Mitchell Jackson: The Residue Years

Beauty life. A passel of females (grandmas, teenyboppers, twenty-somethings) seated in fluorescent chairs pushed against the walls, women mute and cross-legged and lost in beauty mags or prattling across a center table fixed with a gaudy vase of fresh tulips. A few stylists back in the back, dressed in all-black smocks. One of them painting white slop on a client’s near-to-bald scalp, another sifting through a mess of combs and scissors and curlers, another whacking a grandmother’s gray locks into an atavistic bob. Mom finds the last empty seat and leaves me to hold up a wall. She flips through a style book, shows me a few choices, asks me what I think. Don’t none of them move me, so I tell her to choose whichever she likes most. So much for input, she says. Whose idea was this? Whose? she says, and slaps the book closed. We don’t say nothing more till a stylist sways over, wearing plastic gloves glazed in auburn goop. She asks Mom if she’s picked a style. Not yet, but I want something new, Mom says, and turns to me to affirm. Something fresh. The stylist tells Mom no problem and escorts her to a station and I skip back outside feeling eyes on my back. That car is parked close. I get in and let the seat back till I’m almost lying down, and watch the shop’s clientele: a female saunters out patting a spume of loose curls, another one slicking severe blond streaks; I watch a girl hop out the passenger side of an old school sedan (seen the driver around town; he’s one of those recalcitrant brass-knuckleheads who loves to provoke beef) booming with unbalanced treble — business that’s semi-interesting at best short-term, but in the long run is a vapid-ass hobby, so can you blame me for dozing? Who knows how long later, Mom stirs me with a knock at my window. She’s sporting a new short cut, her hair bone-straight and sheened.

Wow! I say.

You like? she says.

I love, I say.

Me too, she says. Can we tip?

It’s hella cliché to claim all the nail shops are owned by Asians, but it’s true almost all the nail shops in the city are owned by Asians. A woman with an apron stitched with the shop’s name asks what service Mom would like and I tell her manicures and pedicures for us both. Mom says, Both? and I say, Yeah, both . They seat us in padded chairs beside each other and run foot tubs of water and I don’t know about Mom’s, but my tub’s a Fahrenheit to scald. Too hot, the tech says. Too hot! I say. Mom chuckles, slaps my leg, tells me to take it like a man. You told me you was a grown man, she says.

A moment after, when the nail tech slips off Mom’s heels, it’s plain to see adding this trip to our itinerary was sagacious as shit. The verdict is out, though, on whether Mom will feel so too.

Let me mention, the smell in this piece, oh boy, this is your brain, this is your brain about to burst. Must be why in some shops the workers wear those white face masks. But I endure, breathe slow and shallow, work my yogaesque peace till she gets to the part where she rubs my soles, the part that, between me, you, and the walls, makes me squeamish as shit and takes all my man-strength to suppress a punk’s titter.

I see we’re still sensitive, Mom says.

Hey, I say. Hey.

They do our feet and, right where we sit, they balance manicure bowls half-filled with marbles on the arms of our chairs. This close, I see my tech’s got a jagged half-moon chipped from a front tooth stained the shade of dry mud. She looks the youngest and thinnest of the workers and ain’t said word one since almost boiling off my fucking foot.

Not so for Mom, who, minus their little language chasm, has been gabbing with her tech like they’ve been friends since birth. That’s Moms for you. Never seen a conversation she couldn’t fuel.

They sit Grace the Gabfabulous under hand and foot heat lamps, and I bide time watching another nailtech apply inch-long claws on the fingers of a chick a nigger wouldn’t want no problems with in a dark alley. Can’t understand why a chick, any chick, would think them joints are in anyway attractive, though it’s probably best that I don’t. A worker ask Mom if she’d like a wax, peel, or massage but Mom declines.

We (me and Mom) stride out so close our sleeves touch.

Feeling good, I say.

Mom makes a fist, touches her rose-red nail job. Feeling more of myself, she says. To be continued.

Downtown: the Justice Center, the blue-capped tower, the State Building, the trillion-windowed federal courthouse, the county courthouse, the courthouse square, the city building with Portlandia looming over the entrance. We end up in North-west on a street lined by furniture stores, vintage stores, boutiques, ATMs.

Before we start, let’s agree on what we’re after, I say. On what you want and what it is you need.

Is this a shopping spree? she says.

Just like TV, I say.

But this isn’t TV, she says. Son, I love to see you do well, trust me I do, but you’ve been spending and spending and I don’t know how you can, she says. Where it all comes from. I don’t know and I know you won’t tell me. I don’t even know if I want you to tell me. No, I know I don’t want you to tell me. I won’t be able to stand it whatever it is.

Mom, don’t trip, it’s no big deal, I say. Let’s not make a big deal out of nothing.

At the first spot a woman wearing a kiloton of costume jewels rushes out a back room to guard the register as if it’s the Fountain of Youth or Fort Knox or both. She snaps open the till and busies with some insignificance only she and God can see without saying shit (not hello, not be right with you, nor how may I help you) to Mom nor I. We’re on the fool side of patience and still she don’t budge a quarter-step away from her post. Just when I’ve had enough, I tow Mom outside.

No such civil rights moment at the next store. This saleslady is on us so quick she stumbles. Welcome, welcome, she says, with a glee that’s damn near satiric. Mom makes her way to a rack, sifts through the hangers, and spotlights a long-sleeved blouse. This is cute, she says. Then get it, I say. I find a seat beside a silver plate of cheese and crackers and half-pints of water while Mom and the saleslady browse the racks, the tables of folded sweaters, the trunks. Mom floats back every so often to showcase her picks (skirts, more blouses, slacks, a single-button suit) and fuss over a price.

If you want it, get it, is the script.

Are you sure? she says.

Mom, get what you want. Let’s not worry over nickels and dimes.

To be true, today’s tab is liable to put a dent in my re-up funds, but somebody tell me, among all my so-called concerns, what should be above my mother’s joy?

Mom builds a nice-sized pile on the counter while the saleslady grins like a first-rate sycophant. We leave with armloads of new threads folded in bags and a discount card good for an eon.

This is too much, she says. Just too, too much.

Says who? I say.

I’m serious, she says.

So am I, I say.

There’s a clot of cars on I-5. I take the Fremont Bridge and get off near the hospital. Just past the bakery I ask Mom if she’s ready to call it a day. She isn’t. Then it’s movie time, I say, bend the next corner, and cruise to the theater by the mall. Mom insists we haul her new threads inside. If we’re keeping them, we may as well keep them, she says. No sense in letting someone steal them.

The box office line is no line at all, a minute wait if that, but since it’s no such luck on showtimes, we settle for a flick (the only one we can agree on) that by my kick-around watch (no jewels around Moms) is an antagonistic wait-time from previews. We buy the tickets and a bundle of snacks and head inside a theater with the lights still up. Mom drops her bags in the seat beside her and dives last-supper-style into the tub of popcorn I was loath to oversalt.