Sister Golden Hair: A Novel (26 page)

But even with Sheila’s dad being gay, there were no assurances she’d be my friend. I had a lot of work to do. Moving through the hallways, I listened carefully to her complain about hot rollers, saying that Herbal Essences shampoo smelled good but made her hair flat. I heard that round brushes were better than flat ones and that once you sprayed your hair, you should never ever comb it out, though the urge might be overwhelming.

Once my hair grew out of the dreaded pixie cut, I bought a set of hot rollers, and every day before school I got up at five thirty. First I washed my hair, then I did the blowout, finally rolling long strands around the hot curlers. I secured each with a metal pin. While I had the curlers in my hair, my head was heavy and hot, the hard plastic edges sticking into my scalp. After I took them out, I combed my hair
and made a few adjustments with my curling iron. I’d burnt myself twice, on both the wrist and hairline, each scar shaped like a beetle. At first I made the mistake of using the smaller curlers in the front so my hair resembled that of one of the desperate-looking permed-hair girls who hung out on the smoking block. Another day I used so much hair spray that my hair was a solid block and smelled like cheap cologne. Whenever I caught a glimpse of my head, I judged my hair harshly. Flatness or dullness was like a splinter in my heart. My hair had a different agenda than my mind; it had ideas of its own.

After much practice I started to get it right. In the bathroom mirror, the height and shine were perfect, wavy but not too curly, and lush. Sometimes I felt like my hair was bigger than my body, that I was just a stick figure underneath a sheath of luxurious hair.

Once I’d mastered my hair I moved on to my clothing. I wore the same few items: a pair of corduroys, a pair of plaid pants, a white blouse or a green one, both with pointy collars, and—on cold days—a green acrylic sweater. My mother, trying to help me, bought me other items—a floral top and even a dress. I’d wear these once or twice, then revert back to my uniform.

Occasionally, someone made fun of me for wearing the same thing every day, but mostly my clothes seemed to make me invisible.

In Phase Two of Project Improve, I started keeping track of what Sheila wore every day in the back of my
social studies notebook. I had a chart with clothing items on one end, days of the week at the top. She sometimes wore the same corduroys in one week, but never on consecutive days, and she never wore the same top in a single week. She wore only brand-name pants, Lee or Levi’s, which stabilized her outfits. It was important, I learned from her, not to lean too much on any one of the acceptable looks.

It wasn’t only clothes that I had to worry about. I also had to follow the accessory trends. Since I’d begun paying attention, there’d been a plastic belt fad, a color barrette fad, and a toe ring fad. These fads could not be dismissed, and not only did you have to participate in them, you also had to be at the right place inside the fad, not the trailblazer who showed up first in jeans with teardrop pockets or striped toe socks, but around the fifteenth or twentieth person. If you waited, you could be made fun of for jumping on the bandwagon. Then the items might actually hurt you instead of helping your status.

I was in a state of constant anxiety over how I would get the fad items I needed. Most recently, I’d seen a few girls, Sheila included, wearing oversize combs stuck into their painter-pants pockets. Though nobody said anything, I sensed this would be the next trend. I made the mistake of asking my dad while he was reading if he’d take me over to the drugstore to purchase one.

“To buy a red comb?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Why?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“You’re on your own then,” my dad said.

So I walked in the rain down to Revco, only to find they didn’t have large colored combs, just white ones. Though the white girls never admitted it, I knew the trend had started with the black girls wearing Afro combs in their back pockets. There were only a handful of black kids at Low Valley, living in old farmhouses on bits of land between gas stations and subdivisions; their families had been here long before the subdivisions and strip malls started to surround them. Though their numbers were small, they had a lot of power dictated by their fashion sense, which was, as far as I could tell, flawless.

It was important never to acknowledge that they were the source of the trends. To wear a white comb would be suicidal. So even though it was getting dark and freezing, I decided to walk up the highway to the next strip mall, which had a beauty-supply store. Several cars came so close to me that I had to jump against the guardrail, and my skin under my clothes was chilly and goose-pimpled. I was aware of how stupid it would be to die in search of a giant red comb. The store didn’t have red, but they had yellow. I paid and walked out into the rain, ripped the package open, and stuck the comb into the side pocket of my painter pants.

