Something Real

by J. J. Murray

  True. "Um, is Greta, uh ... you know."

  "She go both ways," Tonya says.

  "How you know?"

  "How you think?" My mouth drops open. "Come on, Ruth. Let's go eat"

  Tonya pushes me into a crowded little dive called Melki's, the chairs and tables so close together that folks eating at one table could eat off the plate of someone at another table.

  "What we doin' here?" I whisper.

  "Grubbin'," Tonya says, and she directs me to a booth where two white men in fancy suits sit in front of empty plates, one talking on a cell phone, the other writing something in a leather-bound folder. They must be lawyers or something. "Y'all almost through?" she asks. How rude!

  "Excuse me?" the man on the phone asks, but he doesn't ask it with attitude like he should.

  "I asked if y'all was almost through" Tonya smiles and winks at the man writing.

  "Uh, yeah," he says, sliding his golden pen into his suit jacket. "Let's go, Tom"

  A few seconds later, we're sitting in the booth. "That was rude," I tell Tonya.

  "Don't tell me you wanted to wait till they finished on their own," she says, waving at the waitress, an ancient woman with gray-blue hair and, dag, a moustache?

  "That woman got a moustache," I whisper.

  "And a bad temper," Tonya adds. "Don't piss Marcella off or you'll never see your food"

  Marcella stands in front of us, wiping her hands on an already dirty apron. How nasty! "What?" she says in a gruff voice. She ain't gettin' no tip, talkin' like that. This is Calhoun, Virginia, not New York City. Waitresses around here say, "How y'all doin'?"

  "Two specials," Tonya says, "and put the house dressing on the side."

  "Yeah, yeah," Marcella says. "You want water?"

  "Please," I say. Somebody gotta be polite at this table.

  Marcella stares at me. "You want ice in your water?"

  "Yes, please." I smile. "If it's not too much trouble."

  "So you want ice water," Marcella says. "A lot of ice, a little, what?"

  Bitch is pluckin' my nerves. "Whatever you think is enough," I say.

  She shrugs. "Don't know what I may be thinking by the time I get your water. You tell me. You are the customer."

  I bite my tongue. "I'll have a Coke, then. In the can. Cold. Unopened"

  Marcella smiles. "She learns quick, eh?"

  Tonya smiles. "Yes, Marcella. And don't forget to put-"

  "Dressing on the side," Marcella interrupts. "I won't forget" Marcella rolls her eyes at me. "Welcome to Melki's." She shuffles away.

  "Um," I say, "what did you just order for me?"

  "You'll love it. It's a Greek salad with feta cheese, black olives, green olives, ham, chicken, beef, hot peppers, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots"

  "All that?"

  "Oh, and enough pita bread to make you sick."

  A Cajun white woman who likes to touch my ass and, apparently, Tonya's ass and everything in between, a Greek woman with a terrible attitude and a moustache, and now a salad containing food I'm gonna poot all day-I'm having the strangest day, and it ain't even noon.

  The salad, though, is delicious, the pita bread hot and full of flavor, unlike that shit you get at the grocery store that tastes like paper. Neither of us says much while we're grubbin', and Marcella brings us each a slab of baklava. "I didn't order this," Tonya says.

  "On the house," Marcella says. "No one is buying it today." She smiles at Tonya and takes her empty plate, and I notice two of Marcella's top front teeth are missing. "You looked hungry."

  Tonya opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. She slides the baklava toward Marcella. "No thank you."

  Marcella slides it back. "You insult me. I made the baklava."

  I take a forkful and slip it into my mouth. It tastes so good, but at a thousand calories per square inch, it had better. I put my fork down and pat my lips with a napkin. "It's good, Tonya."

  "I've had better," Tonya says.

  Marcella looks hurt and drifts away.

  "Why you do that?" I ask, digging into my baklava.

  "Ho insulted me! Sayin' I looked hungry."

  "You cleaned your plate, Tonya."

  "I know." She slides the baklava back to her and sneaks a bite when Marcella isn't looking. "But she didn't have to say that. That's why I never tip her ass"

  "That ain't very nice."

  "Well, neither is she"

  T"How often you eat here?" "One, two times a week"

  I roll my eyes. "Why you think you get such bad service, then?"

