Leslie's Curl & Dye by DL White

Author:DL White [White, DL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DL White

Chapter Eighteen

KC

* * *

“So then in ‘76… or was it ‘77?”

A stout, dark skinned woman with a freshly shampooed, blow dried and flat ironed shoulder length bob had planted herself next to me in what Leslie called the “lobby” of her shop, a short row of chairs along the window across from the desk. I couldn’t figure out if she had been warned that I would be at the shop that day, or if she just walked around with photo albums in her purse, but I had been looking at pictures of Dolores Robinson and her family for over twenty minutes and there seemed to be no end in sight.

She’d started with telling me about meeting her husband at Howard University, and now I was listening to her life story.

“I think it was ‘77 when me and Walter moved down here from Maryland.” Except she pronounced it Muhrlun. “He got a job with the railroad and I started working over at Augusta Manufacturing. That was the textile mill that closed up shop a while ago now. A lot of us worked out there, mmmhmm.”

She nodded, her lips drawn in and the edges of her mouth turned down.

“So when the mill closed, what happened? Where did everybody go for work?”

She closed up the photo albums and tucked them into the large bag she’d brought with her. “We tried to find jobs in Potter Lake, but we was always real small out here. Not enough jobs in this little town to employ everybody from the mill. Some of us went to Healy, cause it’s bigger. We worked so hard, you know, to have our own, so when it came to workin’, wasn’t no room or use for pride. We took jobs doing anything to pay the mortgage, to keep food in the refrigerator. My husband, Walter, ended up going away to find work. He’s been driving back and forth to Alabama for a long time now.”

“Ms. Dolores, he’s still with the bank out in Birmingham?”

Leslie butted into our conversation from behind her salon chair, where she was twisting strands of her client’s hair together and arranging them into an attractive style. I hadn’t even thought of being able to provide more complicated hairdos like twists and locs, styles that required skill and technique. It made me tired to think about how much I’d have to expand to care for my female clientele.

“Unh huh,”she confirmed, adjusting her wide rimmed glasses. “He just celebrated fifteen years there. He leaves out early Monday morning and he’s back late Thursday night. It’s actually been nice. Right about the time I start to miss him, it’s time for him to come home. And then when I’m about tired of his mouth, off he go.”

I chuckled, as did Leslie. “Well, why not just move to Birmingham?”

“By then we had children in school and friends. We built up a whole life here in Potter Lake. And you know, that means something. This town means something to us— we didn’t want to leave.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.