PullMyHair Page 8

  Her birthday was just around the corner. She’d be thirty-three years old. She moved her head this way and that way, looking for any signs of premature aging. She was happy she’d inherited her mother’s genetic make-up in that department. Not a sign of a wrinkle to be found anywhere on her smooth, deep brown skin.

  At least, she thought she inherited it from her mother. She’d never met her father, and besides the description her mother gave, wouldn’t know the man if he were standing buck-naked in front of her waving a neon flag. She shoved the thought of her unknown sperm donor to the recesses of her mind. As she usually did whenever thoughts of him would surface.

  She had the beginnings of a headache and opened the medicine cabinet to withdraw her prescription pain reliever. She’d been increasingly suffering from headaches and had been forced to seek medical attention as ibuprofen no longer did the trick in providing her relief. She poured a small paper cup of water and swallowed the small pills before she returned the bottle to the cabinet.

  She smoothed on a light dusting of blush to her high cheekbones and darkened her eyelashes before she outlined her full lips and applied a coral-colored lipstick. When she finished applying her makeup, she titled her head to the side and made a small moue with her lips and winked, laughing to herself. She left the bathroom and went to her walk-in closet, in search of the right outfit to wear to lunch.

  The group of ladies she was meeting were all members of the same club that she and Greg joined several years ago. They were all nice enough, if a tad on the catty side. Liza had learned quickly that the women were nice on the outside, butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, as Karina’s Big Momma would say, but they could be total bitches at times.

  Liza had seen for herself how they’d turned on one of their own when the Ellis’ lost a great majority of their money because Marcus Ellis hadn’t had the foresight to diversify his portfolio. When the semi-crash happened, they’d been left with nothing.

  Valerie Ellis had turned to her friends for support, but they’d turned away from her as though her financial problems were some disease they could catch. Liza had been empathetic to the woman and once offered to buy lunch, just to be nice.

  Wrong answer.

  Valerie Ellis had all but cursed her out in her very precise English, saying that she could “afford to buy her own damn lunch”. In fact, she insisted on buying the lunch for every damn body at the table. She and Marcus had only experienced a minor setback. It was by no means the end of the world for them. They were just fine financially.

  Within a few weeks, no one was really surprised when Valerie decided to go to a secluded spa, not saying exactly where this spa was located, and neither was anyone surprised when within days of her departure the large moving trucks appeared outside the Ellis’ home.

  What the incident had taught Liza was twofold. The women in this community were too proud to accept what they saw as a “handout” and her extension of friendship was neither wanted nor appreciated. It also taught her to keep her well-meaning intentions to herself.

  Back in her neighborhood in North Stanton, neighbors always helped neighbors in time of need. It was automatic and nothing out of the ordinary. God only knew she and her mother had received their fare share of “help” over the years.

  She selected and dressed in a cream-colored cashmere sweater, cocoa brown full legged slacks, and low-heeled, brown, Prada mules. She quickly dumped the contents of one purse into the matching brown purse and left the room. After setting the alarm on the house, she went through the adjoining door that led to the garage and opened her car door.

  She eased into the leathered seats of her low-slung Mercedes and reversed out of the garage, carefully maneuvering out of the circular driveway as she automatically turned on the high-powered car stereo and the car filled with the hard-pounding smooth rhythmic beat of her favorite NuSoul band.

  “Take me away from here, far away from here…” she sang along with the female lead vocalist as she drove to the club, unconsciously gripping the steering wheel tightly as she sang.

  When she arrived at the club, she drove to the front entry and allowed the valet to open her car door for her. She deposited the keys into his white-gloved hands and walked to the entry and smiled thanks when the attendant opened the door for her.

  She removed her sunglasses, depositing them into their case and tucked them inside her purse, and automatically cast an admiring gaze around the interior of the club.

  The interior was decorated in rich earth tones of red and gold, with classic artwork adorning the walls. As she walked toward the double doors that would take her inside the luncheon area, the heels of her mules sunk into the plush deep red carpet.

