Silver Sparrow

hid behind their Ebony magazines, taking interested peeks over the tops of the glossy pages. Uncle Raleigh, knowing his role, complimented everyone, including Mama and me, before leaving with a tip of his hat.

Once he was gone, the speculation began in earnest. They ran through the respectable options first. Had he been hurt by a woman so now he was gun-shy? Was he married to the limo company? Lord have mercy, had he been to Vietnam? (At this point, the conversation could get pretty intense depending on the age of the women getting their hair done. It was always a brother-in-law that they talked about having been driven crazy by that war. It was never a husband or, thankyoujesus, a son.) The romantics wondered if maybe Uncle Raleigh had a woman but for some reason —

like maybe she was the mayor’s wife — he had to keep it secret.

Mama denied al these theories. “He’s set in his ways,” she’d say, or “He’s just waiting to meet the right person.” Sometimes one woman would be brave enough to ask the question that was on everyone’s mind. The asker was either the oldest or youngest person in the shop. “He’s not funny, is he, Verne?”

Mama said no, that wasn’t it at al .

The truth was that Uncle Raleigh wasn’t real y a bachelor. He had us.

Mama told me once, on a Monday, while she was working in my relaxer, that she had seen Uncle Raleigh with a woman before. The woman was dark-skinned, real y dark, like Cicely Tyson, but with hair for days. I had seen the woman, too, but I couldn’t say anything. It was just before Jamal graduated, before I figured out that you can be safe and sorry at the same time. Jamal and I were at Adams Park, in the middle of a school day. We didn’t have anywhere else to go — my mama operated a business out of my house and his mother (as she told anybody that would sit stil and listen) “didn’t have to work,” so she was home al day. So we were stuck with public places. He was eager to get back to the car, which he had parked in a discreet spot near a bank of pine trees. I said that I wanted to play on the swings for a while. It was a lie, I didn’t care anything about the swings, but I wanted him to coax me back to the car, for him to say how much he had missed me al day in school, for him to thril me by pressing my hand to the front of his jeans, for him to say that he worried that he was going to bust the zipper just by loving me so much. I was going to ride the swing, flashing him when the air flipped my skirt until he had to say, “Chaurisse, I am crazy about you.”

I had just settled my hips on the swing and used my tiptoes to push back a few paces when I saw my uncle and his lady friend. Uncle Raleigh and I looked right into each other’s faces. My hand floated up to my nose, the way it did when I was afraid. Uncle Raleigh cocked his head like dogs do when they’re confused. Jamal turned to see what I was looking at and Uncle Raleigh’s lady friend did the same. We were, al four of us, caught up in something, but at the time, I couldn’t say exactly what. Then Uncle Raleigh put his finger to his lips like a watchful librarian.

He never brought his girlfriend around to the house and I never asked. It was simple courtesy, real y, one of the rules of our house. We were a polite family back then. For example, on this Saturday night, no one asked me why I wasn’t invited to Ruth Nicole Elizabeth’s Sweet Sixteen, although we lived in the same neighborhood, had belonged to the same Brownie troop, and our mothers took the same dance class at the YWCA.

Not only that, but I’d been to Ruth Nicole Elizabeth’s parties in the past, and my mother always made sure I gave her a good gift. Just last year, I presented her with three fluted add-a-beads — fourteen karat. The previous parties had al been held in her big backyard or in their nice finished basement. Her Sweet Sixteen was to be an elaborate catered situation, which was different. Her parents had to pay a specific amount for each guest. If you were going, you had to RSVP, and rumor had it there was a wait list.

Uncle Raleigh struck a match and lit the cigarette dangling from his thin lips. “You want some of this, Jim-Bo?” he said, offering the burning stick to my dad, who leaned his cigarette into the flame.

I asked the waitress for a refil on my Diet Coke.

“Get a regular Coke,” Daddy said, looping his arm around my shoulder.

“Too many calories,” I said.

“Why you and your mama are so hung up on this weight thing? Don’t nobody but a dog want a bone.”

“And even he wants some meat on it,” Uncle Raleigh said.

They laughed and kept eating.

“What time is it?” I asked, with a flip of my hair.

My dad frowned. He didn’t care for my augmented look. He said it was because I didn’t need it.

“It’s only ten thirty. The event is scheduled to go until midnight,” Uncle Raleigh said.

“It’s a big deal, this party,” I said. “Mama did the hair. Ruth Nicole Elizabeth, her mama, her best friend. We worked on them al day.”

We did, and it had been a pretty miserable afternoon. To her credit, Ruth Nicole Elizabeth never said the word party while I basted her head. She didn’t even complain when I tugged too hard at a tangle behind her ears, removing the soft strands at the root. We final y got them out of the shop at 4:30 p.m. They went home to slip into their “after-five attire” and I went upstairs to put on my blue-and-white so I could go work with Daddy and Uncle Raleigh. For the record, I did own an afterfive dress. It was lavender, with asymmetric tiers and a sweetheart neck, junior size 13. My daddy brought it home late one night; he won it in a poker game.

Even though we were flush straight through spring, my mama was never in a good mood getting people ready for formals. You wouldn’t know it from watching her, but that’s cal ed being a professional. She would be al smiles six weeks later when the girls gave her wal et-sized photos of themselves dressed in Gone with the Wind hoopskirts; above the shampoo bowl hung a corkboard just for these displays. But when we final y closed down the shop, she flopped in her chair with a tiredness that was more than just one day’s exhaustion. “The money is good, but I don’t envy Raleigh and James. Driving those girls around and cal ing them ma’am! Sixteen years old. Help me, Jesus. It wil be prom season before you know it.”

“YOUR MAMA is looking at things al the wrong way,” Daddy said, slicing into his sausages. “Twenty years ago, none of this would be possible.

Your mama can’t see good news when it is staring her right in the face.”

“How much you think a party like that would cost?” Uncle Raleigh asked.