The Braid in the Beauty Shop Window

“Tell her I’m proud of her,” he said. “Tell her that first thing. And tell her I’ll take her for ice cream out on the highway when this field is done, any size she wants, and she doesn’t have to share it with anybody.”

We parked on the square at quarter to nine. The courthouse sat across the street in the sun, and the leaves were coming down in the park, and two old men were already on the bench outside the cafe with their coffee in paper cups.

Vonda unlocked the door herself and flipped the sign. She had her black smock on and her short silver hair combed back, and she had cleared the whole morning.

Annika was already at the back counter, folding towels, and she gave Maren a shy little wave.

The chair by the front window was swept, with a fresh cape folded over the arm.

“Well, look at you,” she said to Maren, and gave her a hug.

“Your daddy called me at six this morning too. He said to tell you something, but I think your mother’s going to tell you, so I’ll keep my mouth shut for once.”

Maren laughed, the first real laugh I had heard out of her in a week.

I told her what her father said, about being proud and about the ice cream, and she climbed into the chair by the window and sat up very straight.

The sun was pouring straight through the big front window, so bright that Vonda pulled the shade down halfway and then put it back up again.

“No,” she said. “Leave it. This is a day that ought to have light on it.”

She brushed Maren’s hair out long and loose, all the way down the back of the chair.

Then she sectioned it, gathered it low at the nape, and banded it tight. She braided it all the way down and banded it again at the bottom.

“Two bands,” she explained to Maren, “so it stays together in the mail. If it comes loose, they can’t use it. The wig lady needs every hair going the same direction, or it’s no good to her. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know that.”

Then she turned to me with the scissors already in her hand. “Shoulder or hand, Mom?” she asked.

“Some mothers hold the hand. Some hold the shoulder. And some go stand outside on the sidewalk, which is all right too.”

“Shoulder,” I said, and I stood beside the chair and put my hand on Maren’s shoulder.

Through the sweatshirt I could feel her breathing, fast and shallow, like a bird. I squeezed once, and she reached up and put her hand on mine.

Vonda measured from the top band to the end of the braid with a cloth tape. “Fourteen inches and a little over,” she said.

“That’s a beautiful braid, honey. That’s the best one I’ve had in this chair in years. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” Maren said. She closed her eyes. Vonda put the scissors above the top band and cut.

It took three cuts, because a braid that thick does not go all at once, and each one made a sound I will hear for the rest of my life.

Then it was done, and Vonda laid the braid in Maren’s lap.

Maren opened her eyes and looked down at it, and then she picked it up in both hands and held it up in front of her in the sunlight from the window.

She was grinning so wide I had to look at the ceiling for a second.