Silver Sparrow

by Tayari Jones

  “She is dear to me, Dana. I’l say that much.”

  “Stop cal ing me Dana,” I said. “I’m Chaurisse.”

  “Sorry, Chaurisse,” he said. “I have a lot to keep an eye on here.”

  His voice sounded thick and I wondered if he was going to cry. “This is terrible.”

  The bathroom door final y opened. Dana leaned her weight on her mother like she was an earthquake victim being tugged from the wreckage.

  She turned and looked at my father and said the strangest thing. She looked at his short pants and said, “I’ve never seen your legs before.”

  23

  TARA

  ONE WEEK AFTER Dana and her mother disappeared into the Forsyth County night, my parents sent out two hundred double-enveloped invitations to the anniversary party. The guest list was essential y their combined client rosters, which had a lot of overlap. My mother gave me three cards to send to whomever I wanted, but I only wanted Dana, and she was gone. I never had her phone number, so I couldn’t cal her. I only knew that she lived somewhere in the vast Continental Colony apartment complex. Once she had mentioned her mother being “upstairs,” so at least I knew that she lived in one of the town houses, but there were so many, and they al looked alike. I knew that my mother liked Dana, cared about her even, so I asked her to drive me to Continental Colony to look for the mailbox labeled Yarboro, but she shut me down. “James and Raleigh told me that Dana was clearly strung out on something, and the mother, too. I knew something was wrong with that girl. I just hate that I didn’t see how bad it al was.”

  “But Dana and her mother knew Daddy and Raleigh already. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  She sighed and spoke in the Mother Voice. “Just let it go, baby. I think Raleigh was involved with the mom, a long time ago. Maybe Dana was hoping that she could get him to be her father. So many kids, black kids especial y, are hungry in their hearts for a daddy. You don’t know how blessed you are.”

  “But it was weirder than that,” I told her.

  “Chaurisse, just try and put it out of your mind. I know you miss your friend, but that girl has serious emotional problems. You don’t want to get mixed up with that.”

  “Emotional problems” was my mother’s catch-al term for anybody who wasn’t quite right in the head. The neighbor kid who climbed a hickory nut tree in his birthday suit — emotional problems. When Monroe Bil s shot his ex-wife when she was walking out of Mary Mack’s, my mother said,

  “Why couldn’t anyone see that he had serious emotional problems?”

  “Why won’t you listen to me? Dana doesn’t have emotional problems. She just has regular problems.”

  “I am listening to you,” Mama said. “You are the one who is not listening to me. ”

  This was not a day to fight. We were in the Honda on the way to Virginia Highlands, a historic neighborhood in northeast Atlanta. Nowadays, you can take the freeway almost the whole way from southwest, but when we went shopping for my mother’s party dress, we took the surface streets the ful fifteen miles. We drove east on MLK, passed by Alex’s Barbecue, which used to have the best ribs on the planet. A mile or so later, we passed Friendship, where we sometimes went to church. After that, we cut through downtown on a series of one-ways. The gleaming gold roof of the capitol reflected in my mother’s sunglasses. On Ponce de Leon, we traveled east, past Daddy’s IHOP and Fel ini’s, where you could get pizza one slice at a time. Final y we made the left onto North Highlands and the trees seemed to bloom al at once and the streets were clean and bright.

  Virginia Highlands is one of Atlanta’s oldest neighborhoods. The homes aren’t columned like over in Druid Hil s, but they’re gorgeous Victorians and the side streets are cobblestoned. We drove al the way out here because my mother had her heart set on buying a dress from Antoinette’s, which apparently is an Atlanta institution, although I had never heard of it.

  Strangely enough, it turned out that my mother and father had similar taste in dresses after al . Who knew that my mother, who was extravagant only from her hairline upward, secretly dreamed of Tara? “Your father and I went to see that movie three times. It was beautiful.”

  I’d never actual y seen Gone with the Wind, because a ninth-grade trip to the Turner Center was canceled because of a complaint from some of the black parents. Stil , I found my mother’s Scarlett-dreams to be plenty weird.