  She nods toward the cash register. "When we leave, look at her tip jar. It'll be empty. She mean to everybody."

  When we get to the cash register and I see Marcella's nearly empty tip jar, I make Tonya get two more slabs of baklava to go. Marcella can't help it if she never learned any manners. Marcella leans around me to look at our table, then looks at Tonya with that screwy gap-toothed grin. "You like my baklava, then"

  "No," Tonya says. "It's for my cat"

  Marcella's eyes pop, and so do mine. "She ain't got a cat, Marcella," I say, putting a dollar in the tip jar. "She's just messin' with you"

  "Oh, that's right, Ruth," Tonya says. "The cat ran away. Guess I'll just use your baklava for a doorstop, Marcella."

  I add two more dollars and grab Tonya's arm. "Come on, Tonya"

  Tonya locks eyes with Marcella. "If I got a hundred of these, I could build me a damn house."

  Marcella's mouth drops open, and I dig deep into my purse, pulling out and stuffing a five-dollar bill into Marcella's tip jar. "Don't listen to her, Marcella. Your baklava is delicious."

  "You," Marcella says, pointing at Tonya, "you not come back" Marcella turns to me. "You come back any time."

  On the walk back to Silhouette's, I try to get Tonya to talk to me, but she's in one of her legendary moods, the kind of mood only an entire pound cake can cure.

  "What man done you wrong now?" I ask while we sit on the blue armchairs in the fitting room. But if what she said about her and Greta is true, it might not have been a man?

  "What makes you think a man did me wrong?"

  "The way you're acting."

  "And how's that?"

  I blink. "The way you're acting and using that tone of voice on me"

  "What tone is that?" she asks with a roll of the neck.

  Dag, maybe she's just on her period. "That one"

  "I am buying you a damn dress, Ruth, ain't I?"

  "Yes. Thank you" I chew on my cheek like Meg does, and the shit works. Can't say nothin' bad when you're chewin' on your cheek.

  She jumps up from her chair and goes into the boutique part, returning a minute later with tears streaming down her face. Here we go.

  "What's wrong, girl?"

  "Gene.,,

  "Ain't he the-"

  "Yes. He was the white man who wouldn't get a divorce to be with me. And guess what? He got his damn divorce, and now he's hookin' up with someone else."

  "Who?" I wince, because that's the wrong question to ask.

  "Skinny, light-skinned bitch with blue eyes and a weave. Tramp can't be more than twenty." She buries her head in her hands. "Ruth, I'm gettin' old."

  "No you ain't."

  "I turn thirty-eight next week"

  "So, you cryin' cuz you gettin' old or cuz you ain't gettin' any?"

  She sits up. "Cuz I'm gettin' old."

  "Liar. I think it's cuz you ain't gettin' any. You gettin' to be just like Naomi. You need yourself a good, stiff dick. Bet you'll find yourself one at the wedding tonight."

  "It's an old folks wedding, Ruth"

  "Reception's at the Hotel Calhoun. Lots of well-hung young studs bussin' tables there"

  She laughs. "Oh, so now you're the expert on well-hung young studs?"

  "Uh-huh. A man who's hung will keep you young"

  She laughs so hard that she nearly falls out of her chair. "Ruth, girl, you have changed."

  "I know. Ain't I the shit?"

&
nbsp; Greta comes through a door a few minutes later, a velvet burgundy dress folded over her arm, a box in her hands. "Please remove your clothes," she says to me.

  I can't take my eyes off the dress. "Ain't you got a dressing room?"

  "You're sittin' in it," Tonya says.

  Daa-em. After a few hesitant moments, I'm in only my bra and bloomers up on that pedestal. Tonya helps Greta lower the dress over me ... and it fits like a glove. It's a little snug in my waist, but it ain't tight enough to cut off the circulation. I look down at my titties staring back at me. I will not be able to bend over in this thing. I look behind me and see a V-shaped slice of my back, the dress hitting me about midcalf. The sleeves end just below my elbows, and my shoulders are kind of puffy. Greta opens the box, and I step into a pair of matching velvet shoes that are surprisingly comfortable for high heels. I look in the mirrors, turning slowly around. Dag, I've just become Cinderella. I can't help the tears sliding out of me.

  I think she likes it," Greta says.

  "Yes," I say. "I love it."

