Silver Sparrow

She adjusted the I Dream of Jeannie ponytail clipped so high up on her head that it grazed the roof of the car. My mother col ected hairpieces, wigs, and fal s like other women col ected Lladro, Swarovski, or souvenir thimbles. She displayed the ful wigs on Styrofoam heads jutting from the wal s of her bedroom like the trophy heads of deer. The half caps and smal er pieces lived in her dresser drawer. Because she didn’t approve of girls dressing up like grown women, she never let me wear them, only al owing me to stroke the stiff curls before laying them back down in their nests of scented tissue paper.

From time to time I asked anyway, if I could just try on one of the ponytails — I was most interested in Tempest Tousled, a long spiral curl. Other girls I knew made do with towels around their heads as stand-ins for long flowing hair. A boy I knew from church arranged a sour mop on his head just to see what he would look like if he were a white girl. I didn’t want any of these homemade costumes when I knew my mother had a dresser drawer stocked with the real McCoy, but she refused to let me hold the hair next to my face, even if I promised not to try and actual y attach it. “You need to get a handle of what you real y look like before you start playing pretend.”

If nine years wasn’t long enough for me to figure out what I looked like, I didn’t know how long it was going to take. I had been in kindergarten when I figured out that I wasn’t pretty. That is the worst thing about being a little kid; nobody is shy about letting you know these things. The fireman who teaches you to stop, drop, and rol if you happen to catch on fire — he picks the cutest girl to sit on his knee and wear his cap. At Christmastime, the ten prettiest girls get to be in the angel choir. Plain girls twirl in the candy-cane dance. Ugly girls pass programs. I never handed out playbil s, but I never for a minute thought I would be in the angel choir.

My parents are not good-looking people, either. My dad is medium everything — medium height, medium age for a father, medium brown, medium afro. His glasses are thick as the bul etproof window at the liquor store. Thank God that didn’t get passed down to me. It’s bad enough living with his hair, fine as spun cotton; even a soft natural-bristle brush pul s it right off my head. My mother, when she isn’t wearing her fal s, could be anyone’s mother — as medium as my father, but a bit on the plump side. If you saw them walking down the street, if you noticed them at al , you would think the two of them might produce invisible children.

“SO, LIKE I was saying. George Burns cheated on Gracie.” My mother chuckled and used the hand that wasn’t on the steering wheel to adjust her I Dream of Jeannie. “Back before you were born, he had a wife named Gracie and he loved her to pieces. I mean, he was crazy about her. It’s the kind of love that most people never experience. L-o-v-e.”

I nodded. “Love.”

“But he strayed. He cheated on her with some tramp. One time and one time only. I think he had been drinking.”

I nodded.

“So here’s the good part of the story. He had betrayed his One True Love. What if she left him? He loved her! So he bought her a tennis bracelet.”

“A tennis bracelet?”

“Diamonds, Chaurisse. Major jewelry. And he never stepped out on her again. Cheating on her made him get his priorities straight. He almost lost her and it tore him up. So every time he saw that bracelet on her wrist, he remembered how much he cherished her. Don’t you love that?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

“And there’s more. This is the important part. Listen to me, Chaurisse. This wil serve you wel the rest of your life.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Years and years later, Gracie was sipping gin martinis with some country club ladies, when George heard Gracie say, ‘I was always hoping that George would have another affair. I want a bracelet for my other arm!” At this, my mother laughed her thick laugh. She knocked her hand against the steering wheel a couple of times. “You get it?”

I shook my head. “Your blinker is on.”

“But do you get it?”

“Sort of,” I said.

“The point is that Gracie knew the whole time. She just didn’t act al ignorant about it. Two things to learn from that story: (a) you know in your gut who loves you.”

“So how come he did it?”

My mother smiled at me. “Sometimes I forget how young you are. I love you so much, do you know that?”

I turned my face toward the car window. I liked it when she turned her light on me like that, but it embarrassed me, too. “Yes’m.”

“But here’s the thing to remember, and then we’l drop it.”

“Okay.”

“Men do things al the time that they don’t mean,” she explained. “The only thing that matters is that he loves you. George loved Gracie. He loved her so much, that when he dies, he is going to make sure that he is buried underneath her, so she wil always have top bil ing.”

“But why did he mess around with some other lady?”

“Chaurisse, you are not getting it. This is the point: If you are a wife, behave like a wife. There is nothing to be gained from acting a fool, cal ing up the other woman at her house, cutting her tires, or whatever. My own mother was like that, always fighting in the streets over some nigger.”

“But how come he did it? Why did that God guy cheat on Gracie?”

My mother switched on the turn signal and sighed. “Al I am saying is that if you are a wife, act like a wife and not a two-dol ar whore.”

THIS, OF COURSE, was before I got a reputation for being a fast-tail girl, without even being one. When I was fourteen, I bruised my reputation and lost my virginity. In that order, mind you. Life is crazy like that. The start of it was basical y a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding that happened at church — and there is no worse place for a