Listen Here (27 page)

from Queen Ida's Hair-Doing House of Waves

Lots of black women did hair in Luketown. Most of them did it just as a favor for a girlfriend, just because they were good at it, and some did it just for fun. They would sit a sister, a niece, or some other family member down in the middle of their kitchen, in the middle of an easy Saturday, laugh, talk and just do hair.

Ida Sims, who had always been known as “Queenie,” was the only one of them to own her own beauty shop. Queenie Sims was serious about the beauty business. But everybody knew she was more serious about the beauty part than the business part. She had been Luketown's first female business owner. For thirty years now, her Hair-Doing House of Waves was where the women of Luketown and a few other towns came to treat themselves when they had a few extra dollars and felt like being served by the Queen of Deep Down Beauty.

On those days when life had been just a bit too hard and the women of Luketown had taken perfect care of everybody else except themselves, they came to Queen Ida's for some relief. Usually Fridays and Saturdays, when they needed just a little extra attention, they called up the Queen and asked if she had any space in her afternoon for them. The women would walk a few doors down the street or drive from somewhere close by to sit and talk and let the Queen of Hair wash and set their blues away and turn their sweet curly naps into endless oceans of waves.

Queen Ida's Hair-Doing House of Waves might have looked like just a hole in the wall to a stranger passing through Luketown, but inside she had built a place of honor for black women and their many different kinds of hair. She had decorated her one-room shop just like something out of those old black and white movies.

Miss Ida was always saying she wanted to make the women who dropped by feel like royalty themselves. Mr. Andy from down the street had covered her two swivel chairs in purple velvet, just for added effect.

Hanging from every wall were soft spotlights, clean sparkling mirrors, and photographs of women who, Miss Ida said, were “some of the most beautiful black women ever born.” And in between all the pretty pictures she had small signs printed up with what she called her “words to be beautiful by.” One of her favorites was “Beauty is not something your Mama and Daddy gave you, beauty is something you must give yourself permission to have. So get to work!”

Queenie Sims believed in making her women feel like each and every one of them had finally won the black woman's lottery jackpot! She had the idea, years ago, that black women needed some special love and attention after all their years of having to take care of everybody else. So she decided to go into the business of treating them like queens every chance she got. That's how Miss Queenie got and kept her name.

Even though the sign said “Hair-Doing House of Waves,” to each and every black woman who went there each week, it also became a private rest stop, vacation, hot tub, emergency room, and restaurant, all in one. Not only did their scalps benefit from Ida's homemade creams and conditioners, but the good and honest talk they got back from her helped them work out some important things they were battling in their own private lives.

When Ida Sims got through with her customers, not only did she have the women of Luketown looking good, but she also had one or two of them thinking and believing something good about themselves as well. Her beauty shop wasn't just about fixing up what was on top of the head, it was also about cleaning out the years of dust hidden inside the deep corners of their lives.

After every head had been brushed and styled, and before anybody ever thought about leaving, she offered each customer a cup of tea as well as a slice of homemade coconut creme pie. And each customer who stood up to leave always got a little surprise box of something. A gift wrapped up in leftover Christmas paper. Something sweet secretly tucked down in their handbags with a little note attached. With that kind of special attention, no wonder Ida Sims had been in business thirty years. There were other shops in other towns nearby, but no one had ever opened up another beauty shop in Luketown to compete with the Hair-Doing House of Waves.

Ida Sims worked three shifts a day with two customers at a time. Each shift lasted about two hours, depending on the length and thickness of the hair. But as busy as she was, she never thought about getting a bigger place or hiring on more help. She said she could only give quality care to the hair and heads of two women at a time and no more than six per day. Quality was more important to Queenie Sims than making more money.

Women who came to Queen Ida's were never sure who would come in at the same time. They never knew which two would arrive and sit side by side for at least two hours with only each other as company. Some of them might have been friends before, but some others might never have spoken to each other before that day. That was part of the beauty of Ida's place, never being sure of just who you might be getting your hair done beside.

Miss Ida always believed that they would talk and by the end of the day make friends with each other. And because of that, they would have more to share the next time they saw each other out in the world doing something else.

There was no waiting room in the House of Waves. There was no room for anybody to avoid somebody else's eyes. There were no magazines, and it was rare to hear any music. It was Queen Ida's mission to get people to talk to each other. The rest of that stuff, Ida said, “you can do anytime.” This was the sacred beauty hour.

