H: Barbershop Fight

Chapter kid barbershop fight

My mother is taking me to my father's barbershop, her fingers gripping
the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles are whiter than usual.
She drives slowly, staring ahead. A car horn sounds behind us. "Go
around," she mutters. My sister has been left at home to watch the new
baby, which I would have preferred doing. We are not going to the
barbershop to get a hair cut.

"I bought him that barbershop," my mother tells me. "With my own money.
My money, not his." She looks over at me, obviously furious. Even her
nostrils are white. No country music plays from the radio like it
normally does. Instead, I listen to my mother mumble cusses. Sometimes
she huffs and shakes her head.

The barbershop is in the middle of a long line of stores, all attached
by common walls. The store fronts are freshly painted and look new, but
the parking lot is full of potholes and weeds growing up from the
cracks. My mother parks the car in the slight shade of a skinny tree,
then turns it off and sits quietly for a moment. Then she grabs her
purse, a gray thing that I know for a fact smells like lipstick and
Youth Dew perfume on the inside, and says, "Wait here." Before I can
complain she opens her door, crawls out, and slams it shut. The air
inside the car fills with tiny bits of dust, making me want to
sneeze.

My father has had the barbershop for less than a year, which I can know
because he started working at it at the beginning of my second grade
school year. He used to be at home all the time, but now he is gone six
days a week. On Sundays he sits in his chair at home, a stack of beer
cans growing throughout the day on the flimsy wood table next to him.
This is both an advantage and a disadvantage to my sister and me.
Staying home from school had always been a matter of pretending to be
sick and asking our father if we could stay home, but now there is no
one to watch us so we are usually pushed out the front door. On the
other hand, not having our father around, especially on Saturdays, has
made the house calmer. I have decided I am willing to make the
sacrifice of going to school if it means being able to go home and do
whatever I'd like. But my sister is taking it very well. She's started
peeing on the bus again. It can happen any time, but I know when it has
by the screaming and yelling that means
my mother has been called to pick her up at school and take her home.
It is never our father who does this task. I have also learned that if
my sister does not meet me on the bus when school lets out, it is
probably a pee day, which means my mother will be home and in a bad
mood.

The car gets hotter, so I roll down my window. My father's car is next
to me. It's almost just like my mother's car, only purple, and it has a
pair of dice hanging from the rearview mirror. These dice are old and
not to be touched. I don't know why.

When the car gets too hot, I decide to go in. My father might give me a
quarter to buy a Fresca from the soda machine in the back of the shop.
Or he might give me a piece of the bubble gum, which is free for
customers, that has jokes written on the wrappers. He keeps the gum on
the counter by the front door, by an ashtray that is always full and
that makes the first bite of the gum taste smoky.

I open the car door and peel myself off the vinyl seat. On my way in I
notice that the candy shop next door to the barbershop has gone out of
business. Underneath the "Going Out of Business" sign is a handwritten
message. "Thanks for nothing," it says. I picture the old woman who ran
the shop writing this down. She wore bright red lipstick that ran into
the little cracks all around her mouth, and despite her skinny neck and
arms - we never saw her below the waist because of the counter - she
was hugely fat. Neither my sister or I liked her candy, preferring the
candy bars in their own wrappers that didn't taste homemade.

The bell on the barbershop door rings as I open it, and cold air runs
over my face and arms. My mother is standing by the chairs, put there
for waiting customers. My father is sitting in one of the two barber
chairs, and behind him is a woman, smoking a cigarette and staring at
my mother. Only my father notices me come in.

"Hi, son," he says. His legs are crossed, and he is wearing the white
shirt with no collar that he calls his work shirt. There are no
customers in the shop.

"Do you think he should be in here?" the woman behind my father asks,
pointing her cigarette in my direction. She has crept closer to my
father, her free hand sneaking up to rest on his shoulder. Suddenly I
hate her.

"I don't have anything more to say," my mother answers. Her voice is
high, the way it gets when she is about to kick us out of the house for
making too much noise. Her arms are folded across her chest, the gray
purse dangling from her elbow. I stay quiet.

"Then what'd you come here for?" my father asks. He is smiling, but
with mean eyes. He puts a cigarette in his mouth and the woman reaches
around and holds her cigarette to his. This takes several seconds, but
eventually smokes starts coming out of my father's mouth and nose. I
can almost feel my mother stiffen. The woman is wearing a sleeveless
shirt, and her upper arm sags down, the dimply flesh jiggling while she
holds her cigarette in front of my father's face. My sister would call
her ugly, or a slut, or both. I think she looks like a girl at my
school who is known for throwing herself on the ground and screaming,
only the girl has blond hair. Maybe this is that girl's mother.

"I won't be home when you get there," my mother says, and I am
thrilled. Any thoughts of getting a Fresca or bubble gum
disappear.

"Fine," my father says, but I can tell he doesn't mean it. The woman
throws both arms around his shoulders as my mother starts to leave. I
grab the door handle.

"And, honey," the woman says, causing my mother to stop and turn around
again, "Why don't you come over to my place sometime? I can show you
how to be a real woman."

My mother pushes past me, knocking my hand from the door handle so she
can open it herself. Her purse hits me in the face as I hurry to follow
her. I can hear the woman laughing all the way to the car.

My mother drives crazily on the way home, narrowly missing other cars
as she speeds along. Her eyes are red but she's not crying. I keep
quiet, my feet pressed to the floor. I think about where we'll go after
we get home. Will it be the motel with the Indian Chief on the outside,
his headdress lit up in different colors? Or the motel that's closer to
our house, the one with a pool? I'm afraid to ask my mother, who has
finally turned on the radio, the music so loud that I can hear it over
the wind coming through my window.

At home I sit next to my sister, lowering my voice and telling her what
happened at the barbershop. "Who was the lady?" she asks me. She is
holding the baby and a bottle of milk. The milk looks green through the
plastic. I know without touching it that it's warm. The baby's eyes are
closed.

"I don't know,' I whisper, "She acted like she owned the place." I can
hear my mother in her bedroom. Something falls with a heavy thud, and I
guess she's in the closet. Then I hear drawers opening and
closing.

"Maybe we should pack our stuff," I say. My sister puts the baby down,
pushing an old newspaper off of the couch to make room. Suddenly my
mother appears in the living room, holding one of her small suitcases
and her purse. She is wearing sunglasses on top of her head.

"I'm going. You're staying," she says. "Watch the baby." She heads
towards the front door, my sister and I running after her. We pull on
her sleeve, but she pulls right back. Again her purse knocks me on the
head. This time I can smell the perfume inside it.

We scream and cry but my mother opens the front door, pulls it shut
behind her, and leaves. We run to my bedroom and stare out of the
window as she gets in her car and drives away. I try but I can't see
her face through the windshield.

"Slut," my sister says, just as the baby wakes up, crying, in the
living room. For once, I can only agree.