Hair
by Lyriqal Williams
The sound of Mom yelling at me ricocheted throughout the house. All of the opened doors, including the front door, caused her voice to echo louder. It felt like the walls were shaking, and maybe they were, considering how run-down everything was. Looking at the mirror, I wondered if it might crack. She was a tall, thin woman, and when we were around others, she was quiet and polite. However, alone, when it was just me, her, and my brother Tony, she was like this: loud and overwhelming, easily angered.
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The light above the mirror flickered, and the chopped-off strands of my hair fell into what felt like a cage around my feet. I stared at the black clumps of hair and wondered if something that terrible had truly happened, something that had caused Mom to shout and curse so loudly that her voice had become strained. As she yelled, I didn’t move. I had grown the habit of dissociating from my body when she raised her voice. The cage of hair around my legs trapped me and blocked my senses. Mom’s voice felt far away until a sharp pain ran through my scalp. My head was being yanked. Mom was using what grip she could to pull my face toward hers, so close that I could feel the heat of the cigarette between her lips. Then, as spit left Mom’s mouth and found its way to my cheek, I remembered what happened that led us here.
I cut my hair. With a kitchen knife, I sawed off the longest portions of my hair, and as I raised the knife to chew away more, the bathroom door swung open. Mom’s face had slowly risen into fury the way a cartoon character’s face would. She had just gotten off of an eight-hour shift, and this is what she came home to: Ella standing in a mess of black hair.
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“Ella thinks she’s too good to go out and get a haircut like the rest of us. I am working my ass off and Ella is in the bathroom, cutting her hair.” Her voice rang through my mind. In moments like that it was hard to take her seriously, especially when I felt like her anger was unjustified.
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She stopped yelling and asked a question that she expected an answer to, but I didn’t want to talk to her. I never wanted to talk to her, so instead, I simply looked at her. Her make-up had started to smudge, and her lipstick stained the cigarette. Her hair had been pulled into a high bun, and as I stared at the kitchen knife that had been dropped in the bathroom sink, I wondered if she put her hair up in defense. Of course, I’d never cut her hair, or anyone else’s, but she didn’t know that. She didn’t trust me. Her appearance must have fallen apart when she came home and saw me. She’d never let herself outside looking like that.
I had always been that way. I preferred short hair, shorts, and tennis shoes. I was never a fan of dolls or unicorns. However, I was never a fan of cars and dinosaurs either. Still, my parents deemed me a tomboy.
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“It’s just a phase, Ella. You will grow out of it,” Mom would say. I never did, and in fact, my lack of interest in the things I was supposed to like only grew more and more. Mom hated this, but she never said anything. That is, until my dad died. With my grandfather deceased and Tony still a baby, my dad was the only male figure around. Mom never really talked to me about it, and around that time, she had stopped really talking to me at all. Instead, she began bringing around older men who would boss Tony and me around and dirty up the house. I didn’t like these men, but every time I brought this up to Mom, we began yelling at each other. In the end, Mom would begin yelling at me about “trying to be a boy,” and “trying so hard to be different from everyone else.” She’d go on about how she didn’t give birth to two boys, she gave birth to a boy and a girl.
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The yelling and cursing went on until I had to walk down to meet Tony at his bus stop. He went to a day camp on the weekends. My feet hit the pavement one after the other, left-right, left-right, and I watched them. I studied the slit crawling its way up to the side of the shoe, the promise of a hole to come. By the time I reached the stop, the bus was pulling up. I saw the children through the window, and I wondered if they thought my hair was weird. Mom said that people are always watching and judging our appearance, and how we look is important. Right now, however, the children were playing amongst themselves, not once looking at me. Tony stepped off the bus. With brown hair and chocolate-brown eyes, he was almost the spitting image of Mom.
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“Hi, Ella,” he greeted me as we began walking.
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“Hi, Tony. How was camp?”
