Blessings

by Sheneska Jackson

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

According to Upscale magazine, Sheneska Jackson, the highly acclaimed author of best-seller L'il Mama's Rules, "reveals the priceless, inextricable bond between motherhood and sisterhood, and shows why she's become a beloved chronicler of the heart of women." Her third novel, Blessings has received widespread praise. Heartbroken after a failed attempt to adopt a child, Pat finds a way to nurture others after all. "Hooking up hair was the ultimate blessing and one of the easiest ways to make women feel better about themselves." Little does she know when she opens Blessings Hair Salon, how blessed she will be. To help her, she hires three women, each struggling with tough personal conflicts and all searching for happiness. Jackson focuses on such important issues as female bonding, infertility, adoption, abortion, and the highs and lows of motherhood. Narrator Robin Miles voices the emotional journey, delving into the personal lives of four women discovering their mutual blessings.

Release date: June 9, 1999

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Print pages: 400

Sample

Chapter 1
In this life there are mysteries that will never be fully understood by mere mortals. Questions that when pondered extensively can leave the average human psyche in such a state of disarray that normal brain activity stalls, leaving the ponderer of such questions wallowing in a mass of confusion, aimlessly searching for the unknown, and ultimately leading to a state of mental chaos and cerebral shut-down. Unfortunately, as we all know, there are some questions that are better left unanswered. Questions such as Does God really exist? Is there life after death? Which came first? The chicken or the egg?
Indeed these questions can certainly leave one's mind hopelessly frazzled and disheveled. But there is an even larger question at hand today. A mystery that has eluded the genius of scholars, scientists, and political pundits alike. A question that has dogged the earth for hundreds of years, and even to this day we are nowhere near a breakthrough in this timeless riddle. The question is a serious one. The question is mind boggling. The question is this: Why? For the love of God! Why does it take so long for a woman to get her hair done at the beauty shop?
Many have tried to unravel this mystery, but none have succeeded. Some of the theories to explain this phenomenon include tardiness on the part of the client, overbooking of appointments, and a general lackadaisical attitude on the part of the beautician. Still, the answer to this question has escaped us. We may never get to the bottom of this dilemma, but if we are truly committed to bringing about change we must first tackle the obvious, most irritating, and most unscrupulous element of the equation. And that is this: Beauticians talk too damn much.
Oh yes, it is a natural fact that beauticians love to run their months. No matter where you live, be it North, South, East, or West, it doesn't matter. Where there are beauticians there is chatter. And on this day, in the bustling city of Inglewood, California, inside the small but well-kept beauty salon on the corner of Centinela and LaBrea, the natural facts were in effect.
***
"I just can't believe he could do something like that," Faye said, shaking her head as she ripped open a bag of silky straight weaving hair. "Do you think he did it?"
"Hell no, I don't think he did it," Zuma answered as she meticulously pulled the end of a rat-tail comb through her client's thick hair, creating a perfect one-inch side part. "I know he did it."
"Don't say that," Faye said, pulling the one hundred percent human hair from its bag and shaking it out. "I believe he's innocent. You saw the trial. He didn't look like a killer."
"Well I don't know what trial you were watching, but all I know is this: His blood didn't just get up and walk over to that crime scene. He was there, he did it, he's guilty as sin, and that's all I have to say about that."
"Stop it!" Faye squeaked, the words stinging her ears as if she was the one accused of murder. "He was set up! And to be perfectly honest, I for one am glad that he got off. It's about time we won something around here. We didn't get any justice with Rodney King," she said, a bit surprised by the rising tone of her voice. She paused and brought it down a notch. "That not-guilty verdict was a victory for all of us. We won this time."
"We won?" Zuma said and stuck the comb into her client's hair. She turned to face Faye head-on and put her hands on her hips. "What did we win?" she asked, flinging her hand through the air. "I have yet to see my O.J. prize, honey. Please. We won?" She sucked her teeth. "I've just about had it up to here with everybody assuming that all black people think O.J. Simpson is innocent. Unh-uh, not me. I know he did it. He did it. He did it. He did it!"
"Well, you weren't looking too unhappy when the verdicts came down," Faye reminded Zuma and raised her hand in the air, rationally. "You were sitting right here in this shop jumping up and down with everybody else when we found out O.J. had been set free."
