The Wisdom of Hair (6 page)

“When I was four days shy of sixteen, Preston Hensley set his sights on me. He was the preacher’s son, but he wasn’t what you’d call devout. Now, he was at church every time the doors opened and nobody ever had to prod him. He wasn’t there for the preaching, though. He was looking for virgins.

“He’d charm their mamas into letting them go out with him, then he’d charm the panties off of each and every one of them. I knew of at least a dozen girls who knew Preston Hensley. Some were in the Girls’ Auxiliary, some in the choir, and one was a visiting missionary’s daughter.”

“No.”

“Oh, honey, he was Beau Paramour all over, you know, from
Harvest of Passion
, that first Gussie book I gave you to read. Anyway, when we started dating I was determined I wasn’t going to be an easy conquest.

“The more he flirted and teased, the more I flirted and teased right back, but I never let him do anything. Now this really drove him crazy because I think he just smiled at those other girls, and their legs parted like the Red Sea. He wanted me so bad, and I toyed with him until he couldn’t stand it anymore. I didn’t have the first clue as to what I was doing, but it sure was fun watching him pitch the tent in his pants and then sending him home.”

“Sara Jane.” My face blushed on and off like a stoplight.

She took another swig of wine, and there was a long pause for effect.

“Wait a minute.”

“What?”

“If I tell you my story, you have to tell me yours.”

“I don’t have a story.”

“Come on, Zora. Every girl has a story, especially one as pretty as you.”

“Really, I don’t.”

My face was hot with shame, but not from Sara Jane’s question. The only stories I could ever let myself tell were about dodging the advances of Mama’s boyfriends who’d had too much to drink. I couldn’t even look at her, and I prayed she couldn’t look at me and know my secrets.

“Listen up now.” She lifted my chin with those soft round hands of hers and smiled at me. “This story’s so good, I’ll tell it anyway. Like I said, Preston was determined to conquer me, and I was getting bored with him. So one night, a Tuesday night when nobody was at church, he took me to the nursery. We sat in the dark with just the moonlight coming through the windows. We whispered and giggled, played with those Fisher-Price trucks, rolling them
around our bodies until he couldn’t take it anymore. The moon was just right. I could see his face. He wasn’t playing anymore.”

She poured us both another glass of wine, sat down, and pulled her feet up under her as best she could. “He took the mattresses out of the cribs and laid them on the floor. Then, he knelt down, took my hand, and I knelt, too. He unbuttoned my blouse while he kissed me on the lips the way they do on TV when you hear that saxophone music in the background. He unhooked my bra, but I didn’t stop him like I had before. I think I was as ready as he was.

“I reached to unbutton his shirt, but he backed away a little so that he was just out of reach. Then he read the most beautiful poem I’ve ever heard. I still have it. I even memorized it.” She sat a little straighter and began to recite:

“Well, that was all it took. We rolled around on that little bed exploring each other, and then he slipped it in, real gentle-like. Poor thing had been worked up for so long that he came in about a half second.”

I laughed hysterically. Sara Jane laughed, too.

“Was it really that funny?” She was trying to catch her breath.

“No. Sara Jane, he was quoting the Bible.”

“No.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s from Song of Solomon.” I wiped tears away.

The first time my Nana showed me the family Bible, I was maybe twelve years old. I found that chapter right off. We weren’t much for going to church, but I read that whole book and wondered what in the world was going on at that Bible-thumping church down the mountain.

“So, whatever happened to Preston Hensley?”

“He was big on the rhythm method; since his daddy was a preacher, I think he was afraid to go to a store to buy rubbers. Anyway, his parents got word that the missionary girl was pregnant, so Preston did right by her. Last I heard they were living in Africa with her parents and Preston was taking a correspondence course from some seminary in Mississippi. They had a little boy and there’s another baby on the way.”

We finished off the wine and opened another bottle. Between my tipsiness and Sara Jane’s nonchalance over the loss of her own virtue, I forgot that it didn’t matter to Winston whether I lived or died. After Sara Jane left, I’d catch myself smiling over some silly little thing she had said or done or how strong she was inside herself. I loved whatever it was inside her that always made her take over when I was hurting and make things better.

The only head
of hair I’d worked on, other than that pitiful mannequin’s, was my own. Students who’d graduated with the June class but hadn’t found jobs yet worked on any customer that came into the school. We were all envious even though none of us, other than Sara Jane, actually knew enough to work on a human head. Besides, it helped those girls who hadn’t found a job yet to get a jump on their apprenticeship.

Prudence Smart, a girl in our class who was neither prudent nor smart, didn’t know what an apprenticeship was. Irene Styles, a bony little thing with a smart mouth, piped up and told everybody it was working for nothing, which wasn’t true at all. It was closer to working for next to nothing.

Whenever Mrs. Cathcart noticed one of us looking a little jealous of those apprentices, she would remind us that they would be gone by the time we were ready for real patrons. But you can only
work on a fake head of nylon hair for so long before you start resenting the girls with living, breathing customers.

The First Baptist Church sponsored a ministry at the local nursing home, and as chairman of the Outreach Committee, Mrs. Cathcart decided it would be charitable to provide the willing elderly with our services. Some of us went every Wednesday for about a month until we got a little clientele going. It worked out well for everybody because the school was closed on Wednesdays anyway in recognition of midweek prayer services at most of the churches in town. Everybody was thrilled at the prospect of having real live customers to work on, although they weren’t paying ones. And it was good for those lonely old ladies to have somebody to fuss over them, even if it was just for a wash and set.

I remember that first day when those twelve elderly ladies toddled into the cafeteria just after breakfast. Two more were wheeled in by nurses’ aides and one of them had an old baby doll sitting in her lap. As luck would have it, the crying girl got her. She took one look at that baby and started crying. Mrs. Cathcart tried to calm her down, but the crying girl told Mrs. Cathcart she was pregnant. It was the last time any of us ever saw her in uniform.

