“All you had to do was call. You know I would have driven down to . . .” Mama stopped and gave a low cry. “Lord have mercy! What did you do? You look like a cancer patient!”
Coco touched her head, stroking the inch of red-brown waves. There was a part in the left side of her cut. “You don’t like it? I love it! All I have to do is slap on some Murray’s and sleep in a stocking cap. And did you know the barbershop only costs ten dollars? Ten dollars! That’s all the brothers have to pay. Can you believe that?”
“But why would you cut it all off?” Mama’s voice wavered. “I took such good care of my little girls’ hair.”
“Aw, Mama, you sure did. And I appreciate you. I appreciate you so much, but I can’t afford to get my hair done every week. It’s, like, forty dollars and three hours every time I go—”
“I would have sent you the money! You know that—”
“I know, but then I had to get those relaxer touch-ups every two months, and that’s, like, thirty extra dollars? And who knows how dangerous all that sh—” She caught herself. “。 . . that mess is in those relaxers? Those carcinogens going into my blood? No, ma’am. I had to give it up.”
Mama kept saying there had to be a better compromise than a woman looking like she had one foot in the grave and another on a slick of bacon grease. Maybe Coco could have let her relaxer grow out and just press and curl or do a wet set? And how did she expect to get a boyfriend with a bald head when she already dressed like a field hand?
I sat on the bottom step of the staircase, watching them. Two small women, identical except for their skin and hair colors. Both delicate-boned with feet that my father marveled at, for how could any person walk on feet that tiny, especially two women as tough as them?
A tap on my shoulder, and Lydia settled beside me. “You gone say ‘hey’？”
“I’m just waiting for your mother to wind down. That’s gone take a while.” We laughed, and the sound made our sister turn to us. Her greeting was brusque as usual, but there was gladness on her face. Her eyes crinkled when she asked what did we know good?
Mama walked behind her, hugging her around the waist.
“Look at this! All my girls together! God is so good, ain’t he?”
Her daughters answered in a chorus: “All the time.”
She called the hospital and left a message for Daddy, but he couldn’t take off from the emergency room. It was Friday night and weekends were the worst time in the City. People getting shot or going crazy from drugs, but that next morning, we heard his voice calling from the living room. His heavy step as he walked into the kitchen. The top of his green scrubs stretched over his belly.
Mama called from the stove, where she was stirring a pot. “Grits?”
“You know it. Sausage and toast, too. No coffee, though. I’m going to try to lay this body down and sleep. I got the late shift again tonight.”
He walked around the table to Coco and kissed the top of her head. “I like this cut, girl! Very elegant!”
“For real, Daddy? So I don’t look like a cancer patient?”
“What fool said that?” he asked.
Coco snorted, and I looked at my mother spooning grits onto a plate. She added three patties of sausage and two pieces of toast, then carried the plate and a mason jar of preserves to the table. She placed the food in front of my father.
“Thank you, woman,” he said.
“You’re welcome.” She went back to the stove and fixed her own plate. Grits and toast, but no sausage. When she sat down, Daddy asked, was anybody going to tell him what fool had told Coco that? What kind of person would be so heartless?
“Your child is signifying.” Mama gestured with her fork. “I’m the fool who said it. Me, and I’ll say it again. She doesn’t look healthy with that haircut and I don’t know why a Black woman with all that long, pretty hair would chop it off.”
“Oh, I see.” Daddy dug into his own plate, even when Coco scolded him for the sausage. Surely, that couldn’t be healthy for a man of his age and weight. Not only that, he was a Black man, and thus at a higher risk for hypertension, heart disease, and stroke.
He licked a finger. “So what you’re saying is, if I give up my sausage, more for you? I see your strategy, girl. This is how you Ivy League Negroes trick people.”
He put his fork down and laid his hand against Coco’s cheek, patting. She rolled her eyes but didn’t move away when he said, look at this. All his ladies together at the kitchen table, eating grits and ridiculing him. It didn’t get any better than this.