Can't Get Enough of Your Love (34 page)

The price is high, and so is she. “Um, I don't think I'm going to need all that.” What the hell is a mineralsalt wrap?

“We also have something we call ‘Zee's Special.' This includes a mini-massage, paraffin manicure and pedicure, a facial, scalp massage, shampoo, and style, for two hundred.”

She's still high. I am a working woman! “Um, well, I'm not sure—”

“How about what we call ‘The Athlete in You'?”

At least the name suits me. “What do I get with that?”

“You'd get a facial, manicure, pedicure, scalp massage, haircut, and style, for one-fifty.”

D-damn. “Look, I'm on a tight budget, so …”

She sighs. “We have something called the ‘Time Out,' a manicure and pedicure for sixty.”

The same total price as the other place. Geez! “I'll, uh, I'll have to call you back.”

When I decide I don't want to eat for a month.

Damn.

How can I look fly on the cheap? I mean, I can shave my legs pretty closely for free and put in my own perm for about ten bucks. And if I need a facial, I can use the mud in my yard. And the average emery board does fine for my fingers and toes.

Maybe Mama will know what to do. I call her. “Mama, I need a makeover.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” And quit giving me one-word answers.

“You know I've been dreaming that this day would come for a long time.”

“Huh?”

“All you have to do is come over Saturday, and I'll do you proud.”

Ah, no. “Um, Mama, I was kind of hoping you'd float me a loan so I could go to a day spa.”

“A what?”

“A day spa. I'll only need”—gulp—”three hundred dollars.” I hold my breath.

Mama laughs for a long,
long
time.

“Mama, come on. I'll even let you go with me.”

She still laughs.

“Okay, two hundred.”

She laughs louder.

“A hundred?”

She stops laughing. “You're doing all this to go to an
IHOP on a Sunday morning so you can cause some trouble with three men who don't want to be with you anymore?”

Yeah. It does sound ridiculous. “I want to be da bomb, Mama.”

“I can do all that for you.”

Can she? “You can give a manicure and a pedicure?”

“A manicure, yes. I am a whiz with an emery board. You're on your own with your toes.”

Figures. “What about a facial?”

“Child, you have flawless skin. All you need is some cleaning and a little makeup.”

I shudder. Mama used to, um, “paint” me when I was in middle school. “I don't know, Mama.”

“Then … come over Friday night and we'll practice. If you don't like what you see, I'll pay …”

Please say three hundred.

“I'll pay
half
of what it would cost at that spa of yours.”

Which would leave me with The Athlete in You. I can deal with that. “Okay. I'll be over Friday night.”

“Good. See you then. Goodbye.”

It couldn't hurt, could it?

“M
ama, that hurts!”

“Hush up, girl, I'm only trimming your ends.”

“You're pulling my hair too hard!”

“You want them uneven?”

“No. Just be gentle, okay?”

She chuckles. “You've always been tender-headed.”

And this is the
easy
part.

“When's the last time you had these raggedy ends cut?”

“I can't remember, but whenever it was, it didn't hurt like this—damn, Mama!”

She smiles. “All done.”

I look at the hair on the kitchen floor and on the towel around my shoulders. “How much did you take off?”

“Enough.”

I finger-comb what hair I have left. “You aren't going to put in a weave, are you?”

“You want a weave?”

“No.” I brush out some of the stray hairs. “I want to look natural.”

“Does that mean you don't want a perm?”

I hate perms with a passion. “I just want to shampoo and condition it. That's all.” I still like looking a little wild.

She leans down to me, taking off the towel. “You
need
a perm.”

“Well, I don't want one.” I stand and pick hair from my shirt.

“It'll be easier to style later.”

I don't answer.

“Less painful, too,” she adds.

“No.”

“Okay. It's your hair's funeral.”

Mama first pulls out a bottle of Kiehl's Protein Concentrate Shampoo for normal to dry hair. “Jill Scott, the singer, she uses this stuff,” Mama says.

“Do you?”

“No.”

“So you bought it because …”

She opens the top and sniffs. “Smells nice.”

