The Braid Nobody in Town Understood
Hailey’s name was first. Beside it, somebody had written 41, and drawn a star.
Kaylee Dunn’s was second. 14.
“They did it at recess,” Miss Kim said quietly. “They went to the nurse and borrowed her tape. Hailey explained about it needing to be uncut and no color. Three of them are long enough already for the shorter kind. They want to know if they can come on the eighth.” She was smiling and her eyes were wet. “The rest of them are growing. They made a chart so nobody quits.”
“Nobody has to grow anything,” I said. My voice came out rough. “Tell them that. Tell them it only counts if they can quit.”
“Hailey told them. First thing.” She looked at me. “She said that was the most important rule.”
Nobody told those girls to do that. No grown person organized it. No clipboard. I want that written down somewhere.
Pam Dunn came to my truck window that afternoon in the pickup line.
She did not put her hand on the door. She stood a little back from it, with her arms crossed over her cardigan, and for the first time since I had known her she did not smile.
“You could have told us,” she said. “One sentence, Travis. Any time in six years.”
“It wasn’t my sentence.”
“I wrote that note.” She said it flat, like a woman reading her own name off a list. “I typed it at my kitchen table. I signed first and I carried it to eight houses.”
“Yes ma’am. I know.”
“I said a thing in that hallway, about you and Jenny. In front of your child.”
“You did.”
She waited. I think she was waiting for me to make it easier. I had made things easier for that town for six years, and I found I was out of it.
Her chin came up a little. “Kaylee has fourteen inches. Donna says that’s enough for the shorter ones. She wants to go on the eighth. She asked me if I would come and hold the tape for her.” Her voice thinned out. “I told her I did not know if I would be welcome.”
“It’s not my appointment,” I said. “It’s Hailey’s. You would have to ask her.”
She looked at me for a moment, and I watched her understand what I was telling her to do.
The fifth grade door opened. Hailey came out with her braid in her arms.
Pam Dunn, PTA president, walked across that parking lot in front of every mother in the pickup line and stopped in front of an eleven-year-old girl. She bent down some. I could not hear it. I saw her mouth move for a while, and I saw her press her fingers against her lips once, and I saw my daughter listen to all of it with her head tipped to the left.
Then Hailey nodded, and said something short.
She told me in the truck.
“She said she was sorry about what she said about you and Mom. She said it was the worst thing she ever said out loud.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said yes ma’am, it was.” She buckled up. “And I said she can come hold the tape.”
May the eighth was a Friday. I took the day off, the first one in two years.