“Then yes, the actual color of a pig is pink.”
“Come on over.” It sounded like she was moving around her house. “By the time you get here, I’ll have Urleen, Norma Ray, and a big pot of coffee waiting for you.”
“Sounds perfect. See you then.”
The conversation didn’t exactly put a skip in my step, but it lifted my spirits enough that the tears threatening to sting my eyes slid back to where they had come from.
When I arrivedat Malene’s, everything was as promised. Well, mostly. The women were there but so was Urleen’s beautician, a woman named Rhoda. Malene had caught Urleen in the middle of getting her hair did, which consisted of a wash and the use of a curling iron for styling.
Rhoda still had one-half of Urleen’s hair to curl.
“Don’t mind Rhoda,” Urleen said with a wave. “She hears all the gossip in town, and she’s never spilled the beans, not in all the time that I’ve known her.”
I gave Rhoda a wave and smiled. Rhoda smiled and kept on curling.
Norma Ray approached me with a steaming cup of coffee. Malene settled a plate of chocolate doughnuts on the table.
“I knew you’d need something to help your mood,” she said.
I thanked her and told the women what Tuney Sluggs had said.
“This is bad,” Urleen replied. To Rhoda, she said, “Ow. You’re pulling my hair.”
“Sorry,” Rhoda replied.
Norma Ray patted my hand. “Clem, I’m so sorry for you. Maybe if you offered to sleep with Tuney Sluggs, he’d reconsider.”
I almost vomited into my coffee. “No, thank you, and if that is the kind of advice y’all are going to give, I’ll just go ahead and go on home.”
Malene rose from her chair. A sparkle filled her eyes. “It seems to me there may be something that we can do.”
“What’s that?” Norma Ray said. “Go ahead and starting writing letters to Clem so that we can send them when she’s in jail?”
“Norma Ray,” Urleen snapped, “you know good and well that we’re not going to let that happen to Clem. Now just hush.” She waved her hands at Rhoda. “Am I done? Because I need to put my thinking cap on, and in order to put my thinking cap on, I’ve got to be standing. And Norma Ray, don’t you say one more word about Clem going to jail, because she ain’t going, do you understand?”
Norma Ray shrank. “I understand, but you know how Tuney Sluggs is when he gets an idea. He goes for it and doesn’t let up. He’s like a dog trying to get to the marrow of a bone. He don’t stop until he’s found it.”
“Well I’m like a dog that when I get on the scent, I don’t back down,” Malene told her.
Rhoda put her curling rod down and fluffed Urleen’s hair. “All done.”
“Thank you,” Urleen said.
“You’re welcome,” Rhoda replied before heading for the front door. “See you next week, and nice meeting you, Clem.”
“Same here,” I told her as Rhoda disappeared.
Urleen pulled a compact from her purse and frowned. “She always misses a spot. Look at that string of hair hanging that she didn’t do. Clem, can you bring me my purse, please?”
I grabbed the bag that she pointed to and heaved it from the chair it sat in. My elbow nearly gave out from the weight. “Urleen, what do you have in here? A tank?”
“Just everything,” Norma Ray said.
I laid the purse in Urleen’s lap and she sifted through until she pulled out a battery-operated curling iron. She pushed it on and proceeded to curl the strand that Rhoda had missed.
“Honestly, that woman needs glasses almost as badly as you,” she said to Norma Ray.
“Can we get back to the original point of our meeting?” Malene said.
