Threads and Braids: The Revolution of Me
The Revolution of Me
I had long blond hair up until I was ten. All my friends were cutting their hair, and I didn’t want to be the only one who wasn’t cool. So I had it cut short, about chin length. I hated it. The next three years I spent growing it out again, just so I could put it up in a simple loose bun and forget about it, almost as if it wasn’t there. I grew it out again to ignore it; it was easier than having other people notice it.
At the age of thirteen I discovered hair dye. It was a fantastic thing, a thing that changed people, turned them into someone else. The first dye I used was meant to tint dark brown hair red. It turned my blond hair orange. I discovered it was permanent. For once I didn’t care. Orange was different, but so what.
It was the beginning of my hair revolution, a revolution which ended up being the beginning of many others. My hair became my way of expressing myself. I didn’t cry or fight; I couldn’t sing or paint. I had tried writing poetry, but none of it helped me express what I was feeling.
My hair went through so many changes it’s still hard to remember the order. I had always thought it would be interesting to shave my head (pre-pubescent dreams of high school wrestling, just like my big brothers), but I knew my head would be some odd shape. After a boring afternoon with a best friend and suddenly a crop of hair not long enough to keep the tops of my ear warm I discover my head was of normal proportions. So I shaved it.
That didn’t transform me into some sort of neo-rebel punk. In fact, I stayed just the same as I always had, perhaps a bit more subdued. If my hair had been normal, long and blond, like before, I think I might have run around screaming.
I began to smoke cigarettes. It made me feel artistic. I could just see myself at three a.m. hunched over my computer, typing like mad, only breaking to take a long drag off of my artistic cigarette. Smoking made me feel dark, bad, rebellious. I didn’t dare disobey my mother openly, or run away from home, so I to smoked. It was the only way. In the beginning it was a social thing, but soon I began smoking alone, just before bed. It was time by myself to unwind. Also, the nicotine exhausted me more that way so I was quite ready for bed afterwards.
Sometimes I had outwardly rebellious urges. I could picture myself dressed in torn up -- yet somehow alluring, sexy -- old clothes, hitchhiking through the Midwest, making up horrible stories about my past. I would be the tortured artist, misunderstood, running off to meet the love of my life in New York City. I never did run away. It was just not safe. What kind of starving -- heroic perhaps? -- artist finds herself strangled to death in a gutter somewhere outside of Chicago? I just couldn’t risk it. So I stayed home, read a lot of books, played with my hair, smoked artistically, and had my nose pierced. I contemplated lesbianism to spite my mother. I pictured lighting my house on fire, just to fuck with my mind. I fell in love with the quiet loners at school, then decided they were losers and quit falling in love with anyone even close to my age. Older men were safer, because they would only patronize me. I would never have to deal with them. I doubt I would have been able to handle a real relationship in high school anyway.
I graduated when I was 17, all set to run off to a prestigious college in New York and start a new life without my old baggage. Everything fell apart over the summer, though, when I fell completely and madly in love with someone I had been in love with on stage for years. We were both actors, he was darker than I, almost an exact male version of who I wanted to be. We’d smoke together on stranger’s front lawns, danced in the middle of the streets, pretended to be old and married. One night he got drunk and finally told me how he felt about me. We spent the rest of the summer living, instead of pretending to.
His name was Sam, and he was everything I craved. He hated his father most of the time, and wove fantastic stories of drugs and sex, all part of his colorful past. Sam was 19. We moved in together in a cramped apartment with two other people. Every night we would cling to each other in a tiny double bed, covered only with a thrift store quilt too ugly for its past owners to keep. We were happy.
Sometimes Sam would travel South to see his sister in California. We had moved to Oregon after we realized we were in love. “You can smoke in restaurants in Oregon,” Sam used to tell me. We did. When I was alone I would imagine what we could do with our lives to keep us moving forward. I had dismissed college on the East Coast soon after moving to Oregon. It was too early to ask Sam to follow me to the other side of the country. I had nothing to run from in Oregon anyway. Sometimes I thought of my own family, but not often. They were self sufficient; they could manage without me.
Once I called my youngest brother, when I was sure our mom wasn’t home. He answered the phone after the third ring.
