Grace
The next day, Felipe came and got Grace at school, but he didn’t take her home. Instead, he walked her down to Rayleen’s hair and nail salon, on the boulevard. It wasn’t called that, and she didn’t own it or anything, but that was where she worked.
“Why there?” she asked Felipe while they were walking together.
“I don’t know,” Felipe said. “She just said to bring you down there. She said she told you about it.”
“Oh,” Grace said. “Maybe. Maybe she said something and I forgot.”
“Do you mind going down there?”
“I don’t think so. Not really. I was just looking forward to going to Billy’s, because he’s teaching me to dance. He’s teaching me this dance called the time step. He says it’s the first, most basic thing I gotta learn. Except I don’t know why they call it the time step, because it’s not a step. It’s a whole dance. It’s like, tons of steps. I have trouble keeping track of them all. But I only had one lesson so far. It’s tap. Do you know what that is? Tap?”
“Sure,” Felipe said. “I’ve seen tap dancing.”
“I have to wear these special shoes, that are tap shoes. And I don’t have tap shoes, of course. I mean, why would I have tap shoes? So Billy let me wear this really special pair of his, from when he was young. They’re really special because they were his very first pair. From when he was about my age. But, you know what? They’re still too big for me. Even when Billy was my age, his feet were bigger than mine. I guess because he’s a boy. Anyway, I had to put on three pairs of socks, and then they fit me. I can’t take them home, though, because they’re too special, but I can wear them at his house. And I have to dance in the kitchen, because you can’t tap dance on a rug. Anyway, I was just sort of looking forward to getting my second lesson, but I guess I can do that tomorrow. You’re not listening to me, are you, Felipe?”
“Oh, sorry,” Felipe said. “Yeah. Mostly. I was mostly listening.”
“Were you thinking about the thing you’re sad about?” Grace asked, because he looked sad.
“A little bit. I guess I was, a little bit.”
“Do you want to tell me? Sometimes that helps.”
“Maybe not today,” Felipe said. “Maybe someday, but maybe not today. It might be hard for you to understand, anyway, because it’s grown-up stuff. You know. Man — woman stuff.”
“Oh,” Grace said. “Yeah. That stuff is hard to understand.”
They walked in silence for a block or so, and then Grace asked, “Felipe? Do you speak Spanish?”
“Oh, yeah. I speak Spanish better than I speak English.”
“I think your English is good.”
“Thank you.”
“Will you teach me to speak Spanish?”
“Well,” Felipe said, scratching his head. “I guess so. I guess I could teach you a little bit. Here’s a good thing to know how to say. ‘Como se dice en Espa?ol…?’ That means, ‘How do you say in Spanish…?’ And then you could just point to the thing you wanted to know how to say. Or tell me the word in English. And then we could add a word every day.”
“Como se dice in Espa?ol,” Grace said. “Why is there an English word in there?”
“There isn’t.”
“In.”
“En,” Felipe said. “E-N.”
“Oh. Como se dice en Espa?ol.”
“Very good.”
“But you have to tell me how to say something. Today. That’s not enough for today, just learning the question. I think I should have an answer for today, too.”
“OK. What do you want to know how to say?”
“Tap dancing. Teach me how to say tap dancing, OK?”
“You have to ask it right, though.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry. Como se dice en Espa?ol…tap dancing?”
“Baile zapateado.”
“Whoa. That sounds hard.”
“Maybe we should do an easier one today.”
An old man walked by with a bulldog on a leash, so Grace said, “Como se dice en Espa?ol…dog?”
“Perro.”
“Perro,” Grace said.
“Good.”
“Felipe? Do you like me?”
“Sure, I like you.”
“What do you like about me?”
“Lots of things.”
“Name one.”
“Well. You asked me to teach you a little Spanish. Nobody ever asks me that. Everybody just figures Spanish-speaking people should learn English. It never occurs to anybody to learn a few words of Spanish. That shows a lot of respect for me. You know. And for my language. That you asked.”
“I liked my Spanish lesson,” she said. “I guess if I had to miss my tap dance lesson, it’s good that at least I got a Spanish lesson. I wonder why Rayleen wants me to come down to her salon.”
“I think she wants to do something with your hair,” Felipe said.
“Oh. My hair. Right,” Grace said. “That explains a lot.”
? ? ?
“Good Lord in heaven,” this lady named Bella said, holding up the back of Grace’s hair.
Bella was a big, heavy African lady. Not African-American, like Rayleen, but really African-African, from Nigeria (this is what Rayleen told Grace), with that nice accent that people have sometimes when they’re from Africa. And dreadlocks. She wore her hair in dreadlocks.
She was one of the hair-stylist people at Rayleen’s salon, and friends with Rayleen, who stood close by, shaking her head and clucking her tongue.
Grace could see them both in the mirror.
“Can you brush it out?” Rayleen asked.
“Oh, honey, that would hurt like the devil. And she would lose a lot. I think we should cut it.”
Grace watched Rayleen in the mirror. Watched Rayleen furrow her brow.
“I’m not sure what her mother would think about that.”
“What do you care what her mother thinks? Where is her mother when this decision needs to be made? Something needs doing, and somebody needs to decide to do it, so let that somebody be you.”
The more Bella talked, the more Grace liked her accent. Even though she wasn’t sure she liked what Bella was saying about her mom. Still, it would be nice to get a haircut, instead of having all those knots pulled out, which was vicious. Grace hated that more than anything. So it would be nice to just have them decide. Right here and now.
“I’ll end up being the one who has to hear it from her, though,” Rayleen said.
She was thin, and pretty, Rayleen. Grace looked at her as though she’d never seen her before, because it was different, seeing her in the mirror and all, and because of the way Bella was standing right beside her. Not that Bella wasn’t pretty. Grace thought she was. But she wasn’t thin. And she wasn’t as pretty as Rayleen.
