change.
“What’re you saving for?” Mama asked me one day.
“Nothing,” I said. I was rolling nickels into a coin wrapper I’d picked up at First Federal. “Just saving.” She watched while I counted out fifty pennies and slid them into their paper cylinder.
“Oh, baby,” Mama said. “Forget saving. Use it up.” She flung her arms wide and tossed back her head. “Spend it. All of it. Squander it.”
Squander
. The word gave me chills. I wanted to yell at my mama that one of us had to be responsible. I was a miser that summer, holding on to everything, not yet knowing that no matter how tight we held on to things, they’d still slip away and there was no way on God’s earth we could prevent it.
On Saturday, when I got to the shop, Raylene had Etta Bird under the dryer and was giving Miss Tilly Pettijohn a shampoo and a roll-up. On the house. Miss Tilly’s husband, Lloyd, died back in the ’50s, and except for a grown son who left town and never came back, she had no relatives. She and Raylene went way back, back to when Lloyd was alive and the Pettijohns had money. Now Miss Tilly went from month to month waiting for Mr. Rollins to deliver her Social Security check. According to Raylene, by the end of the month Miss Tilly reused tea bags so many times that if she asked you to sit and have a cup you had to figure out the date or you’d end up drinking tea so pale and watery it looked like pee.
Lenora was there. She had owned the shop before Raylene and was older than Moses, with fingers bent sideways from arthritis and eyes all filmy. Once or twice a month she liked to come in and do a few perms. “To keep my hand in,” she said, but Raylene said it was because she got lonely and needed to feel useful. “Every living soul needs to feel useful,” Raylene said.
Lenora was giving Pearl Summers a permanent, and the whole place stunk from the solution, one of the worst odors on God’s green earth. With all the dumb inventions people come up with, you’d think someone could figure out a way to make the permanent wave solution smell better. Cinnamon would be good.
The place was abuzz with the comforting hum of women’s voices. Usually I could pick up some information for my book. All I had to do was listen. Like the time Mary Lou Duval said a woman should never get hitched up with a man who wore more jewelry than she did, which made sense to me, so I copied it down. Cora Giles and Effie Bailey were talking about whether or not Bitty Weatherspoon was knocked up by her new boyfriend, but that was nothing I wanted to add to my notebook.
I got out the broom and swept up the clippings from Etta Bird’s cut. Etta was stuck under a dryer revealing her latest revelation to Miss Tilly. Etta was about ninety-two, but she was real peppy and still got around good. And she was always having a
revelation
of one kind or another. It could run from big things like Jesus appearing in a dream to minor stuff like rain on the way. I swept around the chairs and the edges of the rubber floor mat, taking care to get every gray snip from Etta’s cut so we wouldn’t be tracking them around all day. Then I used the excuse of straightening out the magazines to go out front by the
Glamour Day
photo. By now I knew every detail: the attractive way the blonde’s hair curled over one cheek and, on the other side, swept back behind an ear to reveal a crystal ear-ring; the way her lipstick matched the feather boa; the precise way in which she held her hand beneath her chin, fingers slightly curled, a pose I had perfected in front of my mirror. I knew every particular by heart. There was nothing about that blonde even Mama could have thought to improve on.
Saturdays were always busy, and I got to shampoo Effie and Cora, which meant the possibility of two more tips to add to the two dollars and thirty-five cents I had managed to hide in Mama’s silver syrup pitcher. The pitcher once belonged to Goody, and before that to her mama. It
“What’re you saving for?” Mama asked me one day.
“Nothing,” I said. I was rolling nickels into a coin wrapper I’d picked up at First Federal. “Just saving.” She watched while I counted out fifty pennies and slid them into their paper cylinder.
“Oh, baby,” Mama said. “Forget saving. Use it up.” She flung her arms wide and tossed back her head. “Spend it. All of it. Squander it.”
Squander
. The word gave me chills. I wanted to yell at my mama that one of us had to be responsible. I was a miser that summer, holding on to everything, not yet knowing that no matter how tight we held on to things, they’d still slip away and there was no way on God’s earth we could prevent it.
On Saturday, when I got to the shop, Raylene had Etta Bird under the dryer and was giving Miss Tilly Pettijohn a shampoo and a roll-up. On the house. Miss Tilly’s husband, Lloyd, died back in the ’50s, and except for a grown son who left town and never came back, she had no relatives. She and Raylene went way back, back to when Lloyd was alive and the Pettijohns had money. Now Miss Tilly went from month to month waiting for Mr. Rollins to deliver her Social Security check. According to Raylene, by the end of the month Miss Tilly reused tea bags so many times that if she asked you to sit and have a cup you had to figure out the date or you’d end up drinking tea so pale and watery it looked like pee.
Lenora was there. She had owned the shop before Raylene and was older than Moses, with fingers bent sideways from arthritis and eyes all filmy. Once or twice a month she liked to come in and do a few perms. “To keep my hand in,” she said, but Raylene said it was because she got lonely and needed to feel useful. “Every living soul needs to feel useful,” Raylene said.
Lenora was giving Pearl Summers a permanent, and the whole place stunk from the solution, one of the worst odors on God’s green earth. With all the dumb inventions people come up with, you’d think someone could figure out a way to make the permanent wave solution smell better. Cinnamon would be good.
The place was abuzz with the comforting hum of women’s voices. Usually I could pick up some information for my book. All I had to do was listen. Like the time Mary Lou Duval said a woman should never get hitched up with a man who wore more jewelry than she did, which made sense to me, so I copied it down. Cora Giles and Effie Bailey were talking about whether or not Bitty Weatherspoon was knocked up by her new boyfriend, but that was nothing I wanted to add to my notebook.
I got out the broom and swept up the clippings from Etta Bird’s cut. Etta was stuck under a dryer revealing her latest revelation to Miss Tilly. Etta was about ninety-two, but she was real peppy and still got around good. And she was always having a
revelation
of one kind or another. It could run from big things like Jesus appearing in a dream to minor stuff like rain on the way. I swept around the chairs and the edges of the rubber floor mat, taking care to get every gray snip from Etta’s cut so we wouldn’t be tracking them around all day. Then I used the excuse of straightening out the magazines to go out front by the
Glamour Day
photo. By now I knew every detail: the attractive way the blonde’s hair curled over one cheek and, on the other side, swept back behind an ear to reveal a crystal ear-ring; the way her lipstick matched the feather boa; the precise way in which she held her hand beneath her chin, fingers slightly curled, a pose I had perfected in front of my mirror. I knew every particular by heart. There was nothing about that blonde even Mama could have thought to improve on.
Saturdays were always busy, and I got to shampoo Effie and Cora, which meant the possibility of two more tips to add to the two dollars and thirty-five cents I had managed to hide in Mama’s silver syrup pitcher. The pitcher once belonged to Goody, and before that to her mama. It
Similar Books