"Hell yeah, I was jumping up and down. But I wasn't jumping for O.J.," she said, and smirked. "I was jumping for Johnnie Cochran. Now that's one bad man. People may not like his tactics, but he was just doing what any other good attorney is supposed to do -- support his client at all costs and win. Shoot, Johnnie Cochran is a damn hero and if he had been white, people would have been begging for him to run for president by now," she said, and pointed a finger for emphasis. "Shit, Johnnie Cochran is the man, but O.J.?" she said, and curled her lips. "Fuck O.J."
"Zuma," Faye said, wincing at her use of foul language.
"Faye," Zuma said, not giving a damn.
"Well, I still don't think he did it. He may know who did it. But he didn't do it himself"
"Hell yeah, he knows who did it. He did it!"
"A man like that cannot kill two people. It's physically impossible," Faye rationalized. "How is O.J. going to kill two people with one knife? I mean, what was the second person doing while O.J. was stabbing the first? Waiting in line talking about, 'Cut me next, O.J. Cut me'?" Faye paused, surprised by the laughter that statement had generated, but she wasn't trying to be funny. "No," she continued. "There's no way a man like that call kill two people."
"A man like that? A man like what?"
"A rich black man like O.J. Simpson has no reason to be killing anybody. O.J. Simpson is black and any black man going up against this racist judicial system in America has got my support."
"O.J. Simpson ain't black. He ain't nothing but another rich, stuck-up white boy. He ain't never used none of his money to help out black folk," she said, and pointed at Faye. "When have you ever heard about O.J. doing something to help out the black community?" she said, and waited briefly for a response, but Faye was dumbfounded. "O.J. hasn't done shit for me," Zuma said with fire. "Shoot. Where was some O.J. when I was in need? Where was some O.J. when my car was being repossessed? Hell, where was some O.J. when my broke ass couldn't pay my light bill last week? Shoot, support O.J? O.J. can kiss my black ass. And I mean that. Shiiit."
***
It had been two years since the verdicts had come down in the O.J. Simpson trial, but the Juice was still a hot topic at Blessings. Blessings was the spot, the place where everybody came for a little pleasant conversation.Never mind that Blessings was a beauty shop. The way people ranted and raved throughout the place, it could easily have been mistaken for a town hall meeting arena. While women with nappy heads waited patiently on the faux leather sofa for hours and sisters with half-wet locks bent over shampoo bowls scratching their dandruff, the conversation between the two beauticians brewed on. Once again the subject had turned to the Juice, and as usual, the conversation was heated. So heated, that even the time-conscious clients had to get in on it.
***
"I know one thing," the lady with blond-streaked hair yelled as she poked her head from beneath the dryer. "If nothing at all, O.J. Simpson is a wife beater. Y'all saw those pictures of Nicole. She didn't beat herself up," she said, then slammed the lid of the dryer back over her head.
"O.J. said he never hit that woman and I believe him," a lady with a head full of loose braids said as she sat in the corner of the faux leather sofa. Her words seemed to ignite the blond-streaked lady's nerves as she poked her head from beneath the dryer again.
"Y'all kill me," she shouted over the rumblings of the old machine she sat underneath. "You women support O.J. like he was some sorta god." She looked sideways toward the lady sitting under the dryer next to her. "I know some of y'all have had your butts beaten by a black man," she said and squinted her eyes at her neighbor, "so don't tell me that O.J. isn't capable of beating his wife. I don't care how rich he is or was, he's still a wife beater."
The lady sitting next to her gasped as she rolled her eyes and pulled her skirt tail down to hide the black-and-blue bruise that stained her round thigh. She crossed her legs and hoped the conversation would end. But it didn't.
"O.J. was framed," another lady called out from the shampoo bowl. Her brown locks were covered in conditioner and as she lifted her head from the bowl, water dripped down the sides of her face. "Those crooked, racist cops set O.J. up. It was a C-O-N-spiracy."
The woman with the loose braids jumped in again. "That's right. That damn Mark Fuhrman ain't no good. This whole thing was a setup from the get-go," she said, scooping a handful of braids out of her face. "Did you hear those tapes he made? Nigger, nigger, nigger. He didn't have no business being on the police force, let alone being a part of the trial."
