Smart Mouth Waitress (Romantic Comedy) (Life in Saltwater City)

by Dalya Moon

  My father rubbed his hairline, probably checking to see if my bombshell had made his fair, reddish hair recede further. “Let's hold off until your mother gets back from LA,” he said.

  “That'll be weeks!” I said.

  “You must be really horny,” Garnet said.

  “I may have spoke too soon on the virginity issue,” I said. “What I would like is to fall in love, and then, if everything's right, lose my virginity.”

  Garnet put down his fork and studied me. “If you wanna get a boyfriend, you have to cut the ropes out of your hair.”

  I reflexively grabbed my dreadlocks, which were tied back in a loose ponytail. I'd had them for nearly four years, and the longest ones reached my waist. My dreads were as much a part of me as my arms and legs.

  My father didn't speak up to agree with Garnet, but neither did he disagree. One of his eyes twitched.

  My mother had the same dreads as me, though hers were blonder, and understandably, my father couldn't exactly say anything against mine, or it would also be against hers.

  “The ropes are gross,” Garnet said in his usually-eloquent manner.

  “Don't be racist,” I said.

  “You're white,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  He put his chin on his hand and gave me another good stare. “This isn't about all people with dreads, just you,” he said. “People get weird ideas about you.”

  “Weird? Like that I listen to Counting Crows?” I said, getting angry, but scooping a forkful of spaghetti into my mouth to cover my feelings. Garnet's pretty much the best little brother a girl could have, but he's still a little brother. If he thinks he's getting under your skin, he won't stop until there's blood or tears.

  “Like you'd know where to buy pot,” he said. “And you don't shave your legs.”

  Indignantly, I said, “I shave my legs.”

  “I'm just tellin' it how it is, bro.”

  “Are you just guessing what people think, or do you know this for a fact?” I asked.

  He looked up at the ceiling and counted to himself, holding out seven fingers. “This many times, people have asked me to ask you to get them some pot. It's true, bro.”

  Garnet always calls me bro, because neither of us like the sound of sis. When he calls me by that term of endearment, I know he's being honest in his own loving way, which he doesn't mean to be brutal. I grabbed some more garlic bread and thought about what he'd just said, about the impression I made.

  “Would people think those things about Mom?” I asked.

  “No, that's different. She's older, and she wears nice clothes that look expensive. And besides, she's famous. People don't think those things about famous people. They're allowed to be weird.”

  “Dad? Did you swallow your tongue? No opinion, huh?”

  My father was arranging his remaining spaghetti in a three by three grid on his plate.

  “Dad.” I snapped my fingers in front of his face. “Should I lose the dreadlocks? Do you think I'll be able to find a nice boyfriend if I do?”

  Diplomatically, he said, “Perry, I support whatever decision you make.” He scooped a portion of food into his mouth and looked at me intently, like I was one of his diagrams of water pipes for his job at the City's Department of Engineering.

  I'd had the dreadlocks so long, I'd almost forgotten why. No, it wasn't to support the Rastafarian movement. It wasn't political at all. Nor was it about becoming a clone of my mother.

  See, I was sensitive about the size of my bum. And my legs. And my whole body, really, and I thought having bigger hair would sorta balance me out, like how chunky shoes make your calves look smaller.

  Over the last year, I'd lost my so-called baby fat, thanks to portion control and avoidance of cake, so maybe I didn't need the dreads, but I had gotten used to them. Sometimes black people with dreads would give me a thumbs-up and a nice smile. Three people back in my high school had dreads, and whenever we crossed paths, we'd nod, even though our social circles didn't overlap.

  The best part about dreads is you never have a bad hair day. No, scratch that. The best part is confusing the heck out of senior citizens who don't know if they should give you money to keep you from sleeping on the street that night, or run screaming.

  “It's down to you, Dad,” I said. “Garnet says the dreads need to go. You're the other man in my life, and I need your opinion.

