Two Dads are Better than None

Big Hair - I wrote this one for my mom while in NYC.

Big Hair
The blades spun precariously above my body, wobbling and groaning as if they were about to drop down and cut me up. I watched the ominous ceiling fan go round and round as the velvet comforter rested gently beneath my back, imaging the carnage if it were to fall. The whole time a soft tassle shook as the ceiling fan spun around, a bit out of balance. My legs were twitching and bored as they hung off the end of the large bed that seemed to swallow me up.

"Don't put your feet on the bed."mother chimmed. "I paid good money for that and I don't want it all dirty."

"What? My feet aren't on the bed. Look." She didn't look but I could tell her eyes were shooting back at me in the mirror. I didn't even have to look up. I could feel them.

Monday mornings made me anxious. I was ready to go to school and get things started but my mother insisted on taking her time. She sat in front of the bathroom sink and applied her face. She was hunched over a small mirror, her face a few inches from it. "It takes women time to get ready.Now go watch TV."She said matter-of-factly.

"I don't want to. I am ready to go."I insisted.
"Just hold your horses." Her tone rose and I could tell I was pushing it. It is amazing how a six-year-old already knew which buttons to push.

"Besides, today is picture day for you at school. Sit up so I can see what you are wearing."I raised my body much the way a mummy would, with my arms straight out in front of me.

I looked down at what I was wearing; red corduroy pants and a brown and white stripped double-knit shirt. There was a Rolling Stones patch over my knee with big red lips and a pink tongue sticking out. I liked the way the lips and tongue looked. My mother looked at me in the mirror, inspecting me from head to toe.

"Go put something else on."My mother barked. "And comb that messy hair."

I looked at her as she applied a pencil to various parts of her face, moving quickly and with deft intent. She had done this many times before and I though her face had a soft pretty glow.

I stared observantly at the back of her head. The best part was watching her do her hair. Sometimes she had huge curlers and white hair seemed to be stacked on top of her head, piling higher and higher. I wondered if it ever fell. Other times it was filled with aluminum foil, jetting out in all directions. It made her look like some kind of alien. The worst was when she would fasten a plastic cap over her head and tufts of hair stuck out wildly. This look scared me.

It always seemed to me that my mother spent hours on her hair. If she was not washing it or curling it she was coloring it drying it. The sound of the hair dryer whining through the apartment and the pungent smell of peroxide filled the small apartment. She would never last a day at hide and seek.

It seems now that this setting was where I was given instructions on how to live life, while sitting on her bed, waiting patiently with my legs flailing about. She usually asked me about the confines of my simple six-year-old life and I in turn would answer in short phrases. Here I received instructions on how to live and what to do if one such horrible thing or another befell me.

Once she told me that if I was ever lost in the store, I was to find a nice lady or a policeman and tell them I could not find my mommy. One day while in the packed aisles of the supermarket, my mother wandered off from me. With no policeman in sight, I walked to the front of the store and found a short round lady with red hair and heavy blue eyeliner. She had a friendly face and asked me what my mother looked like. I told her she had big white hair and she laughed. I didn't know my mom's name. It was "mommy" of course. I told her my name and she grabbed a CB microphone off the wall. She smacked her gum and had a sing-song sound in her voice as she bellowed the words:
"Will the mother of Brent, please come to the service counter. Will the mother of Brent, please come to the Piggy Wiggly service counter." My name echoed across the store and I liked the sound of “Brent"and "Piggly Wiggly" like that.

No sooner had she stopped then my mother appeared coming up out of the horizon, big hair and all. I pointed. I could tell by her face that she was annoyed.

"Your boy is so cute. He said his momma had big white hair."The lady said smiling and clicking her gum. "Course it looks more blond to me."My mother smiled politely as she thanked the lady and pulled me quickly behind her. When we were out of earshot, she told me not to tell people that, besides, "It was blond not white. You stay right beside me, do you hear?" I nodded.

The funny thing about it was that her hair really did stick out. As the years wore on I developed a strategy for finding her in crowds or when I needed to find her for begging purposes. I even shared this strategy with my little sister." If you ever get lost, just looked for the big white hair."I held my little sister's hand and spoke confidently as we crossed the hot parking lot. The easiest way to do this was to get in a high place and look for the stack of hair. I got so good at it that it took seconds, and once I zoned in on my target I was off. As the years wore on, the stacks of hair got shorter. There was even a period of a few years when I mistakenly yelled "Mom" at the wrong ladies. I would walk away embarrassed and usually then I would hear my name. "Brreeunnnt, over here."

