Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

  “You Billy Beede’s father figure,” Joe North says to me. “You oughta go visit Snopes.”

  “Snipes,” Little Walter says.

  “Billy Beede ain’t my child,” I says, putting my face into a mask of frustration and regret, but behind the regrets I’m smiling, glad North is suggesting that I could father anything.

  Across the street, Billy cups both hands to the beauty shop window.

  “If I go to Snoops with my gun I’ll shoot him,” I says.

  “We’d visit you in the jail,” Spider says.

  Joe North starts laughing. Cause if North went anywheres near the jail they’d put him in it. “Speak for yrself, Spider, I ain’t visiting shit,” he says.

  “If I go shoot at Snipes, I’ll kill him dead,” I says. “He’ll be shaking hands with the devil.”

  “Dill Smiles, you’s a violent hell of a bitch,” North laughs and Walter Little holds the razor away from the Pastor’s neck so we can all laugh good and hard and the Pastor won’t get his throat slit.

  WILLA MAE BEEDE

  Hey everybody, wontcha gather round

  Roll up yr sidewalks

  Lay yr red carpet down

  Cause I’m here.

  This gal is here.

  This town, it’s all mine,

  I’m the gal with the shine, and I’m here.

  Lie to yr woman, leave yr best girl

  I’m dripping with diamonds, I’m studded with pearls

  And I’m here.

  This gal is here.

  Get up, rise and shine, if yr ready now’s the time

  Look who’s here.

  If it’s dry, it’ll rain, if it’s flooding, it’ll stop.

  We’ll light up the dark, we’ll drink till we drop.

  The mountains’ll move, we’ll paint this town red,

  And, if I’m feeling like it, I might even wake the dead

  Cause I’m here.

  This gal is here.

  This town, it’s all mine

  Willa Mae’s right on time

  Yeah, I’m here.

  MRS. RUTHIE MONTGOMERY

  My hands are shaking pretty bad today. I hold on to the chair-back and they quiet down but when I raise them up over Miz Addie’s head, they start shaking again.

  “Yr doing fine,” Addie says, seeing my shaking in the mirror.

  “I got it pretty bad today,” I says.

  “Must be Jimmy’s day or Spencer’s,” Addie says.

  “Spencer’s,” I says. I can’t meet Addie’s eyes in the mirror when I speak my husband’s name. I am lying and me and Addie both know it but she is my only customer and on a Saturday too, when my House of Style used to be thick with business. When my son Jimmy got kilt my hands started shaking and when Spencer died they shook more. But only on they birth or death days. Now my hands shake all the time. My only customer gives me an excuse and I take it. “Me and Spence woulda been married forty-two years today,” I lie. Addie knows we was married at Christmas. She was my maid of honor, but she lets what I say stand.

  “I’m gonna walk out of here looking like a million dollars, and I’m gonna take myself right over to Penelope Lincoln’s and tell her she is wasting her good time and money going all the way to Midland to get her hair done,” Addie says.

  “I could use the business,” I says. I hold my breath, slowly moving the comb through Addie’s hair, parting it into sections that are almost even.

  “Just a touch-up, Ruthie.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I was just saying.”

  “I ain’t blind, Addie,” I says.

  She goes quiet and I get to work, lining a quick smear of grease around her forehead, ears, and nape. Tilda Gonzales, mumbling to herself and pushing a broom, passes behind us.

  “Tilda ain’t right in the head,” I says, loud enough for Tilda to hear. Her husband hears too. He sits in the back spending his free Saturdays watching his wife work, making sure she don’t cheat on him while she’s cleaning for me.

  “Tilda’s a good worker,” Addie says.

  “Least she don’t cost much,” I says.

  Addie sits up straight in her chair, watching closely as I run my finger over her new growth, the nappy part that needs relaxing.

  “Yr hair grows fast,” I says. I set my timer and start laying in the Dixie Peach.

  “Walter is all excited about that trip to Warshington, but I don’t know,” Addie says.

  “You all gonna make history,” I says. I wish I was going but I don’t got no car and Addie and Walter ain’t invited me to ride with them. Penelope and Velma Lincoln are going too, but I wouldn’t ride with them if they asked. Addie and Walter invited Pastor and Carla Peoples. If they don’t go maybe I’ll get asked. I set the timer and start in, smearing on a wide patch of Dixie Peach.

  “Warshington, D.C., got all that humidity,” Addie says.

  “They shoulda took that into account when they planned the March,” I says. “Seems to me, when they planned that March, they shoulda thought about how all that water was gonna be hanging in the air.”

  “They was thinking about marching to the Capitol,” Addie says. “The Capitol’s in Warshington.”

  “Then, when they thought about where they was putting the Capitol, they shoulda thought about the weather too,” I says.

  “It ain’t until next month so I’ll be able to get another touch-up before we go,” Addie says.

  Someone’s looking in the window. My heart gets glad thinking it’s a customer. It ain’t.

  “That’s Billy Beede standing out there,” Addie says.

  “She can stand out there all she wants.”