Her grandmother told her way back when she first started her business to always remember that there were some black women who never got the free time that other women got in their lives to make and keep friends. These were the black women who for all their time on earth had worked two and three jobs. These women had taken care of their own children and somebody else's too. Ida Sims decided way back then that bringing black women together to be friends was an important part of her all-round beauty work. This was where she started making the women of Luketown pay attention to their inside beauty.

No matter what day it was and no matter which two customers came in, there was always a lively conversation going on inside the House of Waves. In this relaxed time of working and talking, a lot more than hair-doing went on. In fact, nine times out of ten, somebody stood up to leave with a new, five-dollar hairdo and a million-dollar attitude. Queen Ida softly preached that creating outside beauty only lasted a week but inside beauty lasted for as long as the head itself stayed around.

from
Rice
(1995)

from the coals
of her bedroom fireplace
onto the tip
of my grandmother's
december winter stick
for fifteen years
hot irons traveled
into waiting flannel wraps
and were shuttled
up under covers
and inbetween quilts
where three babies lay shivering
in country quarter
night time air
hot irons
wrapped and pushed
up close
to frosting toes
irons instead of lip kisses
is what she remembers
irons instead of carmel colored fingers
that should have swaddled shoulders
like it swaddled hoes
and quiltin' needles
and spongy cow tits

everytime
i am back home
i tip into her room
tip again into her saucering cheeks
and in her half sleep
my mother reads her winters
aloud to me
her persimmon whispers are deleriously sweet
to this only daughter's ear
when you are home
she says
the irons come back
every night
i know the warm
is coming

(June 7, 1870–August 26, 1958)

Short story writer Lucy Furman was born in Henderson, Kentucky, and was orphaned when she was young. An aunt took her into her home and sent her to school in Lexington's Sayre Institute, from which Furman graduated at the age of sixteen. She lived with her grandparents for several years, before completing a secretarial course and working as a court stenographer in Evansville, Indiana. In Evansville, she began to write stories.

By the time Furman was twenty-three, her stories were being published in
Century Magazine
, and soon after, her first book of stories,
Stories of a Sanctified Town
, was accepted for publication.

After a decade of poor health, Furman moved in 1907 to eastern Kentucky and became a teacher at the Hindman Settlement School. There, she joined Sayre classmate Katherine Pettit, who had founded the school on Troublesome Creek in Knott County, Kentucky. Furman lived on campus and worked as a teacher, houseparent, and gardener, and gained strength enough to resume writing. “I have charge of the gardening and outdoor work at the Settlement School,” she wrote, “but the happiest part of my life is my residence at the small boys' cottage, about which I have told in the ‘Perilous' stories, and in which I find endless pleasure and entertainment. Here I hope to spend the remainder of my days.”
Mothering on Perilous
was published in 1913, and she continued to write stories for
Century Magazine.
Although she moved from Knott County in 1924, the years she spent at the Hindman Settlement School were her most prolific years as a writer.

After leaving Knott County, Furman returned to her hometown, Henderson, for a decade before moving to Frankfort, Kentucky, until 1954, and spent her final years with her nephew in Cranford, New Jersey.

In this excerpt from the opening of
Sight to the Blind
, a settlement school nurse encounters a woman blinded by cataracts who has been told by her community that her blindness is the result of her questioning God's will after the death of her daughter.

Novels:
The Lonesome Road
(1927),
The Glass Window
(1925),
The Quare Women
(1923),
Sight to the Blind
(1914).
Stories:
Mothering on Perilous
(1913),
Stories of a Sanctified Town
(1897).

“Miss Lucy Furman [obit],”
New York Times
(26 August 1958), 29. Ish Richey,
Kentucky Literature, 1784–1963
(1963), 83–84. John Wilson Townsend, “Lucy Furman,”
Kentucky in American Letters
, Vol. 2 (1913), 247–48. William S. Ward, “Lucy Furman,”
A Literary History of Kentucky
(1988), 86–88.

One morning in early September, Miss Shippen, the trained nurse at the Settlement School on Perilous, set off for a day of district-visiting over on Clinch, accompanied by Miss Loring, another of the workers. After riding up Perilous Creek a short distance, they crossed Tudor Mountain, and then followed the headwaters of Clinch down to Skain's Fork, where in a forlorn little district-school-house the trained nurse gave a talk on the causes and prevention of tuberculosis, the spitting of tobacco-juice over the floor by teacher and pupils abating somewhat as she proceeded. Two miles farther on she stopped at the Chilton home for a talk to half a dozen assembled mothers on the nursing and prevention of typhoid, of which there had been a severe epidemic along Clinch during the summer.

