The Hair Wreath: Part Three

[Read the previous installments: 1 & 2.]

Some of their projects they kept me away from—secrets for birthdays or Christmas. When I learned to talk they didn't trust me. "She's just like her father," my mother said, "Gets straight to the point. Can't keep a secret."

The hair wreath was not a secret. It was a year in the making. Who can hide anything for a year? Hair, after all, is not deciduous like trees but sheds as it wills, a little every day or when a storm blows. The brushing was more vigorous on certain days. If they had ever argued perhaps they would not have brushed so much, but they had enormous sympathy for one another.

Beauty parlors were not in existence yet. Who could have afforded it? How could someone else know how to do your hair? It was an alien concept, unacceptable. The most unworthy thought of all was to dye one's hair. To Grandmother it was a sin against nature. The concept of "natural color" from a bottle was sacrilegious. The Huntley hair color was like a rose which has been in the family for years. We didn't know that our roses would be overshadowed by the coming rage for hybrids with names like "Razzle Dazzle."

My hair was parted and trimmed, examined for lice once I started to school and odoriferously washed with the same mixture that Aunt Ina used for Doll Baby. What's good for mange is good for dandruff and is bound to keep away lice.

At my age they were both studying at home with grandmother, but now there was a law requiring school attendance, and really I think they were glad for me to be out of the house for a few hours, out from around their feet, not listening and watching.

Otherwise, could they have told the jokes that women have, have had from the beginning of time about men and their enormous pride in sexual performance? Would Aunt Ina have participated? Could Grandmother still remember or was it like the exhausting care of infants, something you find repressed when it's long over. Did my mother speak of my father in a joking way or did the sanctity of death prevent honest feelings from escaping? What words embedded themselves in the twisting of the hair wreath while I was away from them in school?

Struggling with shoe laces, determined to do my own, but not up to the job, I cried with exasperation when my brothers called me "cry baby." Aunt Ina showed me the easy way to make the loops first and then tie them once and it's done. I hugged her gratefully and wondered what else she had up her sleeve. Why had not my mother told me about the easy way?

It was the same with the long stockings I wore when the weather turned cold. Aunt Ina showed me how to roll them first, then unroll them up the leg and fasten them so they wouldn't droop down. Years later she showed me how to fasten a sanitary napkin so it would stay put while my mother was still trying to persuade me that I'd made a mistake, that my thinking I'd "started" was a mistake. Probably her reaction was an accident of timing. Or an unconscious expression of sympathy.

The Fuller Brush Man had been in the parlor with her. She was buying a new hairbrush, one for everyday use, the bristles on the silver-backed set having gone hopelessly limp. The visit of the Fuller Brush Man was an event of considerable importance. He was no college boy on a lark of a summer job. The Fuller Brush Man was a professional salesman, with a quality product, as serious as the minister when he came to make his calls. I always knew from the room my mother chose to receive a person how important the visitor was. Neighbors and drop-in cousins came through the front hall, past the double doors into the back hall and joined whoever was sitting in the dining room. In winter it was the coziest room in the house and large enough to accommodate the various activities that took place there.

My first recollection almost is a long stretch of cold weather before I was old enough for school, being allowed to ride my tricycle around and around the round dining room table. Aunt Ina would laugh every time I started up and sing out, "Oh, the music goes round and round and comes out here."

But Aunt Ina did not go to the hospital with me when I had my tonsils out. It was Mother who had that to go through. When spring came that year, after my several bouts with tonsillitis, it was decided that my tonsils must come out. Also my enlarged adenoids were making me "talk through my nose," an unpleasantness that I could not control, no matter how often I was reminded. When my color and appetite had returned and I was judged fit, the date for surgery was set.

It was a beautiful warm morning when my mother and I started out for the hospital, she walking with her small satchel holding her night clothes (she was permitted to spend the night in my room) and I riding my tricycle in high glee. Never before had I been allowed to ride out of sight of our house and now we were crossing street after street through unknown neighborhoods with my mother saying every little bit, "It's not much further, sweetheart. I hope you're not tired."

In fact, I was not tired at all. I was unconcerned about having my tonsils out, not really understanding what was involved; and this walk with my mother across town made me happy, exhilarated. "Slow down a bit, sweetheart," she said every block or so. "You're getting ahead of me." It's true that I was accelerating, unconcerned about leaving my mother behind. Trying to keep up with my brothers had made me tough.

I have no idea where I parked my tricycle when we arrived at the hospital. Were there bike racks in those days? I doubt it. At any rate, the minister's wife came to drive us home in the afternoon of the next day, and I was thinking of nothing but the pain in my throat and the foul taste in my mouth. No one had told me what misery I was in for, and I felt betrayed, even tricked, unintentional as it might be. Mother, who had slept poorly on the army cot provided for her, kept turning around from the front seat to see how I was doing, but I refused to open my eyes and acknowledge her concern.

"You'll be able to eat all the ice cream you like," the minister's wife said cheerfully.

When I learned the word "fatuous" it was the minister's wife I thought of, but "ignoramus" was the word I said to myself at that moment, wishing I could hurl it at her like my brothers whose favorite epithet it was for those they despised.

The floor of the dining room was covered by a linoleum "rug." When the leaves were inserted, the dining table was extended to more or less ping-pong table length; and my brothers and their friends played loud, boisterous games with all sides sharing the peculiarity of the oval-shaped courts. These amusements were allowed on days when ironing wasn't in progress. The legless ironing board was propped between the dining table and a chair, not allowing for recreation underfoot.

