“Nervous as hell.”
“About this?”
“This, and my court date next week.”
“I thought you said you’ll probably just be going to rehab?”
“Well, I talked with the lawyer and he said if the judge cuts me some slack on that other minor offense last year, I might end up doing a twenty-eight-day stint in a rehab program or they could make me do the one that last six weeks, but then again, there’s still a chance I could get a little time.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.”
“Like what kind of time?”
“Two years.”
“In jail?”
“Prison. I’d probably be out in six months.”
“But what about your kids? And Lovey?” I say, thinking out loud.
“Why you think I’m tripping so hard?”
“Well, look. Right now. Don’t worry about them.”
“Somebody’s got to.”
“Then let it be me,” I say. “Do you want me to come down there and go with you for your court appearance?”
“Would you do that, Marilyn?”
“Sure. I don’t see why not.”
“Thank you. I’m still taking that medication, Marilyn, if you worrying about it. I’m clean. I swear it. I’m even going to meetings.”
“What kind of meetings?”
“AA and NA.”
“What’s NA?”
“Narcotics Anonymous. They meet in the same place. It just depends on my mood which door I walk through.”
“Well, I’m just glad to hear you’re walking through one,” I say. “Joy, let me ask you something that might sound silly, but it’s not meant to.”
“I’m listening.”
“I know you’ve heard of yoga, right?”
“Of course I have, girl. I saw a documentary on that, too. Why?”
“Would you ever consider trying it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I just don’t buy some of this new age shit, that’s why. Bending and stretching is supposed to make everything feel better. I bend over when I clean out the tub and I stretch when I hang clothes on the line and I still feel like shit. And that meditating goes hand in hand with the yoga. Hell, I been breathing every single day of my life, but they claim if you breathe a certain way—and how many fucking ways can you breathe is what I’d like to know—but listening to them, you’d swear you get a buzz or something. Why? Don’t tell me you into it?”
“I just started. But it calms you down. And they say it can help you relax.”
“Then you bend and breathe for both of us. I gotta go. I hear the kids up there screaming and running around, which means Lovey probably be next.”
“Bye, Joy. Give Lovey and the kids a kiss for me, and I’ll see you next week.”
After I hang up, I remember that today is also the first day to register for classes online. I head straight to the computer and log on, using my personal ID number. I click and press every button and check all the appropriate boxes, including the space that asks which session, and I hit the one for summer. When I finally get to the one that asks for the course number, I take a deep breath and punch in the numbers for the metals/jewelry class. I go back over the entire form to make sure I did it all correctly, and realizing I think I have, I hit
ENTER
. My heart is beating faster than it did on the treadmill and I know it has to be past my target zone as I push the chair away from the keyboard and wait and watch for a message that will tell me if I’ve been confirmed. And there it is.
Chapter 23
P
aulette lied. You can’t get much deeper in the ’hood than this. She didn’t tell me you couldn’t see the damn place from the street. I must’ve ridden up and down this avenue five or six times looking for the address until I finally stop and ask a woman if she knows a girl around here that braids hair. She was sitting on the front steps smoking a cigarette. “Hell, just pick one. Everybody braid hair now days. Shit, I’m available,” she says and starts laughing to herself. She is stoned out of her mind on something.
I back into a driveway to turn around again, and from my rearview mirror I see purple. The side of this apartment building is what’s facing the street. It looks more like a deserted motel, because two old cars are parked in two of the four parking spaces. One is rusted out and the other has three tires and no passenger door. The plants on the balconies have been dead a long time and bright broken toys are scattered on one. I get nervous when one of the splintered wooden doors flings open and a black guy about thirty comes charging down the stairs right past me as I’m backing right on past this place which I realize is my destination.
One side of this stucco house is definitely purple and the other side lime green. I look at the numbers, and park in front of the dark door. A patch of grass is the size of my bathroom, but someone has planted beds of petunias and zinnias. Loud rap music is coming from the other side of the duplex, thank God, and then I hear growling. I look to the right and behind a metal fence are two pit bulls. I knock on the door since there’s no doorbell.
At first, I didn’t believe Paulette when she told me the girl’s name was Orange. I tried calling the next day to make an appointment just in case Orange might have been getting booked up since Easter was less than a week away. Her phone was disconnected so I called Paulette back to make sure she’d given me the right number. She had. “Try this one,” she said. “It’s her sister.”
“Where does she live?”
“In the same duplex. You know how it is.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask what her name is.”
“It’s Blue. Both of them braid and both of them have kids.”
“Anything else?”
“They aren’t the tidiest housekeepers in the world.”
“Do you mean they’re junky or nasty?”
“You’ll see. But it won’t kill you for one day to come down out of those hills to get a taste of the real world.”
“Do you hear me complaining?”
“Call me whenever they finish.”
I knock again. I hear kids running through the house. A little chocolate boy about four with big bright eyes opens the door. “Hi,” he says. “Who you?”
