Silver Sparrow

Chaurisse spends much of her childhood at Laverne’s beauty shop listening to the local women gossip about each other’s failed marriages. Laverne often gives other women advice, repeating the phrase “Marriage is complicated” (183). Once, while on the way to return a dryer that sounds like a “cheap vibrator,” she and Laverne have a conversation about a man who committed adultery and then got “his priorities straight” (186). Chaurisse can’t understand why he would cheat on his wife if he loved her, but Laverne insists she will understand when she gets older. She gives Chaurisse advice about how to be a wife instead of a “two-dollar whore” (188).

Soon after this talk, Chaurisse finds herself labeled as exactly that when she is caught talking to the preacher’s son, Jamal, in the choir closet. They were only discussing his mother’s alcoholism, but the reputation sticks, and Laverne puts Chaurisse on the pill. After Chaurisse has spent a little while being treated like a whore, she decides to sleep with Jamal and live up to the hype. She loses her virginity to him at Marcus McCready’s house. James knows none of this, as she knows he prefers to think of her as “clean,” and as the little girl who “changed him.”

Chaurisse’s mother, her father, and Raleigh are devastated after Miss Bunny’s passing. Chaurisse tries to distract herself from the loss with Jamal and the mall, but neither do much to heal her. Chaurisse also tries to distract herself with beauty. She convinces Laverne to let her get extensions and tries to befriend “silver girls,” a term she uses to refer to girls who know how to accentuate their already natural beauty with makeup. One day, Chaurisse almost gets caught shoplifting alongside a silver girl who is doing the same thing. Thinking quickly, they work together and evade arrest, although Chaurisse is often distracted by the silver girl’s beauty. They leave the store arm in arm, at which point Chaurisse tells the silver girl her hair smells like smoke. Upset by this comment, the silver girl retaliates by asking Chaurisse if her hair is fake. Chaurisse begins to fret over her hair, leading them to console rather than criticize each other. Chaurisse introduces herself and asks the silver girl her name, to which the silver girl responds, “Dana” (205). She asks Dana to exchange numbers so they can hang out again, but Dana refuses to give out her number. Slightly suspicious, Chaurisse gives Dana her mother’s business card and offers her a ride home in her father’s limousine. At this suggestion, Dana bolts away like “Cinderella.” 

For most of Chaurisse’s childhood, she helps her mother out in her mother’s salon, the Pink Fox. She is proud of her mother’s successful small business. One day during her senior year, she skips school to help her mother on a particularly busy day. While she is helping, Dana shows up saying she wants to cut her hair off. Denied this request based on her age and beauty, she decides to hang around with Chaurisse anyway. Laverne tells Chaurisse to bring Dana upstairs for a soda. Upstairs, Dana takes in every detail of Chaurisse’s home and asks a lot of questions. She wants to see Chaurisse’s room, but Chaurisse has to get back to work.

On the way back down to the salon, Chaurisse notices Dana steal one of James’s napkins. Dana leaves after that, agreeing to come back for a style another day. When she suggests the following day, Laverne says no because she had a date with her husband. Chaurisse notices that this causes Dana to look like she is about to cry. All the women in the shop agree she looked “sad” after Dana has left.

That night, Chaurisse and Laverne eat together and talk about Dana. Laverne says Dana made her “nervous” but Chaurisse says she “kind of like[s] her” (218). She tells her mother that Dana seems worried about college, specifically about getting into Mount Holyoke. She then muses that she might like to attend Mount Holyoke, too.