  The bell hanging on the back of the door clinkles. Billy comes inside. Me and Addie and Tilda and Tilda’s husband all look at her. She looks at us. She hovers up front, near the cash register while Tilda wipes it down.

  “Hey, Tilda,” she goes.

  “Gutmarny,” Tilda says speaking her Spanish-English.

  “Tilda!” Mr. Gonzales calls at her, and Tilda hurries towards him with her broom and her rags, cleaning up back there even though she already cleaned it.

  My hands start shaking again. I grab ahold of the big tub of relaxer, but they keep shaking.

  “I ain’t hiring,” I says.

  “I’m just standing here,” Billy says.

  My hands won’t quiet. I only got a half hour to finish putting the relaxer on before I got to wash it out. My hands are worse than they was the last time Addie was in here. That time I burned her scalp.

  Billy can see my hands shaking and the egg timer’s hands moving and the relaxer already started. She crosses behind the cash register, taking her old smock off the nail where it’s hanging and putting it on. When she quit working for me she threw the smock down and walked out. It stayed there on the floor for a whole week. I wasn’t about to pick it up. I just let it lay there. Customers coming in had to step over it. Then the customers stopped coming cause Billy weren’t here and they liked her, but they liked me too so they weren’t about to go down to Sanderson’s filling station and let Billy do they hair between the gas pumps. They went to Midland.

  Tilda picked the smock up one day. I told her she could wear it but she didn’t want to. It still had Billy’s name on it then. Not no more.

  Billy stands there buttoning the smock’s top two buttons and leaves the rest open cause, as loose as it is, it won’t close up over that fatherless baby she’s carrying. She comes to stand next to me, taking over Addie’s head without asking my permission. I go over to the cash register and sit down.

  “I can’t pay you no top dollar like you think you worth,” I tell her.

  “I’m just helping out,” she says.

  Addie is sitting back in her chair with her eyes closed, letting Billy work without worrying about how it’ll come out.

  “I can’t pay you nothing,” I says.

  “I’ll give you a good tip,” Addie says smiling softly, “and I’ll tell the ladies you�
��re back.”

  “I ain’t rehired her,” I says.

  “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Addie tells me.

  Billy don’t say nothing. She just keeps working, her hands moving quickly over Addie’s head, putting on just the right amount of relaxer, her eyes, glancing at the timer, making sure everything’s going right.

  “Thought you was gone to get married,” I says.

  Billy don’t take her eyes from her work. “I changed my mind,” she says.

  Tilda comes back up front, nodding and smiling at Billy as she passes her. She picks up her cleaning where she left off.

  “You got a real talent for hair,” Addie says to Billy. “You ought to go to beauty school.”

  “I might do that,” Billy says.

  Things between me and Billy was going good. Business was good too, until Miss Billy Beede thought she should be getting top dollar and maybe some day even have her name alongside of mines on my sign out front. She put her foot down and I tolt her to get stepping. And that was the end of that. But things used to be good. When she first came to work for me, after the first week, I went and bought a smock for her with my own money and I took the time myself to embroider her name on it like I got my name on mines. Swirl letters with gold thread. “Billy.” When she quit I ripped the stitching out. Now she’s standing up in here working her hair magic just like she used to do. But on her smock, where her name used to be, all that’s left there now is a swirl pattern of little holes.

  BILLY BEEDE

  He woulda done it for seventy-eight dollars. I coulda got a ride up there for free to save the bus fare. Dill coulda rode me or Laz even, in his nasty hearse, and I coulda got that doctor to do it for seventy-eight dollars. The five deposit and the ten from the earring plus the sixty-three back from the dress woulda made seventy-eight and I coulda begged him to do it for that much. Seventy-eight is on this side of a hundred, I woulda tolt him and he woulda done it and then I woulda been rid of goddamn Snipes and everything about him. And the next time Snipes come through here he would see me and my belly would be smooth without the baby and he would be like, where’d the baby go, and I would tell him and he would look sad and I would say, serves you right, you two-timing-married-already yellow-bitch’s bastard, and you just put that in yr pipe and smoke it, you and yr fat red-drawers-wearing-bitch-wife both. Seventy-eight dollars woulda done it but could Miz Jackson take her dress back? No. Hell, I wouldn’t of took that dress back neither. I shoulda lit Snipes’ house on fire instead of my dress. That woulda been smart.

  “Whatchu thinking about, Billy?” Miz Addie asks me. She can see me in the mirror. I got my forehead frowned up.

  “I’m thinking about beauty school,” I says.

  “There are some fine schools in Dallas you could attend,” she says. “I could write you a recommendation.”

  “Schools in Dallas is high,” I says.

  Miz Addie cuts her eyes into the mirror, looking to see what Miz Ruthie is doing, if she should keep talking to me or if she should be quiet. We’re all right, though. Miz Montgomery’s got her nose deep in the latest Jet.

  “I’ll get Walter to write you a recommendation too,” she says whispering. “Me and him could help you out with the tuition and maybe you could get a scholarship.” She moves her head, full of her ideas for me, getting excited.

