Smart Mouth Waitress (3 page)

My voice clotted with sarcasm, I said, “Thanks. You two have been really supportive. Mom will be relieved I'm in such good hands.”

“We're not supposed to be taking care of you,” Garnet said. “You're taking care of us. You're the mother while Mom's gone. That was the deal, bro.”

“Dad!”

My father shrugged. “He's not wrong. You're the one who wanted to have a year off before college. This was the deal you cut. You made your bed, now lie in it.”

“I made my bed?”

“And speaking of beds and linens, I'm nearly out of dress shirts, so you'd better get a load or two of laundry started tonight.”

In his Little Shithead voice, Garnet said, “Ha ha! You have to wash my dirty gonchies!”

“I hate my life.”

My father said, “Once you get into the swing of things, it won't be so bad. Plus we still have Jay.”

“Jay!” He was scheduled to come that night, too. Jay is our gay housekeeper. Not that being gay has anything to do with housekeeping, but Jay does fit the stereotype of being meticulous and a master interior stylist. I suppose even positive stereotypes are still pre-judging, and I was starting to see how unfair pre-judging was.

Before I could grill my brother more about which friends had said what, Dad craftily changed the topic to a discussion about the diameter of a water pipe, and something he was doing to make maintenance work safer. Garnet excitedly asked more questions, fascinated by the idea of pressurized water having enough force to decapitate a person.

Neither of them noticed me quietly slip off to my room, upstairs.

In
my own private space, I closed the door and crashed on my bed. Daylight Savings Time hadn't kicked in yet, so the sky was already dark.
Winter, you're the worst
, I thought as I turned on my lamp and grabbed some magazines from my side table.

I leafed through page after page of pretty girls in cute outfits, yet there were no models, neither black nor white, with dreadlocks in my magazines.

I'd had a number of plans for things to do while Mom was down in LA, but a hair makeover had not been one of them. Painting my room had been at the top of my list. Buried deep in my closet were two metal pails: pale blue paint and soft peridot-green paint I bought cheap from Home Depot's mis-tints section. My devious plan was to repaint my room when there was nobody around to stop me. 

In my heart of hearts, I would have loved to paint my bedroom a deep red, but I knew she'd make me paint over. Mom has a thing against red rooms. She says it makes her heart beat faster and she doesn't like that.

As simple as repainting seemed in my head, now that the time had come, it seemed like an awful lot of effort.

A new hairstyle, on the other hand, would still offer makeover excitement, with less effort. Plus it might help with the love department, if Garnet's opinion was representative of the male population.

I leafed through a third magazine, trying hard not to obsess over the models' bodies, but focusing on what I could have—the hairstyles. 

Would I give myself bangs? Would I give myself
face-framing
fringe? It was all so overwhelming. Maybe I'd just shave it all off. You can comb out dreads, but lots of people opt for the close-crop to start fresh. What would I look like with ultra-short hair?

I put my head down on my forearm and tried to think of a non-dreadlocks hairstyle that wasn't boring.

I must have nodded off, because I woke up at 7:38pm to the sound of Wicked, the musical, and our housekeeper, Jay, singing along to
Defying Gravity
. I'm not trying to make him sound like a gay stereotype, that's just how he is. His partner, Dean, is less so. Dean's a shy computer animator with a mouth full of silver braces he got for his thirtieth birthday. According to Jay, Dean only wears t-shirts he gets for free from video game companies. I've only met Dean a couple of times when he's dropped Jay off, and he was always wearing enormous black t-shirts over his skinny frame. He seemed like a nice boyfriend. I wanted a nice boyfriend.

The door to my room popped open quickly and Jay yelped.

I yelped in response.

Holding one hand to his chest, he said, “I'm sorry, I thought everyone was out.”

“The boys are out, but you're stuck with me, snake hair.”

“Pretend I'm not even here.” Jay buzzed around my room, wiping down all the surfaces and shaking my wireless computer keyboard upside-down to release the cookie crumbs and other cooties.

“I saw two girls today,” he said. “About your age. They were both playing games on their iPhones while also having a conversation.”

“I do that.”

He shook my keyboard harder and even more fluff came out. “I would love to do that. People my age think it's rude. Different generation.”

“It's not rude, it's just double the fun.”

“I agree,” he said, zipping from corner to corner of my bedroom with his cloth and bucket.

“I'm considering a makeover.”

Jay, whose immaculately-trimmed brown hair makes him look like he gets a haircut daily, stopped cleaning and stood still. “Tell me more.”

“I'd like to soften my look.” I held up the open magazine I'd been drooling on a few minutes earlier. “Something like this. Like I'm the naughty-but-innocent farmer's daughter and I've just finished milking the cows, and now my hands are bored.”

“Uh-huh.” He held his hands up framing my face, the exact same way my little brother had.

Yes, he did.

And right then, it happened. That second framing in one day convinced me.

The dreads had to go.

Nobody had been honest enough to tell me to my face before that night, but I could take a hint this strong.