Before I get a chance to answer, a girl about eight comes up from behind and pushes him away from the door. “How many times Mama done told you just don’t be opening the door unless you know who it is. Now get over there and sit down somewhere.” She turns her attention to me. “You here to see Orange or Blue?”
“I think Orange.”
“I gotta go wake her up. She was braiding late last night. Come on in and have a seat. She be out in a minute.”
It’s hard to digest what I’m seeing. The floors in this living room and down the hallway that were once hardwood have been painted over many, many times but the latest with the ugliest shade of brown I’ve ever seen. The color our cabins at camp used to be. There are two couches in this small living room. One plaid. The other is some kind of wild print whose colors are fading. A great deal of food has been spilled on both, but at least it doesn’t smell like it. A toddler who looks like he could be a year or so is sleeping on one of them. He has rows of thick braids in his hair and is sucking his thumb like it’s breakfast. A fake zebra rug is underneath a glass table that’s begging for some Windex. The curtains on the picture window are sheer, but tacked to the wall above them are two dark sheets that are closed at the halfway point of the window with two safety pins, I think to control the light.
I don’t know where to sit. I hear giggling and then yelling coming from a few doorways down the hallway. “Marilyn, this Orange! I’m sorry to be running a little late, but just sit tight. I’ll be out in about ten or fifteen minutes. I gotta make sure my kids get to school on time even though they already late.”
“No problem,” I say. My appointment was for eight o’clock. It’s eight-thirty.
“Did you figure out yet what kinda braids you want?” she yells again.
“I think individuals.”
“Human or synthetic?”
“I don’t know.”
“All I got here is synthetic, unless you want to run down on San Pablo and pick up some human hair but they don’t open till ten. You driving ain’t you?”
“Yes, but synthetic is okay.”
“I thank Paulette said you was closer to a six or a four.”
“I really don’t know. But take your time. I can come back a little later if you want me to.”
She finally stops yelling and I can hear the wood creaking from the weight of something. I imagine it must be her. “Naw, don’t do that. I got somebody coming in here right after you. Here I come now.” The house actually feels like it’s trembling. In fact, it looks lopsided when I look down the hall and see a six-foot girl who can’t be more than twenty-three but weighing in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds coming down the hall in tight gray leggings and a Lakers sleeveless jersey. Her thighs look like Christmas hams. She must have a thousand thin braids in her hair, half of which are struggling to cover breasts that are bigger than my head. She turns around to reprimand the cute little boy who met me at the door, and I see the other half covers more than half of her back, which is pretty long and wide. “Go brush yo’ teeth, boy. Don’t make me come back there and say it again. And tell Ray Ray he better be outta here before I count to ten.”
When she sees me, she smiles. Now I see that even though she’s a
Glamour
“Don’t” it’s obvious that she’s not only pretty but also one of the sexiest big women I’ve ever seen. “I’m Orange, and I’m sorry for the wait and all this mess. It’s hard keeping a house clean when you got kids running through it all day long and you trying to braid hair, too. Come on over here in the kitchen.”
I follow her around a half corner, and it’s a kitchen all right. Pink and gray linoleum on the floor. The sink hosts its share of unwashed dishes. Pots on the stove just like at Lovey’s: one with hard rice, the other with string beans that have been cooked so long they’re brown. A frying pan is full of cold white chicken grease. On the floor over by the kitchen table are mounds and mounds of hair that look like black cotton candy with an occasional cluster of red vines running through it. “Blue?” she yells again.
“What?” a voice that sounds almost like an echo sails around the corner from that hallway.
“Get your ass in here and clean up this damn kitchen. You said you was doing it last night. I told you we had a early appointment.”
Orange grabs the broom and sweeps the hair up so fast I’m mesmerized just watching her do it. She then calls the little girl, “Brittany, get in here and clean off this table before you walk out that door and it better be now!”
Here comes Brittany, who does exactly what she’s told. Her hair is braided thicker and shorter. I think it’s hers. She removes the plates and bowls and dirty glasses and grabs a bottle of Fantastik, sprays the table so it’s spotless, and then says, “We need six dollars for lunch.”
Orange lifts a pound of hair and flips it over her shoulder then reaches inside her jersey under a soft mountain of brown flesh and pulls out a ten-dollar bill. “And don’t act like you don’t know what change is. You hear me?”
“I hear you,” Brittany says. “Did you call the school and tell ’em we was gon’ be late again?”
“Do we have a phone here that work?”
“Aunt Blue do.”
“Marilyn, would you mind dropping these kids off at school. It ain’t but five blocks. I’ll take the gas money off your hair.”
“It’s no problem,” I say and get up.
“Wait. Never mind. They can walk. They already late, so what’s five more minutes. Hurry up, Ray Ray, or you gon’ get left.” And out comes Ray Ray. He must be six or seven. Rather pudgy and clearly on his way to being big like his mother. “He ain’t mine. He my sister’s. Go!”
“I’ll call the school in a minute. Have a good day and don’t talk to nobody you don’t know. Understood?”
They both nod like they hear this every day. Through the front door I hear Brittany telling the dogs to shut up. Although it was more like “Shut the fuck up.”