  It took nearly a minute for my father to go through his methodical engineer's thought process. Finally, he said, “I don't know if you have to cut them out or what other methods you would use. I don't suppose the hair would be in a healthy-looking state, having sustained some damage. You could always regrow the dreadlocks, but hair only grows at a rate of half an inch per month.”

  Garnet held his hands up, framing my face. “You're not ugly,” he said.

  My voice clotted with sarcasm, I said, “Thanks. You two have been really supportive. Mom will be relieved I'm in such good hands.”

  “We're not supposed to be taking care of you,” Garnet said. “You're taking care of us. You're the mother while Mom's gone. That was the deal, bro.”

  “Dad!”

  My father shrugged. “He's not wrong. You're the one who wanted to have a year off before college. This was the deal you cut. You made your bed, now lie in it.”

  “I made my bed?”

  “And speaking of beds and linens, I'm nearly out of dress shirts, so you'd better get a load or two of laundry started tonight.”

  In his Little Shithead voice, Garnet said, “Ha ha! You have to wash my dirty gonchies!”

  “I hate my life.”

  My father said, “Once you get into the swing of things, it won't be so bad. Plus we still have Jay.”

  “Jay!” He was scheduled to come that night, too. Jay is our gay housekeeper. Not that being gay has anything to do with housekeeping, but Jay does fit the stereotype of being meticulous and a master interior stylist. I suppose even positive stereotypes are still pre-judging, and I was starting to see how unfair pre-judging was.

  Before I could grill my brother more about which friends had said what, Dad craftily changed the topic to a discussion about the diameter of a water pipe, and something he was doing to make maintenance work safer. Garnet excitedly asked more questions, fascinated by the idea of pressurized water having enough force to decapitate a person.

  Neither of them noticed me quietly slip off to my room, upstairs.

  In my own private space, I closed the door and crashed on my bed. Daylight Savings Time hadn't kicked in yet, so the sky was already dark. Winter, you're the worst, I thought as I turned on my lamp and grabbed some magazines from my side table.

  I leafed through page after page of pretty girls in cute outfits, yet there were no models, neither black nor white, with dreadlocks in my magazines.

  I'd had a number of plans for things to do while Mom was down in LA, but a hair makeover had not been one of them. Painting my room had been at the top of my list. Buried deep in my closet were two metal pails: pale blue paint and soft peridot-green paint I bought cheap from Home Depot's mis-tints section. My devious plan was to repaint my room when there was nobody around to stop me.

  In my heart of hearts, I would have loved to paint my bedroom a deep red, but I knew she'd make me paint over. Mom has a thing against red rooms. She says it makes her heart beat faster and she doesn't like that.

  As simple as repainting seemed in my head, now that the time had come, it seemed like an awful lot of effort.

  A new hairstyle, on the other hand, would still offer makeover excitement, with less effort. Plus it might help with the love department, if Garnet's opinion was representative of the male population.

  I leafed through a third magazine, trying hard not to obsess over the models' bodies, but focusing on what I could have—the hairstyles.

  Would I give myself bangs? Would I give myself face-framing fringe? It was all so overwhelming. Maybe I'd just shave it all off. You can comb out dre
ads, but lots of people opt for the close-crop to start fresh. What would I look like with ultra-short hair?

  I put my head down on my forearm and tried to think of a non-dreadlocks hairstyle that wasn't boring.

  I must have nodded off, because I woke up at 7:38pm to the sound of Wicked, the musical, and our housekeeper, Jay, singing along to Defying Gravity. I'm not trying to make him sound like a gay stereotype, that's just how he is. His partner, Dean, is less so. Dean's a shy computer animator with a mouth full of silver braces he got for his thirtieth birthday. According to Jay, Dean only wears t-shirts he gets for free from video game companies. I've only met Dean a couple of times when he's dropped Jay off, and he was always wearing enormous black t-shirts over his skinny frame. He seemed like a nice boyfriend. I wanted a nice boyfriend.

  The door to my room popped open quickly and Jay yelped.

  I yelped in response.

  Holding one hand to his chest, he said, “I'm sorry, I thought everyone was out.”