You’d think that after all of our complaining and chomping at the bit, every single one of us who stood over those wet silver heads would have known exactly where to begin, but we didn’t. Sara Jane, on the other hand, had already sectioned off her lady’s hair and was just chatting away like she had done this every day of her life.

“Well?” the old lady assigned to me snapped. “Are you gonna fix me up or what? I can’t sit here like this; I’ll catch my death.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ll just bet Harold sent you here, didn’t he? I know he would just love to see me six feet under, the little S-H-I-T.”

“Honest, Mrs. Ethyl, I don’t know any Harold. I’m just here to fix your hair. I’m Zora Adams. Remember? I’m here with Mrs. Cathcart from the First Baptist Church.”

“Damn Baptists.” I put a clip in a section of her hair and looked up to see if Mrs. Cathcart had heard her blasphemy. “My first husband was a Baptist, you know. What a cockeyed religion. I wish somebody would tell me just what they think they’re doing during those altar calls. Whispering their sins in that old reverend’s ear, and all the while he’s nodding his head up and down. What does that mean? At least we Catholics have the decency to confess our sins in a dark little box, the way God intended.”

I pulled another section of thin, wet hair up straight between my fingers and grabbed a roller off of the tray. Before I could roll it up, Ethyl would turn around to fuss about one thing and then another and it would slip out of my fingers. Mrs. Cathcart tried to distract the old bat by showing her a little Christian love and compassion, which made the little pulse on my teacher’s forehead go crazy.

“How are you today, Mrs. Ethyl? God loves you and I love you.”

Ethyl just looked at Mrs. Cathcart and stuck out her tongue.

“Humph. She looks just like my daughter, Lytle. Greedy little bitch. Walked around my house for years saying, ‘When you’re gone I want that, and that, and that,’” she said in a squeaky falsetto. She pointed to Mrs. Cathcart. “Get out of here.”

Mrs. Cathcart wheeled around and stomped off. Ethyl was right pleased with herself and settled down enough so that I could try to finish rolling her hair. This was next to impossible because Ethyl
talked with her head and I couldn’t hold on to the section of hair long enough to get it on a curler. The woman didn’t know how to be still, so I just did the best I could. Mrs. Cathcart stared at me from across the room with her Joan of Arc smile, rubbing her throbbing forehead.

Two of the women, who were sisters, sat side by side at the cafeteria tables holding hands, completely unaware Toni and Deana were working on their hair. They were old and thin with the brightest eyes, chatting about all sorts of things like school and whether they would go to the swimming hole that day. One of them confessed that she had stolen two eggs that morning and sold them for candy money when the rolling store came around. The other one said that she knew, that she had found the candy hidden under the house.

“The rats and bugs got it, Lottie. I’m so sorry.”

“I sure hope they finish it before Mama finds it,” Lottie said, and they both laughed so hard, it made the girls fixing their hair fuss.

Clara was assigned the only black woman in the group. Twice she walked across the room to talk to Mrs. Cathcart before she returned to her patron. I could tell by the look on her face she didn’t want to touch the woman’s hair, so I excused myself from Ethyl and told Mrs. Cathcart I would trade with the girl. But Clara had heard Ethyl carrying on, and she didn’t want to have anything to do with her, either.

I finished rolling Ethyl’s hair and had her under the hair dryer when I noticed Clara still hadn’t gotten started. That sweet old woman sat there with a smile on her face waiting for Clara to begin.

“I’m Zora Adams. We’re all so new at this. Do you mind if I help Clara?”

“Why, thank you. That would be real nice. My name is Pensacola Brown.”

I was glad Mrs. Brown wasn’t sitting in front of a mirror as I towel dried her hair. I would have died if she had seen the look on Clara’s face when she finally put her hands in that hair. She looked at me with the most surprised look on her face and mouthed, “It’s so soft.”

“You have nice hair, Mrs. Brown.”

“Thank you, Zora. I try to keep it up, and my daughter helps me sometimes. You know, I worked at the governor’s mansion for thirty-three years. You had to look real neat every day.”

“The governor’s mansion.” Mrs. Brown had Clara’s full attention.

“Down in Columbia, but my daughter lives here in Davenport. She’s the only black female lawyer in town. I’m so proud of her. You know she brought me here so she could keep an eye on me. I’m telling you, this place costs her a fortune, but she says it’s worth it all to be near me. And I’m so glad to be near my grandchildren.”

Clara rolled the first lock of hair on pink sponge rollers. “Did you ever see anybody famous at the mansion?”

“I saw Jimmy Carter. Got my picture taken with him. It’s in my room. Would you like to see it?”

“No, I mean somebody really famous.”

Mrs. Brown looked at Clara, but she was the kind of lady who wouldn’t chastise anybody, no matter how rude or ignorant they were. I guess she got a lot of practice with that at the governor’s mansion.

Clara seemed to have lost her fear of Pensacola Brown’s hair, so I went over to check on Ethyl. She was sleeping hard with her head
leaned against the front of the hood and her mouth wide open, snoring above the roar of the dryer.

Sara Jane came over with two cold Coca-Colas. “For God’s sake, don’t wake her up.”

“You heard?”

“Most of it. She’s a stitch.”

Clara strolled over, popping her gum with the most satisfied look on her face. “I can’t believe I’m the one who got the colored woman. Didn’t think I could touch her hair, but I did it. It’s so soft. Not at all like I thought it would be. And no head lice…”

“Clara.”

“Zora, my mama told me their hair is just like a Brillo pad, and that they all have head lice. Right before I touched it, and you made me do it, Zora, you know you did, I thought I was going to die. But it wasn’t so bad.”