On the day that I first discovered the sign of my first period, I was eager to tell my mother. She had left the Fuller Brush Man in the parlor while she went to get her pocketbook, and the look of dismay she gave me at the news was an unexpected disappointment for the sudden importance I felt.

As soon as she concluded her purchase and accepted the vegetable brush or whatever she choose among the "gifts" he offered, she sat down with me and produced the necessary napkins. I was to restrict my activities while "unwell" and otherwise act normally. Perhaps it was the unaccustomed male presence in the house that had put her in a mild panic. Could she have thought I was going to run right out and get pregnant? With the Fuller Brush Man?

More likely it was the simple annoyance of motherly duty never allowing her the pleasure of even buying a new hairbrush in peace. The word "unwell" struck me as totally Victorian, almost as unpleasant as "the curse," a term I had already heard at school, pronounced with expressions of both irritation and pride. Whoever thought of the word "period" did us all a good turn, although the biblical "the custom of women is upon me" is also agreeable and conjures the fellowship of women.

But back to the hair wreath. It was truly a labor of love and, as Grandmother said, a family memorial. When they were almost finished, the size about that of a tea service tray, the question of a suitable frame arose. Everyone agreed that a new frame would not do, but which of the old frames could be spared? For the first time I realized that all the pictures on our walls were of women or girl children—Madame Pompadour, Madame LeBrun and her daughter, Baby Stuart, and The Age of Innocence. Each one was discussed for days with no decision made. Some frames were too small, some too ornate, some too plain.

Finally, Aunt Ina said, "I'll look in the plunder room." The next day she appeared with an empty frame exactly the right size and not too ornate to overshadow the hair wreath itself.

Grandmother and Mother immediately asked, "What did you do with Grandfather's picture?"

"It had been lying on top of that old bed for years," she said. "I took it out very carefully, the nails were all rusted and hard to pull out; and then I put his picture in with the others in the top drawer of the chifferobe."

"Poor Grandfather," Mother said, "Losing his arm after the War was over. It was hard for him."

"Yes," Aunt Ina said sadly, "But he had the rest of him." She reached down and stroked Baby Doll.

The afternoon that was chosen to finish the wreath, Mother asked me if I wanted to watch. The truth was that by that time I had lost interest. I wanted my brothers to take me with them to the Saturday afternoon movies; although they would abandon me the minute we were inside for I refused to sit on the front row where all the boys their age sat. I was as fascinated as they were by the Westerns or Tarzan of the Jungle features, then thought to be perfect fare for children and some adults in the community who were considered not-all-there. More than the features, however, I was turned on to the curtain raisers, the short serials. They were high adventure, total peril, boiling points of drama with no distractions of desert scenery slowing down the action.

By contrast, the pace by which the memorial hair wreath proceeded had begun to appall me. When I learned the word "stultification" I knew in my bones what it meant.

A kind of tension had set in. The memorial aspect of the project had put Grandmother in a pensive mood. She was not entirely comfortable with using the frame Grandfather's picture had been in. Had he made her promise she would never remove it? She did not say so when Aunt Ina brought it in, but perhaps she had not remembered her promise until later. Grandpa could not know the problems of courtesy she had to deal with. Flaunting his empty sleeve, pinned to his dress uniform, his beard almost as far down his jacket as his belt buckle, had been his statement, not hers. She had not even met him until after the war, had never seen him with both arms.

Mother and Aunt Ina were equally bored with the project, but determined separately not to say so. The possibility of a fuss was too often in the air. Neither would permit it to happen.

Aunt Ina, wanting Grandmother and Mother to make the final judgment as to how to finish off the wreath said she would get a breath of fresh air and went out to the back porch to sit with Doll Baby.

I was trying to learn to whittle and was sitting on the edge of the porch so the chips could fly off onto the ground. It was harder than it looked. I could see that I was going to end up with a sliver and nothing else. Like playing the piano, it was something that looked easier than it turned out to be.

Aunt Ina had been idly twisting her hair and now she began to brush Doll Baby's coat. He nuzzled her knees with pleasure and stood still and attentive.

When I looked around in disgust at my own futile attempts at whittling, I saw she was holding a small quantity of Doll Baby's hair.

"Don't look at me, you'll cut yourself," she said; and I picked up another piece of wood to see if I could do any better the next time.

"I'm going in now," she said. "They've almost got it done."

The next thing I knew, Aunt Ina had gone from the back porch to her bedroom, stopping long enough to snip off a strand of hair underneath where it wouldn't show. She offered one last contribution, for a spot that looked, she said, a bit skimpy.

Pleased that Aunt Ina was taking an interest again, Grandmother said, "Fill it in and then let's finish this off." Mother said, "Yes, do. I've got to make the child some school dresses."

So nobody knew but Aunt Ina and myself that the hair wreath was more than family. Years later when the old wire slipped and the frame fell, not breaking the glass but jarring the wreath unmercifully, no one could understand where the golden blonde hair that fell loose came from, lying at the bottom of the mounting board. Aunt Ina and sweet Doll Baby had long gone to their reward.

Even Grandmother had soon bobbed her hair soon after the hair wreath had been hung in the parlor.

I only think of their beautiful hair sometimes when I see a college girl whose hair comes to her waist and I wonder what holds her back from joining those of us who have given up on our birthright.

[And that concludes "The Hair Wreath", a short story by Virginia McKinnon Mann.]