A Knock at Midnight(33)
To Sharanda, Dallas seemed ablaze with life. Her fun-loving cousin Charlotte was a “hot girl”—naturally beautiful and vivacious, much like Sharanda herself. It seemed to Sharanda like everybody knew Charlotte and everybody else wanted to know her. Dressed in tight jeans and tank tops, hair curled and edges laid just right, flashing those family dimples, Sharanda and Charlotte got to skip the line at clubs. They rolled dice in the VIP back rooms of Lady Pearl’s After Hours and danced off the stress of the day. They let good-looking men in Adidas sweatsuits and Kangol hats or smoothed-out Big Daddy Kane suits buy their drinks: Long Island iced tea for Charlotte, virgin strawberry daiquiris for Sharanda—she wouldn’t touch liquor, not after seeing what it did to Pearlie. It was the late eighties and the culture was unstoppable. Eric B and Rakim had dropped, and the funk-laced beat of EPMD’s “You Got to Chill” blasted from everybody’s speakers. Sharanda got a job at a shoe store and began saving her money to get her own place. Every other day, she drove back to Terrell to help take care of Genice—the sisters had developed a rotating schedule to save money on nurses. It felt good to be in both places her heart called her to be—with Genice, and in the midst of the generative culture and creativity of Black Dallas.
Charlotte began taking Sharanda to Jazz’s, a popular hair salon in the Oak Cliff neighborhood. The owners, Gae and Pam, were legendary hairstylists, so much so that people could just look at your hair and tell you went to Jazz’s. Sharanda, with her sweet smile, caramel complexion, and perfect curves in a five-foot-two-inch frame, was the perfect model for the latest looks. Being at Jazz’s, watching two powerful Black women call all the shots in a thriving business they had built themselves, was transformative. With Gae’s sure hands sculpting every strand on her head into a work of polished art, Sharanda listened to her friend talk about the independence and pleasure of owning her own salon. I could do this, she thought. I could do this myself.
Once Sharanda’s entrepreneurial spirit began to blossom, she discovered a pleasure and excitement in work that she had never known. She found an old building in Terrell for $180 a month, far cheaper than anything in Dallas, and close to Genice. It was tiny and in terrible shape, but she had a vision for transforming the space with elbow grease and a good eye for style and a bargain. She borrowed some money from a boyfriend for first and last month’s rent and rolled up her sleeves, determined to get the small space into salon shape herself. She was more interested in owning a business than in doing hair, but Gae urged her to get her cosmetology license as a backup: “What if all your stylists leave? How will you pay the rent?” Grateful for the guidance, Sharanda went to cosmetology school at night after her shift at the shoe store. There she discovered she had real talent as a stylist and came to love the artistry of it. Slowly, through hard work and her own keen eye for detail, the salon took shape.
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“MY MOM WAS like, Chile, what have you done? Everybody and they mama is talking about you and that paint color!” Sharanda laughed and took a few M&M’s from the napkin between us. “I was like, what are you talking about? I just knew I’d picked a classy design, ballet pink, black cursive for the sign: ‘A New Attitude.’ Genice told her she better drive down and see for herself, and as soon as she finished doing her mama’s hair, she did. She could see the little building she’d rented for her salon from two blocks away. They’d painted it pink, all right.
Hot pink.
Sharanda stood out front, her hand over her eyes to protect from the glare bouncing off the near-fuchsia facade. She took a deep breath.
“Well, it’s a New Attitude for the ladies of Terrell. That’s for sure!”
And a new attitude it was. The hot-pink exterior was unplanned, to say the least, but Sharanda couldn’t afford a new paint job. She made it her own.
Over the next few years, hot pink and black became Sharanda’s trademark color scheme. She used it on flyers and business cards she would hand out in Detroit where she traveled a couple of times a year to take classes at the city’s renowned Black hair shows. Black hair is Black art, and stylists from around the country would travel to Detroit rocking the latest blunt-cut bobs, freezes, and asymmetrical styles so they could take classes, show off, and earn a name in the business. By the midnineties, Sharanda had rented space within her salon in Terrell to four other women; her own clientele was increasing faster than she could keep up with. She was doing well enough to make ends meet, though not with much left over. No matter how many new hairstyles she mastered, women in Terrell could not afford to pay much.
Still, for a first business she’d started at age twenty-three, she thought she’d done all right. And she loved the entrepreneurial part, the risk taking, the creativity. Money was always tight, with her daughter, Clenesha, now three, and her mom to help care for. And Sharanda had a vision for a new business, a way to incorporate her true passion, cooking. With Clenesha on her hip, she started hunting for a new venue. She found another small building and opened a takeout burger joint, hiring two people and cooking herself after closing up at the salon. Now she had two businesses, neither turning much of a profit, but all her own. And she was just getting started.
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FOR A THURSDAY afternoon, the salon was slow when she got there, and Sharanda told the other stylist to go on home. Her client Alisha came in a few minutes late and greeted Sharanda warmly. Alisha always had all the gossip, and Sharanda knew she was about to get an earful.