  She felt many eyes on her, as she walked with studied confidence toward the table of waving women. Her peripheral vision caught one onlooker eyeballing her and saw the woman’s face relax into a smile when she noticed the table of women welcoming her.

  Whatever.

  Liza plastered a smile on her face as she walked up to the table and sat down.

  “Sorry I’m late, what did I miss?” she said and smiled before picking up and glancing over the menu.

  “Not much. Leslie was telling us about the Goodman’s. Did you hear about them?” Michelle asked.

  Michelle was one of the bitchier of the women in the group. She seemed to take a secret delight in the painful episodes in the lives of their friends than anyone else. Liza stole a quick glance over the woman, taking her in, in one quick once-over.

  Her long blond hair was fluffed and teased within an inch of its life, landing at the top of her shoulders. She peered behind her small, lightly tinted glasses with an ugly gleam of delight in her aqua-colored, close-set eyes as she began to gossip about the latest news and how Elaine Goodman caught her husband red-handed having sex with the nanny.

  “And what makes it so bad, is that they planned on taking a cruise next week and leaving the children at home! How in the world will she find someone else on short notice?” she asked, ending the tale. Her cheeks hollowed from the long drink she took from the straw in her tea.

  All of that damn gossiping made a woman mighty thirsty.

  And what the hell was wrong with this woman that she thought the worst thing about the situation was a lack of childcare.

  “You think that’s the worst of it? The fact that she may have to cancel her cruise reservation? Not that she caught her husband screwing the nanny?” Liza tried her best to leave it alone. Tried her damnedest.

  But hell, sometimes, she had to call it like it was.

  She’d have Greg’s nuts on a silver platter; straight-up served Hungarian meatball style around a bed of crisp green lettuce, if she’d been the one to bust him fucking the nanny.

  “Of course not, Liza.” Michelle trained her beady stare in Liza’s direction, and Liza caught the flash of irritation before the woman could mask it. “I was simply making an observation,” she finished with a small…tight…smile.

  “And so was I,” Liza volleyed back and raised one eyebrow at the woman. Just barely. Just barely she refrained from giving Michelle her real opinions.

  Sometimes the country club life was harder for her to navigate than her life in North Stanton had been.

  “So, Liza, did you and Greg go and check out that musical showing in Austin, yet?”

  Liza turned her gaze away from Michelle and smiled at Luanne. Lu was the newest member in the group and Liza had taken an instant liking to the small Asian woman. She and her husband Mac met when Mac was stationed in Korea during his short tenure with the military.

  When they’d moved back to Stanton, Mac had bought one of the newer houses on the row, having admired the area from the time he’d been a child on the outside looking in. Like Liza, Luanne’s husband Mac had grown up in North Stanton. North Stanton had no respect of person. It was an equal-opportunity poverty-stricken community. White, black, brown…all were welcomed.

  Mac had proudly brought his new wife hom
e ignoring the polite stares and settled into his new home with his wife, content to stay in his own world.

  Luanne, on the other hand, was not content to stay at home puttering in the garden. She was vivacious, funny and sweet. And once the others met her and had gotten to know her, her natural vivacious, sometimes outrageous personality, had won them all over.

  Liza had felt an instant kinship with the woman upon meeting her, as she too found herself feeling like the odd woman out when she first joined the club. There was something about growing up poor and disenfranchised that would always make her the slightest bit aware of things she probably wouldn’t be otherwise. Things that weren’t race related. Things that were universal to the poor everywhere.

  “The one with all the stomping?” she laughed, referring to the Broadway show that had won several Tony awards. And although she’d enjoyed the stomping and beating it, had given her a serious headache by the end.

  “I wonder where they’ll live now?” Michelle asked.

  Damn. She just couldn’t let it go. Once Michelle got hold of gossip, she was like a pit bull with a rawhide.

  “I mean, where she’ll live. Didn’t she file for divorce?” she asked.