The blond-streaked lady had nothing to say about that so she just pulled down the lid of her dryer and sat back. But that didn't end the conversation. Another woman with a head of freshly blow-dried hair slammed the Essence magazine she'd been reading onto the counter in front of her. As she turned around to confront the lady with the loose braids her long hair whipped across her face just like one of those girls in the shampoo commercials on TV. "Now, I'm not trying to defend Mark Fuhrman, but the man was a cop. He was just doing his job. So what if he said all that mess on those tapes? That don't mean he framed O.J. Simpson."
"Fuhrman is a red-necked racist. Anybody who could talk about black people the way he did is capable of anything."
"Oh," Shampoo Commercial said. "And I guess you've never uttered a racist word in your whole entire life, huh?" She swung her head around to confront the lady at the shampoo bowl. "I was in here last week when you walked in here bitching and complaining about the Beaner who cut you off and almost made you crash into a tree. Now, does that make you racist against all Hispanic people?"
The lady at the shampoo bowl stuttered and wrapped the white towel that was around her neck over her damp hair as she sat back and shut up.
"And you," Shampoo Commercial said, turning to the woman with loose braids again, her hair whipping through the air. "Remember last month when we were in here talking about the civil rights movement? You said all white people are devils and that you wouldn't care if they all disappeared off the face of the earth." She tilted her head to the side. "Does that make you a racist? Just because you said those words, does that mean you're capable of framing somebody just because they are white?"
The blond-streaked lady realized Shampoo Commercial was on her side and regained enough confidence to poke her head from beneath the dryer again. "I said it before and I'll say it again -- O. J. Simpson is guilty as sin," she chanted like a cheerleader and gave a thumbs-up to Shampoo Commercial. "We've got a killer on the streets," she said as she lost her grip on the dryer's lid and it smacked her on top of her head. She winced, but didn't lose a beat. "And another thing," she said as the dryer's automatic timer buzzed. "That stupid jury in the criminal trial ought to be shamed of themselves."
The bruised woman sitting under the dryer next to her gasped again, but this time she pulled the lid of the dryer from over her head and turned right around to face her opponent. "I've been silent long enough," she said, and pulled her skirt tail down again to hide the black-and-blue mark on her thigh. "Don't go blaming those black people on that jury. They did their jobs. It's not their fault that the prosecution couldn't prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt."
Shampoo Commercial stood up from her seat to walk over to the hair dryer section so she could get in on this phase of the conversation. "No," she said defiantly, "those jurors did not do their jobs."
"Oh yes they did," Loose Braids said as she too walked over to the dryer section. "Those folks ought to be commended. They were locked tip for almost a damn year. Away from their families and everything."
"Hell, I should be so lucky," Blond Streaked interrupted. "I've been looking for an excuse to get away from my family for years." She and Shampoo Commercial chuckled over that. But Loose Braids and the bruised woman were not in the mood for laughing.
"I get so tired of people coming down on that jury." Loose Braids sighed. "Just because they were black and happened to come back with a not guilty verdict, everybody wants to call them stupid. As if a black jury isn't fit to handle a case like this." Bruised nodded as Loose Braids continued. "That black jury made the right decision," she said and pointed directly at the blond-streaked woman. "O.J. Simpson is innocent."
"First of all," Blond Streaked said as she removed the dryer from above her head and stood to her feet. She was all of five foot nothing, but as she looked up at Loose Braids her stance was like that of a giant. "You best get your finger out of my face," she said, eyeing Loose Braids until the finger she pointed had eased its way down. "And second of all, I call those black jurors stupid because they are. They did not do their fucking jobs. They listened to over nine months of testimony and reached their verdict in three hours? Ain't no way in the world you can call that doing your job. They were supposed to deliberate. Have you ever looked up the word deliberate in the dictionary?"
Shampoo Commercial took over from there. "Deliberate means to slowly and methodically come to a decision," she said, moving closer to Loose Braids and speaking as if she were talking to a two-year-old. "Deliberate means to weigh all the evidence. To consider it carefully. How could that jury consider nine months' worth of testimony in three hours? They did not do their jobs," she said, stressing each and every word of her final sentence.
"Yes they did!" Bruised shouted and pushed the dryer lid away from her head again.