  “The boys are out, but you're stuck with me, snake hair.”

  “Pretend I'm not even here.” Jay buzzed around my room, wiping down all the surfaces and shaking my wireless computer keyboard upside-down to release the cookie crumbs and other cooties.

  “I saw two girls today,” he said. “About your age. They were both playing games on their iPhones while also having a conversation.”

  “I do that.”

  He shook my keyboard harder and even more fluff came out. “I would love to do that. People my age think it's rude. Different generation.”

  “It's not rude, it's just double the fun.”

  “I agree,” he said, zipping from corner to corner of my bedroom with his cloth and bucket.

  “I'm considering a makeover.”

  Jay, whose immaculately-trimmed brown hair makes him look like he gets a haircut daily, stopped cleaning and stood still. “Tell me more.”

  “I'd like to soften my look.” I held up the open magazine I'd been drooling on a few minutes earlier. “Something like this. Like I'm the naughty-but-innocent farmer's daughter and I've just finished milking the cows, and now my hands are bored.”

  “Uh-huh.” He held his hands up framing my face, the exact same way my little brother had.

  Yes, he did.

  And right then, it happened. That second framing in one day convinced me.

  The dreads had to go.

  Nobody had been honest enough to tell me to my face before that night, but I could take a hint this strong.

  “Might be nice for a change,” he said carefully.

  “Be honest.”

  “I don't want to hurt your feelings.”

  “I guess I'll be spending the evening combing out my dreads,” I said.

  “I have just what you need.” Jay disappeared for a few minutes and returned, breathing heavily, with an enormous, Costco-sized bottle of conditioner. He explained he didn't normally carry hair product around, but he'd been at his hairdresser that day (I knew it!) and didn't like the smell of their stuff.

  “I'll pay you back for what I use,” I said.

  He waved the notion of repayment away. “May I?” He reached out and held one of my dreads for examination. The end was pretty ratty, as it was one of my favorite dreads for chewing. “Cut them around chin-length first,” he said. “The hair below there probably fell out of your scalp years ago, so you'll be losing it regardless. That should lighten your workload.”

  I thanked him, but he continued to hang out at the foot of my bed expectantly. I got up and stepped into my en suite bathroom. “I guess I'll get started right now.”

  “Okay.” He didn't move.

  “Do you want to help?”

  He pulled some scissors out of his back pocket. “I thought you'd never ask.”

  Chapter 3

  And so, I found myself sitting on my toilet with the lid down, getting my beloved dreads chopped off by our housekeeper.

  The scissors hacking through the first one made a shockingly-loud rending sound.

  KRRRIIISSSCCHH.

  “You can breathe now,” Jay said.

  He was right about me holding my breath, though I hadn't noticed. Lack of oxygen explained the blackout feeling I had.

  “Thanks,” I said, breathing in deeply, but keeping my eyes clenched shut.

  “Hmm,” Jay said. “That's odd, it's actually bleeding.”

  My eyes flew open. Of course my dreadlock wasn't bleeding, but I'd fallen for it, and Jay was so amused, he laughed until he cried. Laughing made the weight lift off my own chest, and for a moment, even though I missed my mother terribly, I felt like everything was going to be just fine.

  He cut the rest of them off with the same loud rending noises as the dreads wailed in protest. Next, we worked the conditioner in.

  After about an hour of alternating between conditioning and combing out my hair, each of us on one side, his enthusiasm waned. He kept commenting on how much of the hair was dead, as in not attached to my scalp—all hair except the root is technically not alive—and all the talk of dead hair was making me feel unclean. I suggested he go off to clean the house while I worked away on my own. I said not to worry about finishing the housework, since he should still get an hour's credit for the hairdressing, but he assured me he could get our three-hour cleaning done in two hours easily.

  “You're not supposed to tell me that,” I said. “What do you normally do with the extra hour?”

  “I try on all your clothes. Kidding! Of course not. I do extra organizing things, like sort out your Tupperware cupboard. You Martins have no sense of organization.”

