As I stop in front of the fabric softeners, I find the Rit brand dyes next to the bleach, and this proximity seems like a portent. The boxes are lined up like crayons, the colors cheerful and primary. There are three boxes of black available and I wonder how many I will need. I look around. There are a couple of other people strolling down the various aisles, like one with a basket full of things, another using his hands as a cart, but no one looks like a colorfast docent. I check out the pharmacist. He glances over at me as if he senses my regard—or more likely, he’s waiting for me to slip something in my pocket and try to run out of the store.
After checking the price, I find that I can afford up to four boxes and be certain that I have enough left over for tax, so I clean the CVS out of its stock of three. I imagine I’ll be a topic of conversation for the cashiers, probably for the pharmacist, maybe even for the manager wherever he or she is. This is a busy store, but that’s a relative term in this sleepy little town, and the people who work here no doubt have plenty of time on their hands to discuss odd customers. Like a girl with black clothes buying black dye.
Just wait until I come in for my lithium.
As I turn away from the shelf, I can sense the pharmacist looking at me again, and I want to give him a little wave and tell him I’ll see him soon. He and I are in a relationship.
He just doesn’t know it yet.
Up at the cash registers and the candy bars, I wait in line behind a woman who is buying hairbrushes, hair spray, mascara, eyeliner, and lipstick. She’s telling the clerk that she is going to her cousin’s wedding. She’s frumpy and on the young side of thirty, with no wedding band. It’s clear by her conversation that she’s hoping to attract a specific groomsman’s attention, and is placing her bets on the makeup she is purchasing and the new hairstyle she is going to try out. I feel sorry for her, and I almost wish her luck as she puts her change into her wallet, takes her white plastic bags with their red lettering, and heads off to attempt to alleviate her spinsterhood.
When the cashier’s eyes settle on me, the smile she gave to the wedding guest is traded in for a professional mask of customer service. “You find what you need?”
“Yes,” I say as I put the three boxes on the counter.
“You know, that’s not for your hair.”
So she sees my roots. Although given the amount of new growth I have, that’s really not an eye test.
“Yes, I know.”
When she doesn’t scan the boxes, I look at the other cashier. She’s staring at me, too, and I have the sense I will fare no better if I take two steps to the right and give her a try. I know what they are both thinking.
Aren’t your clothes black enough, kid? Do you have to pretend you’re special? God, your poor mother.
I want to ignore the thoughts going through their heads, but they’re so clear to me that I can hear them in their own voices, with separate inflections and accents. And that is when a shiver of warning hits me.
What is a simple commercial transaction becomes a race against time. I take out my five-dollar bill and put it next to the boxes. This does the trick, jump-starting the process.
“You’re going to use salt, right?” the cashier says as she hits keys on the register.
“What?” I mumble through the concert of voices that has started to play in my head.
“You need to add a cup of salt to the water in the washer.”
This is very helpful of her and not because it has anything to do with the dyeing process. Her advice provides me with a platform on which to refocus on the task at hand.
“I didn’t know that,” I say.
She eyes my clothes. “Have you ever used dye before?”
“No. What do I do?”
“How much are you dyeing?”
“A big load. I have to get out bleach spots.”
“Use all three then. The dye can’t hurt nothing.” She continues to pick up the boxes one by one and enter their price. Even though it has to be the same. “You want to prewash the clothes first. Leave ’em in wet and fill up the washer with the hottest water. Before you put the dye in with it, you need to dissolve the boxes in two cups of hot water, and do the same with a cup of salt in four cups of water—oh, and you’ll want to add a teaspoon of dish soap to that. Take out the detergent dispenser tray and start the cycle. You want to pour your dye mix in where the dispenser tray goes, followed by the salt, and then rinse that with four cups of cold water. You want your cycle to last a good thirty minutes, longer if you can. Where’s your ColorStay?”
“ColorStay?”
She looks at me with exasperation, as if I have forgotten how to tie my shoes at my age. “Go and get a box of ColorStay. You want to put that in with the load, too, so everything don’t bleed when you wash it next.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
I dutifully go back and reenter the crosshairs of the pharmacist. Returning to the front, I find myself in a five-dollar predicament. But I’m still on the planet. Or at least, I think I am.
“Is it better to have more dye or the ColorStay?” I ask. “I can’t afford it all.”
The two cashiers lean in and whisper gravely to each other, whatever transpires between them a discussion of nuclear arms race gravity—although I don’t know enough about clothing dye to tell which is the Soviet Union and which is the United States.
“Here.” My cashier pulls over a clear plastic dish, like something you’d get tuna fish salad in at a deli. “Let’s see what we have. You, too, Margie.”
The two women count out the coppers in their Give a Penny, Get a Penny dishes. Then Margie chips in a quarter of her own money and my cashier, Roni, as her name tag says, does the same. I am rung up and my five-dollar bill taken, the supplemental change they provide bridging the gap between what I require and what I can afford.
I duck my head and my eyes, mumble a thank-you, and leave quickly, before they can see that I’m teary. To keep myself together, I inform my emotional side that the reason for their aid has nothing to do with me. It’s not about a lower-middle-class girl who needs charity because an upper-class girl is being a bitch; it’s the integrity of the dyeing process. Yes, that’s why. They provided the funding because they take fabric dyeing seriously and wouldn’t feel right if the project failed.
Outside, the rain has arrived, and as I step out of the cool and dry interior of the CVS, I am hit with not just raindrops, but the prevailing humidity that took me five days to get used to, and ten minutes to acclimatize out of in the store.
I turn my face to the angry sky and let the rain fall on my cheeks to camouflage my tears.
I don’t have any salt and I’m out of money.
Maybe I’ll just stand over the open washer and cry.
chapter SEVEN
As thunder booms and lightning flashes, I know I must get back to campus in a hurry, but I feel very small and very weak, my Band-Aid ripped off by the begrudging kindness of strangers with name tags, my tender wound exposed. I have a thought that I need to toughen up, and the thought is spoken in my head in the voice of an older male, the one that identifies as that of my father, although I have no memory of what his voice actually sounds like.
You need to toughen up, it repeats.