The First Chair I Washed Her Hair In

The First Chair

I looked at June and I said, “June, would you mind if I used your basin. I want to do my mother’s hair.”

June did not say one word. She just reached over and took a clean cape off the hook and handed it to me, and there were tears standing in her eyes, and she gave me the smallest nod, the kind of nod that says go on, honey, the room is yours.

I caped my mother. I tipped her head back gentle into the wash bowl, gentle at the neck the way she taught me, and I ran the water until it was just warm on the inside of my wrist, and I wet her hair.

Nobody in that shop said a word. The only sound was the water, and the hum of the dryers, and my mother letting out a long soft breath as the warm water went over her scalp.

I washed her hair. I worked the shampoo through it with my fingertips, slow, the way you do for someone you love.

I felt her go loose and easy under my hands the way she always does. Her body knows those hands even on the days her mind does not.

Her shoulders came down from around her ears. The little worried line between her eyebrows smoothed out. For a minute she was not a sick woman in a shop full of strangers. She was just a woman getting her hair washed on a Saturday, and happy about it.

“That’s good, honey,” she murmured, with her eyes closed. “That’s good.”

I squeezed a little conditioner through the ends, the drugstore kind, and I combed it through gentle with my fingers so it would not pull.

Her hair is thin now. It was thick and dark when I was a girl and she wore it up in a French twist that never moved. Now it is thin and white and I handle it like it is spun glass, because it is.