hers was an inch or two below the knee and had a sassy little slit up the back. From the neck up, she looked like a movie star, and the way she carried herself made you forget that she could probably afford to lose fifty or sixty pounds.

As attendance was called, we were supposed to introduce ourselves. Some of the girls stammered or giggled. My own voice came out just above a whisper, but the big girl spoke in a deep, sexy drawl with a proud confidence that every single girl in the room coveted. We looked at Sara Jane Farquhar in awe, and there wasn’t a single soul in that room, even our instructor, who didn’t want to be her.

“Now, ladies, I am Mrs. Cathcart, your instructor here at the Davenport School of Beauty. I’d like to welcome you, the winter class of 1983.” She paused, waiting for us to applaud ourselves. When we didn’t, she did, and we all joined in. “As students, you’ll learn the art of fixing hair over the next six months. Along with the latest fashion trends, you will master vital skills like pin curls and finger waves. And though perms and color will be your bread and butter, if you can learn to do an upsweep, you can make a fortune these days.

“Class, if you can give a woman a good hairdo, she will crawl to you on her deathbed for you to fix her hair. A woman whose hair has been properly colored is a customer for life. Let me assure all of you, there is great honor in making a woman in your charge look and feel beautiful. This is indeed one of life’s highest callings.”

We stood there applauding for all we were worth, completely mesmerized by Mrs. Cathcart’s address to the class of 1983. I looked around the room. There were twenty-three of us. One girl
was crying. Later on, when she dropped out, Mrs. Cathcart would say she was called elsewhere.

After the applause ended, Mrs. Cathcart led us past the area with all of the dryers and shampoo bowls to a large room in the back that was both storage room and our classroom. Each workstation had a faceless mannequin head with glossy black hair. All of them were identical, except one or two looked newer than the others.

Most everyone leafed through the blue clothbound textbook at each station, except for the crying girl. She ran her hand over the top of
Cosmetology Today
and started to cry again. She bawled at the drop of a hat, every day. I think it must have had something to do with her being pregnant, although I don’t think she knew she was at the time.

Sara Jane Farquhar leafed through her book, and then shoved it onto the little shelf under the top of her workstation. She looked at Mrs. Cathcart like she already knew it cover to cover and was ready to go to work. Mrs. Cathcart gave Sara Jane a dirty look and told everyone to open her text to page one.

All of Mrs. Cathcart’s lessons were drawn out on the back of old maps, the kind teachers pull down like window shades. They were yellow and torn in a couple of places, but when she pointed her yardstick to “Cosmetology, an Introduction” and started teaching, it was clear that she was a very good teacher.

I was the only one who took notes; I may have been the only girl there who knew how to take notes. Mrs. Cathcart liked that. She smiled and nodded at me every time I recognized something important and wrote it down. She went on for at least two hours before she told us we could have a break. There was a rush for the
Coke machine, which by the time I got there only took exact change.

“You need dimes?”

I looked up and saw Sara Jane Farquhar smiling at me with a Coca-Cola in her hand. “Thanks.” I handed her my quarter, but she gave it right back.

“Keep it. I always have change.”

“Thanks. I’m Zora.”

“I’m Sara Jane Farquhar,” she said, the way Marilyn Monroe might have introduced herself. Sara Jane wasn’t putting on; that was just the way she talked. “So what do you think about all this?”

“I’m excited and a little nervous, how about you?”

A group of girls were huddled together listening to a bony girl with a bad perm mimic Mrs. Cathcart’s speech to us. All of them kept cutting their eyes around to make sure she didn’t come around the corner and catch them.

“They shouldn’t be making fun of her,” I said.

Sara Jane nodded. “The joke’s on them. Everything Mrs. Cathcart said was right.”

“She’s sweet, but don’t you think she’s a little overly dramatic?”

“Maybe, but women come to a stylist because they want to feel beautiful. Even if it’s just for that one hour they sit in your chair, even if their hair looks like hell the next morning. For an hour, they had the undivided attention of someone focused on making them beautiful. They don’t get that in real life unless they give it to themselves, and a lot of women just seem to give up on that.” Sara Jane took a swig of her Coke. “But I don’t have to tell you that. You’ve been to a stylist; you know what I’m talking about.”

I nodded, and hoped she couldn’t see my embarrassment. I’d never been to a beauty salon, never had anybody cut my hair but Mama and Nana. I didn’t have a clue as to what she was talking about, but I believed every word Sara Jane Farquhar said.

“So, where do you live?”

“Just off Main in a little apartment on Beckett Street.”

“You’re lucky to have your own place. I live with my parents.”

Mama had embarrassed me so many times when prospective friends came over, the thought of inviting someone like Sara Jane Farquhar to my apartment made me nauseous. But after two days in Davenport, I was lonely, and gawking over Winston Sawyer hadn’t helped any.

“Do you want to come over today—after class?”

“Sure.” Sara Jane smiled, and pushed one of her perfectly bleached blond tresses off of her face. “That would be fun.”

I explained the arrangement I had with
the owner
, not mentioning my growing obsession for Winston, and she said that was fine by her. She would keep me company while I cooked. She also showed me how to pour salted peanuts into my Coke bottle during one of our breaks. She said it was a good, quick snack because you could eat and drink at the same time. The salty and sweet tasted good to me, but I almost choked the first time I tried it.

It’s funny how neither of us ever really said anything about being best friends that day, the way you might on the first day of grade school, but after two fifteen-minute breaks and a lunch together, we just were.

After school, we went across the street to her parents’ store so I could buy groceries to cook for Winston. The minute we walked
through the door, Sara Jane started stuffing all kinds of things into her great big shoulder bag that was about the size of a pillowcase. The people in the store saw her but didn’t say anything. I nearly died when she shoved two big T-bone steaks in there, and then called out to me from the opposite end of the aisle. “Zora, I think I need a cart for all this stuff. By the way, do you have a grill?”

I could feel my face turn red as I shook my head and ducked behind the Wise Potato Chip display on the bread aisle. Sara Jane’s parents owned the store, but she took so much stuff, I just knew the police would be there any minute to haul me away as her accomplice.

Then, lo and behold, Sara Jane came around the corner with a big box perched on top of the cart that said “Hibachi” in huge black letters and asked me to pick up a ten-pound bag of charcoal and some lighter fluid there at the end of aisle six. Winston had only given me fifty dollars. My bill came to $27.74, including tax.

Sara Jane’s cart was so full, I quit worrying about her shoplifting and started worrying about what in the world I was going to do if she expected me to help pay for her stuff, too. But Sara Jane Farquhar didn’t even go through the checkout line. She flirted with the bag boys as they packed up her stolen goods and nearly gave me a heart attack when she asked the off-duty police officer to drive us to my place. I had never met anybody like Sara Jane Farquhar before in my life.

I felt guilty that we brought home at least a hundred dollars’ worth of groceries. I guess Sara Jane knew this because while I was finishing up supper, she told me not to worry one bit, that it was just a little advance thank-you present for letting her hang around my apartment.

“Yes, but I only spent a little more than half of what Winston gave me to buy groceries.”