  She steps behind me and runs her hands over my shoulders. "I broadened your shoulders slightly. I hope you don't mind." "

  I don't."

  She runs her fingers down the V-slit on my back. "I have highlighted your beautiful back."

  "And her huge front," Tonya says.

  "Turn," Greta says, and I turn to her, her chin inches from my titties. "You will be the most beautiful woman at this wedding."

  "Thank you."

  After Tonya pays for the dress, a slip, a bra, some nice hose that don't come in a plastic container, and the shoes"You taken care of for the next ten birthdays and Christmases," she tells me we go to her house for a makeover. She sits me in front of her kitchen window, which looks directly across the narrow space between her house and Naomi's house into Naomi's kitchen.

  "Why we gotta do it here?" I ask.

  "Want Naomi to see what she could be helpin' me with."

  "You think she'll come over?"

  "No. She ain't allowed in my house no more"

  We don't talk any more about Naomi, and Tonya tackles my hair first. She washes and conditions it before cutting away a bunch of stray hairs. "Gonna frame your face first," she tells me like a seasoned stylist. "Then I'm gonna layer it, and then I'm gonna add some burgundy highlights."

  "You can do all that?"

  She combs through a particularly stringy patch of hair and snips the ends. "Been doin' all that on Naomi since we was little." She yanks the comb through another unruly section of hair. "Bitch gonna have to find herself someone else now."

  I wince. "You gotta take her out on my hair?"

  She steps back. "Am I pullin' too hard?"

  "Yes"

  "Sorry. Your hair is spaghetti, Ruth. How you ever become a hairdresser?"

  "I got divorced."

  "Oh, yeah."

  She streaks the tips of my hair burgundy, a fairly good match on the dress, lets it set, then washes my hair again. While Tonya blow-dries my hair, I see Naomi walking back and forth in her kitchen, her hair pinned up, a phone stuck to her cheek. She occasionally faces us with a big smile and a laugh.

  "She certainly looks happy," I say.

  "She fakin'," Tonya says.

  "How you know?"

  "Watch" She picks up her portable phone and dials. I hear the tinny ring of a phone and see Naomi pressing a button on her phone. Tonya clicks off her phone and stands in front of the window. "Told you"

  "Don't she have call-waiting?"

  "Yeah. But the phone don't ring with call-waiting, right?"

  "Oh, yeah"

  Naomi frowns and closes her kitchen curtains. That's the last we see of Naomi.

  Tonya returns to me. "You want a 'fro or some curls?"

  "What you think will look better?"

  "You ain't got enough hair for a full 'fro, so ... Let's go with curls." She picks up the largest curling iron I have ever seen. "Got this one at Sally's."

  "You ever use it?"

  "Nah "'

  "So why you usin' it on me?"

  "Cuz I want to make you some sexy curls, girl. You gonna have coils comin' down that gonna bounce ... gonna turn some heads"

  "My hair don't curl well, girl."

  "It will, Ruth. I know what I'm doing."

  "But my hair don't"

  Half an hour later, Tonya gives up on the curls because I look like a freckled, beige Shirley Temple. She scrunches up her lips. "That didn't work. Does your hair straighten at all?"

  "Some. But you gotta sneak up on it."

  She removes the curls using a smaller Golden Hot, and it's nearly three o'clock by the time she has twisted large chunks of my hair from my forehead to the center of my head and lifted them with a rattail comb. She pins these twists with tiny hairpins and combs the back straight down behind my ears to my shoulders. I check her work in a mirror and smile. I can see my entire face and both ears.

  "I like it."

  "You better. Only idea I had left was some pigtails."

  I ignore her. "I'm gonna need some nice earrings."

  She rubs my earlobes. "You got sexy ears, Ruth. You won't need 'em"

  I rub at my freckles. "What am I gonna do about these?"

  She holds my face in her hands. "They about to disappear."

  And they do. Tonya darkens my face, neck, chest, and back with a mixture of cream foundation and the Bronzing Stick. "You gonna look black tonight, girl." Then using a collection of creams, shimmers, and concealers, Tonya highlights my eyes to blend in with my hair.

  "I can't believe that this is me," I say, looking in a hand mirror. I really look black.