I fell back on the bed again, trying to keep my legs straight. I grunted loudly as if it had actually hurt myself somehow. I stared at the ceiling fan again.

"Go change NOW."She yelled. I ran out of her room and into the small bathroom in the hall. After applying the big brush to my hair I decided that my bangs seemed awfully long. All the little boys in my class seemed to have these mushroom-shaped haircuts and I was not sure why. As I stood in front of the mirror I remembered always being told to "get your hair out of your eyes."Some scissors seemed in order. Out of a kitchen drawer I pulled out a pair of long steel scissors with a shiny black handle. They seemed heavy and made a clean crisp snip as I tried to get my fingers around them.

Back in the bathroom, the scissors wobbled in my hands as I tried to make a clean cut. Snip. A wad of brown hair floated gently down and landed in the sink. It looked better now I thought.

I gathered my things out of my room as I heard my mother shouting "Ready?" She ran through the house as she flung her purse around, digging through it while shutting off lights at the same time. As I walked in front of her towards the door she shouted at me for not changing my clothes. I was waiting outside the front door as she made a last ditch effort to turn out the lights in the bathroom. After she saw the clumps of brown hair in the sink I heard a shrill voice. “Brent! Get in here." I walked obligingly back into the apartment. After one look at the horrified expression on her face, I knew I was in trouble.

"Did you cut your hair?"she demanded.
"Yeah, a little."

She bent down and looked at my hair. I had a 45-degree angle cut into my bangs. My mother only noticed how it slopped down as she stared in disbelief at the three-inch triangle cut out of the middle of my forehead.

"You are in big trouble!" She jerked me into the bathroom and picked up the clump of soft hair.
"Don't ever cut your hair. Do you hear me. Little boys are not supposed to cut their hair. Even I don't cut my hair. It's dangerous."

She picked up the scissors and started cutting at it, trying to make it look normal.

"Why did you have to do this on picture day?"
She whined. "Of all the days."She looked disappointed and angry. After a few more minutes of snipping and swaying her head from left to right, she sighed and said we had to go since we were late already.

"Oh well. That's the best we can do. If the other kids laugh at you, it is because of your funny hair."We headed out the door.

At school it was not that bad at all. No one really noticed my hair it seemed. Six-year-olds weren't preoccupied with such matters. The teachers had surprised looks on their faces. "Wow Brent. Did you get a new haircut for picture day?"
I smiled back and exposed the black spot in my mouth where a tooth had recently fallen out.
“Yeah." I said. They smiled back.

A few days later I was outside the school and waiting to get picked up. A white pinto with two doors and a brown vinyl roof pulled up. My mother reached across to open the door to let me in and I could hear Captain and Tenneil playing on the radio. I threw my bags and a brown envelope into the seat as I pulled the door closed. It took both hands to pull the door in and a bit of effort. Before I could even turn around, my mother had opened the envelope and was looking at something. The look on her face told me that it was not good. She held up a huge picture of a toothy smile but somehow the only thing you noticed was the patch of missing hair and how crooked my forehead looked.

"Oh Brent. These look horrible." Was all she said. "Now we don't have any pictures to give to Grandma."She was mad and stared at the road as we pulled away.

"I like them." I said, trying to make light of the situation.

"Well, then you can have them." She said as she threw the envelope at me. I stared out the window silently on the way home for fear of getting in more trouble.

That night in my room I tool markers and drew on the pictures. On one I drew a moustache and on another I drew a black eye. On the other, smaller ones I drew a beard or some stitches on my face. I wanted to cut them up but the scissors were no where to be found, hidden I was sure. I decided that the moustache looked nice and that I would have a long curly one when I grew up. When I asked my mother which one she preferred, she did not answer. She was not amused when I showed her the pictures.

She beamed at me through the mirror as I held up the picture.

"If you ever cut your hair again mister, you are going to get a spanking." I watched as she applied waves of colorful purple eyelshadow in the mirror and pushed up on the mound of white hair towering high above her.

"And if you think I am joking, just try it and see."
I jumped butt-first on the bed and fell back into the soft velvet comforter. I stared at the ceiling fan wobbling above me, its blades cutting silently through the air. I lied on the bed and smiled, happy that she could not see me in the mirror.