WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (12 page)

“There will be an answer, let it be….let it beeeeeee, whisper words of wisdom, let it beeeeeee.” The last note echoed across the hair dryers and cut through a thick fog of Aqua Net hairspray
like a sword.  Heads swirled and eyes bugged.  Low gasps could be heard from a host of
red lips, drowning out the clink of hair curlers, scissor snips, and whirring dryers. I
knew the Beatles song well enough to hum it with her, although I didn’t remember all the words.  But w
ho knew it was socially unacceptable for a Negro woman to sing a white persons song? 
I certainly didn’t.
It was a standoff at the okay corral of beauty shops. Ms. Blanche had no idea she started a commotion. She was singing and scrubbing some poor blonde’s head, unaware that the world
had stopped rotating.  The silence
rose above the noise like a roar of a train. Lena was under the hair dryer flipping through a magazine, oblivious to anything around her. I longed for her to jump up and say “Stop it. Stop it right now. This is wrong.” Basically, I wanted my mother to be someone she wasn’t.
  And then the silence broke with a wrathful noise. 

“Girl, you’re singing is NOT the answer.” Said Cruella Deville or that’s who she looked like to me, so much I
scanned the room for puppies.  She
swiveled in her chair, black cape tied around her neck, elbows poking
out on each side. 
In the chair she looked like a bat sitting right side up but
when stood up, all I could see was a crow flapping its wings and japing its beak. 
 

 “That‘s a Beatles song.” She said pointing her fingers as if Paul McCartney was in her pocket.
You stupid woman. We know
it’s a Beatles song. 
Sit down and shut up.
 My mind
was on the verge of exploding. 
She 
charged across the room stopping mid-center in a glare. 
She raised h
er hand and snapped her fingers.  Ms. Blanche didn’t look up.  She was in the land of scrubbing bubbles. 

“There will be an answer….let it beeee.”
Ms. Blanche sang. 
The hair dryers whirred. The scissors snipped. The bubbles popped.

“Heyyyy” Cruella says sternly. “You…” 

The way this crow was barking orders and snapping fingers, it was apparent she was used to getting her way.   

“Neeegro.” She
spat.  When it hit my ears, I felt my eyes turn black.  Ms. Blanche stopped and looked up, her round hands still inside creamy bubbles and blonde locks.   “Well…about time. 
Don’t you know anything? THAT is a Beatles song.”
She turned to garner votes in her favor but everyone looked away.  This made her more fervent to vent and rage and ramble
as if it was her right to do so.

“Negroes need to stay with their own kind, just like the white trash
and the Mexicans. 
And them, Asian slant eyed people, and what’s those others, those sand negro’s
or Indian people, those kind too.  Separation is essential to each race.  Everyone knows that. 
It also means that they need to sing their
own
 kind of songs, that jiggaboo, jungle stuff, you know, beating drums and tribal whatnots,
God knows what else.  It’s apparent that no one ever told you, so I’m just letting you know as my duty.  I mean, you just can’t hoard in on the likes
of fine w
hite peoples musical abilities.”  She touched her heart as if she was talking about herself.  “
I
t will taint their reputation and who knows what will be next, interracial breeding, mixed bands and we—,” she glanced around as if she had a Manson following.  “And we just can’t have that.” 

My eyes feel like they will pop out of their sockets and my ears are burning.  The whole time she’s yacking, all I see is a bird.  An old black
crow cawing. 
Caw! Caw! Caw!
 
The wings of her black cape flapped as she talked with her hands.  Her chiseled nose a bird beak, her forked tongue curling in cruelty, her black hair, slick like wet feathers. 
She
was one of
those
people.  People
without a filter. The kind of people who think it’s their God given right to bad mouth others, tear them down,
and set them straight.  And they enjoy doing it.
They make others uncomfortable and move side to side in their seats and touch their hair curlers and turn away to redo lipstick or powder their face and pretend that nothing is happening. Whispers and low gasps filled the room. My inner wild child went crazy. A twig called justice snapped off the family tree. The Nehi soda in my hand fizzled angrily and said, “Rise up Willodean. Slap that biddy upside her winged head.”

I screamed. I stomped a hissy fit across the beauty shop floor. I rose up for justice, plucked the crow naked and tossed her out to the trash and then hugged Ms. Blanche and everyone sang the Beatles song together as it was supposed to be in a
perfect, unprejudiced world. 
But that version only happ
ened in my head.  I sat on the red bench, quiet as a mouse while a twig called j
ustice
lay underneath my feet. 

The whole time the crow bantered, it looked as if Ms. Blanche’s was searching inside herself for a way out of a bad situation.  She turned away, her
eyes me
eting mine. 
I felt the impact of humiliation and 
shame cut me inside as if I felt her pain well up in my gut.  I wanted nothing more than to stand up for her, an
d everything I know to be right and
true, good and noble.  I’d engage my James Dean gene and
bar fight a soda bottle up side that mouthy crow and finish her off by shaving her head and sprayi
ng her eyes shut with hairspray so she’d never forget what she did. 
But then I felt bad because it wasn’t right or good or noble, but gosh darn it—it sure felt like the right thing to do at the time. Instead, I sat on the red bench. Justice denied while fear, heart stopping, debilitating fear kept me there. I was one of
them
. 
The do nothings. The pretend it isn’t happenings. The say nothings. The silent ones. The avoiders.
 

Knowing this made me hate myself. 
I wanted to scream, react, do something, but if I reacted this
whole place would go up in smoke from the whooping Lena Hart would give me for not minding my own business.  My only hope was that Ms. Blanche would just sit on the crow and smash her. 

