Tananarive Due Read online

  Sarah glanced back, annoyed, when one of the women tittered behind her. “It’s not easy to get C.J.’s attention,” the woman said with a strained smile, cooling herself with a lacy fan. “And harder still to keep it.”

  Sarah recognized the woman from occasional appearances at church, usually at Easter and Christmastime, but she couldn’t recall her name. She was tall and regal, always carrying herself with an air of superiority. She was almost fair enough to pass for white, and Sadie had told Sarah the woman somehow managed to remind folks of that as often as possible. And she’d called the man C.J. Obviously she was staking her claim. Sarah felt embarrassment glowing in her cheeks. Did this woman think she’d come all the way up here to throw herself after some strange man at a Sunday-school picnic?

  “Oh, wait! I know you, Mrs. McWilliams!” the woman said, her eyes lighting with excitement that did not strike Sarah as sincere. “Don’t you take in washing?” She’d said it just loudly enough that Sarah knew the woman was purposely trying to humiliate her.

  “All my life, an’ I saved enough to send my daughter to college,” Sarah said brusquely, a tremor of pride and anger in her voice. She clutched her box of samples closer to her side. “I also have my own business, miss. I mix a hair formula.”

  The women shared condescending smiles between them that filled Sarah with rage. Spoiled, ignorant heifers! If she weren’t within hearing distance of the minister and the deacons, Sarah would give them a tongue-lashing that would make them go pale. Sarah’s jaw locked tight, but there was nothing for her to do except turn around and walk back to the picnic blanket where Sadie was waiting. But she could not. And she wasn’t going to stand here all afternoon hoping to steal the attention of Charles Walker, either. Suddenly Sarah realized she had another plan altogether, and the thought of it made her heart gallop.

  “Excuse me, ladies,” Sarah said, forcing a smile, and she began walking toward the crate beneath the oak tree, the speaker’s stump where Charles Walker had given his address.

  Sarah, what in the world are you about to do? she thought desperately, even as she lifted her skirt to climb atop the two-foot crate. Then she surveyed the picnic area from her perch. She was standing at the focal point of attention, and it was too late to change her mind. Sarah felt a thin film of perspiration prickle across her face, arms, and chest. Her heart flew, and even her knees couldn’t keep steady. Girl, you’ve finally lost your damn mind. What’s come over you?

  “Afternoon, everyone,” Sarah called out, but her voice sounded fragile. There was no change in the loud murmur of conversation at the picnic, although the minister cast her a puzzled look. And Sarah couldn’t quite make out all the features of Sadie’s face, but she knew her friend must be shocked to see her standing there. She was a hair away from abandoning her wild notion altogether when she remembered the way Charles Walker had made his voice rise.

  “Ladies and gentlemen! I know y’all are eating your fried chicken and biscuits, but I need your ear for just one minute!”

  Slowly, very slowly, the conversation began to fade. Soon only a few families in the back were talking, and someone’s baby was wailing as if to raise the dead. Sarah decided this was as much quiet as she was likely to get. “Most of y’all here know me, but for those of you who don’t, my name is Sarah McWilliams. I’m—”

  “Speak up, Sister McWilliams!” a man bellowed from the back.

  Sarah paused, momentarily flustered, but then she went on. “This better?” she cried. She was straining so hard, it nearly hurt her throat, but she forgot that as soon as she heard the smattering of applause. Sarah heaved in a deep breath, wondering what she was planning to say now. But the words came to her mouth as if they didn’t need her help.

  “Well, now! I don’t mind sayin’ I sure am nervous standin’ up here like this, y’all. So if I tumble down from here, you’ll know my knees gave out!”

  Laughter. What a beautiful sound! Sarah’s throat, which had been dry from nervousness, regained some moisture. “Now we just heard Mr. Charles Walker give that wonderful talk on advertising, an’ I agree with every word he said.” Sarah knew the savvy man from Denver must be watching her, but she couldn’t muster the nerve to glance his way. “An’ the best advertising I know is what we call the grapevine. That’s what got us by ’fore most of us could even read a newspaper, so that’s what I’m gonna use today. But instead of goin’ from blanket to blanket like I was plannin’, I saw this empty stump up here an’ thought maybe it was my turn to make a speech. I feel I must tell you about a hair preparation that has been no less than a miracle to me, an’ it happens to be one I make in my own kitchen.”

