And then—according to this well-circulated story—I yelled: “You’re killing it,” meaning my hair. I guess I thought my hair, like everything else on my body, was alive. I didn’t understand why my dad would try to cut a piece of me away. So, he stopped and I wouldn’t let anyone near my hair again until I was almost six. By then, my head resembled a blond abandoned squirrel’s nest.
I’M FIFTEEN NOW, SO OF COURSE I understand that hair is dead. My strands don’t scream out when I’m at the hair salon. Though of course, Henny, who has been cutting my hair since I was eight, knows the story too.
Here is what my hair looked like before. It was beautiful, like shampoo commercial hair where the woman throws her head around and each strand glistens as though weaved with tiny suns. Strangers have even stopped me at the grocery store. Or they’d stop Shirley and tell her what gorgeous hair her daughter has. Grandma (Dad’s mom) used to ask for my scraps after a haircut. Her hair was thin and straight. No one really understood where my curls came from. But apparently, I was blessed. This word was also used a lot to describe my hair. Anyway, it was long and thick and beautiful and then I cut it.
I don’t believe I’m unusual. What I mean is, how else should a teenager react when they find out a classmate has committed suicide? Oh, maybe I should start from the beginning, though I’m not sure where that would be. Beginning of me? Beginning of when I started to realize things out about myself that made me feel different than others? When does this story begin?
We were in second grade together. He sat behind me. Also fourth grade, where I got my first ‘D’, which I don’t think was fair at all, and seventh grade science class, and he is was in my English class this year. It’s not like we were friends. Hardly. He was my bully. Threw frog guts at me in seventh grade during dissection. He called me “screen door” and “mosquito bites” in front of the whole class, and yet the teacher didn’t even notice. Maybe he had a whole roster of people he bullied, but it sure felt like he had his hatred aimed straight toward me. But who cares about any of that now? He’s dead.
I was down the block at Dara’s house. Her mom (who knows everything about everyone) got a phone call (not sure from who) and went down to the basement where we were playing and asked if we knew him. I don’t even remember saying goodbye. I just ran home, rushed upstairs to my bedroom, grabbed the scissors on my desk and started to cut my hair. When someone dies like that, things just stop making sense.
Of course, I understand why I was so upset. So, maybe that is where this story starts? But first let me explain what happened after the first cut. Again, I’m fifteen. I don’t understand everything about the body, but I get that if I cut my finger, I will bleed and maybe cry, but blood and pain doesn’t come out of a haircut. And yet, it was like I could feel every hair being pulled out of my scalp. I just stood in the middle of my bedroom, away from my mirror, because I didn’t want to watch what was happening, and cut. The sound was like a slow rip. Not like paper, but well, like something else. My neck itched from the hairs falling against it and the floor caught my curls, creating a puddle of me. I just cut and cut, trying not to imagine him. Trying not to think about why a fifteen-year-old boy would want to kill himself. Trying not to think about Shirley and how I know about the time she tried to kill herself last May, but not about the other times, and there must have been more. Trying not to think about having to visit her on the weekends at that hospital. Angry about what she did, but still trying to be nice to her because she was in a mental hospital that smelled like rotten bandages. I used to call her Shirley in my head, though I’m not sure why. After she tried to leave us, I started saying it out loud.
I threw the scissors down on my bed and slowly walked to my mirror. My hardwood floor was now covered with my hair. Actually, it was really just a messy pile, but it felt like a lot. My hair had reached past my shoulders. The mirror now revealed my new ‘do.
“Eleanor!” screamed Shirley.
Well, I couldn’t hide in my room forever.
“What did you do to yourself?”
“I cut my hair,” I said, plainly.
“I see that. Why?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I needed to—”
“Francine just called me. She said you ran out of the house. She also told me about the boy in your grade.”
I took a deep breath. Greta was the one who found Shirley, not me. But I had to help get her to throw up. She had swallowed too many of her pills. Greta was incredible. She called for an ambulance, tried to calm me down, took care of things. It’s like she knew exactly what to do. I felt paralyzed. I didn’t understand what was happening.
“Why would she take too many?” I asked, as though Shirley had forgotten the correct dosage of her anti-depressants.
“El,” Greta said, “I think Mom tried to kill herself. Call Dad.”
It’s very strange when a parent does something wrong. You can’t send them to their room and punish them. You can’t take away their favorite toy; they don’t have any. I never really got to react in the way I needed to, which was apparently by chopping all my hair off and leaving a messy patch of dirty blond nothingness.
Shirley pulled me into her and I could smell the haunt of cigarette smoke against her clothing. She quit while she was in the hospital, but I had a feeling she’d recently started back up. It was kind of like a secret we both knew about but didn’t mention.
“Honey, I’m so sorry. Did you know him?”
“No,” I said into her chest. “Yeah, I mean, not really.”
“Can I make you something? Can I . . . what can I do?”
“Nothing. I just . . . I just want to be alone.”
WHILE SHIRLEY WAS IN THE HOSPITAL, Flor—her best friend—watched us. Dad was traveling for work at the time. I missed him, but I got along really well with Flor, and she was happy to take care of us. Dad called every day to check on us. He even visited Shirley in the hospital when he got back into town. It’s strange. They’ve been divorced for like six years now, but it’s like they’re nicer to each other now that they’re not married.
Shirley’s doctor at the hospital suggested we try a support group—for survivors of suicide. Dad, Greta and I went each week. Once summer arrived, Greta was hanging out with her friends more—before they all split and went to college—and stopped going to the group. Once Greta went away to college in August, Dad came with me a few more times. I thought about stopping, but actually, I really liked going. I didn’t mind going alone. I guess it helped to be able to talk about it openly, to be around others who understood. Recently, Flor started to go with me.
“ELEANOR, DARA IS ON THE PHONE!”
I walked over to my desk to pick up the phone. We used to have only one phone in the whole house. It was in the kitchen with a cord long enough to reach the family room and even the front hallway. Then, we got cordless phones a few years ago. One in the kitchen, one in Shirley’s bedroom and Gret and I have one in our bedrooms. I used to love how—depending on the channel—you could hear bits and pieces of neighbors’ conversations. There was always some static, but I’d dig out all the wax in my ears just to hear whatever I could. My imagination would always fill in the rest.
“Hey,” I said.
“You okay?” Dara asked. “You just ran and—”
“Sorry.”
“Want me to come over?”
“Nah.”
“Why do you think he—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.
“Yeah, okay. I mean, I guess it’s extra scary because your mom . . .”
“I really don’t want to talk about it.”
THAT NIGHT, SHIRLEY TOOK ME TO the mall to get my hair evened out, whatever that