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Screaming now, Tiara, who could hardly see past her hunger, looked over at the other crib to see her roommate jumping in her crib. Tears speckled the bigger one’s face, but had Tiara been able to recognize a hidden smile, she’d notice that one was there.
“What’s wrong with you, Toni?” Tasha turned around. “I need to feed your sister. Can’t you see Mommy’s busy? You’re supposed to be asleep.”
?
An hour later, the echoes throughout the overly decorated, eight thousand–square-foot mansion had quieted and Tasha, who’d already had two glasses of red wine at the wet bar in the master suite, was sitting on the toilet, thinking of how she would urinate if she had the energy.
Her eyes closed, she was sure this was the most comfortable she’d ever been in her life. Right there on the toilet, she was in a quiet, movement-free bliss that began at her toes, which were being warmed by the heated marble floors, and ended at her middle, which was just as warm.
“Oh, God, please don’t let them wake up again. Please,” she prayed more honestly than she had in her entire lifetime. “I just want…I just want some rest. Some rest and some…I want my husband back.” Her erratic thoughts then went to her husband. In counseling, a few months after Toni was born and Tasha had been placed on antidepressants to control the crying she did whenever she was alone in the car with the crying baby with the smart eyes, Tasha had promised never to be angry with Lionel for not being there. Basketball was his life. It was her life. It was how they could afford the $5,000 heated toilet she was enjoying so much. He was a good husband who tried his best and if he could, she knew he’d be right there with her. He loved her. There was no question about that. So she had no reason to feel so alone.
The urine finally came and Tasha eased deeper into relaxation as it trickled from her. She sighed and thought of how much she’d enjoy going back to bed.
“If I can’t get sex, I might as well get some sleep,” she said aloud as she reached for the toilet paper.
She wiped herself and looked down to make sure that the paper fell into the expensive latrine. Though the wine was making her eyelids heavy, she could see that the inside of the bowl and the paper weren’t the only white things in the pyramid her thighs made on the seat. There was something else. Something pointy. Out of place. New, yet old.
“What?” Tasha spat, reaching for the thing. “What the hell?” She pulled at it with two fingers. She rationalized that maybe it was lint. A piece of fiber she’d picked up in the bed or maybe it had fallen off of Tiara’s nightsuit. She pulled it, not with any strength, because she was sure the thing would fall away, but when it didn’t, she let it go and shook her hands at it like it was a car coming at her at 80 mph.
“Gray…a gray…? No!”
Tasha’s thirty-two-year-old cry was so loud it not only woke the little girls in her home but also many more for dozens of blocks in their exclusive subdivision. Only not one cried or whimpered or winced. From the little ball, Tiara, to Toni, who’d take the vision just as poorly as her mother thirty years later, the girls merely opened their eyes and stared into space, feeling in Tasha’s voice the inescapable physical and heartbreaking burden time would place on their bodies.
?
After two phone calls and a triple-flight1 of calming Merlot later, Tasha’s brave little witnesses were joined by two more mourners—Tamia and Troy.
The three best friends, who’d met and started their 3T sisterhood when they were undergrads at Howard University, stood hunched over in a half circle at the basin in Tasha’s bathroom. Before them was a single spiked, white hair that Tasha forbid anyone in the room to call gray.
“So you just saw it?” Tamia asked so seriously anyone who walked in would think they were looking at a dead body. And it could’ve been. All Tasha had said when she’d called was that it was a Code 3T2 at her house—that could’ve meant the house was on fire, or she was about to set fire to it. Either way, her girls had to get there quickly.
“Yes, it was just there,” Tasha whispered for no reason above dread. “Just there. Just…just sticking out from all the rest of the hairs.”
“It is pointy,” Troy said, squinting and moving closer to the hair in a way that only a best friend would do for another best friend as horrified as Tasha. This, in fact, could be said about the entire scene.
“Who cares about it being pointy, Troy? I don’t want it to be here at all, period,” Tasha said. “Why is God doing this to me?”
“God has nothing to do with this,” Troy said. “And don’t use his name in vain.”
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“What? God has everything to do with this,” Tasha pointed out. “He put the damn hair there. He can take it away.”
“What? See, you need Jesus. I’m going to have my women’s group at the church pray for you.” From her pocket, Troy produced a little prayer pad she used to record all of the negative things and thoughts she encountered throughout each day.
“Well, get it right and make sure you tell them to pray that I never get another one of those fuckers.”
“Tasha, give Troy a break,” Tamia jumped in. “I wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t come to pick me up and there isn’t much we can say about this…this gray—”
“What did you say?”
“I mean,” Tamia corrected herself, “as you described it, ‘platinum’-colored hair anyway.”
“I’m sorry, y’all.” Tasha’s voice cracked and then the merlot-influenced tears came. “It’s just that it came from out of nowhere.” She stood up and walked to a red velvet chaise that was certainly luxurious, yet oddly placed in the middle of the bathroom floor. “And it’s so long. Look at it!” The girlfriends’ eyes shot from Tasha and back at the devilish hair. “I’m like, how long had this been happening to me and I didn’t know? It was growing and I never noticed. It’s like it wasn’t there yesterday and today it’s everywhere.”
“Everywhere?” Troy asked, pulling the prayer pad back out of her pocket.
“No, not like that. Well, I don’t know. After I plucked that one, I was afraid to look.” Tasha looked at her friends expectantly.
