Silver Sparrow

by Tayari Jones

It’s a shame that there isn’t a true name for a woman like my mother, Gwendolyn. My father, James, is a bigamist.

“I am improving my appearance. Wives can afford to let themselves go. Concubines must be vigilant.”

Dignified and proper, like a strand of pearls.

I slipped easily into my role as unacknowledged girlfriend. When you already had one secret life, what bother was it to have another secret within that secret?

“You are some kind of pretty. Fine, too. Thick.”

She and I had the same hair, but I hadn’t learned yet to make it move for me.

These women and men are obsessed with long hair.

“Raleigh, you may be white on the outside, but when the music starts you are one hundred percent American Negro.”

What a dumb statement.

She and I have a connection. Today, the link is rusty, the current erratic, but there will always be something between us.

This!

Mr. Sanders, asked me to sit on his lap after church. I refused the gum he offered, but I climbed onto his lap because I didn’t know that I could deny an adult any favor.

Unfortunately, many children were taught this.

RALEIGH WANTED TO MARRY my mother.

Who didn't see that coming?

The last in the series are six or seven of his own stricken face, his arms extended to hold the camera.

Selfie photo

“I ask for so little,” she said.

And that is why you get so little.

“That’s the best he can do. Bigamy is expensive.”

I had been in kindergarten when I figured out that I wasn’t pretty. That is the worst thing about being a little kid; nobody is shy about letting you know these things.

She pulled her fingers through her hair. I did the same, but augmented hair is for looking at, not for touching. The strands were unbending against my fingers.

What is the obsession with hair?

Lord knows it isn’t fair how nature parcels out the goodies.

Genetics are a crapshoot.

“Short cuts are for people who can’t grow hair.”

This made me laugh.

The young man told us that he was meeting his future in-laws for the first time. “Smart move,” my dad joked with him. “You never want to marry a girl before you see the mama. You need to know what you’re getting.”

“If you don’t like Marcus,” I asked her, “then why do you want to go to his party?” “Because I hate him so much I can’t stay away from him.”

“You can’t put the rain back in the sky.”

My mother’s favorite TV show was The Golden Girls, about these four old ladies that live together in an apartment, solving each other’s problems, being each other’s bridge over troubled water.

If there was anything the last few weeks had taught me, it was that people only told you what they wanted you to know. Asking a straight question didn’t necessarily get you a straight answer.

Just because you were ignorant doesn’t make you innocent.”

I don’t agree with this at all. She was innocent.