Lost Pages: Hair

When I edited Dreaming in German,  the rule was that no publisher would look at a memoir of over 250 pages, so I cut my original manuscript by over a hundred pages.  Today I am going to start a new blog feature. I am calling it "The Lost Pages."  Here's the first installment.

Hair

The battle began when I was eleven.  Or maybe it started before that. because my mother liked short hair and I had succeeded in growing mine out to my shoulders.  What I remember is standing at the window of our hotel room in Zadar, Yugoslavia, three tight beds in the slick room behind me.   Outside, in the distance, a line of cypresses blocks the view of the Mediterranean.  Teenage couples giggles as they walk hand in hand away from the hotel.  My mother, sharp comb in hand, tugs the hair out of my face, tightens it flat to my head with a rubber band.

I hate this.  I want my hair to fly free. I want to part it low on one side and let a swath of hair dip over my eye.  I want... I don’t know what I want, but I don’t want my  mother to comb my hair, pull it out of my face, so I look clean as a licked cat.  I shake my head and whine, “ not so tight, it hurts.”  My mother says,  “Hold still. Stop wiggling.”

Below to the left, closer than the cypresses, tangled vines define the terrace where my family will eat dinner.  Mirko, the Serbian waiter, will glow in his white uniform and treat my like a child.  My mother reaches into the top dresser drawer and pulls out a big bow, the one with the red flowers on it.  It matches the dress I am wearing, the dress my mother has made.

“No.”

My mother hesitates. “ What do you mean, no?”

I stomp my foot, but carefully, just enough that my mother, her hand still resting on my  head, can feel it, but not so much that my father, who is reading on his bed, will hear.  “ I don’t want a bow.”

My mother’s hands fall to her sides.  She says,” At least let me put in the small black one. You need something to cover the rubber band.”

I turn back toward the window as my mother feels for the black bow.  When I bend forward, I can see the fig tree with its light green bundles of fruit.  They are still hard and dry; my father picked one, because I wondered what their insides looked like.  A jungle of bird voices is rising, tropical and wild, cries and screeches twining around each other.  I cannot name these birds.  But  I long to fly with them.