  “Hold still,” I tell her, “we’re almost through.” I got ten minutes left on the timer, then I’ll let it work for a few, not leaving it on too long. If you leave it on too long the hair’ll break. To wash it out, I’ll walk her back to the sink.

  “Think it over,” Miz Addie says holding very still and whispering.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I tell her.

  Miz Addie said she would give me a big tip. Maybe two dollars. If I tell her I’ve decided on beauty school and that I’m starting up a kind of bank account for it she may give me three or four dollars. Maybe even five. And then Miz Ruthie would have to pay me something, seeing as how I’m doing all this work. The relaxing and the washing, plus the set and the comb-out. She’ll have to give me something for this. Miz Addie will tell her to give me something. Maybe a dollar or two or Miz Addie could just, when she’s leaving the shop and goes to the cash register to pay, put the money straight into my hand, not giving it to Miz Ruthie at all, but just give the ten dollars it costs straight to me. With that ten plus the five dollars’ tip I would have fifteen. The fifteen with the five deposit along with the pearl money makes thirty. Maybe he would do it for thirty. Probably not.

  “It would be nice if Miz Penelope and them knew I was working today,” I says.

  “I ain’t hired you,” Miz Ruthie says from her magazine.

  “But here I am working,” I says.

  “I’ll tell them tomorrow at church,” Miz Addie says.

  I reset the timer and step back watching her head, watching the relaxer work. You got to watch it close cause it works slow, underneath the pink crème, uncrinkling the hair and making it flat. My mother used to press her hair. She had her own pressing comb and would sit in the kitchen with the comb heating over the gas stove, pressing her hair herself. When I got old enough I helped. Then I would do it for her all by myself. The first time I seen relaxer, Dill did Mother’s head in the backyard. Dill callt it a konk and it stunk. Mamma’s hair came out so smooth I thought it was a wig at first then I thought it was magic.

  I wash out Miz Addie’s hair then set it. She likes the tiny rollers. I work slowly, reminding her how good I am at what I do, rolling her thin hair tight but not so tight it’ll hurt, giving her a good head of thick curls that I’ll comb out neat and ladylike, making her look as churchy as she is. If I do a good job she’ll tell everybody come Sunday morning, but if I do a great job, making her hair so smooth and shiny that she won’t believe it’s her own, if I make her look that good, then she’ll go home and get on the telephone or she could go to the phone that’s by the cash register and call up Miz Penelope and Miz Velma and them right this very afternoon, and then, before she leaves the shop, all of them could be coming in here, standing in lines and crowding into the seats, pushing ladylike but pushing just the same for they chance to get they hair done by the one and only Billy Beede. Even Miz Ruthie, stingy as she is, says I got “hair magic.” I’ll be working on two or three heads at once. Miz Penelope got hair like an Indian so all she would want is a wash and set, but she don’t like her gray showing so I would suggest a rinse and she would agree. That would be six or seven dollars plus the tip. Her sister Velma got hair like mines, but she’s old-fashioned and still likes the pressing comb and I can get all the way down to the scalp without the head feeling it and she knows it, and that would be, with the tip, about nine dollars. I would get fifteen or sixteen dollars from the two of them, plus, with the money from Miz Addie: thirty-one. Put that with the twenty I already put down and that’d be fifty-one. I’d have fifty-one total. Then Marla Simms plus Miss Neetra Charles and Poochie Daniels and them, they like my bouffants and hell, even Mrs. Jackson, let bygones be gone by the wayside, I’d offer to do her hair for free and maybe then she’d take back the dress and I’d be set. Even if she don’t take back the dress I could still get at least sixty by the end of the day and they’d look good for Sunday and I’d head straight up to Gomez. That doctor said be back within the week and I’d walk in there on Monday morning and lay my money down and he’d help me like he promised and then I’d be done with Snipes. Shit.

  “Yr rolling me a little too tight, Billy,” Miz Addie goes. Miz Ruthie cranes her neck to see.

  “I was just thinking,” I says, rolling gentler and smiling, “Church sure would be a more beautiful event tomorrow if Billy Beede could work her magic on the ladies today.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Miz Addie says, bending her chin to her chest and letting me curl up the back.

  It’s a whole hour since Miz Addie went. She paid the cost up front, putting what was really my ten dollars right into Miz Ruthie’s hands. She got c
hange for a five and gived me two. No one else is come in yet. Just me and Miz Ruthie sitting here. Tilda, finished cleaning everything, is mopping her way out the back door. Her husband’s still sitting in the back room surrounded by the professional-size tubs of Dixie Peach no-lye relaxer. His hands is neatly folded in his lap, his small brown eyes watching his wife swish the mop back and forth across the white linoleum squares.

  “Where please is your library?” Tilda mumbles to herself.

  “We don’t got no library,” Miz Ruthie says.

  “She’s just practicing,” I says. Tilda goes quiet and we sit there in the heat. Miz Ruthie got a big floor fan but it broke two days before I quit and she still ain’t got it fixed.

  “Everyone’s going to Midland to get they hair done these days,” Miz Ruthie says.