“Might be nice for a change,” he said carefully.

“Be honest.”

“I don't want to hurt your feelings.”

“I guess I'll be spending the evening combing out my dreads,” I said.

“I have just what you need.” Jay disappeared for a few minutes and returned, breathing heavily, with an enormous, Costco-sized bottle of conditioner. He explained he didn't normally carry hair product around, but he'd been at his hairdresser that day (I knew it!) and didn't like the smell of their stuff.

“I'll pay you back for what I use,” I said.

He waved the notion of repayment away. “May I?” He reached out and held one of my dreads for examination. The end was pretty ratty, as it was one of my favorite dreads for chewing. “Cut them around chin-length first,” he said. “The hair below there probably fell out of your scalp years ago, so you'll be losing it regardless. That should lighten your workload.”

I thanked him, but he continued to hang out at the foot of my bed expectantly. I got up and stepped into my en suite bathroom. “I guess I'll get started right now.”

“Okay.” He didn't move.

“Do you want to help?”

He pulled some scissors out of his back pocket. “I thought you'd never ask.”

Chapter 3

And so, I found myself sitting on my toilet with the lid down, getting my beloved dreads chopped off by our housekeeper.

The scissors hacking through the first one made a shockingly-loud rending sound.

KRRRIIISSSCCHH.

“You can breathe now,” Jay said.

He was right about me holding my breath, though I hadn't noticed. Lack of oxygen explained the blackout feeling I had.

“Thanks,” I said, breathing in deeply, but keeping my eyes clenched shut.

“Hmm,” Jay said. “That's odd, it's actually bleeding.”

My eyes flew open. Of course my dreadlock wasn't bleeding, but I'd fallen for it, and Jay was so amused, he laughed until he cried. Laughing made the weight lift off my own chest, and for a moment, even though I missed my mother terribly, I felt like everything was going to be just fine.

He cut the rest of them off with the same loud rending noises as the dreads wailed in protest. Next, we worked the conditioner in.

After about an hour of alternating between conditioning and combing out my hair, each of us on one side, his enthusiasm waned. He kept commenting on how much of the hair was dead, as in not attached to my scalp—all hair except the root is technically not alive—and all the talk of dead hair was making me feel unclean. I suggested he go off to clean the house while I worked away on my own. I said not to worry about finishing the housework, since he should still get an hour's credit for the hairdressing, but he assured me he could get our three-hour cleaning done in two hours easily.

“You're not supposed to tell me that,” I said. “What do you normally do with the extra hour?”

“I try on all your clothes. Kidding! Of course not. I do extra organizing things, like sort out your Tupperware cupboard. You Martins have no sense of organization.”

“That's you? Mom and I thought Garnet was going through a secret OCD phase.”

He slowly backed away. “Being organized is healthy. There's something wrong with our society that we put a mental illness label on a person who plans out his wardrobe a week in advance.”

“You always look sharp,” I said. “I would steal that belt of yours.” Jay's tight black jeans were held up by a black belt with all sorts of metal studs, like a dog collar.

He'd managed to avoid getting any conditioner or hair on himself, but I looked rather pathetic, in my soaked, gooey t-shirt, covered in loose hairs.

He patted me on the head before leaving the bathroom. “Keep combing. Just keep on combing.”

My arms ached, but I couldn't go to work with half a head of dreads, so I kept going, though I could certainly see why people opt to shave off their dreads.

At nearly ten, Dad and Garnet returned home, yelling that they'd bought me pistachio gelato from La Casa Gelato.

Jay, who had just put away the vacuum cleaner, rushed into my room and found me in the bathroom. “That won't do,” he said.

“But I'm done!” I'd just finished combing out the final one, and my scalp was aching with discomfort from being pulled. Every one of my little hair follicles hurt.

“You're all bedraggled. Let me give you a quick trim,” he said.

The idea of more hair-yanking made me grumpy, but I agreed, and the haircut Jay gave me was mercifully quick. The long part ended just below my shoulders, and he put in some layers to remove the more damaged ends, but no bangs.

I'd already removed all my makeup when I was letting my arms have a break from being up in the air, and with my soft, wet hair combed smoothly down the sides of my face, I looked as innocent as a little baby deer. My hair was much finer than I expected, and had almost no volume.

“Is that farm-girl-wholesome enough for ya?” Jay asked.

I smiled at my reflection. “I totally look like I could chop off a bunch of chicken heads.”

“You can do anything,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. “Ah, the love of my life is waiting in a warm vehicle out front.”

“That sounds really nice,” I said.

“You have no idea,” he said, and while I was pretty sure he wasn't meaning to rub in my boyfriend-less status, I did feel a twinge of jealousy.

After Jay left, I changed into a dry shirt and ran down the stairs to show my family.

My brother, Garnet, was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter by the sink, picking his nose. When he saw me, he whipped his hand down quickly. “Oh, hi. I didn't know Perry had someone over.”