“No need to recite it, sister,” Kyle said jovially. “My wifey can do it. She knows the words. She knows the Word!”
They both looked at Troy and from nowhere the words of a Bible verse she’d only skimmed came charging from her mouth.
“Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.”
“Proverbs 31. Amen and hallelujah and shalom and selah and what else?” Sister Glover said.
“Umm…Praise the…Whatever…doesn’t matter. Put the pedal to the metal and get us to hell!” Kyle’s head wobbled and rolled onto the floor of the car.
Troy was awakened by a spill of sweat that slipped from her forehead to pool in her ears. Exhausted by her dream, she sat up slowly. She wasn’t afraid or scared. Not rushing down to her prayer closet or racing to pick up her Bible, which had fallen into the center of the bed between her and Kyle. Her shoulders fell. She looked at Kyle and began to cry.
?
As Troy contemplated getting out of the bed, getting into her car, and getting as far away from her reality as possible, Tasha was getting a better look at what she swore were crow’s-feet crowding the undersides of her eyes—they weren’t.
“Any more concealer and you’ll look like a corpse,” Tamia said, standing beside Tasha as she hunched over the basin to get closer to the mirror. Both women could feel the bass from the music outside rattling through the sink top.
“They’re like cracks…little cracks under my eyes.” Pulling her eyes back from the sides of her head and then pushing them closer together, she turned to Tamia. “See them? See the difference when I do this?” She pulled her eyes back. “And when I do this?” She pushed them in.
A woman waiting to wash her hands walked out after it was clear she couldn’t get past them.
“Well, when you scrunch your face up like that, I see many things.” Tamia laughed, before turning to look at her own eyes.
“Maybe I need surgery. A blepharoplasty…maybe a whole face-lift…. Look at my forehead.”
“Tasha, stop it,” Tamia said, looking at her friend for a while. “You know, I can’t believe he’s going to marry her.”
“Who?” Tasha pulled her forehead back from either side and pushed it back in again.
“Nathaniel—Charleston’s friend,” Tamia answered. “She’s just so obviously a gold digger. She has no class and less history. The girl’s only in because of how she looks. Did you see her out there? She’s probably sleeping with one of those basketball players. I wouldn’t put it past her. He could do so much better.”
“Oh, who cares, Mia?” Tasha said. “A shallow man finds a shallow woman? They deserve each other, if you ask me. I thought he was a delicious,14 anyway.” She paused. “Do you think I should get cheek liposuction?”
Tamia had no language to communicate how ridiculous she thought her friend sounded. She just glared at Tasha’s reflection in the mirror as Tasha pulled her cheeks in and out like a fish.
“What the fuck?” Tasha pushed her face closer to the mirror, and then closer again.
“What?” Tamia asked.
Tasha climbed up on the basin and angled her chin toward the mirror.
“A hair…Look! Another…fucking hair!”
“Where?”
“On my chin! Right here!” Tasha shrieked and turned her chin toward Tamia.
There was a curly, short gray hair poking out from the right side of Tasha’s chin.
Tamia covered her mouth to stop from laughing.
“It ain’t funny! It’s not fucking funny at all! I’m aged. I’m old. I’m dying.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. It’s just a stupid chin hair.”
The hair was so long, Tamia reached over and just plucked it from Tasha’s chin.
“I get them all the time,” Tamia added. “They have a cream for it.”