The Braid Nobody in Town Understood
She looked at her notes. “She said, and I wrote it down, ‘It’s my hair and it’s my reason and I’m not ready to say it.'” She looked up. “Then she asked if she was in trouble. I said no.”
“Then I’d leave it there.”
“Travis. You understand that if you would simply tell me the reason, I could close this folder tonight. I could tell nine mothers it’s handled. They would leave you alone.”
“I understand that.”
“But you won’t.”
“No ma’am. I made a promise to my wife, and the promise was that I would keep my mouth shut. It’s the only hard thing she ever asked me for.” I stood up, because I was done, and I have never learned a more polite way to show it. “Hailey’s not being made to do anything. If she wanted it cut tomorrow I would drive her to Donna’s myself and hold her hand. She knows that. You can write that down.”
She wrote it down.
At the door she stopped. “Can I say something that isn’t in the folder?”
“Go ahead.”
“I think you’re letting people believe something ugly about you. And I don’t think it’s true. And I don’t understand why a person would do that.”
“Because the other choice was letting them watch her,” I said.
She did not know what I meant. She thanked me for the tea and drove back to town.
Here is what I meant.
Jenny lost her hair twice.
The first time, Hailey was three. It came out in the shower in a single week, and Jenny stood in our bathroom with a towel around her and a handful of it, and she laughed, because that was how Jenny took a hit. It grew back short and curly and darker, and she said she liked it better, and I believed her.
The second time, Hailey was five, and Jenny did not laugh.
By then we were driving to Amarillo every other week. There was a room up there with recliners and windows, where they hung the bags, and Hailey came with us because Jenny wanted her close.
There was a little girl in that room. Seven years old. I am not going to give her name, because it does not feel like mine to use. She had a pink knit cap and no eyebrows, and she and Hailey took to each other the way kids do, right away, with no questions.
One afternoon that little girl told Hailey that when she grew up she was going to have hair so long she could sit on it.
Her mother was in the next chair. I watched that woman’s face, and I watched Jenny watch it.
On the drive home Jenny was quiet clear to the Canyon exit. Then she said, “They gave her a wig, you know. Her mama showed me. It’s a little short bob made out of plastic. It itches her, and it’s hot, and it looks like a doll’s. She won’t wear it.”
“That’s a shame.”
“There’s a woman in Amarillo who makes real ones. By hand. Her name is Brenda. For children, she does it for nothing, but she can only make as many as she has hair for.” She was looking out at the fields. “Do you know what it takes to make one long one for a little girl? A whole braid. A long one. Hair that has never been colored or permed or cut into layers. Most grown women don’t have it to give.”