From the way Mama talked and behaved, anyone would have thought I really was being prepared for a debutante ball. She couldn’t wait to tell my daddy when he came home from work that evening, a little after ten. When he worked the later shift, he would have a sandwich for dinner, but that was never enough for a man his size, so Mama would prepare leftovers for him if she was home when he returned. If she wasn’t, I would come out of my room as soon as he was home and warm up his dinner.
“Ice has a date Saturday night,” I heard her tell him at the table.
We had a small, separate dining room and a four-chair yellow Formica breakfast table in the kitchen. She served the late dinner in the kitchen, ostensibly because she didn’t want to mess up a clean dining room just for a leftover dinner. It made no sense to me because she would have to clean up the kitchen again anyway.
Despite her complaints, our apartment was a good size for the rent we paid and Daddy was always pointing out that the building was rent-controlled and we wouldn’t get as much for our money if we did what Mama wanted and looked for another place to live. He tried to make it nicer to please her. He had friends who laid carpet and put up wallpaper and got some very good deals at the mall. No matter what he did though, the place was still “a dump” to Mama.
“Date? What kind of date?” Daddy asked. I could hear the concern in his voice, which took me by surprise. He rarely asked me anything about my friends or any boys at school. He never pushed me to go to dances or asked me why I wasn’t going out on weekends.
“A nice date,” Mama said. “I arranged it myself,” she boasted.
“You arranged it? What do you mean? How?”
“I arranged for Louella Carter’s brother Shawn to take her out. He’s an army boy on leave from boot camp.”
“Army boy? What kind of an arrangement is that? What are you saying, she never met him?”
“Now you tell me, Cameron Goodman, how is she going to meet anyone shut up in this place listening to music with you on weekends and such, huh? You think there’s some sort of billboard out there with her face on it, announcing Ice Goodman’s here, come and ask her out?”
“This doesn’t sound good to me,” Daddy said, his voice ringing with alarm.
“Oh no? And why is that, Cameron? Huh? Why? Because I made it all happen?”
“It just doesn’t sound like it will be good. Army boys are a different breed,” he warned. “Don’t forget I was an MP. I know what being shut up with other men does to them, especially a boy just released from boot camp.”
“Well, this time it will be good,” she insisted. “Louella’s a very nice girlfriend and I’m sure her brother’s a nice young man. Besides, what have you been doing to help that child be a normal girl, huh? Nothing. You’re content just keeping her home listening to music. How she ever going to meet anyone and get married that way?”
“She’s only seventeen and still in high school, Lena. It’s not exactly a crisis.”
“How old was I when you married me? Huh? Well?”
“It was different,” Daddy said almost under his breath. “You were different.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You think she’s better than us?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying,” he said, but he didn’t say it firmly enough for her.
“Blowing that child’s ego up to make her think she’s the Virgin Mary or something, raving about her singing all the time. No one’s ever going to be good enough for her. Maybe that’s what you want, Cameron Goodman. Maybe you want to keep her at your side all your days. Her hair will grow gray alongside yours listening to music. It’s unnatural, that’s what it is.”
“Stop it, Lena.”
“She’s going on a date. She’s going to be a normal girl who talks. And she’s going to make me proud. Come aboard or swim to shore, Cameron, but don’t you dare say one word against it, hear? I’m warning you.”
Daddy was quiet. He wasn’t happy, but he retreated as he usually did. His lack of enthusiasm and his warnings, however, put even more steam into Mama. Now she had to prove she was right. She couldn’t wait to get me up and out to the beauty parlor the next morning. She made such a production out of it, I was truly embarrassed when we arrived.
“Here she is!” she cried as soon as we stepped through the doorway.
All the women in chairs turned to look and every one of the beauticians stopped work. Dawn, a dirty blond no taller than my old grade-school teacher, Mrs. Waite, emerged from the rear of the shop and looked me over as if I was someone just brought to civilization.
“She’s got potential,” she declared. “I see what you were saying, Lena.”
Mama swelled with pride.
“But we’ve got some work here,” Dawn added cautiously as she circled me. Everyone else was still looking at me.
“Pretty girl,” the woman in the first chair said.
“Tall, like a model,” the man working on her commented.
Dawn fingered my hair. “You’re really dry, girl,” she said. “And doing a lot of shedding.”
“I knew it,” Mama said. “She just hasn’t looked after herself right. I’ve been hounding her, but you know young people today. You can’t tell them anything.”
Dawn didn’t respond. She kept circling me, which made me even more nervous.
“We have to shampoo and condition plenty,” she said. “Add moisture.”
“Exactly,” Mama said nodding.
“What have you been using on your hair, hand soap?” Dawn asked me. Everyone laughed, even Mama.
