If I Never Went Home by Ingrid Persaud Page B

name.’
    Bea had fought back tears, retreating to the relative safety of her room and her books.
    The next opportunity came when she was at the hairdresser’s, waiting while her mother had her hair done. Bea dared to ask directly if she could have shorter hair. Judy, the hairdresser, ran her fingers through the dark thick mane.
    ‘Let we cut it in layers,’ Judy said. ‘Man, that go look real good. Mira, the child have good hair.’
    ‘Nah. Nah. Nah. We not doing nothing so,’ her mother had retorted. ‘Leave the hair. You can’t see how she hot with sheself already? If you give she some fancy style I go can’t control this force-ripe madam.’
    Her mother had swung her chair so she faced the rest of the salon. ‘I look like I ready to be anybody grandmother?’
    The half-dozen ladies in the cramped salon all burst out laughing.
    ‘Put the pill in she Milo-tea,’ urged Judy, grinning. ‘It never too early these days. You ain’t see in the papers how that high school girl, must be same age as Bea, making baby for a schoolboy still in short pants?’
    The women nodded in collective agreement.
    ‘Mira, girl, you have your hands full,’ Judy continued. ‘I thank the Lord I don’t have no girl children to worry about so. My two sons don’t give me no trouble.’
    ‘Judy, you don’t know how hard it does be. Sometimes I wish I had a son, yes.’ Her mother had sighed. ‘Bea looking innocent because she so small. But let me tell you something. She ain’t easy, you hear? Just the other day we was on the beach and she laughing and running up and down playing cricket. Next thing you know a fellow come and want to take out she picture. Well, I make she sit down by me straightaway. The child need to learn some decency.’
    Bea had sat next to her in silent humiliation. The salon ladies picked her over with their gazes like vultures pecking on a rotting carcass.
    ‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Mira. ‘Is me alone. I have to be mother, father, everything.’
    ‘She father don’t help out?’ asked a woman from under her hair dryer.
    ‘Help out?’ echoed Mira. ‘He feel if he give me a little change for the child that he done he work as a father. But ask him to keep she to ease me up little bit and he can’t do that. He always have somewhere to go running behind all them Jezebel.’
    ‘Man, forget about he,’ said Judy. ‘You still young. Take a next man.’
    ‘You see any nice man between Port of Spain and San Fernando? If you see any that ain’t going to thief your money or horn you with your best friend then let me know.’
    The salon ladies laughed in agreement.
    ‘Oh Lord, you talking truth, yes,’ Judy laughed. ‘Them man them real worthless. And mind you, all of them the same. Coolie, black, white, mix-up. Them all make the same damn way.’
    ‘I don’t know if they all the same. My mother cry when I tell she I was marrying Bea father. Man, that woman cry for days. She say how if my father was alive it would have been licks for so. He wasn’t having no black man for a son-in-law. And she say Bea father look like he go run down plenty woman. Well, so said, so done. If you go against your parents it does come back to bite you in your, excuse my French, bite you in your backside.’
    Judy nodded. She was spraying Mira’s hair. ‘Right, I done,’ she said. ‘Take a look.’
    ‘Judy, you real know how to do my hair,’ replied Mira, inspecting the back of her head in a mirror. ‘Thanks. Let me settle up with you.’
    Judy waved away Mira’s purse. ‘Man, put that away. You think I forget is your birthday?’
    ‘Oh, Lord, girl, is how you know I turn twenty-one again today? You is a real good friend. Thanks, Judy.’ Mira turned to the rest of the salon and waved. ‘Ladies, I gone. Bea, hurry up and come.’
    Bea had gone home encrusted in a loneliness and isolation she could not understand. If only her father would take her away. He used to love her. She was sure of it. As a little