from clarissa

brenda connor-bey

3.

Grandma Dukes gave me the rag doll named Clarissa. She was made from Grandpa Dukes' old brown socks. Grandma Dukes stuffed it with soft cotton and gave Clarissa navy blue button eyes, black yarn for hair, and a blue and white checked dress like the one she made for me. She looked better than my old Raggedy Ann because of her smile. It was a wide smile in bright red just like my mama's. But Grandma Dukes said that Clarissa's smile was like my smile. She kissed me, her face round and dark like Clarissa's. Grandma Dukes brought the smell of Ivory Soap and Pet Milk to my mornings.

Clarissa and me we traveled all over town. We went down to the river and watched the boys sail their boats made from popsicle sticks, their sails of white paper. Me and Clarissa sat for hours and watched them race those boats and call each other out of their names.

But what me and Clarissa liked the best was sitting on the front porch of our house in the white wooden swing. We could sit for hours and listen to mama talk inside. She called it her hair salon and charged the ladies $2.50 to press and curl their hair. The smell of Dixie Peach and frying hair, like Grandma Dukes called it, filled our mornings.

Sometimes me and Clarissa watched mama through the screen door. She made the ladies' fat hair lay flat on their heads. We giggled when the grease bubbled as she twisted their hair in the curling iron. Clarissa said the bubbles looked like the top of an ice cream soda dancing along the round arm of the curling iron. Mama's hands, with her long red fingernails, held the comb underneath the curl, the hot magic wand resting on the top, click, clicking in the cool of the morning where the mist became sunlight.

4.

The ladies in the shop, me and Clarissa liked them the best—that is, next to sitting in the swing. They always gave us money when they came in or when they left the salon. One time, when we peeked through the screen door, we saw them open their hands like fans and make that clucking sound with their mouths. It made me and Clarissa think about the hens in Grandma Dukes' backyard. The smile had gone out of their eyes, and Clarissa said she heard them say my name and say something about “being slow” and what a shame it was because I was such a pretty child. But I didn't hear them because Grandpa Dukes' pickup truck roared past our house, the dust rising to meet the sun. And as that big old sun moved across the sky, gentle breezes blew off the Delta. Me and Clarissa tried so many times to catch the taste of it in our mouths and to hold it there forever because it made us smile.