“Why'd you buy it?”

She pushes me back to the sink. “I knew your hair would need all the help it could get.”

After a relaxing shampoo and conditioning with something called Fudge Dynamite—”Oprah uses it,” Mama tells me—I follow Mama to her bedroom and the vanity where I've parked all my Golden Hots.

“You don't expect me to use these, do you?” she asks.

“I'm
doing this part,” I say. No way I'm going to let her scar my tender head.

She sits on her bed. “And what exactly are you going to do?”

I look in the mirror. I still look basically the same as I've ever looked. “Something different.”

“Uh-huh.”

I pick up the blow-dryer. “I might flip it up on top and …” I look past my head in the mirror and see Mama looking pitiful. “Okay, Mama. What would
you
do to it?”

She picks up a bag sitting on her nightstand and empties all sorts of stuff, including a bunch of pink Velcro rollers, onto the bed.

“What's all this?” I ask, picking up a bottle of John Frieda Frizz-Ease Corrective Styling Mousse curl reviver and a container of Kérastase Nutritive Masquintense for fine hair.

“It's my first makeover of you. I had to research and read up a bit. Times sure have changed.” She picks up some Matrix Sleek Look Styling Cream. “This is supposed to control your frizzies and your flyaways. You have plenty of those.”

“All this stuff has to be expensive,” I say.

“It's okay. I'm sure I'll find a use for this stuff after we're done. You ready?”

“I am.” But is my hair?

Mama says to let my hair air-dry, so I sit there for an hour while she treats my ends with the Matrix cream. “Jada Pinkett Smith gets this done all the time,” she tells me.

Mama has been reading
Essence
.

She applies the Frizz-Ease
and
the Kérastase. “Won't my hair explode?” I ask.

“I don't know. I hope not.”

She then wrestles with all of my Golden Hots, using different sizes and curling my hair in different directions to make my fine hair look fuller in the back, diminishing my peanut head. She trims a few strays here and there. “Not bad.”

“Are you going to use the rollers?”

“Not this time,” she says.

“This time?”

“I know you'll be back, Erlana. And I also know you can't be paying three hundred dollars when you can get all this done here for free.”

I look at the finished product and see my once-limp hair wrapped around my neck and touching my shoulders. I look … nice. I don't mean “fly” or “hot”—just … nice. Older. Wiser. Smarter. Sassy. Even … cute for real.

“Well?” Mama asks.

“It looks … nice.”

“It'll look nicer once we fix your face.”

“What's wrong with my face?”

“What isn't?” she says. “Come on. Your face needs fixing.”

And fix we do. We first go to the bathroom, where Mama uses Bioré Pore Perfect Blemish Fighting Ice Cleanser to clean my face. Why are the names of these products so damn long? They barely fit on the label. She then moisturizes my face with Nivea Visage Moisturizing Toner (finally a short name!).

She stares at the container, then scans my face. “Your skin should be glowing by now.”

The face in the mirror
is
glowing more than normal. “My face looks fine to me.”

She opens the medicine cabinet and pulls out Lancôme Aqua Fusion. “Let's try this stuff.”

“Mama, how much did you spend on all this?”

“Too much if it doesn't do the trick.”

Aqua Fusion makes my face shiny, all right. “Don't worry,” Mama says. “I can tone that down some.” After that, Mama does some magic with some of her oldtimey
makeup that gives me lips (I have lips!) and some damn sexy eyes.

“How'd you do that?” I ask.

“Magic,” she says.

I look like someone else. Damn, I almost look like a girl.

She pushes me out of the bathroom and back to her bedroom. “Now, what are you planning to wear?”

“Whatever it is, it will be tight and show lots of skin.”

Mama sighs. “Can't you for once just be classy?”

“I am classy.”

She coughs. “You are classy now from the neck up, but we need to make the rest of you look just as classy.”

“I want to be a queen.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, a princess, then.”

“I have a few possibilities in my closet.” She goes to her closet and opens the double doors.

“I don't want to wear your old-fashioned clothes.”