Afterward the school-women were invited to dinner by one of the visiting mothers. Mrs. Chilton at first objected to their going, but finally said:

“That's right; take ‘em along with you, Marthy. I allow it'll pyeerten Aunt Dalmanuthy up to hear some new thing. She were powerful' low in her sperrits the last I seed.”

“Pore maw!” sighed Marthy, her soft voice vibrant with sympathy. “It looks like things is harder for her all the time. Something new to ruminate on seems to lift her up a spell and make her forgit her blindness. She has heared tell of you school-women and your quare doings, and is sort of curious.”

“She is blind?” inquired the nurse.

“Blind as a bat these twelve year',” replied Mrs. Chilton; “it fell on her as a judgment for rebelling when Evy, her onliest little gal, was took. She died of the breast-complaint; some calls it the galloping consumpt'.”

“I allus allowed if Uncle Joshuay and them other preachers had a-helt off and let maw alone a while in her grief,” broke in Marthy's gentle voice, “she never would have gone so far. But Uncle Joshuay in especial were possessed to pester her, and inquire were she yet riconciled to the will of God, and warn her of judgment if she refused.”

“Doubtless Uncle Joshuay's high talk did agg her on,” said Mrs. Chilton, impartially, “but she need n't to have blasphemed like she done at Evy's funeral occasion.”

Marthy covered her face with her hands.

“Oh, that day!” she exclaimed, shuddering. “Will I ever forgit it? John and me had got married just a month before Evy died in October, and gone to live up the hollow a small piece from maw, and even then she were complaining of a leetle scum over her eyes. Losing Evy, and rebelling like she done atterward, and Uncle Joshuay's talk, holp it along fast, and it were plain to all before winter were over that he had prophesied right, and her sight were a-going. I would come down the branch of a morning and beg her to let me milk the cow and feed the property and red up the house and the like, but she would refuse in anger, and stumble round over chairs and table and bean-pot and wash-kittle, and maintain all spring and summer her sight were as good as ever. Never till that day of the funeral occasion, one year atter Evy died, did she ever give in.”

Here Marthy again covered her face with her hands, and Mrs. Chilton took up the tale:

“I can see her now, up thar on the hill-shoulder, betwixt you and John on the front log, by Evy's grave-house, and Uncle Joshuay a-hollering and weeping and denouncing like he does, and her setting through it like a rock. Then finally Uncle Joshuay he thundered at her the third time, ‘Hain't it the truth, Sister Dalmanuthy, that the judgment and the curse of God has fell on you for your rebelliousness, like I prophesied, and that you hain't able to see John thar or Marthy thar or the hand thar before your face thar?' when Aunt Dalmanuthy riz up sudden, and clinched her hands, and says slow and fierce: ‘Man it
is
the truth you speak. The curse
has
fell; and I hain't able to see John here or Marthy here or the hand here before my face here. But listen what I got to say about it. I'm able to hate and to curse as good as God. And I do! I hate and curse the Hand that, after taking all else I loved, snatched from my bosom the one little yoe lamb I treasured thar; I hate and curse Him that expected me to set down tame and quiet under such cruelty and onjestice; I hate and curse and defy the Power that hated and spited me enough, atter darkening the light of my life, to put out the sight of my eyes! Now,' she says, ‘you lay claim to being mighty familiar with the Lord; take that message to Him!' she says.

“Women, that whole funeral meeting kotch its breath at them awful words, and sot there rooted and grounded; and she turnt and looked around defiant-like with them sightless eyes, and strode off down the hill, John and Marthy follering.”

After a somewhat protracted silence, Marthy's gentle voice resumed:

“And from that day to this John and me hain't left her sence. We shet up our house and moved down to hern; and she tuck to setting by the fire or out on the porch, allus a-knitting, and seldom speaking a word in all them years about Evy or her sorrow or her curse. When my first little gal come along, I named it Evy, thinking to give her some easement or pleasure; but small notice has she ever showed. ‘Pears like my young uns don't do much but bother her, her hearing and scent being so powerful' keen. I have allus allowed if she could get her feelings turnt loose one time, and bile over good and strong, it might benefit her; but thar she sets, day in, day out, proud and resdess, a-bottling it all up inside.”