11
ACROSS THE STREET and down half a block was a small building with a plate-glass window for a front wall. That was The Beauty Shop, owned by Hester Grey and run by her daughter Shirley. There were three chairs set side by side before the window where a black woman could get everything from gold frosting on her hair to application of the newest skin bleaching techniques.
Shirley was smoking a cigarette, and Dorthea, her number two girl, was putting curlers in a woman’s hair. They were all talking loudly.
From outside it was really nice. The three were almost yelling, you could tell by the posture they took to speak. After yelling they’d laugh hard, but you couldn’t hear a sound through the thick glass. It was like experiencing the deep pleasure of music without being able to hear it.
When we opened the door, a brief moment of mirth reached us before the women clammed up. The room smelled of cigarettes and hair spray. It wasn’t a pleasant odor, but it conjured the memories of many a woman I had known.
“Fearless,” Shirley Grey said. “Paris.”
“Afternoon, ladies,” I said.
Both Shirley and Dorthea had big puffed-up hairdos. That was where the similarities ended. Shirley had a lot of flesh with no figure to speak of and a permanent scowl on her face. She thought she was a raving beauty though. She always wore tight dresses that showed more than anyone wanted to see.
Dorthea was an African beauty who had been brainwashed into thinking she was ugly by movies and magazines. She had straight blond hair puffed out like a white country singer and all kinds of costume rings and beads. Her breasts were trussed up in a brassiere that pushed them out like battering rams, and her long skirt was so tight that she walked like one of those Chinese women with the destroyed feet. Still, her face was elegant with deep brown skin and high cheekbones. Her eyes slanted up, and her teeth were as white as the enamel on a new gas stove.
She showed a lot of teeth when she saw Fearless.
“That was too bad about your store, Paris,” Shirley said. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, babe. I came home and it was gone.”
“Where were you?”
“Out bein’ a fool.”
Shirley shook her head and sucked her tooth. She and her mother had lost all the men in their lives. The father ran off with the number three chair girl. Her brothers were both institutionalized, one by the prison system and the other by the armed forces.
“Shirley, can I borrow Dorthea for a moment?” Fearless asked.
We decided while approaching the beauty shop that Fearless would ask for Dorthea. Women were much more likely to say yes to him.
“Can’t you see that she’s workin’?” Obviously Shirley didn’t see it our way.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Dorthea spoke up. “Mrs. Calhoun don’t mind waitin’. Do ya, honey?”
Up until then I hadn’t looked closely at the woman in Dorthea’s chair. She was older and with a stern, strawberry-brown face. She had white-rimmed glasses and hard eyes. Her stern countenance was cause for surprise because it broke out into a big smile for Dorthea and the prospect of her talking with a good-looking man.
“Go on, honey,” Mrs. Calhoun said. “Me an’ Shirley can talk mess without you for a while.”
Before Shirley could object, Dorthea took off her white apron and scooted toward the door. We were right after her.
Outside, the three of us convened at the curb, but I might just as well have been the fireplug as far as Dorthea was concerned.
“What you wanted, Fearless?”
“Did you know them Messenger of the Divine peoples?” he asked.
The light of love faltered in her eyes.
“Did you?” I chimed.
“What’s this all about, Paris?” Now that she was angry she talked to me.
“Dorthea, honey, I don’t wanna fight with you…”
