Read The Wisdom of Hair for Free Online Page B

the car. He didn’t even stop at the picnic table to see if there was a Styrofoam plate covered in tinfoil. He just went straight in the house to the living room and poured himself a drink.
    “Oh, Zora, he’s got something heavy on his mind.”
    I’d not missed a single day setting that hot plate on that stupid picnic table. I’d set it in the same place so often that the heat from the plate had made a permanent mark on the redwood table. I couldn’t believe Winston didn’t care his dinner wasn’t waiting forhim. I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach. At the very least, it should have occurred to him to come check on me to see if something horrible had happened to me.
    Sara Jane got up, went to my little refrigerator, and moved things around until she found a bottle of Boone’s Farm Apple Wine she had actually bought at another grocery store across town because her parents were Baptists and didn’t believe in drinking alcohol much less selling it. She poured mine in a Bama jelly glass and hers in my only teacup. “You drink and I’ll talk.” She took a big gulp of wine. “I’m going to tell you about Preston Hensley.”
    I nodded and sat down on the couch. It was impossible not to smile when Sara Jane gave me that little smirk. I was still dazed and wounded, but she had a way about her that made me lay down my cross for the moment.
    “When I was four days shy of sixteen, Preston Hensley set his sights on me. He was the preacher’s son, but he wasn’t what you’d call devout. Now, he was at church every time the doors opened and nobody ever had to prod him. He wasn’t there for the preaching, though. He was looking for virgins.
    “He’d charm their mamas into letting them go out with him, then he’d charm the panties off of each and every one of them. I knew of at least a dozen girls who knew Preston Hensley. Some were in the Girls’ Auxiliary, some in the choir, and one was a visiting missionary’s daughter.”
    “No.”
    “Oh, honey, he was Beau Paramour all over, you know, from
Harvest of Passion
, that first Gussie book I gave you to read. Anyway, when we started dating I was determined I wasn’t going to be an easy conquest.
    “The more he flirted and teased, the more I flirted and teased right back, but I never let him do anything. Now this really drove him crazy because I think he just smiled at those other girls, and their legs parted like the Red Sea. He wanted me so bad, and I toyed with him until he couldn’t stand it anymore. I didn’t have the first clue as to what I was doing, but it sure was fun watching him pitch the tent in his pants and then sending him home.”
    “Sara Jane.” My face blushed on and off like a stoplight.
    She took another swig of wine, and there was a long pause for effect.
    “Wait a minute.”
    “What?”
    “If I tell you my story, you have to tell me yours.”
    “I don’t have a story.”
    “Come on, Zora. Every girl has a story, especially one as pretty as you.”
    “Really, I don’t.”
    My face was hot with shame, but not from Sara Jane’s question. The only stories I could ever let myself tell were about dodging the advances of Mama’s boyfriends who’d had too much to drink. I couldn’t even look at her, and I prayed she couldn’t look at me and know my secrets.
    “Listen up now.” She lifted my chin with those soft round hands of hers and smiled at me. “This story’s so good, I’ll tell it anyway. Like I said, Preston was determined to conquer me, and I was getting bored with him. So one night, a Tuesday night when nobody was at church, he took me to the nursery. We sat in the dark with just the moonlight coming through the windows. We whispered and giggled, played with those Fisher-Price trucks, rolling themaround our bodies until he couldn’t take it anymore. The moon was just right. I could see his face. He wasn’t playing anymore.”
    She poured us both another glass of wine, sat down, and pulled her feet up under