The Residue Years by Mitchell Jackson

this? Whose? she says, and slaps the book closed. We don’t say nothing more till a stylist sways over, wearing plastic gloves glazed in auburn goop. She asks Mom if she’s picked a style. Not yet, but I want something new, Mom says, and turns to me to affirm. Something fresh. The stylist tells Mom no problem and escorts her to a station and I skip back outside feeling eyes on my back. That car is parked close. I get in and let the seat back till I’m almost lying down, and watch the shop’s clientele: a female saunters out patting a spume of loose curls, another oneslicking severe blond streaks; I watch a girl hop out the passenger side of an old school sedan (seen the driver around town; he’s one of those recalcitrant brass-knuckleheads who loves to provoke beef) booming with unbalanced treble—business that’s semi-interesting at best short-term, but in the long run is a vapid-ass hobby, so can you blame me for dozing? Who knows how long later, Mom stirs me with a knock at my window. She’s sporting a new short cut, her hair bone-straight and sheened.
    Wow! I say.
    You like? she says.
    I love, I say.
    Me too, she says. Can we tip?
    It’s hella cliché to claim all the nail shops are owned by Asians, but it’s true almost all the nail shops in the city are owned by Asians. A woman with an apron stitched with the shop’s name asks what service Mom would like and I tell her manicures and pedicures for us both. Mom says,
Both?
and I say, Yeah,
both
. They seat us in padded chairs beside each other and run foot tubs of water and I don’t know about Mom’s, but my tub’s a Fahrenheit to scald. Too hot, the tech says. Too hot! I say. Mom chuckles, slaps my leg, tells me to take it like a man. You told me you was a grown man, she says.
    A moment after, when the nail tech slips off Mom’s heels, it’s plain to see adding this trip to our itinerary was sagacious as shit. The verdict is out, though, on whether Mom will feel so too.
    Let me mention, the smell in this piece, oh boy, this is your brain, this is your brain about to burst. Must be why in some shops the workers wear those white face masks. But I endure, breathe slow and shallow, work my yogaesque peace till she getsto the part where she rubs my soles, the part that, between me, you, and the walls, makes me squeamish as shit and takes all my man-strength to suppress a punk’s titter.
    I see we’re still sensitive, Mom says.
    Hey, I say. Hey.
    They do our feet and, right where we sit, they balance manicure bowls half-filled with marbles on the arms of our chairs. This close, I see my tech’s got a jagged half-moon chipped from a front tooth stained the shade of dry mud. She looks the youngest and thinnest of the workers and ain’t said word one since almost boiling off my fucking foot.
    Not so for Mom, who, minus their little language chasm, has been gabbing with her tech like they’ve been friends since birth. That’s Moms for you. Never seen a conversation she couldn’t fuel.
    They sit Grace the Gabfabulous under hand and foot heat lamps, and I bide time watching another nailtech apply inch-long claws on the fingers of a chick a nigger wouldn’t want no problems with in a dark alley. Can’t understand why a chick, any chick, would think them joints are in anyway attractive, though it’s probably best that I don’t. A worker ask Mom if she’d like a wax, peel, or massage but Mom declines.
    We (me and Mom) stride out so close our sleeves touch.
    Feeling good, I say.
    Mom makes a fist, touches her rose-red nail job. Feeling more of myself, she says. To be continued.
    Downtown: the Justice Center, the blue-capped tower, the State Building, the trillion-windowed federal courthouse, the county courthouse, the courthouse square, the city building with
Portlandia
looming over the entrance. We end up in North-weston a street lined by furniture stores, vintage stores,