It wasn’t only my hair and my clothes. I knew I also had to censor the things I said. I’d worn the same outfit throughout junior high, but I’d also carried around the
Big Book of Burial Rites
and a few times tried at lunch to begin discussions by asking people if they’d rather be buried or cremated. And it wasn’t only in the lunchroom; in history I’d demonstrated Lido burial by lying out on the floor with my arms crossed over my chest and my face and feet covered with torn leaves I’d brought from home in a Ziplock bag. I’d tried out some of my dad’s ideas, saying trying to define yourself was like trying to bite your own teeth and asking if anyone had heard of the Theosophical Society. For a period I also carried the unicorn girl notebook around and tried to tell the kids who had lockers near mine about the unicorn girl’s antics. I had told a girl in my gym class that the mole on our teacher’s upper arm looked like a flower bud.

Once I had my hair perfectly curled and my painter pants and cheesecloth shirt combination down, and I’d understood what it was OK and not OK to talk about (burial rites: no; television: yes), I decided I needed practice. To try to approach Sheila and her friends was too risky, so I selected for my dry run a group of girls who sat together at the front table at lunch. They were a clique of no-man’s-land types, a few volleyball players and a girl who made her own
clothes. They accepted me right away, even inviting me to a sleepover.

I arrived at the split-level, my black suitcase packed with a pair of cotton sweatpants and a pink T-shirt. We danced to 45s and made ice cream sundaes. I was doing well until later, when a girl lit a candle and said she wanted to tell ghost stories. None of the stories were new to me, but when the girls started to talk about Tilden Lake I felt myself heading into the danger zone. I held my tongue until I could no longer control myself.

“When a child dies in the Vinto tribe, they wrap it in leaves and send it down the river in a basket woven from dried flower stems.”

The girls stared at me; now I had their attention. I wondered if I should move on to the later chapters, which deal with contemporary burial rites, embalming, and cremation.

“And exactly why are you telling us this?” the chubbier of the volleyball players asked.

“Last year in civics she went on so long Mrs. Reynolds had to tell her to stop, that she was making us all sick.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “sometimes the oddest things come out of my mouth.”

One girl whispered into the other’s ear and then they both laughed.

I’d blown it. It was going to be a long night.

So I was back to square one. Clothes and hair were simple compared to conversation. Talk hovered around boys, eye shadow, and KC and the Sunshine Band. All the girls thought KC was adorable, but a few also thought he looked gay. Every subject had to be current. You couldn’t talk about foot-binding or Abigail Adams, or how candles were made of animal fat. These were in history and considered weird. Also no talking about whether communism was better than capitalism or if there could be a planet out there identical to our own. Even simple philosophical questions—
Do cats have imaginations? What is the greater significance of déjà vu?
—should be avoided.

The best topics were something you’d seen on television, particularly
Welcome Back, Kotter
, or
The Carol Burnett Show
, or maybe something funny one of the DJs on
WROV
said. You could say anything you wanted about your morning hair preparation or how annoying your mother was. You could talk about movie stars and hippies, and if you acted removed, you could also mention suicide, sex, and civil rights, but your tone had to be disapproving.

At night I stuck my radio underneath my pillow and listened. I had noticed that with my eyes closed, the songs made colors underneath my lids: “My Love Is Alive” a silvery blue, and “Fame” a sort of magenta. Bowie songs were the best, making not just a single
color but a whole spectrum of silver, blue, and purple light. But it wasn’t just the notes that were like shining beads; every noise—the rain against the window, the car tires on the main road, even my dad’s snoring—swirled into a kaleidoscope of sound and light.

I’m not sure why he asked me to come to the VA hospital with him. My dad needed help, he said, with a play a few of the veterans were putting on. I had been to the VA before to drop him off. It was a huge three-story brick building with steep stairs up to the front doors. If the weather was warm there was always a handful of men in wheelchairs out front. Often some guy yelled out a third-floor window.

Inside the VA my dad was loose-limbed and happy, very different from how he was at home, where he was always lying on the couch, reading. The play, he told me, was based on an oral history project he’d been working on. He took down the men’s stories and typed them up. By telling their stories the men were supposed to get control over their symptoms. The common room, where the play would take place, was already filled with a dozen men. The walls were painted bright blue, and there were vinyl couches against either wall, a wood console television, two strips of fluorescent overhead light, and a cardboard box cut into a trench, pasted with green construction-paper foliage.

Louie, my dad’s favorite, wore, besides his rain boots, gray pants with large side pockets and a khaki jacket buttoned up to the neck. A red felt cross was sewn on his armband.

“You’re late!” he said.

“I’m sorry, Louie.”

“Do you smell burnt rubber?”

“No, Louie,” my Dad said. “Nothing is burning.”

There were a few men in wheelchairs, one young man was missing both legs, and another had a fleshy stub sticking out of his shirtsleeve.

A guy on the couch jumped up.