“Is she okay?”
He stepped back, running his hands over his face the way he did when he was stressed, and she entered the foyer. Nena could hear music blaring. “What happened?”
“I’ll let Peach tell you.”
He looked terrified, as if he didn’t want to go near the room with the howling girl. This big man, as he’d be considered back home, was practically pushing her toward Georgia’s door so she could deal with whatever was behind it.
“I’m handling it with the school.”
She stopped to look at him. The school? Nena wasn’t one for group hysteria, but the way they were acting out of character was alarming her. She didn’t like changes, and this behavior was a change.
He stopped abruptly, as if remembering himself. He reached out, holding her arm and making her feel all sorts of jolts radiating from the touch.
“Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“We’ll get it all sorted,” Nena said as stoically as she could.
They split up, Cort to the kitchen with his phone in hand and a look of relief on his face. The irony was not lost on her. He was sending a killer to sort out his daughter.
She arrived at the door and knocked on it. “Georgia?”
The music cut off immediately. Her sign to enter.
Nena opened the door wide enough to see Georgia sitting in front of her dresser, comb in hand, attempting to work her way through her massive bushel of hair. She was in sweats and a T-shirt, damp from having come out of the shower. She was trying to tug a brush through the tangles, but through the mirror Nena saw the frustration and anguish etched on her face.
Georgia turned in her seat, her eyes red and puffy. “They put gum in my hair,” she said, hiccuping. “And Dad had to cut out the chunks. My hair is ruined!”
Nena let out a breath, understanding perfectly. She remembered the horror, the shame, when she had gazed at her own coarse, dry, knotted mess of hair in her mum’s hotel room. There was unbelievable pride in Black women’s hair. Their hair was their crown, their superpower, something women taught each other to care for, as Nena’s first mother had taught her.
“I can kill them for you,” Nena said. “No one will know.”
Georgia’s eyes saucered, her mouth dropping open with brush still in hand. Then she burst out in laughter at Nena’s obvious joke.
“Can I help you?” she asked, happy the girl was consolable.
Georgia turned back to the mirror, her hands dropping to her side, leaving the white-and-black-handled brush nestled in her hair, which Nena carefully extracted. Nena made a concoction with the products they had. It took a considerable amount of time, but she finally got Georgia’s hair to the point where it felt buttery soft. With a wide-tooth comb, she separated her hair into quarters and worked through each section with precision and gentleness, as if handling a Fabergé egg, all while Georgia recounted her argument with Sasha over an answer Georgia had corrected her about in front of the class, and then the gum in the bathroom.
“And she didn’t just throw it in, you know,” Georgia said. “She put a massive wad in and then mashed it until there was no way it was coming out without cutting. Bitch.”
Nena agreed with her. Putting gum in another girl’s hair was an attack.
“I miss this,” Georgia said, surprising Nena because the girl had fallen silent, eyes drooped, and Nena had thought she’d fallen asleep sitting up.
“Miss what?” Nena asked.
“Someone doing my hair. Like, my dad’s done real well with my hair until I got old enough. Don’t get me wrong.” Georgia’s voice cracked.
She looked at Nena through the mirror, her eyes welling with huge droplets of tears that made Nena swallow in discomfort.
“But I miss my mom doing my hair.” Her voice held immense sadness, and she sounded all of five. “Do you ever miss yours? Your birth one?”
Nena frowned at the tuft of hair in her hands, not trusting the cavern of emotions this girl brought about in her, this girl who was so very much like her and yet so very different. This girl who was much more than her.
“I miss her every day,” Nena whispered.
“And when you met your mom and got adopted, did it change anything for you? Change how you felt? Did you ever worry you’d forget who she was or what she looked like?”
Nena continued working on Georgia’s hair, understanding Georgia’s true meaning. Georgia wanted assurances she’d never forget her mom no matter who came into her life. Nena wasn’t ready for this. She wanted to run, wanted to do a dispatch, anything but talk about dead mothers and their memories.