  There were more chuckles. Again remembering the cue from Charles Walker, Sarah tried to find the eyes of as many ladies as she could, speaking to them directly. “I know if somebody’d said to me a few years ago they had a formula that could grow hair, well, you would’ve had to try to beat me off with a stick. Y’all who know me, I ain’t shamed to say, I had so much botheration ’til it seemed like half the hair was about to fall out my head. Well, those days are long gone for me, and some of you may think it’s ’cause I’ve been using a product called Poro.”

  A few women, probably Poro users themselves, murmured.

  “Well, I ain’t gon’ say nothing against Poro or Annie T. Malone, since some of y’all know her, and she is a fine member of this community. But I will say that God was good enough to give me the knowledge to make up my own formula, an’ I’ve been using it almost eight months now. I can talk about it ’til I run out of breath, but I always say the best way to make a point is to show it. So that’s what I’ma do. . . .”

  With that, her fingers trembling slightly, Sarah laid her box of hair formula at her feet. Then she reached up behind her head to unpin her hat. That done, she pulled the pins out of her hair one at a time, until clumps of it began to fall loose. No doubt, she thought, the minister might not approve of this, a woman loosening her hair at a church picnic! But Sarah only shook her head to further free her hair, using her hands to try to flatten it more neatly.

  This time she did glance at Charles Walker, and he was gazing right back. For an instant Sarah was struck by the boldness of what she was doing, and she felt her heart trip again.

  “Mr. Walker, I guess this is another kind of advertising,” she said, and there was more laughter. He smiled at her. “Now I hope y’all don’t think I’m bein’ too immodest. But the thing is, you really have to see it or you wouldn’t believe I was tellin’ the truth. My hair grower has given me this hair in a few months’ time. And I have another treatment with a comb to give it this length for weeks. I don’t use lard, and I don’t wrap my hair, neither. As you can see, it’s growing to my neck. Now, I have some of my grower for sale here today, but I know there are those of y’all who still won’t believe it. Reverend, like you told us at church last week, even some of Jesus’ disciples who saw his miracles still had doubts. So for those folks, I say come right by my house any evenin’ this week, or even after the picnic today, an’ I will give you the same comb treatment—for free.”

  There were a couple of audible gasps from women, then warm applause.

  “An’ after I do it once, ladies, you’ll be callin’ after me all hours to get it done again. You’ll never be satisfied to have your hair like it was before.”

  “It’s true! She been combin’ mine!” one of Sarah’s customers called out, an older woman named Claire Newcomb. Sarah saw her waving a white handkerchief above her head.

  Sarah pointed. “That’s right. Now, Sister Claire, you go on and stand up an’ let the folks see,” she said, motioning with growing confidence. Claire had an impressive head of hair for someone in her sixties, and she obligingly pulled off her hat so the picnickers could see how she’d swept her hair into a beautiful style. “I can do the same for any of y’all,” Sarah went on. “An’ with so many folks out there claimin’ they got a miracle cure, I thought I’d better let you know there’s a miracle i
n your own house, so to speak. It’s at a price everybody here can afford—and if it don’t do what I’m sayin’, well, I’ll give your money right back.”

  When Sarah finished speaking, three women were already waiting for her to ask to buy a sample of hair formula, and all of them asked where she lived so they could come for a combing demonstration. Even as she spoke to them, Sarah noticed more women standing up, gathering up their skirts to make their way over to talk to her.

  She didn’t have a free moment to think about Mr. Charles Walker the entire afternoon.

  By evening, Sarah’s kitchen was as bustling as a barbershop. While Sadie, Rosetta, and Lelia mixed formula and prepared ingredients in jars and bowls throughout the kitchen, Sarah had one customer sitting in a chair in front of her while two others waited in chairs against the wall. The kitchen smelled of smoke from the hot comb, forcing all of them to cough occasionally. Sarah’s face was knit in concentration as she tried to comb her customer’s hair without burning her scalp, and her hand was already slightly cramped. The process wasn’t easy; when she pulled the comb off the stove, she had to test it against a paper napkin to make sure the napkin wouldn’t burn. If the comb wouldn’t burn paper, she’d learned, it wouldn’t burn the hair.

