1
CThe spring sun poured through the lace curtains of Evelyn’s Beauty Parlor, turning the small shop on Pleasant Hill into a warm, golden hive. It was the kind of Saturday in 1966 when every chair was spoken for by nine o’clock and the waiting bench stayed full until closing. The air carried its familiar perfume: hot pressing oil, bergamot pomade, lye from a fresh relaxer in the back, and the faint sweetness of talcum powder sprinkled after a good rinse.
Five hooded dryers hummed in steady rhythm, while old wom en gossiping among themselves. Mirrors lined the walls, reflecting a dozen faces in various stages of transformation. Shelves groaned under jars of Dixie Peach, Murray’s, and Apex pomade, while a small radio in the corner played low—spinning Aretha Franklin’s latest just loud enough to feel but not loud enough to drown out talk.
Tallulah-Mae Johnson—Mae to everyone who loved her—stood at the front station, cape draped over Mrs. Loretta Hayes’s shoulders. Loretta taught third grade at the colored elementary school and believed in looking sharp every single day of the week, especially Sunday. Mae parted a thick section of Loretta’s hair with the tail of a rat-tail comb, her movements smooth and certain. She reached for the hot comb resting on the small stove burner, tested it against a scrap of brown paper—sizzle, curl, good heat—and glided it from root to end in one long stroke.
“Hold your ear down just a touch, Miss Loretta,” Mae said softly, voice low and soothing as always. “There we go. This side’s layin’ down real pretty now.”
Loretta smiled at Mae’s reflection in the mirror. “Girl, you got hands sent straight from heaven. I swear my hair behaves better for you than it ever has for me at home.”
From the waiting bench, young Shirley Ann Jenkins—home from her first year at Spelman and full of big-city ideas—leaned forward. “Miss Loretta, you gon’ wear that new pink hat tomorrow with this press? The one with the little veil?”
“If the Lord lets me see morning, yes indeed,” Loretta answered. “Can’t let Sister Wilkins outdo me two Sundays in a row.”
Laughter rippled across the shop.
Under the middle dryer, Mrs. Delilah Porter lowered her Jet magazine and fanned herself with it. Delilah worked as a nurse’s aide at the colored ward of the city hospital and heard everything worth hearing.
“Y’all leavin’ out the best part,” she announced, eyes gleaming. “Deacon Wilkins wasn’t just visitin’ the choir director. He was carryin’ a pie. A sweet potato pie. At ten o’clock at night.”
The room erupted.
“A pie?” Shirley Ann gasped, clutching her chest. “Lord, have mercy.”
“Exactly what Sister Wilkins said when she found the empty pie plate in his car,” Delilah continued. “Only she left out the mercy part.”
Even Mrs. Evelyn, bent over the shampoo bowl in the back rinsing Mrs. Clara Beaumont’s relaxer, let out a deep chuckle. “That man been triflin’ since he had baby teeth. His mama shoulda switched him harder.”
The conversation flowed easy from there—first the deacon’s foolishness, then whose daughter was expecting out of wedlock, then the price of gas going up again. Someone mentioned the voter registration table set up outside the courthouse last week, how only three people had made it through the line before the sheriff’s deputies started asking for poll tax receipts nobody had.
Mae listened more than she spoke, the way she always did. She had a gift for it—making folks feel heard without ever raising her voice above the dryers. She finished pressing Loretta’s left side and moved to the right, sectioning, oiling, combing, pressing, each motion deliberate and gentle. When the hair lay silky and straight, she began pinning it into soft, bouncy curls with bobby pins held between her lips.
Delilah wasn’t done meddling. She lifted the dryer hood just enough to be heard clearly, graying curls still in rollers.
“Now hold on, ladies. We been pickin’ over everybody else’s lives like crows on a corn row. Ain’t nobody asked the real question.” She turned her sharp gaze on Mae. “Tallulah-Mae Johnson, when you gon’ let us throw you a wedding? Twenty-four years old, pretty as a picture, runnin’ this shop like you born to it—and still goin’ home to an empty house every night?”
The room quieted just enough for the question to land heavy.
Loretta twisted slightly in her chair to look up at Mae. “Delilah ain’t lyin’, baby. You deserve a good man. Somebody steady. What about Brother Thompson’s youngest boy? The teacher over at Ballard-Hudson? He got his own house now, I hear.”
Shirley Ann chimed in. “Or that new postal worker—Mr. Davis? Tall, drive a clean Buick, sing bass in the choir like he mean it.”
Mae shook her head, smiling as she slid another pin in place. “Y’all worse than my mama on her determined days. I got plenty keepin’ me busy. This shop, church circle, helpin’ Mama. Ain’t no room left for courtin’ right now.”
“But honey,” Delilah pressed, “time don’t wait. You want children one day, you can’t—”
The bell above the door gave a sharp, unexpected jingle.
Every conversation stopped cold.
A white man stood just inside the threshold, hat in his hands, looking like he wasn’t entirely sure he belonged. He was in his early thirties, tall and lean, with sun-lightened brown hair and a plain cotton work shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow. His face carried the kind of quiet tiredness that came from long hours under the hood of a car, faint grease still under his nails even though his hands looked scrubbed. He didn’t smile, didn’t frown—just scanned the room slowly before his eyes settled somewhere near the counter.
The dryers kept humming, but the women’s voices did not return.
Mrs. Evelyn straightened up from the shampoo bowl, water dripping from her rubber gloves. Mrs. Clara stayed bent forward, eyes wide in the mirror. Loretta’s hand drifted to the base of her throat. Delilah let her magazine fall closed in her lap. Shirley Ann pulled her knees up onto the bench like she could make herself smaller.
Mae stood frozen behind Loretta’s chair, bobby pin still pinched between her fingers, heart suddenly loud in her ears.
White men didn’t come into Evelyn’s Beauty Parlor. Not to get hair done, not to chat, not for anything harmless. If they came at all, it was usually with a clipboard and a demand, or worse.
The man cleared his throat, shifting his weight.
The silence stretched tight, thick as the humid Georgia air outside.
He reached for his hat, sliding it off his head.