  After we paral el-parked on St. Charles, Mama craned to read a street sign and then pointed that we should go right. “Vivien Leigh was so gorgeous. And that accent. It was Southern but not country. Elegant. I’l remember those dresses — even the one she made out of a curtain — I’l remember that for the rest of my life. That little waist!”

  I turned my face away, embarrassed, but also not wanting to fal down her rabbit hole. “There’s the shop,” I said, pointing out the painted sign hanging from a purple awning.

  It figured that if you wanted a white-girl dress, you had to go to a white-girl store. Antoinette’s, the sign announced, had been doing business with Virginia Highlands’ brides for more than a century. As we walked in the door, we were greeted with the delicate odor of jasmine potpourri and

  “Good morning, ladies. May I help you?” spoken like sweet tea. The owner of this accent was a white girl, about my age. She was so thin that the armholes of her sleeveless dress gaped, revealing a turquoise slip. The boy’s class ring around her neck was so huge it could have been a bracelet.

  “Yes.” My mother shifted into professional mode, which basical y meant she took special care to pronounce the letter t. “I am looking to purchase

  — today — a bridal-inspired special-occasion gown. I am hoping to make the purchase today.”

  “I see,” the salesgirl said, doing a little double take because my mother’s chestnut pageboy matched her own, in both color and style. “Is this for yourself or for your daughter?”

  “For myself,” my mother said.

  “Wel ,” the salesgirl said uneasily, and we could feel her sizing us up, “you just look around and let me know if there is something I can help you with.”

  The shop was smal , but my mother and I were the only customers on this Sunday afternoon. If this store was such an institution, why wasn’t anyone here? The salesgirl, as if reading my mind, offered, “Most people make an appointment, but you’re in luck.”

  We were not in luck. My mother pul ed a couple of dresses from the racks, frowned, and patted her wig. A cream-colored corset dress caught my eye and I turned over the tag. It was a good thing Daddy said the sky was the limit.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the salesgirl who was red-faced as she watched me. “What size do you go up to?”

  She bit her lip and winced. “Ten?”

  My mother returned three dresses to their racks. “Okay, Chaurisse. Let’s go.”

  I turned to the salesgirl. Surely, somewhere out there, there were white girls with meat on their bones, and surely these chunky white girls went to prom, were introduced at cotil ions, and got married at Cal anwolde. “Where do they have the kind of dresses we are looking for in our sizes?”

  The salesgirl flushed again. “There’s the catalog store cal ed the Forgotten Woman —”

  My mother said, “I am not buying my dress at a store cal ed the Forgotten Woman.”

  The salesgirl said, “It’s not a good name, but they have real y nice things.”

  My mother shook her head.

  “Let me cal my mama,” the salesgirl said. We must have looked confused, because she added, “It’s a family business,” before disappearing to the back.

  Mama and I sat on an upholstered bench, not sure exactly what we were waiting for. Across from us stood a three-way mirror, and I saw what we must look like to the salesgirl. We didn’t belong here — my mother in her embel ished tracksuit and me in Dana’s rainbow tube top. Mama reached over and plucked a lace garter from a table of fril y underthings. “Do you think I could get this thing to stretch enough to get around my toe
?” She laughed, but her face was half anger and half sadness. “Before I got married, I had a teeny waist. I wasn’t a pretty girl, but I was nice-looking.”

  I wanted to say “You are nice-looking now,” but looking in the three-way mirror it was clear that neither of us was much to look at. We were both too fat, our faces round. Mine was threatened by a double chin and my mother’s had already reached that point. She didn’t have to worry about acne scars like I did, but unlike me, she hadn’t had the benefits of orthodontia. As I leaned my head on her soft shoulder, the dol -baby fibers of her wig tickled my nose.

  The salesgirl popped from the mysterious back room, fresh and bright. “It is your lucky day, after al . We had a special order that was returned.

  There’s nothing sadder than ringing up a return on a bridal. But this is a happy ending. Do you want to see it? It’s up-sized.”

  We agreed but without much enthusiasm. My mother and I were not lucky people.

  “I think you’l like it,” she said, unzipping the vinyl garment carrier.