  Sarah had sold all of her samples at the picnic, and she had at least two dozen orders to fill by the time she went to church tomorrow morning. Almost every woman at the picnic had wanted to either try her grower or send some to someone they knew, and Sarah had promised to have it ready. She’d learned from her experience selling Poro that customers easily forgot their fervor and were quick to change their minds. She only prayed that she and her friends would be able to collect enough old mason jars, tin cups, and tin cans to deliver that many orders on such short notice. Usually she was lucky to get two or three new customers in a month. She’d never expected to generate such excitement at one gathering!

  Something shattered on the floor. “Ooh—damn, damn, damn,” Lelia’s voice cried. “I dropped this damn— Oh, ’scuse me, y’all.”

  The women chuckled, but Sarah’s temples flexed with anger. “Lela, hush. I can’t understand why you started cursin’ like a drunkard. An’ if you dropped some o’ that mix, you best scoop it up in something else. I don’t have it to waste.”

  “Damn isn’t real cursing, Mama,” Lelia said. When had this girl gotten so sassy, and in the presence of guests?

  “Girl, you better find somethin’ to fix up that mess, and hush your mouth ’fore I hush it for you,” Sarah said. At that, Lelia sighed and began to search frantically for something to salvage the ingredients she’d spilled on the floor.

  “That sho’ was cussin’ in my day, ’specially for ladies,” Rosetta said, stirring the rod wax in her bowl. “Now you got women sittin’ in saloons without no corsets drinkin’ whiskey, smokin’ cigarettes, an’ got they legs all up so’s they petticoat’s showin’.”

  The women shook their heads and murmured with disgust, including the woman under Sarah’s comb, who nearly got burned when her head moved. Her hair was coarse, so the comb needed to be hot. Sarah patted her shoulder to remind her to sit still.

  “Some of ’em act worse than men, you ask me,” Sarah said, remembering the woman who’d behaved so rudely to her earlier that day. “Spiteful! I thought I’d have to slap one o’ them heifers at the picnic. Most of y’all know I got folks dear to me who’s yellow as the day is long, but this high-yallow gal today was actin’ like I was out to steal her man. I should’ve told her, I ain’t got no more use for some dandy high-tone man than . . .”

  But Sarah never finished her thought because the breath had been stolen from her throat. Suddenly her imagination was playing the strangest trick on her: She was sure Charles Walker himself was standing in her kitchen entryway, wearing the same clothes he’d worn at the picnic, with his hat pressed against his belly. She blinked fast, trying to clear away his image.

  But when Rosetta and Lelia both gasped, she knew it was more than a trick of her eye.

  Rosetta, who had never before seen him, held up her bowl as if she planned to throw it at him. “What in—”

  Mr. Walker looked sheepish, backing up a step. “Oh, ladies, I’m so sorry. The front door is open, and I heard voices back here. Didn’t nobody hear me calling?”

  A thick silence fell over the women in the room. Lelia’s eyes were as big as saucers, and she quickly wiped her hands on her apron as she stared. Sarah’s heart seemed to have lodged itself behind her tonsils. Mr. Walker’s presence felt foreign, somehow deeply personal. When was the last time she’d had a man in her kitchen? She couldn’t even remember.

  Despite a parched throat, Sarah broke the silence. “Can I help you . . . Mr. Walker?”

  Mr. Walker nodded greetings to each woman in the room before stepping forward again, his hat still in his hand. “I didn’t mean to walk back an’ surprise y’all lovely ladies. I was jus’ wondering where a newspaperman from Denver might leave his calling card for the proprietor of this here hair business. I heard so many good things at the picnic, my curiosity got the best of me, so I decided to come see this miracle cure for myself.”

  Nearly too late, Sarah realized she had left her comb in her customer’s hair longer than she should have. Quickly she jerked the smoking comb away, and it clattered to the stove.

  Sarah’s mind had been wiped empty of her thoughts, a state that shocked her nearly as much as Mr. Walker’s unexpected appearance. What was wrong with her? She needed to tell this man she was busy, that he had his nerve walking back here in the company of women he wasn’t properly acquainted with, and he needed to learn some manners.

  Instead she heard herself speaking in her most polite tones. “Well, Mr. Walker . . . you might find some room for a calling card on that table. Lela, clear up that mess for Mr. Walker.”