"No they didn't!" Blond Streaked and Shampoo Commercial said in unison.
"Yes they did!" Loose Braids groaned.
"No they -- "
"Hey, hey, hey!" a voice shouted from the other side of the shop, forcing the debaters to pause. They all caught their collective breaths as they turned to catch a glimpse of the woman walking their way. "What in the world is going on over here?" the tall, pristine woman asked as she moved between the feuding ladies. She graced the debaters with a smile so pleasant that they all began to feel a bit awkward about the way they had let their conversation get out of hand.
"Sorry," Loose Braids said as she slowly walked back to the sofa and took a seat. "I guess we got a bit too caught up in our conversation."
"Sorry," Blond Streaked said as she sat back down beneath the hair dryer next to Bruised.
"Yeah, I'm sorry too," Shampoo Commercial said as she headed back to her chair and picked up her Essence magazine. "We didn't mean to get so loud. It's just that some people have some very screwed-up ways of thinking."
"Excuse me?" Bruised said and raised an eyebrow.
"Now, now, ladies," the tall woman said calmly yet authoritatively.
"Sorry," Bruised said and faked a smile toward Shampoo Commercial. "I guess you're right. I mean you ought to know with that big ass bowling ball you call a head. With a dome that big I guess you're qualified to think for all of us."
Loose Braids snickered as Shampoo Commercial rolled her eyes, but before another word could be uttered, the tall lady with the soothing smile spoke up. "Everybody just calm down," she said. "This is a beauty shop, not a battlefield," she scolded, and frowned for a second. She looked over her shoulder at Faye and Zuma and squinted her eyes at her fellow beauticians. "See what you guys started?" she said as both Faye and Zuma shrugged their shoulders and smirked. The tall woman looked around the shop at all the disgruntled customers and realized she had to do something quick. Unhappy customers were definitely bad for business. "Hey," she said, clapping her hands together and flashing her smile around to all the ladies. "I've got a joke," she announced, then took a deep gulp before she continued.
Faye and Zuma shot each other a look, but that didn't stop the jokester from putting on her show. "Okay," she said, grinning. "Here we go....What do you get when you cross an elephant with a rhinoceros?"
Faye and Zuma rolled their eyes and sighed. The disgruntled debaters didn't even raise an eyebrow as they looked curiously at one another.
"Okay, we give up," Zuma squawked as she walked behind the client sitting at her hair station and waited for the punch line.
"Elephino!" the tall jokester said and grinned. "Get it? Hell if I know...Ele-phi-no... Hell if I know!...Get it?"
They didn't.
Still everyone gave her a polite chuckle, which was all the tall woman needed to feel satisfied. She stood in the middle of the shop and smiled to herself. Once again she had brought order back to the chaotic shop. So what if no one understood her joke. No one ever understood her jokes. The point was that she had returned the atmosphere back to its proper state of bliss. Keeping the peace was her duty. She owned the place. Her name was Patricia Brown.
Pat looked around at the shop she'd owned now for five years and decided to pick up a broom. The floor was covered in matted, dirty hair from a previous client who had her shoulder-length coif chopped off to a chin-length bob. She sighed as she swept through the shop, smiling at the customers who politely moved their feet out of the way for her. It was Friday evening and as usual the place was packed with women looking to get "did up" for the weekend. She was proud of her shop and the women who frequented it. Be they businesswomen who came in every week to keep up their professional appearances, broke women who had scraped together just enough money minus a tip for the occasional splurge, or the teenage ghetto fabulous girls who'd conned their boyfriends into giving them some cash to get their hair did. The nature of the client didn't matter to Pat. She loved them all.
Pat didn't see hair styling as a form of retail beauty. She saw it as a form of therapy. She was often amazed at what a good hairstyle could do for a person's self-esteem. It was almost miraculous. She'd named her shop Blessings, because that's what she wanted to create. She and the two other women who worked with her could take any average-looking woman off the streets and turn her into a diva with the flip of a hot comb. They were practically miracle workers. Hooking up hair was the ultimate blessing, Pat thought, and one of the easiest ways to make women feel better about themselves.
