Gold, Fire & Refinement

Chapter Forty-Six

"In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future." ~Alex Haley

Feeling well rested, Eva Pearl woke up after ten on Monday morning. When Room Service arrived around ten-thirty, she uncovered yet another big and hearty meal. After breakfast, sitting in the parlor of her regal suite, she spent a few minutes thinking about how much it helped that she decided to stay at the hotel for several days before driving home. Time and good food had helped her heal a bit, physically and mentally. She went to the bathroom to look in the mirror again. Most of the bruises from the last beating she received had become barely visible, and her face had filled out a little. Stepping on the bathroom scales, she found that her five-foot seven-inch frame now weighed one-hundred-nineteen pounds, three more than she weighed when she left Las Vegas. Still several pounds short of her preferred one-twenty-five, she thought what she saw looked like a good start. Smiling at her mirror reflection, she started thinking about how even though she was a bit heavier, in pounds, she felt a lot lighter, in spirit. It was due to sleeping well at night and to not spending her days in fear. Instead of looking backward, now she was looking forward to new days. Not dreading what each one might bring.

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After rolling her breakfast cart into the hallway, Eva Pearl took a shower and washed her hair. With damp curls forming, she squirted lilac-scented conditioner into her hands and massaged it through her hair. She would let it stay in instead of rinsing it out, to tame her heavy, freshly blonde-streaked waves as her hair dried. Instead of straightening her curls out with the blow dryer and flat iron, as she usually did, she would drive with the top down on her convertible. That way, her waist-length waves would air dry in the wind as she drove.

Admiring her new look, she thought about how Frank always liked her hair. He said it was one of the reasons he contacted her online when he saw the profile picture she posted on RedHotTeens.com. He said he had never known a black girl who had natural hair that was as curly and as long as hers was. She told him every girl in her family had hair like hers, and that they took after their mother. When he asked if her mother was white, after saying no she told him to stop trying to put all black people into one little box—unless it was a box of crayons. "We have a lot of variety in our race," she told him. "We have different skin colors, different hair textures, and different-looking facial features, sometimes all in the same family." 

She explained how most black Americans were mixed, racially, because of all the crap that went on during and after slavery. "Your ancestors did this to us, so stop expecting us to all look the same." After she said that, Frank never asked her another question about her hair or her race. 

On her second day in Jackson, she went to a salon and had a lot of blonde streaks put in, mostly because Frank never allowed her to get highlights. She considered getting a really short haircut too, since her "manager" always liked his girls to have long hair. It would have felt great to chop it all off, but she changed her mind because she wanted her mother to see at least some of the daughter that left home all those years ago. When she watched the shows her now-famous baby sister was hosting on The Keepers, on THN, she liked how Zarah looked with a lot of blonde highlights. That was why she decided to try them. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, she thought she looked more like her baby sister, even though Zarah's skin was a lot lighter. Still, the streaks complimented her bronze-brown skin and made her face glow. Smiling at her reflection, she was happy with her decision. 

"It won't look classy on you," Frank always said when she told him she wanted to get highlights. "Black women always look classier with dark hair." She poked her tongue out at the thought of Frank's voice and felt relieved he would never be saying anything else about her hair or about her, other than in her thoughts. She loosened the top of her robe, draped it around her shoulders, and held her chin up. Then she decided it wasn't the color of a woman's hair that made her look classy or not. Class was much more than that. She piled her hair on top of her head and a handful of curls escaped on both sides, framing her face. She smiled again. The universe was helping her to see, deep down inside, she had all the class and sophistication she would ever need. Because both class and sophistication had to exist inside, before it could shine outside. It was mostly about respect. Something you must have for yourself; something you must demand from others. Frank had no idea about class, because he never possessed any.