I looked down, debating whether I would just turn and run out or stay.
“Well, let’s get you in the chair and get started,” Dawn said. “We’ll make it right.”
“Go on, Ice,” Mama coached.
Reluctantly, I walked across the shop, past the other chairs and women and got into the chair reserved for me. Dawn came around and started to prepare the sink for my shampoo.
“You use a blow-dryer too much,” she began, “especially with your dry hair. Why don’t you give your hair a break and put it in cornrows?”
“No,” I said sharply.
One of the women who was having it done turned to look my way.
“It’s not for me,” I added and gave Mama a look that told her I would get up and leave if they didn’t listen.
“Just suggesting,” Dawn said. “What do you say we do a press and cut, Lena? I’d bring it to here,” she said pinching my hair at my chin. Mama nodded. Dawn looked at my face and smiled. “You’ve really never been to a beauty shop before, huh?”
“Not because of me,” Mama said.
“This is going to look great,” Dawn told me. “I’m going to insert a full head of weave, apply styling mousse and set your hair with a flat iron, curling the front down and the back up. You’ll see. Great,” she said.
Mama stepped back, nodded at Dawn and they began. I closed my eyes like someone about to go into an operating room and tried to shut out all the talk and laughter by listening to Daddy’s music replay in my head.
When it was finally over, Dawn turned me around and stood behind me as proud as any artist. I gazed at myself in the mirror, amazed at the difference in my appearance. Not only did I appear older and more sophisticated, but Mama was right: I did have most of her good facial features, maybe even better because of my stronger mouth and bigger eyes and more prominent cheekbones—features I had inherited from Daddy.
“Well?” Dawn said. “You haven’t said a word all the time I’ve been working. What do you have to say now?”
“She loves it. Don’t you, Ice?” Mama asked, her eyes pressuring me to respond positively.
I nodded.
“Yes, I think I do,” I admitted.
Mama let out a trapped breath, and she and Dawn laughed. Mama really looked pleased and that made her face even softer and younger. Anger always aged her instantly, like a dark hand waved magically in front of her.
“Now we’ll do her eyebrows and I’ll get her straight on her makeup,” she told Dawn. “We’re off to get her a nice dress.”
“Are you going to a prom or something?” Dawn asked me.
I looked at Mama.
“No, she’s going on her first real date.”
“First? You’re kidding me, Lena Goodman.”
“I wish I was,” Mama said. “We’ve got a lot of time to make up.”
Dawn raised her eyebrows, looked at me and nodded.
“I bet,” she said. “And I bet she will,” she added.
Everyone but me laughed.
“Okay,” Dawn said, “I gave you the best cut I could. Remember, before you go to sleep every night, prepare your hair for its own beauty rest. Apply a small amount of the moisturizer your Mama just bought for you, and to stop hair breakage, don’t wear no hair band. We have satin sleep caps, Lena. Maybe you oughta get one for her.”
“Yes,” Mama said. “Absolutely.”
Mama was on a tear now, spirited by our success at the beauty parlor. We took a cab to the Gallery at Market East and to Drawbridge’s Department Store where Daddy had a twenty-percent discount. When I saw the price of the clothes, I didn’t think it mattered if he had a discount or not, but cost didn’t matter to Mama. She wouldn’t let a little thing like breaking our budget for a couple of months stand in her way.
“I don’t want you wearing those granny clothes young girls parade around in these days. Most of them look like sacks from thrift shops. And those clodhoppers they wear…I swear it’s like girls are ashamed to show what they got anymore, or else they don’t have it and don’t have anything to show.”
I tried to explain styles and trends to Mama, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
“What makes you look good is in style and what doesn’t is out of style in my book,” she said.
We wandered through the teen fashions unsuccessfully. Mama didn’t like anything. I thought she would give up on Drawbridge’s, but she decided to go into the adult section, and she stopped in front of a manikin wearing what was called a princess cut blouse and skirt. It was a black and silver polyester jacquard material with a floral pattern on the blouse and a modest leaf pattern on the skirt. Because of the curve-enhancing princess shape in front and back, Mama thought it was sexy and stylish.
When I stepped out of the fitting room, Mama and people around her looked impressed. Other customers paused to look at us, too. I was embarrassed by the attention.
“What a perfect fit and what a beautiful figure your daughter has, Mrs. Goodman. She could model for us,” the saleswoman said. “She looks like she’s in her early twenties.”
“Her father will have to sit at the door with a shotgun, you buy her that dress,” a woman just passing said to Mama.
Mama was bursting with pride, her eyes electric, her shoulders hoisted.
“That’s the latest fashion, you say?” she asked the saleswoman.
“Yes ma’am. It just came in yesterday, matter of fact.”
