What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (7 page)

I think that’s probably the reason dreads never caught on any more than they did. Sisters always like having enough hair to toss around, but we’re rarely prepared to endure the indignities of the in-between stages. That’s why extensions were born. Even my clients who decided to really lock up wanted some help getting started.

“Most people twist their hair to avoid all that,” I said.

He shrugged and raked his hand through his hair. “Misses the point,” he said. “Learning to have the patience to let nature take its course is half the lesson.”

“Is that why you didn’t cut yours?”

“I don’t know.” He smiled again. “Yes, I do. I didn’t do it because everybody thought I was going to.”

“Defiance,” I said. “One of my favorite reasons for doing anything.”

That was the damn truth. The problem is, Eddie’s defiance got him a head full of beautiful dreadlocks. My rewards weren’t always quite so spectacular, but I bet his weren’t always that way either. There was something in his face that made me think he’d seen enough and done enough that there was nothing I could say that would shock him. Which is not to say he couldn’t be surprised. I didn’t have enough information to speculate on that yet.

i’ve been masturbating
like a madwoman for two days. I feel like I haven’t been touched by anybody but me in a hundred years. I woke up last night with my hand between my legs in the middle of a seriously scandalous dream involving me and two guys I had sex with once during a particularly heated political campaign. Not at the same time, of course. I had one on the night of the primary victory and one on election day. But in the dream, the three of us were all there together, rolling around on the couch in the candidate’s inner sanctum.

That’s probably what woke me up. I hate politics. Plus, even in my wild days, I had pretty strict rules about some things. I was never interested in groups or animals, most especially
snakes,
which had their fifteen minutes of freakish fame during one memorable summer when somebody had a girlfriend in from New Orleans with navy blue fingernails and a seven-foot boa constrictor she liked to wear around her neck. Needless to say, whenever she appeared, Negroes lost their minds.

It’s hard to think about that stuff now without beating myself up for being so stupid, but I think I’d feel that way even if I hadn’t gotten sick. I used to justify some of the things I did then by saying, well, at least I’m having a lot of great sex, but you know what? I wasn’t having a lot of great sex. Some of it was fun and exciting, but a lot of it was just sweaty and boring and seemed like the quickest way to finish the evening without hurting anybody’s feelings.

Once I took the test and admitted the results, everything changed, of course. Folks who used to spend whole evenings trying to look down the front of my blouse would now break out in a cold sweat at the very thought of having sex with me. Some gay friends who’ve been positive for a couple of years tried to tell me that it gets better once you complete the transition from what they called your
preplague
lovers to your new
postplague
relationships, but I have my doubts. Most straight brothers are still in such denial that when you fess up, their first reaction is to run in the opposite direction as fast as they can. That pretty much leaves a bunch of people you wouldn’t fuck on a bet or who are already sicker than you are.

After the first couple of months of my involuntary celibacy, I was so crazed that I went to one of those Sunday support group gatherings where a whole lot of HIV people who want to have sex get together and try to see if they can work something out. Everybody gets a glass of cheap wine or sweet tea and then you sit in a circle like group therapy and tell your name and indicate whether you’re just HIV-positive or already diagnosed with
full-blown
AIDS. I hate that expression. Sounds like a typhoon moving through your body, but those distinctions are important. Some people who’ll give you a shot if you’re just positive won’t have anything to do with you if you’re already standing in the eye of the storm. You’re also allowed to say something about your sexual preferences if you want to be specific.

The first two people to speak were men with AIDS who liked integrated country-and-western gay bars where they could do the Texas two-step without being hassled because they were black. They had lucked out and found each other, but their immediate bonding only depressed the rest of us, who should have had a glass of wine to toast their good fortune and gone home to our memories and our vibrators. But we didn’t. We went on around the circle: teachers, waiters, a musician, trying to sound casual and knowing none of us were attracted to any of the rest of us, except the first two guys, who had already made a date for Friday night, excused themselves, and left.

