hair story

does she or doesn't she?

Newlywed: She bleached her hair, the close-cropped jet black tresses enshrouded in a peroxide haze. I only saw it in a snapshot: my mother in a high-waisted leopard-skin bikini, lifeguard tower in the background. 

Divorcee: She’s 40. I’m 12. She’s sporting the Toni Tenille bowl cut, Frye boots, my great-grandmother’s mink coat, and a NOW bumper sticker on the bright blue ’57 Chevy pickup she later traded in for a Volvo station wagon.

Resident: She wheels out of the salon on the memory care unit, and I almost don’t recognize her beneath the poufy, all-white bouffant. But she knows me.

This micro-story was originally published in Multiplicity Magazine, May 2022.