  “That's you? Mom and I thought Garnet was going through a secret OCD phase.”

  He slowly backed away. “Being organized is healthy. There's something wrong with our society that we put a mental illness label on a person who plans out his wardrobe a week in advance.”

  “You always look sharp,” I said. “I would steal that belt of yours.” Jay's tight black jeans were held up by a black belt with all sorts of metal studs, like a dog collar.

  He'd managed to avoid getting any conditioner or hair on himself, but I looked rather pathetic, in my soaked, gooey t-shirt, covered in loose hairs.

  He patted me on the head before leaving the bathroom. “Keep combing. Just keep on combing.”

  My arms ached, but I couldn't go to work with half a head of dreads, so I kept going, though I could certainly see why people opt to shave off their dreads.

  At nearly ten, Dad and Garnet returned home, yelling that they'd bought me pistachio gelato from La Casa Gelato.

  Jay, who had just put away the vacuum cleaner, rushed into my room and found me in the bathroom. “That won't do,” he said.

  “But I'm done!” I'd just finished combing out the final one, and my scalp was aching with discomfort from being pulled. Every one of my little hair follicles hurt.

  “You're all bedraggled. Let me give you a quick trim,” he said.

  The idea of more hair-yanking made me grumpy, but I agreed, and the haircut Jay gave me was mercifully quick. The long part ended just below my shoulders, and he put in some layers to remove the more damaged ends, but no bangs.

  I'd already removed all my makeup when I was letting my arms have a break from being up in the air, and with my soft, wet hair combed smoothly down the sides of my face, I looked as innocent as a little baby deer. My hair was much finer than I expected, and had almost no volume.

  “Is that farm-girl-wholesome enough for ya?” Jay asked.

  I smiled at my reflection. “I totally look like I could chop off a bunch of chicken heads.”

  “You can do anything,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. “Ah, the love of my life is waiting in a warm vehicle out front.”

  “That sounds really nice,” I said.

  “You have no idea,” he said, and while I was pretty sure he wasn't meaning to rub in my boyfriend-less status, I did feel a twinge of jealousy.

  After Jay left, I cha
nged into a dry shirt and ran down the stairs to show my family.

  My brother, Garnet, was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter by the sink, picking his nose. When he saw me, he whipped his hand down quickly. “Oh, hi. I didn't know Perry had someone over.”

  “Very funny.”

  His eyes grew bigger, and for several seconds, he said nothing but a string of swear words.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” I said, doing a quick twirl, my damp hair swinging out lightly. “You wanted me dreadlocks-free, and now I'm ready to take over the world.”

  Finally out of swear words, he gave me a big hug. “You look pretty, bro.”

  “Don't make me cry.”

  “Don't tell Mom, but I'm really glad the hair ropes are gone.”

  “Thanks, bro,” I said.

  He finally let me out of the hug and I went to find my father, at his computer. His reaction was more painstakingly neutral than Jay's or my brother's, but I could tell he was pleased.

  “You'll have to tie it back at work,” he said. “You don't want loose hairs getting into the food.”

  “I'm glad you love it,” I said.

  “You're the spitting image of your mother when we first met,” he said.

  “I'm not her.”

  “I know, sweetie. Go eat your gelato.”

  Back in the kitchen, stooping down to pull open the freezer drawer of our refrigerator seemed like too much effort, so I left my gelato for another day. My stomach didn't seem that eager, anyway, and one of my rules for keeping my weight down is I don't snack unless I'm a little hungry. You'll still catch me nibbling out of boredom at times, but I try to alternate between baby carrots and high-calorie items.

  I had work in the morning, so I took my Magnesium and Vitamin D pill and started getting ready for bed.

  Up in my room, I sent a text message to Courtney, telling her I had a surprise for her the next day and she'd better not call in “sick” like she had that day.

  She didn't send a message back. Courtney doesn't like it when you call her on her bullshit, and that was what her being “sick” that day was. We both knew she'd taken the day to spend with her new girlfriend, but she was too chicken to just be honest with me.