“Blue say her be out in a minute.” This is the little boy who was at the front door. But now he is dressed to the nines. His T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers all bear a designer label. His face is shiny from too much Nivea lotion. I wonder where he’s going so early. Preschool, probably.
“Go get my cigarettes, Lexus. Sit,” she says to me, pointing to a chair that’s got crushed cereal flakes in it. I wipe them off into my palm and start looking for the trash.
“Don’t even worry about that. Throw it right down there on the floor. It’s getting mopped later.”
I follow her instructions. “I’m allergic to smoke.”
She looks at me like I might be making this up. “Then we got a problem. What happen, you can’t breathe or something?”
“Pretty much.”
“Five years ago you could smoke anywhere and wasn’t nobody complaining, but now all of a sudden everybody’s allergic and worrying about secondhand smoke. But I’ll open the window and blow it in that direction. Can you handle that?”
“I guess.”
“Look, I ain’t no chain-smoker. So don’t freak. You drink coffee?”
“Just decaf.”
“What’s the point in drinking it?”
“I just like the taste. And plus I’m perimenopausal and caffeine brings on hot flashes.”
“Peri-who?”
“Perimenopausal. It’s the year or two or five before your actual period stops when you have a bunch of unpleasant symptoms.”
“That’s about the nicest fucking way I’ve ever heard anybody put it. My grandmama and all my aunties all said the same thing: for about three or four years they thought they was losing their goddamn minds, they sweated like pigs, couldn’t remember shit, couldn’t sleep through the damn night, their hands and feet was always ice cold and the straw that broke the camel’s back as they say was when they had to start using K-Y jelly. How old are you?”
“Forty-four. I’ll be forty-five the end of October.”
“You look damn good for your age. I’da never put you past thirty-eight. That’s how old my mama is. Blue, get your ass out here!”
Orange goes over to a closet and pulls out about ten long cellophane packages of synthetic hair that looks real. “You wanna keep your same dull brownish-black or you want me to pump it up a little bit?”
“Like how much pumping?”
“How long you want it?”
“Maybe to my shoulders.”
She rips open one of the bags and the hair is a reddish-brown. It’s pretty. “This ain’t too much for you, is it? I hope not, ’cause you look like you could stand a new look. No offense.”
“None taken. It’s fine.”
“You said you wanted microbraids on the phone, didn’t you?”
“Whatever’s the fastest.”
“Why, you gotta be somewhere at a certain time?”
“At six.”
“Girl, we’ll have you outta here by two o’clock, three at the latest, if Blue would ever get her lazy ass out here.”
“Are both of you going to do my hair?”
“Yeah. We work faster that way.”
“How much more will it cost for two people?”
“Didn’t Paulette tell you how much we charged her?”
“No. She just said you were reasonable.”
“Reasonable. Try cheap. For all these braids it ain’t gon’ be but one-twenty, plus twenty for the hair. Is that a problem for you?”
“No, that’s fine.”
“You got cash, I hope.”
“I do.”
“Good. Anyway, let me get a cup of coffee and you make yourself comfortable.”
I hear the baby whimpering.
“Lexus, bring Baby Benny in here so Miss Marilyn can hold him.” She turns to me. “Do you mind? He a good baby.”
“No, not at all.”
I hear the house shaking again. I already know who it is. These two could be twins. “Hi, I’m Blue.”
“This is Marilyn,” Orange says. “And she ain’t got all day. Now get them dishes cleaned up and if you wanna get paid today you best to step on it.”
“What time is the phone company supposed to be here?” she asks. She’s taller, not quite as heavy as her sister, and wearing baggy jeans and a big white T-shirt. Her hair is jet black and bone straight. It stops at her shoulder blades. She also sounds like she may have spent some time in class when she was at school.
“Between whatever and whatever. You can’t change your day around for them motherfuckers,” Orange says.
“I tried calling you and the recording did say your phone was out of service.”
“It was cut off. It wasn’t out of service. But it’ll be back on later today. When did you last wash your hair?”
“Yesterday.”
“You married?”
“Yes.”
“Blue, put some hot water in a clean cup and put it in the microwave for a minute and a half and then put two teaspoons of Folger’s crystals in it with three teaspoons of sugar and then hand me the milk, I’ll pour it in myself. How many kids?”
“Three.”
“Wait a minute. Blue, go unlock your damn phone and call the school and tell ’em Brittany and Ray Ray is on their way.”
Blue obeys.
“How old?” she says to me.
“My daughter’s twenty-two and the twin boys nineteen.”
“They live with you?”
“Nope. The boys are in college in Atlanta and my daughter goes to U.C. Berkeley and lives with her boyfriend.”
“That’s so nice. You musta done something right to have all your kids end up in college.”
“I just tried to love them.”
“It takes more than some damn love, and you know it. What do your husband do for a living?”
“He’s an engineer.”
“What do he do being a engineer?”
“He makes sure buildings don’t fall and crumble during an earthquake.”
“Shit, what do he do between earthquakes?”
“Good question. I’m trying to figure that out myself.”