  “Hmmm. Who knows? But I sure would have loved to be a fly on the wall during those proceedings,” Debra said. Debra was nice enough when Michelle wasn’t around. But once Michelle was in attendance, she played bitch partner with her. Teaming up to laugh and gossip at the chosen victim.

  “Hopefully, they’ll recover.” Leslie piped in, before turning to Liza, “Liza, I saw that musical too! I went with my mom. She’s kind of hard of hearing, so she said she loved how well she could hear all the nice soft music. Poor thing. Whereas it was loud as hell to us, Mom thought it sounded like elevator music!”

  Leslie and her husband Raymond had been apart of the Regency Community from the time they were both children. They’d known each other their entire lives and when they married it was natural they’d settle in the same community that they’d grown up in.

  The women stopped speaking when their lunch arrived. Throughout the luncheon, try as she might, Liza just couldn’t get into the conversation. For some reason, she was beyond irked at the stabbing comments from Michelle and her demon spawned sidekick Debra. Yeah, she was off today.

  Usually, she could brush it off, but today, their constant gossip about the Goodman’s misfortune, grated on her last nerve. Maybe it was the glee with which the beady-eyed Michelle told the story. Or maybe it was the way that her eyes would widen, a sly-assed grin on her face as she all but rubbed her hands together in creepy delight as she gave amazing details about Stan Goodman’s affairs, along with his purported sexual prowess in the bedroom.

  Whatever it was, she knew she needed to get away for a minute or she’d say something she’d regret later in hindsight.

  “Excuse me ladies, I need to visit the restroom.”

  She couldn’t leave the table fast enough and almost tripped over the thick carpet in her haste to get away. Once inside the bathroom she breathed an audible sigh of relief and slowly peeled her body from the door, glad there was no one in the opulent ladies room other than herself and the attendant.

  “Honey, are you okay?”

  Liza looked up from the sink, which she had been standing in front of staring into the mirror not really seeing anything. She had no idea how long she’d been staring off into space. Her mind had been a million miles away. She turned to the older woman with a practiced smile on her face, but stopped as she instantly recognized her.

  “Sister Pauline?” she asked. She couldn’t believe it was Sister Pauline from the church she’d grown up in. The old woman hadn’t aged a bit!

  Her dark brown skin was liberally sprinkled with moles and freckles dotted across the bridge of her large, bell -shaped nose. Her dark eyes seemed magnified behind the thick lenses of her bifocals and Liza laughed inwardly at her eyebrows. Sister Pauline obviously still shaved her eyebrows completely off, and redrew them in thick and black, big and arched, giving her a wide-eyed permanent look of surprise.

  The old woman scrunched her large nose up and peered into Liza’s face behind her thick pop-bottle glasses. “Liza LeCroix? Girl, is that you?” She laughed. “Honey, let me look at you all grown up!” she said, getting close to Liza. “Girl, you better get over here and give Sister Pauline a hug!” she said, hugging her as she breathed heavily into Liza’s face.

  Yep. If she’d thought she was mistaken before, the minute the old woman’s breath hit Liza’s nostrils, she knew it was Sister Pauline. After all these years, not only did she look the same, she still had funky breath.

  Liza felt tears in the back of her eyes, and not because of the old woman’s horrendous breath. Somehow, seeing the familiar watery-eyed woman from her childhood was overwhelming. She hugged Sister Pauline fiercely, smoothing her hands over the woman’s bony back.

  “Baby, you’re crushing Sister Pauline!”

  Liza laughed and released the older woman. She’d forgotten how she’d refer to herself in the first person.

  “Sorry, Sister Pauline. How’ve you been? I didn’t know you worked here,” Liza said, taking a soft tissue from the marble sink vanity and lightly dabbing at her eyes.

  “Chile, I been working here for a while! I usually work evenings though. I could ask how you’ve been, but I can already tell that, baby…you look good! Tell Sister Pauline what you been up to. And how’s that mama of yours?” she asked, and listened with a wide smile plastered on her face as Liza told her how she’d gone to college and received her bachelor’s degree as well as master’s degree in social work, with an emphasis on helping children and adolescents.

