I pull the F-150 into one of the parking slots in front of the salon and my heart starts to pound. It gets louder as I climb down from the truck and shut the door behind me. I breathe in the desert for the first time since I left that Sunday so long ago. The air smells of cumin from the Food Shark a few blocks away. I never knew that broken concrete and cracked stucco had any sort of scent at all, but it does. It smells like hard mud that’s baked in the sun for decades. It smells like home.
Ramon Campos’s old green Bronco rolls past, tailpipe hitting the road every few feet, but I’m struck by the silence. No sound of traffic or voices or crush of snow. Was it always this quiet? My breath doesn’t freeze in front of my face and I unzip my quilted coat and leave it in the truck. Is Marfa having a heat wave or have I gotten used to living in a blizzard?
I hit the lock on the key fob, the truck chirps, and the lights flash as I stare at the WALK-INS WELCOME sign and the logo of a bottle of hair dye painted on the door. I’ve waited for this for so long. Wanted it since my spirit roamed UMC El Paso, yet I’m afraid, and it feels like my boots weigh twenty pounds each. I force one foot in front of the other. The front door is as heavy as I remember, but the cowbell hanging on the handle sounds louder.
I take everything in all at once: the smell of hair solutions, shampoo and super-hold, the sight of Lorna wrapping Rosita Ortega’s hair on pink rods, and the sound of Astrid Rojas under a dryer with a People magazine. I worked here for five years, and it feels different and familiar at the same time.
I look at my old station, and it’s like I never left. After I got my cosmetology
license, I painted BIG DREAMS DESERVE BIG HAIR in big purple letters above my mirror. It’s still there along with my styling tools and shears. Everything is the same—except there’s a big stuffed unicorn sitting in my chair.
“Can I help you?” Lorna asks.
I turn my attention to her and place a hand on my stomach. “I have a two o’clock appointment with Carla Jean.”
She gives my hair a once-over, and I recognize the pity lowering her brows. The kind of pity reserved for abandoned dogs, train wrecks, and straight hair. “Carla Jean,” she hollers, and I hear my momma talking to herself like she’s always done. My pounding heart beats against my ribs and my breath whooshes from my lungs a moment before she appears. “You must be Edie.”
Then everything stops. Heart, lungs, time. That’s my momma’s voice, but about the only thing I recognize is her hair. It’s still ratted like a tumbleweed, but she’s lost so much weight, I can’t say that I’d know her if we passed on the street. Her face is thinner, her crow’s feet are deeper around her eyes, and her jawline is a bit slack without a double chin to fill it out.
“Come on over.”
My insides are stuck on pause, and I feel light-headed as I follow her across the small room and sit in her salon chair. She looks good, but she doesn’t look like herself. I guess that makes two of us.
“Well, you’re just pretty as a picture.” She runs her fingers through my hair and gets a feel for the volume and texture. “What can I do for you today?”
All my life, Momma’s been big. In her and Daddy’s wedding picture she was pregnant with me. There hasn’t been a time since I was born when she’s been under 210, and it isn’t as if she’s a tall woman. She’s so changed, it’s like I don’t know her, but then I smell her Yardley English Rose perfume and tears fill my eyes. I want to fall on her neck and tell her I love her and cry until I’m out of tears. Astrid’s hair dryer shuts off, and I choke and snort trying to hold back.
“Man troubles?” Momma asks.
I don’t have a man. I have someone who makes me laugh and gives me orgasms, but Oliver is not my man. I wipe my eyes and nod because I can’t tell her the truth.
“Men are the worst kinda trouble,” Lorna chimes in.
“Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em,” Rosita adds.
Astrid looks up from her magazine. “Not unless there’s a life insurance policy.”
Momma hands me a tissue box and I put it in my lap. “We’ve all had our share.” She does that tsk-tsk thing she’s always done and then says, “Well, sugar, there’s nothin’ that can’t be made better with an updated look.”
I blow my nose and almost smile. Momma hasn’t had an updated hairdo since she visited Dollywood in 1994.
“Oh honey, what happened to your hand?”
I’m wearing the neoprene splint with the Velcro wrapped around my pinky and ring fingers. “Boatin’ accident,” I lie, but it could have happened that way. The orthopedic surgeon is happy with my progress and gave me new hand exercises, but it’s going to take a while before I don’t have to wear any sort of brace. “My dinghy collided with the Neptune at the Revenge Regatta.” Or something like that. “I would have been skipper if it wasn’t for the weight restriction.”
Momma just looks at me and nods her head up and down. “Well, if that don’t beat all. You thinkin’ about goin’ platinum?”
I shake my head. No way am I going to let Momma strip my hair.
I watch her through the mirror as she grabs a salon towel and pins it around my neck. “A perm would give you some volume. I just got new spiral rods and such.”
Not a chance. “I think I need a shampoo and blowout.” She looks so disappointed that I didn’t take her suggestions, I add, “And curled with your hot wand and fluffed some.”
Momma’s eyes light up. “I just got a three-barrel curlin’ crimper I’ve been dyin’ to try out on someone.”
That makes me a little nervous, but it’s better than a perm.
“I’ll have you lookin’ so fine, your man will come runnin’ back faster than a chicken on a Cheeto.”