Grace felt Bella’s long fingernails raking lightly through her hair — at least the part that could still be raked through — and along her scalp, and it felt good, like a massage.
“You sure she’ll even get up from her bed long enough that you’ll have to hear about it? Have you even gotten her to call the county yet?”
“She says she did,” Rayleen said, like she wasn’t very sure.
“She did!” Grace piped up. “I know she did, because I was right there.”
“Oh. Good. Did she say what she was supposed to say?”
“Yeah. That you were my babysitter and all. Yeah.”
Rayleen furrowed her brow even more deeply. “Was she…did she seem…pretty…awake?”
“Medium,” Grace said.
Rayleen and Bella looked at each other’s eyes in the mirror, and Bella rolled hers a little bit, so Grace could see the whites of them.
“I guess we just keep our fingers crossed,” Rayleen said.
And Bella said, “So, let’s focus, girls. What about the hair?”
“I think we should let Grace decide. It’s her hair. Grace?”
“Hmm,” Grace said. “I think probably we should cut it. Because I hate that thing where somebody brushes out my hair when it’s knotty. It pulls. But…I don’t know. Will it look OK?”
“Will it look OK?” Bella howled. “Oh, my goodness! Little girl! You don’t know who you’re talking to! If I cut it, it will look superb!”
“I don’t know what superb means,” Grace said.
“Like good,” Rayleen said, “only better.”
“Oh. OK, then.”
So Bella put one of those drapes around Grace, and snapped it tightly at her neck, and Grace made a mostly pretend noise like being strangled.
“You don’t want to get the hair down there under your collar, though,” Bella said. “That’ll itch like crazy.”
“Right, I hate that,” Grace said. “I hate that worse than anything.”
“We should teach her how to brush her own hair,” Rayleen said.
“I know how to brush my hair,” Grace said, a little too loudly.
She was distracted, looking at the image in the mirror of a woman customer in the chair behind hers, because the woman held a little tan Chihuahua dog on her lap.
“Perro,” Grace said, but nobody was paying much attention.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“We only have one brush, and it’s up on top of the dresser in my mom’s bedroom, and I can’t reach it. When I was a little kid, I tried pulling out the drawers and using them like steps, so I could climb up there. Not to get the brush. To get something else, but I don’t remember what the something else was any more. I forget now. It was so important at the time that I climbed up there, but now I don’t even remember. Isn’t that funny? Anyway, the whole thing fell down on top of me, and I was screaming and crying, and my mom had to run get one of the neighbors to help get it off me. That was before we lived here. That was back when we lived right off Alvarado Street. Anyway, I wasn’t about to try that again.”
“I can’t really wash it properly until I get these knots out,” Bella said, as though she hadn’t even been listening. She pulled out a long, sleek, pointy pair of scissors and held them, paused, over Grace’s head.
Bye-bye hair, Grace thought. But it was better than all that brushing and pulling.
“I’m surprised no one noticed at her school,” Rayleen said. “Wouldn’t you think her teacher would notice that nobody brushed her hair for weeks?”
“Maybe she did,” Bella said, still holding the scissors paused. “After all, you still don’t know who called the county.”
“Hmm,” Rayleen said. “Right. I hadn’t thought of that.”
? ? ?
Walking home with Rayleen, Grace couldn’t stop looking at her fingernails. She held them out in front of her, both hands at once, and admired them. It made her trip over a crack in the sidewalk twice. Well. Three times.
“You might want to look where you’re going.”
“But they’re so beautiful!”
After the haircut (which looked funny, in a way, probably just because it was something Grace wasn’t used to, but also kind of stylish and nice at the same time), Rayleen had given Grace nails. They were the kind you paste on, and they were a really pretty shade of pink, and they had sparkles and other little charm things pasted on. Like, one little paste-on charm was on her middle finger, and it was silver, and shaped like a tiny flying horse. She couldn’t stop looking at the flying horse.
“I’m glad you like them,” Rayleen said.
“I know how to speak Spanish,” Grace said, still looking at the nails.
“Since when?”
“Just since today.”
“You learned Spanish just today?”
“Some. I know como you dice en Espa?ol…dog. It’s perro. You dice ‘dog’ in Espa?ol by saying ‘perro.’”
“OK, I stand corrected. That’s a lot of Spanish to learn in one day. I’m impressed. Oops. Look out, Grace. Look where you’re going.”
Grace looked up just in time to zig-zag around two young women walking toward them on the sidewalk.
“Sorry,” she said to them. Then, to Rayleen, “Maybe when we get home we can order a pizza.”
“Maybe,” Rayleen said. “But it’s not going to be like the last pizza. I could barely carry that thing into the house. I didn’t know a pizza could even cost that much. When the guy told me the bill, I thought he was kidding. Who orders pepperoni and sausage and Canadian bacon and meatballs all on one pizza?”
“Me.”
“And triple cheese? I mean, I’ve heard of double cheese, but…”
“I’m sorry if it was too much money. But you said to order what I wanted.”
“Right,” Rayleen said. “I did. So, live and learn. But this time I’m making the call. And this time I’m telling you in advance that you want cheese and pepperoni. Period.”
Grace smiled to herself. Because it was still pizza. And it was still a million times more pizza than she was about to get from anybody else besides Rayleen.
“Have you thought of what you like about me yet?”
“Yes,” Rayleen said. “As a matter of fact, I have. You’re a survivor. And you don’t complain. Now, that’s just off the top of my head, and it’s just so far. Like I said before, I’m sure when I get to know you better, there’ll be tons more.”
“It’s good for now,” Grace said, sneaking a quick look at her nails again. One had a little crescent moon charm stuck on — her right pinky one. “That and a pizza’s plenty good enough for today.”