When it was finally over, I skipped the post confessional cocktails, went home, ran a hot bath full of the bubbles I used to save for
serious
seductions, made myself a good, strong drink, and sat in that water until it got stone-cold, thinking about all the fucking I had done and all the fucking I wasn’t going to do, and I realized that the only thing I was sorry about was that I never had a chance to
make love.

Joyce told me that she had been in love with Mitch since she was sixteen years old so that in addition to being the only man she had ever had sex with, he was the only man she’d ever even kissed. I envied her that. I still do. I remember looking at the words in Mama’s suicide note in her neat little handwriting and thinking to myself, well, if that’s the price,
fuck true love.
It’s too scary and too complicated and way too much weight to carry as fast as I intend to be moving. Some people weren’t cut out for it, I told myself, and I was one of those people. The problem was, once I started running, I never slowed down long enough to be sure.

it’s almost noon
and the day is as pretty as any I can remember. I spent the morning like a cat, moving from one patch of sunshine to the other, turning my face to the softness of the breeze off the lake, stretching the last city kinks out of my shoulders. I’ve been here a week and Joyce has been at the hospital more than she’s been home. She invited me to come with her to see the baby, but hospitals are the best place to pick up something random and that’s the last thing I need. I haven’t had any problems,
knock on wood,
but I don’t take chances. Besides, the truth is, I’ve been working so hard for so long, I was enjoying a chance to just do nothing.

Besides, this little interlude isn’t going to last much longer. Joyce is trying to get Eartha’s baby released from the hospital. She had to get Mattie to sign a form as the baby’s aunt giving Joyce permission to check her out and bring her home until her mother resurfaces or some kind of permanent arrangement can be worked out. All Mattie wanted to know was whether or not what she was signing obligated her to the kid in any way, shape, or form. When Joyce swore to her that it didn’t, literally
swore,
one hand raised and everything, right there on the front porch, Mattie signed it. Of course, she couldn’t ask us in. Crack addicts never ask you in. They’re afraid you’ll want to get high.

Joyce is ecstatic, although I will confess, I am still less than enthusiastic about spending the summer with a newborn crack baby. But what can I say? When she asked me what I thought, I knew it was a trick. Grown people never ask you what they should do until they’ve already decided for themselves. They don’t tell you that, of course, but they stand there and wait for you to either confirm their good judgment or reveal yourself as not as smart as they thought you were by advising them in the other direction.

So I avoided all that pressure by pausing as if to truly consider the question, then giving her a sisterly smile and telling her to
go for it.
She was so relieved, she hugged me and promised not to ask me to change any diapers. I probably should have asked her to put that in writing.

It turned out to be a pretty interesting morning, though. I had just finished making myself a serious screwdriver with some of Joyce’s organic orange juice when the same big brown Cadillac that had been the start of so much high drama at the liquor store a few days ago pulled up into the yard and stopped. A tall, slender young man who looked to be about sixteen years old swung the door open slowly, unfolded his lanky frame a section at a time, and looked around. In spite of, or in defiance of, the warm weather, he was wearing a hooded black sweatshirt, amazingly low-slung blue jeans, spotless white designer sports shoes, unlaced, a Chicago Bulls cap, and a bored expression. He looked as out of place in Joyce’s yard as a Siberian tiger.

He sauntered around the car and opened the door for the woman waiting patiently inside. The woman didn’t move until he leaned down and extended his hand in a way that looked strange and old-fashioned, given the boy’s urban-warrior outfit. She grasped his hand firmly and raised herself regally out of the car like Coretta Scott King arriving for the martyr’s annual birthday celebration. Although I’ll never forget that car, I had never seen either one of its occupants before in my life.

The woman looked to be in her late fifties and was a lot more dressed up than people usually get around here in the middle of the week. She was wearing a pale blue polyester pantsuit and white sandals with stockings. Her hair, which was pressed and hot-curled within an inch of its life, was elaborately styled and piled like Mahalia Jackson’s when she sang her solo at the end of
Imitation of Life.
Hardly anybody asks for that kind of hard press anymore. Sister seems to have missed the moment when we decided it was okay for the hair to
move.

