He turned off the radio after the song was over. “So what’s your story? You came out here to sing?”
“No, sir,” I said. “I didn’t know I could sing until I got here. That was a lucky surprise.”
Without warning, Russell turned and reached into the backseat. He strained against his seat belt and completely blew a stop sign. Horns blared.
He finally got ahold of his small moleskin notebook and turned back around. “I’m going write that down just in case you get famous,” he said.
Russell, like most people who want to be famous in Los Angeles, assumed that everybody else who came out here wanted to be famous, too. He was an aspiring screenwriter, and he figured I wanted to be some kind of big singer. But he was so excited about my quote that I didn’t have the heart to tell him that for me, Nicky’s was just a job.
In the back of my head, I was already thinking about the part of my life that would come after I turned eighteen and could legally do whatever I wanted.
I’d rather chew on lead paint than go back to high school, but the one dream of mine that hadn’t been dashed back in Glass was going to college with sophisticated people who wanted to learn something and didn’t make fun of you because you were dark.
And though I knew it was a little early in the process to start planning, I figured if I could hang on to this singing job at Nicky’s for about two more years and save up some money, then I could take the GED and go to college. I could better myself, so that I’d be smart and people would take me seriously. Just like the Farrells.
But for now, I was taking it one step at a time, so I came back to the now. “Russell,” I asked, “how do you figure a bob with a straight bang would look on me?”
ELEVEN
Russell’s salon-owner cousin, Sophia, greeted him with a bear hug and sent me over to a woman with big hips and a skinny waist named Pearl. She had a country accent like mine and she kept oohing and aahing as she picked out my hair.
“Ooh, girl, you a virgin. No chemicals? No dyes? No perms ever?” I shook my head, and she just about fainted. “I have never, ever met a black virgin over the age of twelve . . . where was you raised?”
It was more a squealed demand than a question. It made me think that maybe she was preparing to go to my home like Muslims go to Mecca.
But it was nice to be described as a lucky hair virgin, as opposed to the child of neglect. “Mississippi.”
“No, you ain’t,” she nearly screamed. “I’m from Columbus, Mississippi. I swear it’s true. Where you from?”
“Glass.”
“Glass,” she said. “I ain’t never heard of there.”
I guessed a lot of people probably hadn’t. Even folks in Glass had thought our town was nowhere and small. “It’s right next to Wills.”
“Oh, I know Wills. Isn’t that where the Farrell Fine Hair factory is?”
Veronica and Tammy laughing at me on the porch sprang into my mind without warning. I could feel myself getting angry and embarrassed all over again, like it was happening now, right in front of me, and not over two weeks ago in Mississippi.
Still, I managed to choke out, “No, the Farrell factory is in Glass.”
Pearl kept running her hands over my Afro. It was a soft animal that she couldn’t stop petting. “Actually, we only use Farrell products for our relaxers up in here. But I know you ain’t wanting a relaxer. I know you don’t want anything for all this beautiful hair but a trim.”
Back then I didn’t know how unnatural Los Angeles was, or I would have understood how rare it was to have a hairdresser pass up service and profit to make sure I didn’t put any chemicals in my hair. If I had understood that me not having a weave and still having my original down-home accent made me special in Pearl’s eyes, I wouldn’t have hesitated about going against Nicky’s orders. Not even for a second. But in the end, it was the Farrells that helped me decide it.
I’d be damned if I would spend Nicky’s cash on any product that would put more money in the Farrells’ pockets.