Hair
A personal narrative
by Krystin MacPherson

First and foremost: I am keeping my hair.

The first offer came from Paul in Hawaii , an e-mail offering to shave his head and give my sister his twelve inch long locks, infused with natural highlights from the sun, to be made into a stylish wig. Andrea junked the e mail, "How weird would it be," she asks me over the phone, "My boyfriend smells my hair, and ahhh! eeew! It's his best friend's hair! No thanks."

I'm more concerned with picturing Paul with a bald head, "Yeah, and even more frightening is how big his ears would look!"

Next, at work my sister casually remarks to Janessa, her coworker and a friend of mine, that she is going to give herself a mohawk before all her hair falls out from chemotherapy. Janessa is overly enthusiastic: "Cool! I've always wanted a mohawk! I'll get one too to support you!"

My sister calls me after her shift and relays the story, "I need your opinion."

"Janessa? Why would she do that?"

"I don't know, it's just weird. Do you think she'll actually do it?" I can hear the wind in the background and picture my sister leaning against her car in the Stadium Flower's parking lot.

"She could. Janessa's pretty wild."

I picture my sister hugging her arms to her chest to block the wind, "Yeah, but do you think she's really doing it to support me, or do you think she's just looking for an excuse to get a mohawk?"

I grunt into the phone, "Probably the latter. She likes to steal the image of non conformist. She'll do anything if it has shock value."

Maybe my sister is already in the car; maybe the wind I am hearing is actually traffic, "Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. Oh well, if she does get it, and it looks bad, she'll be stuck with it. My hair's going to fall out in ten days anyway."

"True. Do you think she has a lumpy head?"

Maybe Andrea is sitting in her car in the parking lot. "Do you think I do?"

"Nah." I say truthfully, I think her scalp, underneath her short brown hair is smooth and pale white, slick as an egg.

_______

When I picture the build up of tissue, I picture a larva cocooning on the side of my sister's throat undergoing metamorphosis. I am waiting for the day when its transformation will be complete and a butterfly will fly out her mouth.

For a long time they called it "eroded tissue," now they are calling it lymphoma. At dinner the night we found out for sure, absolutely, positively, (after a year of maybe, no, possibly) my mother tried to explain what this meant. Her words came in mono syllabic: "kee" "mo" "thair" "ap" "pee" "and" "raid" "ee" "a" "tion." I stared at my plate and chopped my salad into tiny bits of cucumber and celery with the side of my fork. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Joey watching me.

After dinner, Joey and I were alone upstairs in my barren bedroom. We sat in place of the pillows on my cold bed, leaning against the yellow wall.

"You know, she'll be OK. It's stage one, the doctor said she has a ninety-five percent chance. She's going to be fine." Joey said.

"I know, I know she'll be fine." Being "fine" has little to do with anything. "She's still going to lose her hair-" I began, but my words washed away into gulps, and instantly Joey's arms were clutching at my back and I was sobbing into his shoulder: "she's going to have to take time off school; she's going to have to stop working."

I imagine that my mother is hurting. She has one daughter who is temporarily putting her life on hold, putting bad hair days on hold, putting school on hold- for MRI's, biopsies, weekly blood checks, tubes in her veins. Nausea. Fatigue.

The other daughter, the younger one, cries on the phone. She is talking about classes with her mother and her voice just cracks into a million little pieces- picture a necklace of seed beads breaking and spilling all over the floor- she can't gather herself together quick enough. It is because her mother's voice sounds stale and unnatural over the wires, like a stranger- a wrong number. It is because the younger daughter is not there and all she has are the pictures she forms in her head: Her mother is on the right side of the couch, facing the TV; a mug of tea in her left hand, the phone in her right. The hand that grips the mug is made up of soft skinned fingers and a gold wedding ring with a 1/3 karat diamond resting below a bony knuckle.

_______

My father says he doesn't need this right now. Not when his eldest daughter is about to go in for her first treatment of chemotherapy. Not when his cholesterol reading tells him he should be a dead man.

I've had tears threatening the brim of my eyes all day, all week. I don't need this either, but it's not a matter of need, I think, it is a matter of want. I want to get to Olympia . I want to see Joey. I told him I would go to his brother's show weeks ago, and I want more than anything to be able to keep my word. So badly that I skipped my morning class and took the train home- the only way to get to Olympia in time. So badly that I spent less than a half an hour at my own home, where my sister limped around the house, holding her hand to the small of her back where she had a needle injected into her bone the day before.

My father refills the coolant and hands me the keys to my nearly overheated Saturn, and holds up a bottle of water. "If it starts to heat up you need to pull over right away, wait for it to cool down, and then fill it up with this water. Then you need to turn around and come home."

"What if I am half way there?"