“I’ma sorry, Ms. Wilshire. I’ll shalt singa that song agains.” Ms. Blanche said in a tender voice. 
What? An apology? Come on Ms. Blanche. C
ut her.  Rip her black weave off her head.  C
urse her, throw soap bubbles, do something!

“Yous lookin’ mighty good, Ms. W. That hairdo maketh you look ten yeers younger.”
What in Sam Hill is happening?
 The flattery
melted the crow’s wrathful demeanor and she softened into another person.  And then the
unthinkable.
 

“No—no—no.” I whisp
ered to myself.  My eyes were wild and my heart thumped loud raging drum beats that pressed my back to the wall.  The crow was morphing right before my eyes.  My feet started tapping unable to control my shaking.  I wanted to simply disappear.  This can’t be happening, again. 
Oh. God. Not again.

I was five years old when I first saw a Dresden. Maw Sue told me they would come, eventually. She didn’t know when or how to prepare me for their arrival. It was a part of the curse she didn’t have the wherewithal
to teach since she avoided it as much as possible, so she wouldn’t have to go to some clinic.  After I saw it for the first time
—
nothing
 could have prepared me.

I was grocery shopping with Lena, standing a few feet behind her and reading an Archie & Jug head comic book. We were on the canned food aisle when I felt a block of energy, a kinetic charge that lifted hair follicles on my neck and arms. It was heart stopping—fear provoking—don’t know what it is—kind of energy. It made me panic
.  I couldn’t think straight. 
I was scared
of what I might see if I lifted my eyes from the page.  I tried to concentrate on the words of the comics but it was nearly impossible. 
I could hear cans hitting the metal shopping cart, one after another along with the pitter-patter of Lena’s
peep toe heels.  I lifted the comic book higher so I could find my way around, seeing only the floor, the bottom half of Lena’s skirt and legs and the shopping cart wheels, squeaking and off balance.  A few steps forward, I see two sets of feet and another shopping cart on the opposite side moving toward me.  The energy was getting stronger, as if it clicked on my skin like rubber bands. 
Did I eat something I’m allergic to?  Did a bug bite me and cause fever to make me feel this way?
I
knew what fear did to me, but this was a different sort of fear as if fear and another fear joined hands and came against me. 
Not able to stand it, I lowered the comic book down to my nose, peeping my eyes out and trembling
, my hot breathe heaving against the pages and my skin.  And then I felt silly, because it was only some woman and her daughter.  The young teenage girl had her back to me while she boringly watched her mother pick out vegetables.  Her blonde hair was pure gold as if touched by sun fingers.  Lena’s squealing shopping cart made her turn around.  What started out as a smile on my face—turned to pure horror. 
I blinked a few times, because I just do that to make sure I’m seeing what I’m seeing, those unseen things that cross over in my other vision. Those things I’m not supposed to talk about, except to Maw Sue.
But Maw Sue wasn’t here.  But a Dresden was here and s
he was alive and pulling energy from me. At first I wasn’t exactly sure of what I saw or the feelings I felt. In my normal vision, for a few seconds, she looked like everybody else. Just a normal teenage girl, freckled face, blue eye shadow, lip gloss, long blonde hair, striped t-shirt, bell bottom jeans, a few gold necklaces—attitude. But in seconds, her face transformed into the nightmar
e I’ve dreamed a thousand times.  The dream was a warnin
g, it must have been
.  They exist.  Oh, my God, they exist. 
It was all real, the dream, the nightmarish dream, inside the house, inside the room, inside me.
 
I had never been able to go inside the Dresden room, for fear of what was hidden inside, although I had seen it in my dreams. 
In seconds, the teen’s face transformed as if a shadow moved in front of her, disfiguring her from a normal teen to a white pasty mask of
horrific.  Her face looked as if it was dipped in flour and then dry baked in the sun,
leaving r
igid lines and cracks of awful. 
Small drifts of
white powder disperse from her skin as she turns her face.  The powder drifts and lags behind,
only to swiftly catch back up to her like scattered little ghosts.
And that wasn’t the most terrifying, it was her eyes, or rather where her eyes should be. 
Now nothing but hollow sockets, darkened as the black of night, leaving two holes swallowed the effigy of everything around her, pulling inward the scattered little ghosts like puffs of air, slipping in and
out of her as if they are looking for the eyes of the soul. 
I felt drawn to her—even though she repelled me and
trickled fear in me like none other.  That’s when I heard the scattered little ghosts crying, or maybe it was the teen crying, I’m not sure.  The horrible screams came from the eye sockets, as if she had a house of her own, inside her, next door to me, as I heard it through the cracks of my windows, from my own haunted house.  It was as if we were both bearing witness unto the other, our pains, and our desperate cries to be normal. 
There was a sad tragedy to her
that lifted the folds of my skin and I resisted its impact, for I could not take its connection to me and what it wanted to tell.  I simply freaked out. 

I threw the comic book down and ran screaming down the aisle.
Lena who was at the end aisle had a terrified look on her face.  I tackled her at the waist full force and screaming. 
She dropped a bag of rice and two cans of tomatoes.

“What is it?”
She said frantically. 
I pulled at her clothing and tried to climb her like a wall. The whole time I’m pointing to
the teenager ten feet away and burying my face in Lena’s skirt to keep from looking.  I was only a kid.  I
said the only thing that came to my mind.

“Flour girl. Flour girl. Flour girl.”

Lena reacted with
confusion shushing me over and over and patting me on the back. 
When she realized half the grocery store
had arrived on both ends of the aisle, she was morbidly embarrassed.  I turned around, still clutching my mother’s leg, while the teen and her mother staring at us with concern.  Lena offered up
sincere apologies to the distraught mother and daughter and some lame excuse.