telling you five or four times

December 29, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary 

sitting here waiting for the color to set into the deepest layer of my hair, each strand painted red or purple or a possible rogue orange gold by way of chemicals and rubber gloved circular movement, i wait for the dryer to finish a spin and then some, i wait for ernie to wake up from his pre-bedtime nap, i wait for someone to cry out in the night from beneath blanket and the twinkle of lights just as i am entering the shower to relieve the itching and minimal burning of my scalp.

ernie doesn’t like to see the shower as i rinse the dye from each of the once-brown, once-silver hairs of my head. the water pools in irregular circles of dark red, scarlet, a saturated blood color, thinner and darker than ordinary blood were it to spurt fresh with its first kiss of oxygen against the white cast iron bathtub, the cheap white plastic curtain.

melanie used to come over to color my hair. i would sit in the yard and would micro-manage the amount of dye she’d use from the bottle. “did you use it all? use it all, i really want you to use all of it. how much is left in the bottle?” an hour later she would have used the entire bottle, having separated small sections of hair and repeatedly coating them with the dye. tonight, i apply the color myself, using all of the dye, and it only takes ten minutes. i do not sit in the yard, i stand in the bathroom, starting with the part, the hairline, squeezing globs of white-ish purple and smearing them over and under until making a knot on the top of my head. when my hair is shorter i spend thirty minutes waiting to rinse while larger pieces fall down on my neck and the tops of my ears leaving purplish tattoos speckled on my skin.

rebecca colored my hair once with henna powder purchased from the indian store. the texture was pleasant and it smelled of rotten grass, but my hair did not change colors. noel used henna on my head once, too. her hair turned a real handsome auburn but mine did nothing. the darkness of my hair only responds to chemicals, i suppose.

my boys have blond hair, henry’s darker, jude’s lighter, like ernie’s was when he was small. my mother never let me dye my hair and i never did so until i went to college and cut off the length of it and mailed it in a box to a boy who had a thing for lady of shalott hair. i wonder if i would let my daughter change the glimmer and nature of her hair with a box of color, in the yard, in the bathroom? perhaps it’s easier to have boys, then, after all.

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