Free The Wisdom of Hair by Kim Boykin Page B

Clarence Carter could read my mind. Every time he declared his own weakness for his lover, Sara Jane would pick up a spoon, a salt shaker, or anything else handy that she could use for a microphone and sing right along with him.
    I knew Sara Jane liked everything just so and hated to leave the kitchen undone. I’d just enough wine in me to think I couldn’t live another day without telling her about all of Emma’s things, especially that little box in the drawer behind the soup spoons. I knew what I was doing, sure as the world.
    “Oh, just let the dishes drain tonight,” she said, which didn’t work into my plan at all. “Let’s sit outside on the porch and finish our wine. I have something I want to ask you.”
    “Lazy,” I said, flicking dishwater at her off the ends of my fingertips. Clarence gave one last James Brown yowl as Sara Jane scooped up a handful of silverware and opened the drawer real wide, and stopped just short of putting the knives and forks away.
    “Zora, why do you have a wrapped present in your silverware drawer?”
    “Oh, that. It’s not mine.”
    “Well, who the hell does it belong to?”
    “Winston’s wife, Emma. She left lots of things here, dresses and such. I think she bought them and hid them from Winston so he wouldn’t get mad. I just let everything be. Ooh, I love that song,” I said as soon as I heard the first few bars of “Sixty Minute Man.” “Would you turn up the radio? My hands are wet.”
    “Everything?” she asked, ignoring The Dominoes altogether.
    We dried our hands on the dishcloth we’d used for dancing. I showed her the dresses in the boxes under the bed and two in the top of my closet. I really made over them because I knew it was eating Sara Jane to know what was in the little box almost as much as it was eating me.
    “Oh, my God, you just have to see this cute little angora set. It’s blue with little pearl buttons. They look like real pearls.” I didn’t have the first clue as to what real pearls looked like, but I pulled a box out of the bottom drawer of the bureau and tried to act surprised when she stopped me from opening it.
    “Zora, why didn’t you open that present?”
    “Sara Jane, it’s not mine. Besides, it’s wrapped and it just wouldn’t be right. I’ve got to tell you, I felt so guilty going through all of Emma’s stuff, I just couldn’t,” I said, like I hadn’t taken a complete inventory of Emma’s new clothes and tried on every single piece.
    “Don’t you want to know what’s in there?”
    “You don’t think we should open it, do you?”
    “Hell, yes,” she said, tearing into it like it was Christmas morning.
    The box wasn’t taped shut. When she opened it and pushed the powder-blue tissue paper aside, we both gasped.
    “My God.” Sara Jane whispered, “Do you think that’s why he’s so sad?”
    I couldn’t say a word. I blamed it on the wine and ran straight to the bathroom. Every time I retched, I saw the Serendipity box under the bed just like I had that first time I cleaned that toilet. I retched again and couldn’t stop.
    “Honey,” Sara Jane cooed as she held my hair back. “You’re so slight. You’ve got to go easy on that wine.”
    I sat on the bathroom floor and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Before I could say anything, Sara Jane had wrung out a cold cloth and was dabbing my face like Nana did when I was sick.
    “You okay?”
    “I don’t know.”
    The baby’s rattle sat on the table for a long time. It was silver with two big hearts engraved on it. A fancy smaller heart linked the two together. The note card inside the box sent me running for the toilet again. “Our love has created something wonderful. I love you. Always, Emma.”
    I told Sara Jane I needed some air, but the truth was I couldn’t stand to be in the same house with that baby’s rattle lying out on the counter. We took our chairs out to the porch where neither one of us said a word for a long time.
    “Zora? Do