Welcome to my chair. Sit down, baby, I'll be with you in a minute. I'm Yvette. I'm 47, I've been doing hair since I was fifteen years old, and for twelve years now I've owned my own four-chair salon in southwest Atlanta. My husband Otis says I talk more than I cut. That's a lie. I do both at the same time.

This is my journal. The ladies in my chair tell me everything, and I keep most of it. What I write here, I write with their blessing, and first names only.

Jump to August »

Twenty-five years and one day. Let me tell it in order, because I want to remember it in order.

Nita, who has worked chair two for me nine years, did my hair at seven in the morning in my own chair, shop closed, lights half on. I did not say one word about how she was doing it. Nita says that was the true miracle of the day.

The church was full by a quarter to four. Otis's whole family came up from Macon. My sister flew in from Detroit. The shop ladies sat together on the third pew in their hats, and I do mean hats. Mother Hattie wore the purple one with the feather that has been to every wedding and funeral at our church since 1968.

Otis stood up front in the gray suit I picked and the purple tie I picked and a handkerchief he picked, which was gold and too big, and I let it go. I have learned a thing or two in twenty-five years.

Then Gloria stood up to sing. Three months ago she didn't know if she'd be singing anything this fall. She sang "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" in the wig I cut for her, and I had to look at the ceiling.

Pastor asked Otis if he had anything to say. Otis pulled a church bulletin out of his pocket with writing all over the back and read, "Yvette, you have been telling me where to go for twenty-five years, and I have not been lost one time." The whole church fell out. Then he read the rest, and nobody was laughing, and I'm not putting that part here. That part is mine.

In the fellowship hall his brother Lonnie came up with a boom box and said, "Hold on, now," and pushed play, and it was Darnell. Our boy had mailed a tape all the way from Germany. "Mama. Daddy. Happy anniversary. I wish I was there. Daddy, dance with her." And Otis did. Al Green, "Let's Stay Together," same as 1974. My feet hurt and I did not care.

When we got home Otis took off those shined shoes on the front porch and sat down on the step and said, "Same time in twenty-five years?" I said, "You'll have to ask me." He said, "I'm asking." I sat down next to him in my champagne lace, and I said yes again.

Closed the shop at two. Rehearsal at six. Otis walked too fast down the aisle and Pastor made him do it three times. Nita's doing my hair tomorrow at seven. Nobody does her own hair on her own day. Not even me. Especially not me. Bed.

Gloria came in after her treatment today to have the wig freshened up for Saturday. She's past halfway on this first set of treatments, and then there's a different medicine after, the Taxol, into the winter. She says she's a new kind of tired now, heavier in the legs. She sat in my chair with her eyes closed and said, "Make me look like Diahann Carroll." I said, "Baby, you already look like Diahann Carroll, I'm just going to remind people."

Meanwhile Keisha, my youngest, twenty-three and too smart for her own good, was on chair three singing along with TLC on the radio, that "No Scrubs." Mother Hattie, who is 84 and has come every Friday for a press and curl since before Keisha was born, and was only in today because she wants to look right for Saturday, asked what in the world is a scrub. Keisha explained it. At length. With examples. Mother Hattie thought about it and said, "Oh. We called that a no-count."

Gloria laughed so hard I had to stop the comb. That's the first time I've heard her really laugh since June. I'd have paid money for it.

Two ladies in my chairs today who drove up from the coast Tuesday ahead of that hurricane, Floyd. One from Savannah and one from Brunswick, both staying with family, and both needing their hair done, because you do not sit up in your cousin's house for a week looking any kind of way. The Savannah lady said it took her all day to make a drive that ought to take four hours. I didn't charge either one of them. Don't tell Otis. (Otis, I know you read this.)

Darnell called last night, one o'clock in the morning over there. He can't get leave for Saturday. They're short-handed with so many from his post sent down to Kosovo this summer, and he's only been over a year. He sounded so grown and so sorry, and I told him it was fine, baby, it's fine.

Then this morning between clients I went in the storeroom and sat on a case of shampoo and cried where Keisha couldn't see me. Twenty-five years, and the best thing that came out of them is the one who won't be there. I dried my face, fixed my eyeliner, and went back out and did a relaxer. That's the job. That's also the marriage, some days.

I found the dress. Well. The dress found me.

I had it in my head I wanted lavender. Four shops said lavender, and every lavender dress in Atlanta made me look like an Easter egg somebody forgot to hide. Then at a little boutique over on Cascade Road the lady brought out champagne lace, tea length, with gold beading at the neck, and a hat to match with a little bit of veil, and I heard myself say, "Oh." Just, oh.

Tried it on at the shop tonight after closing for my jury: Nita, Keisha, and Mother Hattie, who stayed late on purpose and pretended she didn't. Nita cried. Keisha said "Okay, Miss Yvette, I SEE you." Mother Hattie looked me up and down a long time and said, "That'll do." From Mother Hattie that is the Nobel Prize.

Otis has not seen it and will not see it. He has his own instructions. Gray suit. Purple tie. Shoes shined, and I will check.

After work I went with Gloria to pick out her wig. She tried on eleven. I counted. She kept picking the ones that looked like somebody else, and I kept saying no, ma'am, we are not hiding you, we are keeping you.

We settled on one close to her own color, a little fuller than she used to wear. Then I did what I do. A wig out of the box looks like a wig out of the box. I brought it to the shop and thinned it and shaped it and brought it down soft around her cheekbones, where her own hair always fell, and I set it on her head and turned the chair.

She looked a long while. Then she said, "There she is."

She told me the nausea pills they gave her this time around work better, and she ate a whole plate of Otis's greens Sunday. I sent her home with more.

Gloria has been in my chair every other Saturday for eleven years. She sings alto in our choir, she has the prettiest crown of hair in the church, and in June they told her it's breast cancer. She told me I could write about her as long as I say she's still fine. She is still fine.

Two weeks after her first chemo it started coming out. She called me at home after church today and just said, "Yvette, it's time." I knew what she meant. I opened the shop at six this evening, pulled every blind, and put on some Mahalia Jackson, low. We cut it close together. She did not cry once while I was cutting. She cried when I turned the chair to the mirror. Then I cried. Then we both laughed at ourselves crying, two grown women in an empty beauty shop on a Sunday night.

She said, "I have a nice shaped head, don't I?" I said, "Gloria, you have a beautiful head. I have been telling you that for eleven years, it just had hair on it."

Well, it's official. September 25th, four o'clock, at our church. Otis and I are renewing our vows on our twenty-fifth anniversary.

I told Otis at supper. He put his fork down and said, "Did I get asked?" I said, "You got asked in 1974." He picked his fork back up. Twenty-five years, and that man still knows when a question is already answered. Otis has carried mail on the same route for twenty-four years. He knows every dog on the south side by name. He knows me too, mostly.

Our son Darnell is 22, a Specialist in the Army, stationed in Germany since last summer. He calls Sunday evenings with a phone card, and the call always cuts off right when he's getting to the good part. I wrote him today at his APO address and told him the date so he can put in for leave. I underlined it three times. He knows what that means.

Pastor says he'll do it. The shop ladies say they'll do the food. I say I'm going to need a dress.