  “Oh, baby, that’s so nice. But what about your mother? What’s she up to these days? She hightailed it out of Stanton as soon as you left and nobody’s seen hide nor tail of her since!”

  “Yes, Mom left when I went to the University. She lives out in Oakland with one of her sisters. She always said she’d go back to California as soon as I graduated,” Liza forced a smile on her face.

  “Umm, umm umm. No offense, baby, but Edna was always a selfish trollop, if you ask Sister Pauline. She could have waited ‘til you finished school before she left her only baby girl alone,” she said.

  Sister Pauline’s lips were pressed tightly together and pooched up, the upper lip touching the end of her nose as though she smelled something rank. Her eyebrows were lowered above squinted eyes, as she tsk’d and shook her head in obvious disgust over her mother’s desertion.

  The look on her heavily lined face was one that only a black woman of her age could have and get away with. “Well any way, that’s good about you and your social work. I always wanted to be a social worker. I bet you love that work, don’t you? Being able to help a young girl…kind of like how you was helped by all them social workers you and your mama had, when you was growin’ up.”

  “Well, actually Sister Pauline…I don’t work, ma’am.” Liza was suddenly ashamed. “I married my husband, Greg. He’s an attorney. He’s a partner in his firm.”

  “Well, that’s good baby, that you don’t have to work. I think it’s nice when a woman can stay at home with her children. Too many folks today let other folks raise their kids. Then they wonder why the little bastards grow up trying to set off bombs at the schools and such,” Sister Pauline said, shaking her head. “Umm, umm, umm. It’s a damn shame, it’s a damn shame, is what it is. All I’d need to have is them kids for one day. Just one damn day. One day with Sister Pauline and their little asses would stop acting a fool. One day with Sister Pauline and they’d see the light. The little fuckers. Help ‘em Lord!” she said, suddenly catching the spirit as she lifted her hands and waved them in the air.

  Sister Pauline had caught what was known as a “mini-spirit”. It always hit her like that. Usually after a tirade, she’d catch the “spirit” of God.

  Liza was torn between laughing and crying. Laughing because Sister Pauline hadn’t changed a bi
t. She’d cursed in one breath and praised God with the other.

  Crying because she felt ashamed.

  She’d gone into social work for the reason Sister Pauline mentioned. To help young people, young women in particular, who were living in poverty, but had potential for so much more. Potential that was often overlooked when a child lived in the projects.

  “No, Sister Pauline, I don’t have children.”

  “What? No children? How long you been married, girl?”

  “Seven years, ma’am.”

  “Hmm.” She humphed, peering at Liza over the top of the glasses perched at the end of her large nose. “What? He got that penis disability or something?”

  “Penis disability?”

  “Girl, don’t play with Sister Pauline. You know what I mean. When a man can’t get his willy wonka up.”

  “You mean erectile dysfunction?”

  “You saying it, so that tells me you know what the hell Sister Pauline is talkin’ about! They got some pills that a get his ass hard as a damn rock. Do you remember Sister Roberta Hall?” When Liza nodded her head, she continued. “Well, a few years back her old man was having them problems. Roberta went on that Internet and bought some of them penis pills! Honey, he’s been hittin’ it like a porn star, ever since!” She laughed so hard Liza had to lightly thump her on the back to help clear her throat.

  “No, ma’am. He doesn’t have a problem with that. We’ve just decided to wait until the time is right,” she said, trying her hardest not to laugh.

  “Lord have mercy, chile! If it ain’t right after seven years…when the hell it’s gone be right? And if you don’t have kids at home, why aren’t you out there working as a social worker? Why aren’t you helping out children who need you? What did you get all that education for in the first place? To live on the Hill? You know, the good Lord charges us to help each other. He allowed you to get all that good education, girl! You need to use it.”

  Liza stared at the woman, a queasy sensation pooling in the pit of her stomach at her words.

  She knew in her heart that the old woman was right on all counts. Even if she did sound crazy as hell mixing religion and cursing like that.