She stole my hair.
I watched the strands drift to the toilet,
to the floor, to my lap. Her hands
were abrupt and rough when she touched me.
They always were.
Her words were the same. They jerked
from tight lips and were full of accusation.
I was angry.
But it was a background emotion. I was
preoccupied with the physics of hair falling
around me. I wanted to observe
and understand.
She wanted to cut away the work I
hadn't known I made for her.
She took it down to my scalp.
I was teased
for looking like a boy. For wearing a badge.
that everyone knew meant,
"I'm the kid with lice."

She stole my hair.
Yanked it and pulled it tight, trapped it
in plastic rods and drowned it
in chemical that burned my skin.
I couldn't breathe.
But grandma told her it would kill them
and keep the bugs away for good.
So they mangled my straight, fine hair
into a kinked, curled ball that I hated.
Some days I wondered
if she was trying to eradicate
what I inherited from my father
that looked so unlike her own
coarse, wavy, beautiful brown locks.
My hair moved. My hair flowed.
My hair glowed like spun gold in the sun.
Her hair sat rigid like a crown.
I had lice again and, of course,
it was somehow my fault.

She stole my hair.
Made me hate every strand.
I cried in the mornings trying to
brush it into submission by myself.
I missed the bus because, no matter what,
there was always a bump in my ponytail.
Why was there a bump in my ponytail?
Other girls didn't have bumps in their
ponytails. I cried, I panicked, I wished for
a mother who would help.
She slept. Sometimes on the couch
with drool pooling under her face.
Sometimes at night. Often during the day.
I had lice again. I always had lice again.
Somewhere along the way, she gave up.
She let them win. She stopped running
the tip of that pencil through my hair.
The school sent notes.
She slept through it.

© Averil Sperry