As she glided her broom across the floor toward the bathroom, Pat stopped for a minute and stuck her head in to take a peek at herself in the mirror. She ran her hand over her freshly styled hair that Zuma had trimmed for her earlier that day. She tucked a single curlicue that Zuma had left dangling over her eye behind her ear and smoothed it down. Zuma was always trying to give Pat's hair a bit of pizzazz, but pizzazz wasn't Pat's style. She was the conservative type. A prim and proper Christian woman whose only vice was her penchant for telling an occasional dirty joke. Pat was tall and slender with an understated beauty that didn't need to be beefed up with silly fashion fads or here-today-gone-tomorrow hairdos. Pat was content with herself and happy, and as she gave herself a final once-over in the mirror, she plastered the smile back onto her face, looked over her shoulder at the fully crowded shop, then continued sweeping.
When she had finally gathered up all the hair with the dustpan and trashed it, she sat down in a chair in the back of the shop and let out a sigh of relief as she gazed around. This was the first time Pat had been off her feet all day, and even though she still had a slew of heads to finish, she couldn't resist stealing a couple minutes of solitary relaxation. She glanced at her friends, Faye and Zuma, as they worked feverishly on their clients' heads. It was already getting dark outside and still her shop was packed with people. She knew she wouldn't get home before midnight tonight, but that was the norm on Fridays. She always kept the shop open late on the weekends to meet the demands of her ever-increasing clientele. Fridays and Saturdays were the days her shop made the most money and although the weekend was always hectic, she performed her duties with great pride. Yes, she was overworked, but that was a price she was willing to pay for success. More than anything, Pat was proud. Blessings was her baby. Her very own beauty shop. Her very own business. Her husband had bought the shop for her, but she had made it her own. Not only was she a wife, she was an entrepreneur now, and her life had taken on new meaning. And that was a blessing in and of itself.
To outsiders looking in, Pat had the perfect relationship with her man. He was rich by black folks' standards, meaning he owned a home, had a nice car, good job, and no apparent addictions. He loved Pat to death and gave her everything she ever wanted. But there was one thing that Pat's husband could not give her. He was a good man, but he wasn't God. He couldn't part the seas, turn water into wine, or heal the sick. So for now Pat had to make the most of the things her husband did give her, the most important thing in her life -- her beauty shop.
Blessings was located in Inglewood, California, a small, predominantly black area of Los Angeles that for the most part was considered a prettygood city. It wasn't as ritzy as West Los Angeles, but it didn't have the negative reputation of South Central even though it was only a stone's throw away. Inglewood was the perfect location to start up a small black business, but it was obvious to Pat when she first began looking for a location for her shop that she wasn't the only one who thought like that. There were so many other beauty shops in the area that Pat had been cautious about opening another right in the midst of all the competition. But Pat knew one thing. Black women like to look cute. Black women spend more money on hair, clothes, and entertainment than any other race of people. A black woman could have a refrigerator with nothing in it but a bag of bread, but if it came down to getting her hair done or going grocery shopping...well, let's just say she'd be eating wish sandwiches until her next paycheck.
With that in mind, Pat decided to go ahead and open her shop in Inglewood despite the competition and because she didn't want to work too far away from her home in Ladera Heights, the black Beverly Hills. Driving was not one of Pat's favorite things to do and with Inglewood being the next city over, she decided to throw caution to the wind and go with her instincts. Besides, Pat had a plan to get over on all the other beauty salons in the Inglewood area. It was a gimmick, she knew, still she gave it her best shot. Her plan? To post a sign right in the front of the shop's window that was sure to get everyone's attention. The sign was simple and to the point: Get your hair done in two hours or less or the service is free -- Guaranteed.
Needless to say, with the wait at most other salons in the area being upwards of three hours, Pat's sign attracted a huge amount of attention and gave her the leg up on the competition that she needed. Still, the gimmick only worked for a couple of months. The first weeks were wonderful. The sign caught the eyes of many women and clients began to trickle in slowly but surely. But by the second month, the darn sign began to work too well and soon Blessings was filled to the brim with so many clients that there was no way possible for Pat to keep her guarantee. There was no way she could get to all her customers in less than two hours working by herself.