  It was perfect enough to make you believe that God real y keeps his eyes on sparrows and overweight colored women alike. The dress wasn’t pure white, but it wasn’t that self-conscious beige that brides wear when they want to make it clear that they are not passing themselves off as virgins. This dress, more A Midsummer Night’s Dream than Gone with the Wind, was a lush cream color, the same shade as the pale flesh of almonds.

  “Try it on?”

  The pale almond gown may have been up-sized, but it was stil a bit snug for Mama. Later, back at the Pink Fox, she made the episode into a funny story, joking, “It took Chaurisse, a ninety-pound white girl, and a crowbar, but they got me into it.” Mama had been up against the dressing room wal , hands splayed against the wal like she was getting patted down by the cops. I pushed the sides of the dress together, using my index fingers to poke down the rebel ious flesh, while the salesgirl coached, “Empty out your lungs. Shal ow breaths! Shal ow breaths!”

  The plan was that Mama would lose a pound and a half each week until the soiree. In addition, she would wear a serious long-line girdle and a pair of control-top Hanes. And last but not least, neither Daddy nor Uncle Raleigh could see the dress until the special day.

  “Mama,” I said, “it’s not a wedding dress.”

  “Stop being so negative,” she said.

  WHEN TEENAGERS THROW parties, much of the thril comes from deciding who to invite and who to ignore, but for my mother the delight was in including everyone she knew. The party was the only conversation in the Pink Fox ever since the double-enveloped eagles had landed. At dinner, my father patted himself on the back. “Looka there, Buttercup. I forgot that the ladies going to the party were going to have to pay your mama to get them ready to go! This thing is going to pay for itself!” It was a happy time in our household, even though Raleigh was a little down in the mouth when he thought nobody was watching him. He and Daddy had recently stopped working Wednesday nights, so we gathered together and watched Hill Street Blues. We passed the bowl of popcorn, popped without butter to respect Mama’s diet, but Raleigh never ate any of it.

  Mama said she thought his mopiness was because al the party talk reminded him that he didn’t have a wife or kids of his own. He didn’t even have a date to bring, saying he would just escort me. I told her that I thought that he was stil shook up about the scene at the gas station. Dana’s mama had cursed him to his face. Mama said, “Missing Dana is what’s got you turned around. Raleigh’s got problems of his own.”

  Three weeks in, my mama had dropped five and a quarter pounds. To celebrate, she had me heft a sack of onions. “Imagine this much lard, removed from my behind.” It had been tough going. For two days, she consumed nothing but lemonade sweetened with maple syrup, made even more disgusting by a dose of cayenne pepper. One week, she ate turkey slices rol ed in lettuce as lunch, but by bedtime she’d convinced herself that a little frozen pizza wouldn’t hurt anything. She didn’t ask the ladies at the Pink Fox to tote around a bag of onions, but she worked one finger, then two, into her waistband to show her progress.

  “Show us the dress,” said Mrs. Grant, mother of Ruth Nicole Elizabeth. She was getting her roots done.

  “I’m not even halfway to my goal,” Mama said.

  “Just try it on,” said Mrs. Grant. “We know you are a work in progress. We can use our imagination. Am I right, ladies?” She clapped her hands, nodding at the women sitting in chair no. 1 and chair no. 2, asking for their support. They waited a moment and then started clapping, too. Mama looked at me. “What do you think, Chaurisse?”

  “Go for it,” I said.

  While Mama was gone, the Pink Fox was quiet. The TV, mounted on the wal like in a hospital, was broken, so there was nothing to distract us from each other. In chair no. 1, one person was ready for a relaxer. The lady in chair no. 2 waited for her curls to be combed out. Mrs. Grant, under the dryer, cal ed out to me. “Are you looking forward to graduation?” Ruth Nicole Elizabeth had been given an honors scholarship to Emory University.

  “I guess so,” I said, busying myself organizing the hard-sided rol ers.

  “Plans?”

  “Probably Georgia State.”

  Mrs. Grant’s voice was loud because she was under the hair dryer. “I know Laverne is real y proud of you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I probably need to go help her.”

