In My Mama's Head

My mama’s friend asked her, “Who put a thing like that in your head?”

My mama didn’t answer. I wanted to answer for her. I thought I knew the answer, but I was only seven.

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I hear my mama cry out with joy for something I didn’t understand. I want to ask her, “Who put joy like that in your voice?” I could guess, but I’d be just guessin’, you know. I was only seven.

I didn’t know the answer.

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I heard her footsteps leave our church pew one Sunday morning. I heard my mama's footsteps all the way down the sidewalk ― click, click, click ― moving her away from us, vanish her after a car door shut out there.

I asked my mama’s friend, “What put a thing like that in my mama’s feet?” But she didn’t answer. Maybe she didn’t know, or maybe she didn’t want to answer.

I only asked because I didn’t know the answer. I was only seven.

•

One day I watched my mama dress up, put her make-up on before the mirror, carefully outline her mouth in cherry red lipstick, brush mascara through her eyelashes, smooth and puff the blush, powder, and foundation over her pale skin. She slipped a black gabardine two-piece dress ― the one with the pintuck bodice and peplum waist ― over a black silk full-length slip, sat down on the edge of her bed, rolled her nylon hose over each toe one at a time up to the two dangling black garters on each thigh where she snapped the sheer lace at the top into clips all around. “There,” she said. Finally standing before the mirror, she looked over her shoulder to check the back of her hosiery, bent down to straighten the dark, thick seam bisecting her calves like a scar from a surgeon’s scalpel and then slipped into her open-toe, high heeled shoes cut out at the front where she fluffed up the pink silk roses sewn on the leather in the place just above her toes. And then she pulled out the slipper chair in front of the dresser and sat down before a silver tray spread with jewelry. When she finished her wrists were wrapped in rhinestones, clusters of pearls dangled from her earlobes, and a tortoiseshell comb fastened her black hair high in a swirl above the edge of her upright collar at the nape of her neck, and she was done.

My mama’s a real doll, I thought, and I was only seven.

I watched her stand before the mirror, pose, turn, pose again, look at herself another way, tip her head back a bit. Smile. Pose. Smile again and hang the strap of a tiny sequin handbag over her shoulder, drop her lipstick tube inside and snap it shut.

My mama saw me watching her from the floor where I sat near her bedroom doorway.

"Don’t I look beautiful, Sweetie?"

Yes, Mama. You do. But silently I asked myself who put such beauty in my mama’s heart?

I didn’t answer. I was only seven but I thought about having that beauty put in my heart from then until I was twelve. At twelve I wondered when my feet would drop those steps leading me to my very own somewhere place. I wondered until I was eighteen when I cried out for joy the first time, really cried out for my own joy, even as I kept wondering all the while until I was twenty-one what thing would be put in my head someday and who will put it there. I didn’t know until then that I did. I did. I put all those things right where they belong exactly when they belonged right where I put them just like my mama taught me in case I need to take care of myself someday, she said, just in case you need to rely on yourself.