A thin white scarf was loosely tied under her chin to protect this well-sprayed helmet of hair from even the possibility of a breeze. She smoothed the pants suit over her well-girdled hips and turned to the boy, who was leaning against the car with his hands in his pockets, dragging the jeans down even further. I could see and hear them clearly through the screen door, but neither one had noticed me.

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” the woman said, starting toward the back steps. Joyce’s car was sitting in the yard waiting for Eddie to finish repairing its fuel pump, so they must have assumed she was home.

“How about I go and come back for you?” the boy said without looking in her direction.

She stopped, turned toward him, held out her hand. He didn’t move.

“Tyrone Harris Anderson, what did you promise your grandfather?”

The boy mumbled something.

“I can’t hear you, son,” she said.

“To cooperate,” he said, louder, sounding like a stubborn first grader.

“That’s right. So hand me the keys.”

He slouched over and dropped them in her hand.

“Thank you,” she said. “And don’t sit there in that hot car either. Go walk down to the lake and enjoy the sunshine.”

He looked at her like she had completely lost her mind.

“Go on now!” Her voice carried the sharp edge of someone who was used to having her way.

“All right, all right,” he said, pulling his cap down over his eyes and squeezing the bill until the break satisfied him. “Don’t take all day,” he muttered, strolling down to the dock, my favorite peaceful place, although I would be willing to bet the tranquil beauty of the scene was lost on him. His misery was self-contained, able to bloom anywhere.

She didn’t see me until she reached up to knock and there I was. She jumped back about a foot and gasped.

“I’m sorry,” I said, opening the screen. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Joyce’s sister, Ava.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling with everything but her eyes. “I didn’t even know Joyce had a sister.”

“I’m visiting from Atlanta for the summer,” I said.

“How lovely. Family is so important, especially in these terrible times.” She looked at me, still with that fishy, too bright smile, and then clapped her palm to her forehead the way people do on television when they’ve forgotten something. “Where are my manners?”

She held out her hand with the complete confidence of an incumbent politician ahead in the polls. “I’m Gerry Anderson,” she said. “The pastor’s wife.”

Of course she was.
I smiled and shook her hand.

“Didn’t Joyce tell you I was coming by?”

I shook my head.
Of course she hadn’t.

The Reverend Mrs. Anderson smiled brightly, but she was clearly annoyed. When I started to explain that Joyce had been spending a lot of time trying to get things straight with Eartha’s new baby, she nodded and clicked her tongue.

“I forgot all about that poor little fatherless child,” she said. “Such a shame. Babies having babies without any thought to how they’re going to care for them. I keep telling Joyce these girls need some old-fashioned lessons in how to say
no.
All that other just confuses them. We need to teach them how to cross their legs and keep their dresses down. It’s a shame is what it is.”

I agreed it was definitely a shame, but I kept getting distracted by the elaborate construction of her hair. I was wondering how much of it she had grown and how much was cash and carry. I probably should have invited her in, but I was looking forward to a quiet afternoon alone. Entertaining the preacher’s wife was not on my agenda. She waited another beat to see if I’d break down and offer her a glass of iced tea, but I just couldn’t do it.

I looked over her shoulder down to the dock where the kid I assumed to be her grandson was smoking what looked like a big, fat joint and tapping the ashes into the water. He took a final, deep drag, then pinched the fire out and put the roach back in his pocket. Wasn’t he afraid she’d smell it on his clothes when he climbed back into the car beside her?

“Well, let me leave something for her then,” she said finally, handing me a large envelope. It was addressed to Joyce, in care of the church, and it was open. Gerry wagged her finger, frowning. “You tell Joyce the Good Reverend is not happy about this. Your big sister’s been a bad girl.”