"It doesn't matter; I don't want a car stuck in Olympia . You better just head home. I don't want to have to worry about you, I have too much else to worry about." My father pauses for a moment and stares into the open hood of my car, "Is this really important?"

I nod my head.

All I have to do is drive in a straight line and I will be there. Traffic is slow so I have plenty of time to check the temperature gauge every five seconds to make sure that it doesn't climb any higher than the quarter mark. When I am not looking, I grip the steering wheel tightly, exhale when I start to feel suffocated, and scream the pop tunes blaring in fuzzy from the radio at the top of my lungs. It's not until I reach the Olympia freeway exit, after 2 and a half hours, that I start to feel confident that my car will not blow up.

The moment I see Joey, scanning the parking lot for my car, my tension slides out my toes. When I last saw him, two weeks ago, he was clean shaven. I play this game with myself whenever I haven't seen him in a while: What type of facial hair will he have? I toss my arms around him and kiss his full beard. I stand on my tip toes and kiss his eyes. I kiss his mouth and check to see if he still has the same salty taste I left him with.

Joey presses me tightly against his chest and breathes in the scent of my hair, "Thank you for coming."

_______

Steven, Joey's 32 year old brother with long, wavy black hair, is in what is called a "droning" band, also referred to as "doom." They wear black robes with hoods, designed by Joey's older sister Liz, and stand in clouds of generated smoke, beating out single chords on their guitars that are so loud they cause the whole room to vibrate. Joey's mom gives me bright pink ear plugs to pinch into my ears. Imagine the sound track to a horror movie. When Sunn begins to play, I stand in front of Joey, leery of the guy to my left who dawns a black trench coat and keeps glancing over at me with his mouth hanging open and his eyes crossed. Half way through, Steven raises his guitar pick to the ceiling to symbolize the climax of the show. Joey's dad is behind us, standing on the arm of the couch with his camera posed and ready. In the back, his mom is sleeping on the couch, her head bent to one side. I think of the undaunted love for a son in a black hooded robe. I think of the undaunted love for a balding daughter and a daughter who cries on the phone.

Eventually the guitar chords vibrate my body into a trance. Joey is supporting my weight with his arms and I am somewhere else. I am nowhere. Not Bellingham or Seattle or Olympia . Not in my lofted bed in my dorm or in Joey's queen sized bed at his house. Gone are the telephone lines connecting me to every one that I love. Gone are the invisible strings pulling me in three directions: towards my family and sick sister, towards Joey, and finally, towards my success at Western. On the car ride home from the train station my mother asked my why I could not stop crying. "Are you worried about your sister? Cause she's going to be fine. Everything is going to be OK."

I was still crying. I couldn't stop. "I don't know where to be , Mom."

Now I am nowhere. There is only the loud droning of the guitars, the wash of smoke, and the feel of Joey's chest against the back of my head. But even that starts to disappear.

_______

I am in Bellingham , on my own for the first time in my life. My sister has moved back into my parent's house after three years of a similar "on her own."

She calls me while I am in the library studying at a sloped, oak table, to say that Janessa is planning on getting her mohawk the next day. "This is so annoying. You can't lose your hair before the cancer patient!"

"Maybe she is planning on giving it to you," I whisper into the phone.

"Well I don't want it. I don't want anyone shaving their head for me, it's winter, it's going to be cold. Eighty percent of your body heat escapes out your head! Do you think I would be doing this if I weren't about to lose it anyway?"

"You're right. It's an absolutely, positively ridiculous form of support."

"More like copy cat." Andrea says, "I still don't know what her aim is. You know, it's weird, the people who really start paying attention are the people you would least expect it from, and then, the people you would think would do something, don't do anything. This guy I graduated high school with calls me like every other day to see how I am doing."

"Well, the less close you are to someone; the easier it is to deal with this kind of thing." I say, partially in defense of myself.

"Yeah, I guess." My sister responds.

When I hang up, I can't help but wonder whether my sister was hinting at something, what am I doing ? I ask myself. First and foremost, I am keeping my hair, but isn't there something else I can do ?

_______

I am crying before I even get out of the car. Joey, having picked me up at the train station, leans over the gear shift to hug me. He takes my face in his hands and kisses me; he looks me in the eye and tells me to call him in an hour.

Since the last time I have been home, my father has installed an additional door. A glass door, a huge window door. One that swings out instead of in. Standing in between the open glass door and the closed older door, I prepare for entrance into my own home, wiping my eyes and practicing my smile. Practicing: I am happy. I am a college girl. I am loving college life.

My father is sitting in the love seat, reading a book. He never once picked up a book the whole time I was living here. Now he doesn't put it down when I walk in with my backpack swung over my shoulder and my coat zipped up to my chin.

