The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Nancy came out of Jolene’s Boutique and Salon’s breakroom in a foul mood, snapping the plastic apron on her chair back with a loud retort that sent Ronald’s client upright underneath her dryer. “Whoa,” Ronald said, “someone’s in a crispy mood.”

“Don’t get me started, Ronald,” she growled and grabbed her broom to resweep her area. Ronald shook his tinged hair, clucked his tongue and said, “Girl, you’re gonna wear out that linoleum, couldn’t be any cleaner.”

Finally she put away the broom and dropped into her chair with a defeated sigh. Her next customer wasn’t due for 10 minutes and Mrs. Anderson never came on time anyway. Never one to let angry dogs lie, Ronald said, “You been listening to Jolene’s hot talk radio station, I’m betting. You don’t have enough stress with those kids of yours and the cost of daycare?”

“I know, I know, I …” She trailed off. For a moment she just clicked her scissors in the air, slow cuts, slicing nothing at all. She stared at herself in the half length mirror running the length of the salon, touched a finger to one cheek and frowned at herself. “Doesn’t it feel like us women are supposed to back to the kitchen?” she muttered.

“Oh, honey,” Ronald replied, walking over to lightly drape an arm over her shoulder in sympathy. “I’m supposed to go back to the closet, not the kitchen,” he whispered out of range of Rita Jorgenson who had stopped reading her Woman’s Day magazine to watch the two stylists with considerable interest.

“It’s hard, Ronnie, really frickin hard, rising two kids, paying most of my earnings for daycare. Maybe I should go back home, quit knocking myself out. Dan wants me to. But … I don’t know, maybe if he didn’t keep getting laid off.”

Dan, as Ronald well knew, didn’t get laid off, he got his ass fired. Usually for drinking on the job. So much for bread winning, Ronald told her when the café that hired him as morning cook sent him home after he screwed up multiple orders.

The front door jingled and Patricia Anderson walked in early. Ronald pulled away abruptly and Nancy welcomed her client. Rita Jorgenson tossed her magazine on the side table, shook her curlered head and said over the dryer, “You just hang in there, Nancy. It wasn’t us women who screwed up this world but it’s gonna be us who fix it. So hang in and don’t ever give up.”
Ronald gave a whoop and a small holler. “Damn right, Ms. J, damn right!” Patricia Anderson took off her coat and parked in Nancy’s chair. “Did I miss something?” she asked.

“No,” Nancy told her, “the revolution’s just getting started.”