The Braid Nobody in Town Understood
Pam is the kind of woman a small town runs on. She organizes the fall carnival and the meal train and the teacher gifts, and she has never once raised her voice. She has a way of laying her hand on your arm while she says the thing, so that you cannot step back from it without being rude.
She laid her hand on the door of my truck instead, right on the window ledge.
“Travis. Did you get our note?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“I hope you read it in the spirit it was written.”
“I read it.”
She smiled. She has a very kind smile. “We all loved Jenny. You know that. I think about her every time I see that little girl dragging that hair across the parking lot.” She shook her head slowly. “And I think, what would Jenny say? I think she would be mortified, Travis. I really do. She kept herself so nice.”
I looked through the windshield. Hailey was coming out of the fifth grade door with her braid over her shoulder and her arms wrapped around it.
“Saturday the eleventh,” Pam said. “Donna will open at nine. I’ll pick Hailey up myself. You can sleep in for once. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“We’re not cutting it yet.”
Her hand stayed on the door. Her smile did not move at all.
“Yet,” she said. “It’s been six years of yet.” She patted the ledge twice, the way you would pat a horse. “Well. Miss Kim will be calling you. I thought you would rather hear it from a friend first.”
She walked back to her Suburban. She waved at Hailey as she went, with all four fingers.
Hailey climbed in and pulled the braid in after her and shut the door carefully, checking it.
“What did Mrs. Dunn want?”
“To take you to Donna’s on a Saturday.”
“What did you say?”
“I said not yet.”
She buckled up. She looked out her window at the elevator for a while.
“She thinks you won’t let me,” she said.
“I know what she thinks.”
“It’s the other way around. I won’t let you.”
“I know that too.”
“You could tell her.”
“I could,” I said. “It isn’t mine to tell. You know the rule.”
She did know the rule. She had been in the room when it was made.
Miss Kim came out to the house on a Tuesday evening. She is the school counselor, a young woman from Lubbock, and she had the decency to look like she would rather have been anywhere else.
She sat at my kitchen table with a folder. I gave her iced tea. Hailey was in her room with the door open, which was my idea.
“I want to say first that Hailey is a wonderful student,” she said. “Nobody has any concern about how she is cared for. She’s clean, she’s fed, she’s kind.”
“All right.”
“The concern that was brought to me is more about,” she turned a page, “her autonomy. Whether Hailey has a say in her own appearance. Several parents feel she’s being made to carry something. For you.”
“For me.”
“For your grief. That’s the phrase that was used.” Her face went pink. “I’m sorry. I’m only telling you so you know what’s being said.”
“I know what’s being said.”
“Mrs. Dunn also mentioned the number seventeen. That you’d set an age.”
“Miss Kim, has anybody asked Hailey?”
She blinked. “I asked her today. At school.”
“What did she say?”