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He went on a rant about all of the things he made, and how he got in and out of trouble. I hummed in response. It was the first conversation I’d had all weekend since mom and I don’t really have conversations. It was a nice change to be talked with and not talked at.
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When we reached the house, the front door was locked, and I had to wait until Tony pulled out his key to unlock it. Mom was sitting on the couch, eyes trained on the television, but the volume was so low that I knew she wasn’t paying attention to it. Our entrance into the house was silent, and my walk to my bedroom was quieter still. Tony stayed behind and talked to Mom.
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“How was your day, sweetheart?” she asked as she helped him off with his backpack. That was the last thing I saw as I retreated to the back of the house.
That Monday, I arrived at school during lunch. Mom said it was urgent that I get to the hair salon, even if I missed half the school day. I didn’t waste my time going to the cafeteria. Instead, I made my way to the bathroom. I headed straight to an empty stall and ate the sandwich I packed, as the pungent smell of waste filled my nose. This was normal for me, so I had no special reaction. When my sandwich was finished, I made my way to the sink and got a good look at my reflection. At the salon, they evened my hair with tools I was not familiar with. Afterward, Mom and I drove to a hair store, where she picked out a black wig and forced it onto my head. The synthetic hair had come down to the middle of my back.
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“My child is not going to walk around looking crazy,” she said.
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As I looked in the mirror, I felt crazy. I felt like someone else. I pulled the wig off of my head and stuffed it in my backpack. My hair didn't look as cool with the stylist's trimming to even it out, so I quickly ran my fingers through it to rough it up. When I was done, I saw my dad in the mirror. I got my black hair from him. Because of his habit of running his hands through his hair, it was always an unruly mop on top of his head.
When I got home, the house was empty, which wasn’t anything new. I made my way to the bathroom, yesterday’s crime scene. Mom had made me sweep up my hair as she continued her rant. She’d gone off about how I am a girl, how I need to start behaving like one, and how I can’t change my appearance to cope. An acceptable form of coping to her must have been paying for trendy hairstyles and designer clothes, things I found unnecessary. I went to the living room and took off my shoes. The slit in the bottom had gotten worse, and for a second, I wondered when would be a good time to bring up getting new ones.
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Mom didn’t come home until later, and I noticed her slight alteration in appearance. Her hair was straight, and the ends were even; her hair was always very nice. She went to get it evened and professionally washed every two weeks. I didn’t like people touching my hair, but it worked for her. By the time she came home, Tony and I had already had our dinner of meatloaf, which we ate almost every night. Meatloaf was cheap, and Tony and I liked it a lot when we were younger. As I prepared dinner, I glanced at the kitchen knife I had used to cut my hair. I had yet to clean it off, but why bother?She greeted Tony, and she gave me a once-over with pursed lips. She didn’t like my hair. Mom didn’t go into the living room and settle down until I went to take a shower. I meant to head straight to my room, but I overheard her and Tony playfully arguing about what was on the television. I peeked into the living room and saw Tony standing between mom’s legs as she gave him a tight hug. We used to be like that, she and I. Of course, that was before my dad died. She always looked so happy with Tony, and I wondered why she never seemed that way with me anymore.
Later that night, I overheard Mom talking on the phone. I could always hear her because the knob on my door was broken, so the door didn’t close. I didn’t usually eavesdrop, but that time, I did. I could hear the sweetness in her voice, the sweetness that was never directed toward me.
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“You know Ella, she’s…hard to understand and even harder to control. She reminds me too much of, what? No, yeah, my hair is fine, but Ella’s hair is, okay, yeah. Talk to you tomorrow.”
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After a few moments of silence, sniffles filled the house. For a moment, I felt guilty, but I wasn’t sure what for. Being hard to understand? Being even harder to control? Reminding her too much of–. I rolled over and listened as her sniffles turned into weeping, then looked at the floor where my backpack sat with the long, black wig still smushed inside.