Hair, Chapter 1: Mine

My mother forbade her girls haircuts because so did the Bible. Instead I had pigtails, thick, spit-spot pristine or gone scruffy. But one time she clamped the bottom of each braid with a barrette and singed the ends, using a candle. Where she’d heard about this, I can’t say. Was it supposed to seal in the healthful oils, or what? The scriptures didn’t prohibit torching.

So not until high school did the first inches fall. It happened in the dorm. I wanted a smaller bun. Pinned under the Mennonite prayer cap—see-through—the bun’s bulk still told a story. A girlfriend did the whacking—maybe my roommate.

If I were to rank according to their knack (not effort) all the people who’ve since taken swings at me, my husband wins last place. Maybe his line of sight is skewed. I’d always end up lopsided. “Look,” I’d wail. “Look at this side and that side. The slant. And that clump hanging down.”

Even those I paid, even if they rightly steered the scissors, failed to work miracles. Even cuts, but the stragglers rising from my scalp have always defied managing. They’re worse frazzled in damp weather, ragamuffin, recalcitrant. Even—especially?—now, in its latter days, my headful refuses subjugation.

Here’s my haircutter now. She sits me on her windy porch, slashes hurriedly, almost callously, and flicks away the leavings. Almost before she starts she’s done. She goes at everything like that, racing time, batting down tedium, outwitting indolence.

(It’s tricky being the victim and, at the same time, taking potshots. She said I had to get permission before posting any.)

Once, in the early days of Covid—surging deaths, contagion in the very air—and me over at her house risking a trim, she made a big slip, but not with the scissors. Done with me, she pulled off her mask and blew at me to disperse the scraps. Blew. Haste isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you see. It helps to think.