  I opened the back door and started up the concrete steps. No doubt my mother was upstairs. It seemed that $750 was a lot to pay for a dress that was stil so much trouble. Like Grandma Bunny used to say, “Pretty ain’t easy.” Wel , unattractive and unmotivated wasn’t easy, either. I knew Mrs. Grant had asked about my plans to be kind. Going to Georgia State was what I would probably end up doing, but it wasn’t a plan. I hadn’t been accepted to any of the Sisters. Even the stepsister turned me down.

  I thought about my flute and picolo, snug in their velvet-lined case. I’d lost interest even before I discovered that I wasn’t any good at it. Blowing a flute could never get you anywhere. There is not one flautist in the whole world that anyone has ever heard of. Every boy that plays the trumpet dreams of being Miles Davis, but the flute is something you take up because you couldn’t think of anything better to do.

  I crossed through the den, passed the kitchen, and entered my parents’ bedroom, fol owing the crisp swish of crinoline. I found my mother, struggling beneath her wig-heads, contorting herself to reach the zipper in the middle of her back. “Help me,” she said. Her face had grown damp with the strain of it. I tugged the tiny zipper up its track, sealing her soft brown body into a casing of silk and whalebone. A flush of tenderness overcame me and I pressed my lips to the spot just above the hook and eye. “I love you, Mama,” I said as she stepped toward the mirror and reached down her front and lifted each of her breasts and settled them into the sweetheart neckline.

  The women in the shop were a wel -behaved audience. Mrs. Grant, who seemed to enjoy clapping her hands, led them in applause as my mother entered through the back door. They marveled over the detailing at the sleeves, the embroidered bodice, the tiny seed pearls, obviously attached by hand. My mother waved off the praise, apologizing for her bulging waist. She explained that she was going to wear Grandma Bunny’s 1950s girdle. “That wil be my something old,” she said. Catching her own eye in the mirror, she added, “I guess my own self is my something old. I’m forty-three this year.” Everyone protested that she was not old at al , and no one pointed out to her that this was just a party, not a wedding.

  I’d been carrying her train like a lady-in-waiting, but I dropped to my knees to demonstrate how it could be gathered into a bustle, earning me one of Mrs. Grant’s rounds of applause. While I was on the floor, matching satin loops to tiny pearl buttons, there was a jangle of bass bel s as someone entered the Pink Fox. My mother’s voice was thin as plastic wrap. “Hel o there, Dana.”

  I pushed the dress aside like a heavy curtain to see my lost fr
iend standing beside her mother. They were both dressed like schoolteachers —

  pencil skirts, button-down tops. If I didn’t know them, I would think they were missionaries for some sort of strict religion. “Dana!”

  “Dana!” her mother mocked.

  “Finish what you’re doing,” my mother said when I started to rise from my crouched position at her feet. Although my mother was wrapped in layers of expensive cloth, I could feel her body tense, sheltering me. My hands were unsteady, but I stayed on my knees and matched each button with its loop until the bustle was tucked below her waist. Mama stood stil until I finished and Dana and her mother waited, too. Looking back, I can see this little pause as a courtesy.

  Mama took two steps in the direction of Dana and her mother, extending her hand. “I am Mrs. Witherspoon. You must be Dana’s mother.”

  “I am,” Dana’s mother said. “I am Mrs. Gwendolyn Yarboro.”

  I could see that Dana was a younger, more frightened version of her mother. The corners of her mouth twitched every few seconds as she tried hard not to look at me. With the toe of her pump, she scratched her leg, running her hose.

  “I need to speak with you,” Gwendolyn said to my mother.

  “I’l be with you in a moment,” Mama said. “Just let me go and change out of this dress.” She put her hands on her stomach where the dress was tightest. Then her hand drifted up to hide the plumped cleavage.

  “Is your husband here?”

  “He’s working,” my mother said. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Mama,” Dana said, “let’s just come back later.”

  Gwendolyn looked at her daughter. “We have to see this through.”

  The customers were uneasy in their seats. Mrs. Grant offered to leave even though she was stil wet under the dryer. My mother waved her hand.

  “No, stay. There’s nothing happening here.” She picked up a blow-dryer and turned it on even though she was stil in the party dress. “Miss Yarboro is going to come back later.”

  “You can’t turn me away,” Gwendolyn said, reaching to take the roaring dryer away from my mother. “Turn that thing off and listen to me.”