"Well, Hello. Come in." He says, biding me entrance into my own home.

My sister is sitting up on the couch, watching commercials on the T.V. Her light brown hair is still there, tossed lazily about on top of her head.

"Hi, how ya doing?" I ask her.

She smiles in slow motion, "Tired."

Everyone is tired.

My mother is in the kitchen, leaning over the counter and unwrapping dishes of baked beans, ground meat, and cheese enchiladas to heat in the oven. (The girls at work are taking turns making dinner once a week for my family, my mother had explained to me over the phone. "Why?" I asked, "That's what they did when grandma died. Nobody is dying , why are they doing that?" My mother had sighed heavily," It's a stressful time, Krystin.") Tonight we are having Mexican prepared by the call center at Stadium Flowers. Last week dinner was frozen lasagna from the design center ("What? That doesn't make any sense! If they are going to make you dinner, they should make you dinner! You could pick one of those up at Safeway yourself!"). My mother looks tired peeling the saran wrap off of all those dishes and fending off my father who has followed me into the kitchen to inquire about the food, when will it be ready? What's taking so long Patty?

My mother's greeting is a sigh, "It's Krystin, you're home." Her voice wants to show excitement, tries hard, but fails. She's too tired. I wait, pressed against the kitchen wall for my mother to finish unwrapping the food. Finish putting it in to the oven and setting the timer. I wait until she has time to find me. To hug me for a long time.

I would have wanted a "Welcome Home Krystin!" banner every two weeks, but instead I was confronted with a glass door, another obstacle to getting inside. I would have wanted my entrance into the home to be characterized by a huge exclamation point!

I have always been selfish like that.

________

My sister's dinner plate is empty save for a canned protein shake. "I just don't have an appetite," she explains.

She has a tube running inside the skin of her left arm, from the inside joint of her elbow to her shoulder, for chemotherapy. "I'm still not totally OK with it being there."

I am not OK with it being there at all. Where was I when they stuck that tube in her arm? Why didn't anyone intervene? I don't care why it is there, I want it out. In the bathroom, my mother has placed strips of plastic wrap and tape on the counter for my Andrea when she takes a shower. She cannot get the opening, where the tube was inserted, wet.

My arm aches.

After dinner my family settles down for their routine of evening T.V. My sister has taken up knitting in her spare time; her fingers move to the rhythm of Entertainment Tonight, Evening Magazine, Survivor. I desperately want to talk to my family, about anything, I don't care how benign, I just want conversation. I want to feel involved in something . I hang around by the fire place for a while, dropping comments on whatever is on the television, waiting for something to happen, but nothing does.

I flee to Joey's house where there is a mom a dad, a dog, a cat, and two parakeets, but no sick sister. When I walk in the door the dad immediately draws me into a conversation on the difference between leopards and cheetahs, the mom offers me food (there are two troughs of pasta on the table awaiting me), and the cat claws at my shoes. Joey drags me away from his eager parents, shutting the door to his room as they continue to talk, "God. They are so annoying." He says.

I sit on the edge of the bed, trying not to cry. Not again.

"What's wrong?" Joey asks me, grabbing at my face and searching for tears.

Joey is wearing a black, short sleeve Sunn T-shirt. I run my fingers over the skin of his bare arms, feeling for tubes or abrasions. His skin is soft, smooth and uninterrupted from his shoulder to his elbow, his elbow to his wrist. I kiss the inside of his arm, grateful that nothing but skin meets my lips.

_________

Andrea sits in a chair in the middle of the kitchen, a bed sheet wrapped around her body. My family takes turns using the electric razor to shave the sides of her head. She has a pile of brown hair in her lap. She moans. She laughs. She asks for a mirror. My father tapes everything. The pile grows larger and larger.

"Give her a crew cut." My grandpa says. He is the only one who doesn't take the razor in his hand and run it across her scalp.

Around me, everyone laughs and eats cheese. Brie. Gouda . Havarti. Andrea wanted it to be a party.

I use handfuls of gel to get the strip of hair in the middle to stick straight up. I run my fingers through her hair and already, three days after her first chemo session, they are covered in strands of hair.

"Yesterday I was looking at myself in the mirror and my eyebrows were falling out. Just falling out." My sister says, staring at herself in the mirror.

The hair around her mohawk is soft and short, like baby hair. Her nose ring glitters in the mirror. Andrea poses for pictures with her tongue out and her fingers in the "hang loose" sign. I keep staring at her. She has always been beautiful; now she is disarming.

I have second thoughts about keeping my hair.

Krystin MacPherson is a freshman student at Fairhaven College . She is currently studying creative writing, literature, and journaling. When she is not at school in Bellingham, she lives with her family in the Seattle area.

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