The Rape of the Lock
Rebecca Johnson
The terrible haircut on the author
Word Count 548
I watched my long hair land on the floor in fluffs of brown. By the time I understood what was happening, it was too late. Half my head had been shorn to look like Helen Reddy. I was seven years old.
I wept. Not the silent tears of a stoic. My shoulders heaved, my mouth stretched into a keening rictus of despair, salty mucus snaked down my nostril into my blubbering mouth. I raged like a beast at what had been done to me without my consent. My mother was mortified. The stylist asked us never to return.
On one level, I knew I was overreacting. It was just a haircut. My mother had four children in five years. Everything fell on her shoulders, so it’s not surprising that she would seek to lessen her load wherever possible. Short hair meant less fuss.
But it was more than just a haircut. Something violent had been done to my body without my consent. When you’re the youngest of four children so close in age, you learn to fight for what you want. Otherwise, the brownies will be completely gone by the time you stick your trembling hand out for a crumb. The haircut marked the moment I understood just how little the world cared for my wishes. If I wanted something, I would have to fight for it. If I desired long hair—and what vain little girl does not?—I would need to make the chaos of my hair invisible to my mother. I learned to brush it daily, wash it regularly, and tie it back in a ponytail.
In sixth grade, I was the only white girl in my class. The other parents fled our Memphis neighborhood in the wake of forced busing for the white suburbs. Every morning, a huge yellow school bus picked up the last four kids in our neighborhood. You might think we’d huddle together in that sea of empty seats, but we put as much distance between us as we could.
At lunch, the black girls would argue over who got to braid my hair. I’d lean my head back and enjoy the gentle tugging at my scalp as we laughed and gossiped. My hair was my entrée to their social circle, though no one ever invited me home to their house. In the bathroom mirror, I saw how the braids revealed furrows of my white scalp. Ugly, we all agreed. They’d undo it and then re-do it the next day, like Penelope’s fruitless weaving.
I once heard a black author on NPR recall with anger how white people always wanted to touch her hair. Their presumption over her body filled her with rage. I thought of calling in and telling my story, but I did not. I knew my own rage at the presumption over my body.
One bad haircut does not set one’s personality for life but how else to account for the tight clamp of this memory, or the fact that I am now close to sixty years old and have never once had my hair cut shorter than shoulder length? A single strand of hair left at the scene of a crime can convict a killer. Hair carries our story.
Rebecca is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in various publications including (alphabetically) Elle, Mademoiselle, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The NYT Magazine, Salon, Vogue (contributing editor 1999-2020). Johnson is the author of the novel And Sometimes Why. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children.