  Lelia looked at Sarah with obvious surprise, then she exchanged a glance with Sadie, who was smiling knowingly. Finally, with her lips tight, Lelia moved aside some bowls and mixing spoons to make a clear space at the edge of the kitchen table. For a moment, none of the other women spoke or moved, as if Mr. Walker’s presence had mesmerized them.

  “Who is this?” Rosetta finally asked pointedly, breaking the silence.

  “Rosetta, this is Mr. Charles Walker from Denver,” Sarah said. “He’s . . .” Then she faltered. She couldn’t even begin to explain why he was there, since she didn’t know herself.

  “Madam,” Mr. Walker said, moving forward to shake Rosetta’s hand. “I’m sorry to intrude. I’m a newspaperman—I sell advertisements in Denver—and Mrs. McWilliams said some things today I couldn’t get out of my head. I have a great interest in new businesses, you see, ventures an’ such. We didn’t have an opportunity to speak earlier. I was hopin’ she could tell me what time might suit her.”

  You missed your opportunity, Sarah thought, nearly smiling. But she was still as impressed by Mr. Walker’s eloquence as she had been at the picnic. He could put words together, all right! Glancing at the other women, Sarah saw that they were impressed, too. Even Lelia was gazing at Mr. Walker as if he were a prized discovery, trying to be subtle as she straightened her apron and patted down her hair.

  But Mr. Walker didn’t look Lelia’s way. He was gazing dead-on at Sarah. “Madam, I fear you’re busy,” he said. “I do believe I’ve picked a bad time.”

  Madam! He’d used the word often, and Sarah liked his formal manner of address, which was so unusual to her ear. Her chest swelled.

  “Well . . . you see I’m fixin’ hair right now. . . . I don’t know how these ladies would feel . . .”

  “He can stay!” Sadie said, cutting her off. “Why not? Right, ladies?”

  The other women agreed.

  So, for the better part of an hour, Charles Walker stayed in Sarah’s kitchen, refusing to accept food or drink, simply studying the mixing being done at the table, then strolling behind Sarah to watch the work she was doing with the hot comb. Occasionally, he asked questions—How
long does this procedure take? How long does the effect of the hot comb last? How long have you been doing this? How do you deliver your formula after it’s mixed?—but for the most part he studied them in silence.

  And soon the women began talking again, nearly forgetting he was there.

  Finally, standing out of her sight behind her, Mr. Walker spoke to Sarah in a low, private tone. “I need to take the Tuesday train. I really hope we’ll have a few moments to talk before I leave for Denver, Mrs. McWilliams,” he said, then added even more softly, “That is, if Mr. McWilliams won’t mind.”

  Again, Sarah’s heart danced. It was clear to her by now that Mr. Walker’s only purpose in being here was probably to try to sell her an ad in his newspaper—what else would a man like him want with her?—but she couldn’t control her body’s excitement at the mere sound of his voice, almost as though he were touching her instead of only speaking. The blood in her veins was racing with anticipation. Even her nose was savoring his so-close scent; he didn’t smell like honey soap the way she’d imagined, but his skin and clothes definitely smelled somehow sweet and masculine all at once. Lord have mercy! Sarah cursed at herself, trying to keep calm. Remember, Sarah, he could jus’ be tryin’ to charm his way into stealin’ your formula. What’s he askin’ all these questions for? That thought helped Sarah snap back into herself again.

  “Mayhap we can make an appointment Monday evening, Mr. Walker,” she said primly. “And I’m a widow, sir, so it’s been seventeen years since Mr. McWilliams would care ’bout my business meetings one way or the other.”

  Then she dared one glance around to look at Charles Walker, and the first thing she saw was his perfect, wonderful grin.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I just don’t like him, Mama. You saw the way he came in here all high and mighty!” Lelia said, frustrated, as she watched Sarah search her wardrobe for a dress to wear to supper with Mr. Charles Walker. He hadn’t appeared at church as Sarah had hoped he would, but he’d slipped a note under her front door Sunday night, promising to pick her up at six o’clock Monday; he’d included the address of a nearby hotel and even a three-digit telephone number, which was useless to Sarah, since she did not know anyone with a telephone. Unsightly poles had been erected throughout her neighborhood like dead upright trees strung together, but most of her friends had neither telephones nor electricity. Electricity cost too much to wire throughout the house, and telephones just seemed like a needless bother.