119 - Untangled

*Trust me, Mrs. Davis, you want to deal with me. You do not want my wife to come up here and deal with this. One of you will walk away and the other one will have a nervous breakdown. We have nine kids. You are not even close to being a challenge for my wife. - Trigg*

The first morning that Camille was trying to help Nicki with her hair, it took nearly two hours to get the long tightly curled hair untangled. And then another two hours just to get it manageable.

It was all done in the living room with Nicki on the floor and Camille on the blue couch. The computer with Nicki's program for the virtual classroom sat on the coffee table.

Camille was worried about using the straightener and called Guinivere who recommended a woman who could assist. It took several calls back and forth between Camille, Guinivere and Shonda.

Finally, Shonda agreed to meet them at her small at home salon. Camille made her take her computer and check in with her last teacher of the day. When the teacher started calling Nicki out for her leaving early, Camille revved her engine as they sat at the stop light.

“Excuse me, Mr. Pointe –“

“It’s *Mrs*.,” the woman cut Camille off, and Nicki tried very hard not to laugh.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Camille said with exaggerated sincerity. “It’s hard to hear in the car and we’re headed to an emergency appointment that I have spent all day trying to get for her.”

“Maybe you should have made the appointment sooner, you had all summer.”

“Excuse me?”

“She just got custody of me last week,” Nicki said.

“I guess because your parents –“

“Are dead,” Camille said harshly. “Both her parents were well respected doctors that were working the front lines of the pandemic and lost their lives trying to save other people’s lives.”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Pointe said.

“You sure as hell are. And I know that as an adult, you would not be trying to embarrass a child in front of the rest of her class. Certainly not as a person of authority. I know that you would not be doing something like that. Right?”

There was an uncomfortable silence from the computer before the teacher told Nicki where to find the syllabus and calendar for the class. Closing the program, Nicki disconnected her computer from the Jeep’s hot spot and tucked it away in her bag.

“Camille, that was the best!”

“I just don’t like when people in authority using their position to lord over the people that they should be helping.”

The venom in her voice had Nicki looking at her in surprise.

“You had a teacher like that.”

“Doreen Davis,” Camille spit out. “I code, I do math in my head. We’re not talking about 47 plus 95 minus 12 with the solution divided by two is 65. We’re talking differential and integral calculus in my head. And she wanted us to write out everything. Every. Thing. And I did not do it.”

“What happened?”

“We got into it one day and she wrote out this long and complicated formula and I told her that it was unsolvable. She told me that I was wrong. We started yelling at each other, something that I *never* do, and the teacher next door came in and he was the head of her department. He looks at the board and says that I’m right.”

“I’m assuming that she did not like that?”

“Not at all,” Camille chuckled. “But she wrote the formula wrong. Later that day, Mr. Daily had me moved out of Doreen’s class and into his. She still managed to make the rest of my time in high school a living hell.”

“I hate people like that,” Nicki murmured.

“Well, I’m not always known for playing well with others,” Camille warned as she pulled up to the address that she had been texted. “So, just be warned.”

They got out at the same time and headed to the front door with their face masks on. It was a pale skinned woman with bright blue hair that answered the door.

“Shonda?” Camille asked through her washable face mask.

“Yes, ma’am,” she smiled, and it was visible even with the disposable mask. She looked at Nicki and assessed her hair from a distance. “Nicki your hair is great.”

“Thanks,” she said as she reached up and touched her hair that was now in a huge afro.

“Let’s get you back here and we can see what we need to do.”

The little salon had a professional feel to it and did not seem to be something that had been done since the world shut down. The white tile floor and semigloss heather gray walls were contrasted by a black hairdressers sink and station. Both had chairs sitting in front of them.

Shonda had Nicki sit in the barber chair and ran her hands through the dark hair.

“I lost my brush last week when we moved,” Nicki said as Camille sat at the nearby table and pulled out her computer.

“We’ve all done that from time to time,” Shonda said as she pulled on a black cape. “Can’t tell you how many I’ve lost over the years.”

“That’s what I told her,” Camille said setting up her hot spot and connecting her computer and phone.

“Tell me what you want to do with your hair, that will determine if we do a straightener or a relaxer.”

“I would really like to get braids, but I know I can’t.”

“Why not?” Camille asked her.

“My parents did *not* like them. They always said that they looked trashy.”

“Oh, they sure as hell can,” Camille agreed. “If you don’t take care of it, if you go too long between appointments. But then again, if you don’t take care of your hair, any haircut, or style can look trashy.” She paused for a moment, “Except maybe the Farrah Fawcett from the 70s. It just looked like it was getting long.”

“Oh, god, that is so true,” Shonda laughed. “I never noticed that before.”

“You’re welcome. Here’s a useless tidbit, braids were used to communicate messages between the slaves before the Civil War.”

“Really?” the other two asked Camille.

Nodding, Camille grinned, “I’ll have my mom send down my encyclopedia on hair and let you read it. You should see the outrageous things that they would do in the French court just before their revolution. It really emphasized the drastic differences between the rich and everyone else.”

“There’s an encyclopedia on hair?” Shonda asked.

“There’s an encyclopedia on *everything*,” Camille laughed. “And I have just about all of them. I’m guessing that it’s too late to start doing braids.”

“Yeah, it really is. But we can do a relaxer and have you come in on Saturday.”

Nicki looked at Camille, silently pleading with her to do this.

“We can do that.”

“Cam, you’re the best! absolutely the best!”

“You just remember that if I ever have to be in the kitchen by myself,” she warned as her phone rang. Looking at the screen she saw Celt’s office number. “Sorry guys, I’ve got to take this.”

Picking up her phone, she walked away and clicked the little green button before holding the device up to her ear. “Hey, Celt. What’s going on?”

“Hey, girl,” Priscilla said, and Camille could hear the tears in her friend’s voice.

“Oh, my God!” Camille whisper yelled. “Girl, what the hell is going on?”

“There’s … there’s a limited amount that I can say.”

Priscilla’s voice was raw and emotional. Her speech was slow and halting. This was not how her friend usually sounded.

“Are you safe?” Camille demanded.

“I am now.”