She pushed the door open and walked into the kitchen careful y, as though she was walking on a just-mopped floor.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“Is this where you eat dinner? In the kitchen? Or do you have a dining room?”
“You don’t have to whisper,” I said. “We eat in the kitchen.”
“Where do you sit? How come you have four places set? Who eats with you?” She ran her hands over a chair and picked up a checkered place mat.
“Are you okay?” I said again.
“Where does your father sit?”
I pointed to the chair nearest the window. “Right there.”
She sat herself in that seat and set her hands on either side of the place mat. She nodded, in a satisfied-seeming way.
“Are you sure you’re okay? Do you want a Coke?”
“Yes,” she said. “Can you pour it in a glass?”
I poured the Coke over a handful of ice cubes and handed it to her. “So what’s the deal?”
I talked to her like we were old friends, another trick I’d learned from boys. Talk familiar and you’l get familiar. This was different from what I felt even for Jamal. This thing I felt for Dana originated under my scalp and stretched itself behind my ears, snaking down the back of my neck and down my spine. Girls like us, the ones who have been found out, our nerves are on edge like broken teeth.
“You told me to come,” she said. “You gave me your card.”
“You don’t want to have short hair, trust me,” I told her.
“I thought I might like to have an Anita Baker cut. Low on the sides and fluffy up top.”
I shook my head. “Short cuts are for people who can’t grow hair.”
“Where’s your father?”
“My dad?” I shrugged. “Working the line at the airport. What difference does it make?”
“Doesn’t make a difference.”
“Okay, so what’s up?”
I wanted her to admit that she was curious about me. I know how people act when they have an interest. When boys do it, my dad cal s it “sniffing around.” I heard him say to Raleigh, “I never thought it would bother me so much, al these hard legs sniffing around my daughter.” It’s a good way to say it, capturing that animalness of people. But it’s not just boys. Girls do it, too, when they want to know more about you.
She didn’t say anything, she just looked around our kitchen like she had never seen one before. She stood up and opened the drawers, picked up a spoon and frowned at her reflection. “Can I open the fridge?”
I shrugged and she pul ed open the door, taking a long look, like she was counting my mother’s cans of Fresca lined up on the door racks. She shut it and opened the freezer side. “No ice maker?”
I shrugged, but I felt embarrassed. “Ice trays make good ice.”
“Y’al have al new appliances? Electric range?”
“I don’t care,” I said. “My mama is the only one that cooks.”
“She cooks every day?”
“We go out to dinner sometimes. Al of us. Red Lobster. Piccadil y.”
“Did he ever take her to the Mansion?”
“Maybe, on their anniversary. Now sit back down. Stop trying to get me off track. Tel me why you came over here.” This was a trick I used with Jamal. I made him say exactly what he wanted.
“You don’t want to know,” she said, returning to my father’s chair. She sniffed the air like a rabbit. “I smel cigarettes.”
“My dad smokes like its going out of style.”
Dana whipped her head toward me. “You mother lets him smoke in the house?”
“There’s no letting him do anything.”
Underneath us, I knew my mother was wondering where I was. On busy days, my job was to get the clients into the shampoo bowl as soon as possible. A woman with a dry head can walk out if the wait becomes unbearable, but if she’s dripping wet, she won’t go anywhere. I wanted to get Dana back downstairs. Get her in the shampoo bowl and make her my hostage.
“Are you going to let me give you a wash-and-set?”
“I haven’t decided. I have a lot on my mind. I’ve been trying to tel you that.”
I looked at her careful y and turned my head to the side. “Are you pregnant?” I whispered.
She laughed. “Why do people think that is the only problem a girl can have?”
“Are you?”
“I thought I was one time.”
“Me, too.”
“It was stupid because I’m on the Pil .”
“Me, too!”
“But nothing is foolproof.”
The coincidences were making me loopy. “I know!”
She smiled and moved her hand like she was going to touch me, but she didn’t.
“I have too many things on my mind. I’m applying to Mount Holyoke,” she said. “Early decision. Where are you going to col ege?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Where are you applying?”
I shrugged. “A lot of places.”
“Mount Holyoke?”
“If it’s one of the sisters, I did, but Spelman is the only one I care about.”
“If you got in, would you go?”
“I guess,” I said. “But don’t change the subject. Tel me how come you’re here.”
She raised her eyebrows and pul ed her hand through her high ponytail. “Maybe I just wanted to be friends.”
I hated how she talked to me. I just want to be friends. People who real y wanted to be your friend didn’t say things like that. If they real y wanted to be your friend, they just did it. They just took your hand, listened to you talk.
“Don’t turn your face away from me,” she said. “I real y came over here to thank you for saving me in the store that time.” She gave a wobbly smile. “You can fix my hair for me if you want to.”
There was a knock on the floor. My mother, in the shop, was jabbing the ceiling with a broomstick.
“I got to get back downstairs,” I said. “I’m on the clock.”
“She pays you to work in the store?”
“Five dol ars an hour.”
“Are you close to your dad?”
I said, “More when I was little. It’s different now that I’m growing up.”
“Me, too,” she said with a bit of a sigh. She waved her hand to indicate her face and chest. “He can’t deal with it.”
I nodded. “I know what you mean. He can’t deal, and he doesn’t even know the half of it.”
“Exactly,” said Dana.
“I gotta get back downstairs,” I said. “You want a wash-and-set or not?”
“I want to see your room,” she said.
“Next time.”
She turned around the kitchen, pivoting on her left foot.
“Your kitchen isn’t anything special.”
“Who said it was?”
When we were leaving, I heard her brass bangles rattle as she slipped my father’s napkin into her fake Louis Vuitton.
We entered the shop through the back door. My mother was blow-drying the client I had shampooed. According to the big clock with shears as hands, we had only been gone fifteen minutes.
“Everybody come back to their senses?” Mama said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dana said.
“Good,” Mama said to her with a kind smile. “Come back another day and we’l do you something pretty.”
“Tomorrow?” Dana asked.
“Not tomorrow,” my mama said. “I got plans.” She batted her eyes and al the customers laughed. “My husband is taking me to dinner, so I wil be trying to do something with my own hair.” Then she said to Dana, “Now don’t go cutting in your head before we see you again.”
“No, ma’am,” Dana said. She was like a different person now. At first I thought she was trying not to laugh, but now it seemed like she was trying not to cry.
“Show yourself out,” Mama said. “Chaurisse has work to do.”
I nodded and wrenched the top off of a large jar of basting oil. Dana stood at the doorway with her hand on the push bar, looking at us like she was about to go off to war. “Good-bye,” she said.
She couldn’t have been at the end of the driveway before everybody started talking about her.