“We’ll take it,” Mama decided.
It was an expensive outfit because of its designer, but Mama was determined.
“Your father can pick up some overtime,” she told me when I showed her the tag.
“I don’t need anything this expensive, Mama.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “The better you look Saturday night, the nicer you’ll be treated. He’s not going to take you to any Denny’s in this,” she said laughing. “That’s for sure.”
“Maybe he can’t afford to do anything else, Mama,” I said. After all, I didn’t know anything about him and Mama really didn’t know much either.
“That doesn’t matter,” Mama said. “When a woman impresses a man, he doesn’t think of budgets and bank accounts and what he can and can’t afford. He just thinks about one thing: impressing her. I know men, honey. And before long now, you’re going to know them too, know just what to expect.
“Your education is starting a little later than mine did, but you have the benefit of me,” she decided, nodding. “Truth is, I wish I had me when I was younger. I didn’t have an easy time of it. My mother thought sex was such a dirty word, she had me and my sister and brother thinking we had been born through some sort of pollination, you know, like flowers? It got sprinkled on her stomach and we got created.”
I smirked at her attempt at a joke, but she laughed.
“I’m not being funny. All she knew was the birds and the bees and that’s what bees do; don’t they spread the pollen? Bet you didn’t think I knew so much about science, huh?
“I got a lot of surprises up my sleeve, Ice.”
Suddenly, I was afraid she was telling the truth.
My heart ticked like a time bomb as Saturday night drew closer. That night after we had done all our shopping, Mama made me put on the outfit we had bought so I could model for Daddy. First, she worked on my makeup. She sat me in front of her vanity table and stood behind me gazing at my face in the mirror, scrutinizing. She decided I needed a little eye shadow. I thought it was too much, but she claimed my eyes were my strongest feature and I should do all I could to make them stand out.
“You have a natural pout,” she told me, and decided to enhance it by dabbing a sliver of lip gloss onto the center of my lower lip. She showed me a trick to prevent lipstick from getting on my teeth. I was to put my finger in my mouth and close my lips. When I withdrew my finger, it removed any excess color.
“Someone once told me a beautiful woman’s face was like an artist’s palette. The artist sees the picture there and brings it out. You got to do the same with your face, Ice. Make it a work of art. That’s what I do,” she said softly, but with deep feeling.
I remember looking up at her and thinking with surprise that she had more depth to her than I had ever imagined. Looking at myself in the mirror and at her behind me, standing there so proudly, I realized my mama had nothing but her good looks to rely on to give her meaning and purpose in life. Most of her girlfriends did look at her enviously and wanted to be in her company because her beauty had a way of spreading to them, embracing them, keeping them under wing. People, especially men, looked their way because Mama strolled along in the center. Maybe with the right management and some lucky breaks Mama could have been a model. As she sat there night after night, thumbing through those beauty magazines and gazing at the women who advertised beauty products or fashions, she had to be tantalized, taunted and frustrated knowing how much more beautiful and special she was.
It was funny how all this came to me in those moments before her vanity mirror. We had never had a real mother-daughter conversation about such things. Through the endless flow of complaints and moans she voiced in our small world, I was burdened with the task of understanding what she really meant and really felt. I had to read between all those crooked lines until I suddenly realized who she was.
Mama was a beautiful flower that had been plucked too early and placed in the confines of some vase where it finished blossoming and then battled time and age to keep from losing its special blush. Now she was looking at me and thinking I would complete her, I would do all that she had been unable to do and be all that she had dreamed she would be.
“Children are our true redemption,” the minister told us all one Sunday. “We believe they will redeem us for failing to be all that we had hoped to be, that they will do what we dreamed we should do and be whom we thought we should be. That’s a healthy thing. ‘Go forth and multiply,’” he recited.
The burden of such responsibility was heavy and something I didn’t want, but I didn’t have the hardness in me to turn around and say, “All this is your world, Mama, not mine. I don’t need to be in the spotlight. I don’t mind being in the chorus. It’s the music that matters most.”
Of course, I kept my famously shut-tight mouth zipped.
“All right,” she declared when we were finished. “Put on your dress. Let’s show your father how blind he’s been by treating you like a little girl.”
I was almost as nervous dressing for Daddy as I was to be dressing for Shawn on Saturday. Mama came into my room to make sure I had everything right. She had bought me a pair of shoes to complete the outfit and had given me her precious pieces of jewelry to wear: her pearl necklace on a gold chain with the matching pearl earrings.
“Turn down that music, Cameron Goodman,” she cried from my doorway, “and get yourself ready for a real surprise.”
