Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon

She bought a Playtex garter belt, I. Miller No Color hose, Fruit of the Loom panties, and two nylon slips—one white, one pink—one pair of Joyce Fancy Free and one of Con Brio (“Thank heaven for little Joyce heels”). She carried an armful of skirts and an Evan-Picone two-piece number into the fitting room. Her little yellow dress that buttoned all the way down lay on the floor as she slipped a skirt over her head and shoulders, down to her waist. But the placket would not close. She sucked in her stomach and pulled the fabric as far as possible, but the teeth of the zipper would not join. A light sheen broke out on her forehead as she huffed and puffed. She was convinced that her whole life depended on whether or not those aluminum teeth would meet. The nail of her forefinger split and the balls of her thumbs ached as she struggled with the placket. Dampness became sweat and her breath came in gasps. She was about to weep when the saleswoman poked her head through the curtain and said brightly, “How are you doing?” But when she saw Hagar’s gnarled and frightened face, the smile froze.

“Oh, my,” she said, and reached for the tag hanging from the skirt’s waist. “This is a five. Don’t force it. You need, oh, a nine or eleven, I should think. Please. Don’t force it. Let me see if I have that size.”

She waited until Hagar let the plaid skirt fall down to her ankles before disappearing. Hagar easily drew on the skirt the woman brought back, and without further search, said she would take it and the little two-piece Evan-Picone.

She bought a white blouse next and a nightgown–fawn trimmed in sea foam. Now all she needed was make-up.

The cosmetics department enfolded her in perfume, and she read hungrily the labels and the promise. Myrurgia for primeval woman who creates for him a world of tender privacy where the only occupant is you, mixed with Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps. Yardley’s Flair with Tuvaché’s Nectaroma and D’Orsay’s Intoxication. Robert Piguet’s Fracas, and Calypso and Visa and Bandit. Houbigant’s Chantilly. Caron’s Fleurs de Rocaille and Bellodgia. Hagar breathed deeply the sweet air that hung over the glass counters. Like a smiling sleepwalker she circled. Round and round the diamond-clear counters covered with bottles, wafer-thin disks, round boxes, tubes, and phials. Lipsticks in soft white hands darted out of their sheaths like the shiny red penises of puppies. Peachy powders and milky lotions were grouped in front of poster after cardboard poster of gorgeous grinning faces. Faces in ecstasy. Faces somber with achieved seduction. Hagar believed she could spend her life there among the cut glass, shimmering in peaches and cream, in satin. In opulence. In luxe. In love.

It was five-thirty when Hagar left the store with two shopping bags full of smaller bags gripped in her hands. And she didn’t put them down until she reached Lilly’s Beauty Parlor.

“No more heads, honey.” Lilly looked up from the sink as Hagar came in.

Hagar stared. “I have to get my hair done. I have to hurry,” she said.

Lilly looked over at Marcelline. It was Marcelline who kept the shop prosperous. She was younger, more recently trained, and could do a light press that lasted. Lilly was still using redhot irons and an ounce of oil on every head. Her customers were loyal but dissatisfied. Now she spoke to Marcelline. “Can you take her? I can’t, I know.”

Marcelline peered deeply into her customer’s scalp. “Hadn’t planned on any late work. I got two more coming. This is my eighth today.”

No one spoke. Hagar stared.

“Well,” said Marcelline. “Since it’s you, come on back at eight-thirty. Is it washed already?”

Hagar nodded.

“Okay,” said Marcelline. “Eight-thirty. But don’t expect nothing fancy.”

“I’m surprised at you,” Lilly chuckled when Hagar left. “You just sent two people away.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t feel like it, but I don’t want no trouble with that girl Hagar. No telling what she might do. She jump that cousin of hers, no telling what she might do to me.”

“That the one going with Macon Dead’s boy?” Lilly’s customer lifted her head away from the sink.

“That’s her. Ought to be shamed, the two of them. Cousins. ”

“Must not be working out if she’s trying to kill him.”

“I thought he left town.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Well, I know I don’t want to truck with her. Not me.”

“She don’t bother nobody but him.”

“Well, Pilate, then. Pilate know I turned her down, she wouldn’t like it. They spoil that child something awful.”

“Didn’t you order fish from next door?”

“All that hair. I hope she don’t expect nothing fancy.”

“Call him up again. I’m getting hungry.”

“Be just like her. No appointment. No nothing. Come in here all late and wrong and want something fancy.”

She probably meant to wait somewhere. Or go home and return to Lilly’s at eight-thirty. Yet the momentum of the thing held her—it was all of a piece. From the moment she looked into the mirror in the little pink compact she could not stop. It was as though she held her breath and could not let it go until the energy and busyness culminated in a beauty that would dazzle him. That was why, when she left Lilly’s, she looked neither right nor left but walked on and on, oblivious of other people, street lights, automobiles, and a thunderous sky. She was thoroughly soaked before she realized it was raining and then only because one of the shopping bags split. When she looked down, her Evan-Picone white-with-a-band-of-color skirt was lying in a neat half fold on the shoulder of the road, and she was far far from home. She put down both bags, picked the skirt up and brushed away the crumbs of gravel that stuck to it. Quickly she refolded it, but when she tried to tuck it back into the shopping bag, the bag collapsed altogether. Rain soaked her hair and poured down her neck as she stooped to repair the damage. She pulled out the box of Con Brios, a smaller package of Van Raalte gloves, and another containing her fawn-trimmed-in-sea-foam shortie nightgown. These she stuffed into the other bag. Retracing her steps, she found herself unable to carry the heavier bag in one hand, so she hoisted it up to her stomach and hugged it with both arms. She had gone hardly ten yards when the bottom fell out of it. Hagar tripped on Jungle Red (Sculptura) and Youth Blend, and to her great dismay, saw her box of Sunny Glow toppling into a puddle. She collected Jungle Red and Youth Blend safely, but Sunny Glow, which had tipped completely over and lost its protective disk, exploded in light peach puffs under the weight of the raindrops. Hagar scraped up as much of it as she could and pressed the wilted cellophane disk back into the box.

Twice before she got to Darling Street she had to stop to retrieve her purchases from the ground. Finally she stood in Pilate’s doorway, limp, wet, and confused, clutching her bundles in whatever way she could. Reba was so relieved to see her that she grabbed her, knocking Chantilly and Bandit to the floor. Hagar stiffened and pulled away from her mother.

“I have to hurry,” she whispered. “I have to hurry.”

Loafers sluicing, hair dripping, holding her purchases in her arms, she made it into the bedroom and shut the door. Pilate and Reba made no move to follow her.

Hagar stripped herself naked there, and without taking time to dry her face or hair or feet, she dressed herself up in the white-with-a-band-of-color skirt and matching bolero, the Maiden-form brassiere, the Fruit of the Loom panties, the no color hose, the Playtex garter belt and the Joyce con brios. Then she sat down to attend to her face. She drew charcoal gray for the young round eye through her brows, after which she rubbed mango tango on her cheeks. Then she patted sunny glow all over her face. Mango tango disappeared under it and she had to put it on again. She pushed out her lips and spread jungle red over them. She put baby clear sky light to outwit the day light on her eyelids and touched bandit to her throat, earlobes, and wrists. Finally she poured a little youth blend into her palm and smoothed it over her face.