Memory, Week 2

Megan tells me under a copse of orange trees in the Camping Zeus Hostel that my hair looks really good today, and then I am sitting in a spinning chair as my mother argues playfully with my Greek hair dresser, Ash. He is a tall, wiry man with a sun-and-smile-etched face and black hair shot through with streaks of gray. His hands are like brown leather as they pull all two-and-a-half feet of my hair on top of my head into a cumbersome fountain ponytail. He combs with vicious precision, and I try desperately not to wince as I feel strands separating from my scalp. All my life I have been told I’m “tenderheaded,” but I maintain that everyone else just has hands like hams. This hair is a sonata, and only one in ten is a conductor.

“Not too short, Ash. She wants the top layer long so it lays right,” my mother says.

The air smells like warm human hair from the dryers mixed with the chemical sting of hairspray and dye. She had her hair colored ambulance-red just a few weeks ago here in Sunlight Hair and Tan.

He nods, smiles in his—what I suspect is purposeful and crafted—absent way, then snips off a foot-and-a-half of my hair in one long stroke. I watch the enormous swatch fall to the ground, and it seems duller somehow. My neck arches, lightened.

The cropped layers fall around my ears, and I pay the stylist twenty dollars for the five minutes I spent in the chair as my mother fusses. She’ll never be satisfied with any of my haircuts, and it’s a fact I’ve learned to brush off over the years.