“They're not old-fashioned.” She pulls out several outfits or dresses (I can't tell) that are still covered in plastic, laying them on the bed. “They're classy. Classy clothes never go out of style.”

I stand and watch as she removes the plastic. Hey now, that's nice. Jade green with gold buttons—oh, burgundy. I love burgundy. Whoa, black satin! “What's all this?”

“I bought these for you once upon a time, you know, for dances, prom, graduation.”

And she saved them all these years, just waiting for this moment. I didn't go to the prom, though I did have a date. I was in my “Black Power, White People Suck”
mode during my senior year. I went to a “black prom” party—really an overgrown house party—instead. And during graduation, I wore rolled-up sweatpants and a Nike T-shirt under my gown.

“You saved these?” For when I would finally become a girl.

“Try”—she picks up the jade dress with the gold buttons—
“this
on for size.”

“It can't possibly still fit.”

“You stopped growing taller when you were sixteen, and you've lost enough weight since your injury. Try it on.”

I slide into the dress, and it slides onto me. It's a little snug in the hips, mainly because I didn't have hips in high school.

“I can't tell,” Mama says, “whether that dress lightens or darkens your eyes.”

I pose in the long mirror on the back of Mama's door. “It lightens them. It's all the gold accents.”

She returns to the closet. “I always knew there was a girl in there somewhere crying to get out.” She pulls out a shoe box. “Your feet haven't grown, either. Try these on.”

“Matching shoes?”

She nods.

I slip them on and … Oh, these are ouchy shoes. My pinkie toes are folded over the toes next to them. They look perfect with the dress, but …

“Just make sure you sit at a booth so you can kick them off, and whatever you do, get there early so they won't watch you trip all over yourself.”

I smile. “Sounds like a plan.”

She goes back to that closet. What's next? “It's
going to be cold, so you'll need a coat.” She pulls out a long, black, wool overcoat. “Classy women wear these.”

And when I put that overcoat on and look in the mirror, I realize something: I never knew that a goddess lived inside me. I bet no one would suspect that this goddess would rather be sacking a lesbian quarterback or breaking number 39's kneecaps.

“This is all just too much!” I stand straighter. “How do I look?”

“Like a lady.”

I feel tears forming behind my eyes, so I turn away from her. “I'm … I'm going to have to sleep standing up or something so I don't mess up my hair.”

“You could stay the night here. It's closer to IHOP, right? When are you getting up on Sunday?”

“Four thirty.”

“Why so early?”

“I didn't ask what time they met.” I turn to her. “I want to get there before the sun rises.”

“All right. As soon as you get up, I'll do a little more magic.” She looks at her hands. “You could even stay tonight and tomorrow night. There's a college game on ESPN tonight, and Virginia Tech plays UVA tomorrow. Tech will probably win, but you never know when those two teams play.”

I blink. “How …” I'm sure she checked the
TV Guide
for who's playing whom, but how does she know about Virginia's major football rivalry? Mama has been researching more than just hair and skin products.

“And I have Velveeta and salsa and those chips….”

I smile. “Sure, I'll stay.” I take off the overcoat. “What are you going to do?”

She takes the coat and hangs it up. “Something I've never done before.” She laughs. “I'm going to watch a couple football games. You're going to explain what's going on, right?”

“I'd love to.”

She checks her watch. “One game starts in fifteen minutes, Louisville versus somebody. We better get ready….”

By the time we watch our
fifth
college football game twenty-four hours later on Saturday night, I have my mama screaming at the refs to “throw a damn flag!” and at the coach to “pass the ball, fool!” I doubt she understands everything about the game, and I'm sure she has better things to do, but for a little while at least, she tries to understand why I love football so much.

Sleeping in my old room in my old bed with its old posters of Venus and Serena Williams, Althea Gibson, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee isn't as hard as I thought it would be. I actually sleep pretty soundly, despite the fact that the room is half the size of my room at Jenny's dollhouse and that the sounds of traffic are so damn loud. But, I realize that Mama's house is almost as nice as my own.