She thought she had found the answer to the problem when she hired a part-time shampoo girl to help her out for a while. But even the two of them working together was not enough of a solution and on several occasions Pat found herself doing more heads for free than she could afford. Needless to say, the sign had to come down and with no gimmick, Blessings became just another run-of-the-mill beauty salon in an area already congested with too many. A few die-hard clients who were pleased with the way Pat handled their hair stayed with her, but most of the clients dwindled away, especially after a shop named Off the Hook Hair opened up lust two blocks away. Off the Hook Hair specialized in all the latest hair designs, and though Pat did consider herself to be an okay beautician, especially considering the fact that she'd only had her license for less than a year, she knew she could never compete with the stylists Off the Hook Hair had to offer. So, slowly but surely, Pat's business began to go under.
That first year Blessings was in business was a nightmare that Pat would certainly rather forget, she thought to herself as she stretched out her legs in the back of the shop. Looking around the shop now, though, it was hard to believe that Blessings had almost gone out of business in that first year. Now Blessings was considered one of the best hair salons in the city. People came from as far away as the San Fernando Valley to get their hair done at Pat's shop and business was, as they say, booming. Of course the days of the two-hour guarantee were long gone. Now if you come into Blessings by ten, you're lucky to get out by five -- on a good day. It was just one of those things. No one knows why it takes so long to get their hair done, they just accept it. They make a day out of it. And knowing that it can be rather taxing sometimes to wait over four hours to get one's hair done, Pat figured she could at least give the women who came to her shop a relaxing atmosphere. From the outside, Blessings looked like any other beauty shop. The two huge windows in front were trimmed in pink and stenciled with prices and advertising specials as well as a big, black woman with a full head of crimson hair and of course a large pink neon sign that blinked "Blessings." But inside, Blessings had all the comforts of home. There was a big-screen television complete with VCR, a sound system, a mini refrigerator and microwave oven for those who brought in food, a nice comfortable sofa, and mounds and mounds of magazines to distract the clients from their long wait. The shop was relatively small with only three hair stations, two shampoo bowls, two hair dryer seats, and one newly purchased manicuring station that Pat had bought last month because she wanted to expand. Just last week, she'd had the painters out restenciling the front window from Blessings Hair Salon to Blessings Hair and Nails. And it wouldn't stop there. Pat had even bigger plans for expansion. Soon she'd add on waxing and massaging, and as soon as the renters next door decide to shut down their fledgling hardware store, she planned on purchasing it too, knocking out the wall that separated the two suites and adding on an aerobics studio. But those plans would have to wait for a year or three. Right now, hair and nails were all Pat could handle.
With the addition of the manicuring station, Pat had plans of going back to beauty school to get the manicuring license. She hadn't planned on doing nails herself, but since the red and white Help Wanted sign that hung on the front door hadn't been answered she really had no choice. Pat had it hard enough doing hair alone and adding manicurist to her title was not a welcome designation for her. But she had gone ahead and purchased the manicure station and she couldn't let it go to waste. So on top of doing hair, booking appointments, greeting customers, answering phones, keeping the place clean, and managing the books, Pat would soon be taking on even more responsibility. But Pat wouldn't complain. No, no. She'd do whatever it took to make her business the best it could be. Blessings was her baby and she would never let it go under. She remembered how awful she felt that first year of business when the lack of clientele almost forced her to close down her shop. The thought of losing what she'd worked so hard to create was almost too painful to remember. But that was a very long time ago, Pat assured herself as she got up from her seat in the back of the room and walked up front toward her hair station. She beckoned her blond-streaked client to join her and as she watched her scramble from beneath the hair dryer she pasted on a smile and tapped the seat of her chair. "Come on, darling," she said to her client as she watched her sit down in front of her. She placed her foot on the lever at the bottom of the seat and pumped four times until her client was elevated to the proper height. "Spirals or an up-do?" Pat asked as her client gave her a perplexed look. "Spirals," Pat decided and plugged in her curling wand. Pat took in a deep sigh as she combed through her client's hair and waited for the wand to heat up. She looked around the shop, knowing it would be hours before she could get off her feet again, but still she didn't complain. She'd take a jam-packed salon over an empty one any day. She'd seen her share of empty seats that first year of business and she vowed never to go through that experience again. And as long as she had her secret weapon she never would. Pat's secret weapon would keep her in business for the rest of her life. That secret weapon went by the name of Zuma, Pat t