I felt like I was a runway model when I crossed from my room to the living room. Daddy obeyed Mama’s command, turning down his music, and then she brought me into the living room. When he looked up from his big cushioned chair, his eyes did a dance of their own, enlarging, brightening, blinking and then suddenly narrowing with a kind of dark veil of sadness. I could see it clearly in his face. It was as if his thoughts were being scrolled over his forehead in big white letters: My little girl is gone and in her place is this beautiful young woman who is sure to be plucked like her mother and taken off to be planted in someone else’s garden. All I will have are the memories.
“Well?” Mama demanded. “Don’t just sit there acting mute too, Cameron Goodman. Say something. I spent a lot of time and energy on all this.”
“She’s…absolutely beautiful, Lena.”
“You like the outfit?”
“Yeah,” he said nodding emphatically.
“Good. You’re going to need to remember that when you see the bill.”
His smile froze, but he didn’t show any anger or displeasure.
“She reminds me a lot of you, Lena, when I first set eyes on you,” Daddy said.
Mama absolutely glowed.
“Told you,” she whispered and squeezed my hand. “She’s prettier than I was, Cameron. I didn’t know anything about hair and makeup then.”
“You were a natural.”
“There’s no such thing. Every woman needs to have her good qualities highlighted,” Mama insisted.
Daddy sat back, his smile warming again. Then he drew a serious expression from his thoughts.
“Where’s this Shawn taking her?” he asked.
“How am I supposed to know? The man isn’t here, is he? And when he comes, I don’t want you treating him like one of your suspects or something.”
“I don’t have suspects,” Daddy said. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong in knowing your daughter’s whereabouts when she goes out.”
“I’m warning you,” Mama replied. “I went through a lot of trouble to make this night special for her. Don’t do anything to mess that up or I’ll heave your precious old records out the window.”
Daddy’s face turned ashen for a moment and then he forced a laugh, shook his head and put up his hands.
“Yes, boss,” he said and gazed at me. “I want you to have a good time, honey. I do.”
I didn’t say anything. My heart was doing too many flip-flops and there was a lump in my throat big enough to choke a horse.
Mama returned to my room with me to watch me put my new things away. She mumbled about Daddy not appreciating her efforts enough but blamed it on his being a man.
“Men expect too much and appreciate too little,” she lectured. “They think you go into your room, fiddle about for a while and then come out looking like a million dollars. If you’re taking too long, they moan and groan, but if you didn’t look your best, they’d be unhappy because they wouldn’t get all the congratulatory slaps on the back from their jealous friends.
“Men tell you they don’t want other men gawking at you, but believe me, Ice, that’s exactly what they want. It’s like everything else they own. They want to drive a fancy car so everyone will look at them and be jealous. They want expensive watches and rings to draw green eyes. It’s the same with their women.”
I guess my eyebrows were scrunched. She stopped talking and smirked.
“You don’t believe me, do you? What? You don’t think men think of women as another possession? You still living in your books, girl. Forget all that romantic slop. What I’m telling you is the truth, is reality. You’re going to start learning about the real world now and you’ll come back to me and say, ‘Mama, you were right. Tell me more so I know how to deal with it all out there.’
“That’s what you’ll be doing,” she said nodding to herself and hanging up my skirt and blouse. “And I’ll have lots more to tell you, too, more than you could ever learn from books and music.”
She turned to me and looked thoughtful, looked on the verge of a decision. She made it quickly.
“Your daddy isn’t the only man I’ve been with, Ice. I can see in your face that the news surprises, even hurts you, but a daughter becomes a woman when she can sit with her mama and hear about her mama’s love life without squirming and hating her for it.”
She was quiet. Maybe she was waiting for me to say I was ready, but I wasn’t and maybe never would be.
“Don’t worry,” she concluded. “I’ll know when it’s the right time to tell you more about the real world.”
She started out and stopped in the doorway, smiling.
“I wish I could be invisible, like one of them tiny angels, and ride on your shoulder tomorrow night and whisper advice in your ear when you need it.
“But you’ll be fine,” she decided. “You’re my daughter. You got to have inherited something more than my good looks. Just don’t be afraid to have some fun,” she advised. She looked angry. “Don’t be listening to those church choir songs in your head either. Last thing any man wants is to be holding hands with a saint or someone who’s there to remind him he’s headed for everlasting Hell just because he thinks you’re pretty and wants to kiss you.
“If you got to sing anything, sing something lively,” she said and left.
Poor Mama, I thought. She thinks this is all one big movie or musical.
And the irony was she thought she was getting me prepared for the real world.
Maybe there was no real world. Maybe it was all makeup and lights and curtains opening and closing.
And when you fell off the stage, that was when you were really dead or forgotten. No applause, no music, nothing but the silences so many people seemed to fear.