  "It's you, but I ain't done yet. You got some tricky lips. They ain't full enough, so ... We gonna have to trick folks into thinkin' that they are"

  Ten minutes later, I'm looking at lips I didn't know I had. They're kind of plum-colored and glisten, and though I know they're thin, they look thick.

  "You could do this on the side, Tonya," I say.

  "Y'all need someone down at Diana's?"

  I squint. "You ain't quittin' the phone company, are you?"

  "I might."

  "Cuz of Naomi?"

  "You're gonna throw away a sixteen-year career over her?"

  "Might" She washes her hands. "Tired of that place anyway." She looks at me a long time. "You've always been beautiful, Ruth"

  "Go on ""

  "Really. It's just been under the surface"

  I blush, but the face in the mirror remains black. "And you brought it out"

  She shakes her head. "Nah. I just dressed it up a bit." She checks the clock. "We better be gettin' to the church, right? Get dressed. I'll be down in a minute."

  "Right. Don't you have to do your hair and makeup now?"

  She walks out of the kitchen. "I said a minute, I mean a minute."

  I slip on all the new clothes, and it feels like a birthday or a Christmas that I never had. Everything I'm putting on is new except for my bloomers. I got to get me something sexier than these. I slide on the silky slip and hose, a very sexy bra, and as I'm putting the dress over my head, Tonya returns to the kitchen.

  "Ready?" she says.

  I pop my head through the top of the dress and look at her. She's plain Jane with her hair pulled back, very little makeup, and a simple jade green dress and matching shoes. "You goin' to a wedding lookin' like that?"

  She pulls down on my dress to hide the slip. "This is your night, Ruth. I didn't want to take away from your glory."

  "You might find you a man, girl."

  She winks. "But boys got some good imaginations."

  I'm almost out the door when I remember Kevin. I call his mama's apartment and get no answer. "He's probably already there," I say. "Let's go"

  I don't stop traffic or nothin' like that on the short walk to Antioch, but I feel like I could. Tonya and I walk up the main steps, open the doors, and ... Jesus, somebody puked lavender and gold all over the damn place! I'm gonna
stand out for sure now.

  "Ka-CHING," Tonya whispers as we enter the sanctuary.

  "Ka-gaudy," I whisper back.

  Lavender and gold bows hug the ends of every pew, and lavender and gold ribbons intertwine and snake all over the place. Jesus, if Junie's wearin' lavender, will Jonas be wearin' gold? Little biddies, some of them board members, run to and fro attaching and reattaching fallen ribbons while Jonas's family keeps to its gray self in the corner.

  "Flowers don't match," Tonya says, pointing at the garden around the pulpit. "Pale yellow roses and gold ribbons. Very tacky."

  Dag, Junie's dowry must have been a big one. There's more money tied up in those flowers than in my entire wedding.

  Tonya nods toward my bench. "Time to regulate."

  I see the tiniest little woman on my bench. Girl can't possibly reach the pedals. I look all around for Kevin, but I don't see him anywhere. "You got my back?"

  "Always," Tonya says, and we march up to the munchkin on my bench.

  "Excuse me," I say.

  Miss Munchkin turns and stares at me through some very thick glasses. "Yes?"

  "You're sittin' on my bench," I say.

  She squints. "I'm playing for the wedding."

  "Not anymore," I say. "Go talk to Junie "

  "I have already," she says. "I've been rehearsing for weeks"

  Tonya steps closer. "You're bein' replaced."

  "I don't understand," she says.

  "You been paid?" I ask.

  "Yes"

  "Then, get lost."

  "But-"

  I slide onto the bench and bump her to the other end till she slides off. "Enjoy the wedding," I say, and I start pulling out stops.

  Miss Munchkin's little jaw pumps up and down, and she storms off down the aisle to the back of the church.

  "One down," I say. And where is Kevin? I tell Tonya Kevin's number, and she goes off to call him.

  I warm up with a few choruses of "He's Able" till a tall, skinny black man approaches and taps my shoulder. "Where's Darlene?"

  This is the soloist? I don't stop playing, but I have the courtesy to push in a few stops. "She's been replaced. By me"'

  "You know the songs I'll be singing?"

  "You won't be singing."

  "Excuse me?"

  I hear the back doors open and turn, seeing Kevin out of the corner of my eye. Thank You, Lord. "You won't be singing."