“Bruce?” I asked him slowly, testing the water, “Is mom home?”
“Jan? Where are you? No, she isn’t.”
“I’m in New York, don’t tell her I called.” I paused to look at Sam, remembering what I wanted to say. “Do you remember when we were little and dad used to play Puff the Magic Dragon on his guitar and sing to us?”
“No.”
“I hate him sometimes.”
“Why?” Bruce suddenly sounded angry. He had a good relationship with our father. “He tries so hard Jan. What is it about him?”
“Don’t worry,” I tried to sound distant, “I’m sure he loves you.” Sam began to hum Puff in the background. I wasn’t sure if Bruce heard him or not. I heard a door slam in the background, but Bruce didn’t act like he noticed.
“You never seem to love anyone! What’s wrong with you?” I heard heavy footsteps, then my mother’s voice. I listened long enough to hear her grab the phone and say my name, then I dropped the phone in the receiver. I started laughing because I knew most people would be crying if this happened to them. I grabbed Sam and began to waltz around our bedroom. He began to laugh, too. My mother thought I was in New York. School would have started a few days ago if I had decided to attend. Oregon seemed so safe.
Sam worked as a waiter, riding to work on the motorcycle he had bought from a friend back in California, a week before we moved to Oregon. I told everyone we met in Oregon that I was pregnant and couldn’t work. I was a bartender at Hutchenson’s, a biker bar half a mile away. No one I met or talked to had ever seen me there. I hoped to keep it that way. I worked during the day, and anyone who had no better place to be in the middle of the afternoon than a seedy biker bar seemed pretty dull.
Sam encouraged me to write. He claimed I kissed better after writing. Maybe I just carried less stress. Sam began to smoke less, and he took up swimming. I learned to ride his motorcycle, and would take long drives during the weekend, searching for something that inspired me. We both kept changing things, the position of furniture in our room, the way we talked. For an entire weekend we refused to talk at all. Our roommates gave up on us and found a hotel. They came back late Sunday night to find us huddled together in the living room, crying. Without talking our emotions, no matter how large or small, built up inside of us. We could no longer take it.
Four months after living in Oregon I decided to tell my mother I was not going to school in New York.
“It’s snowing,” was the first thing I said when she picked up the phone. It was a lie.
“Jan?” She sounded shocked that I was still alive and willing to contact her. “I called your school, they said you just never showed up. None of your friends know where you are. It’s been three months since anyone’s heard from you.” She sounded sick. As soon as she paused for a breath I realized that she was smoking. I doubted I had enough impact on her to start her up on something she hated.
“What happened?” Someone in our family must have been sick or dead or something. I realized I might care, but oddly enough the care factor was limited to two of my brothers. No one else in my family mattered as much.
“Lee committed suicide.” She choked the words down like straight gin, something she only drank on really bad days. Lee was my oldest brother. “Bruce was the one who found him.” I felt bad. Not horrible, just bad. Sam was at work, he didn’t know I was calling my mother. He wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours. I had no friends in Oregon. If I called anyone else in California I might let them know where I was.
“Is he okay?” She paused for a minute, perhaps thinking that I meant Lee.
“He’s in counseling. He’s not taking it very well.” I turned on the TV, keeping the sound muted.
“Uhuh,” I whispered, deciding it was easier not to pay attention. I couldn’t remember why I had called. She talked about the cost of burying Lee, about boxing up all his stuff, then just throwing it away. I wondered if there was anything in those boxes she could have kept. Lee had an amazing knife collection. Then I remembered that my mother hated knives. “Did he leave a note?” My morbid fascination was half a game, half real interest.
“Yes, of course. Some stupid movie line that I can’t even remember.” Yes you can, I thought bitterly. Lee wasn’t a brain surgeon, but he was clever. It was probably something haunting like “I’ll be back.” That was the kind of note I would have left, anyway.
“Is Bruce there?” I asked hopefully, wondering if he’d remember what the note said.
“Yes.”
“Can I talk to him?” I heard her call out his name, her hand muffling the phone. I could picture her whispering, almost hissing, at him to find out where I was.
“Where are you?” He asked, picking up the phone. My brother had never been very blunt.
“What did the note say?” I countered, ready to answer his question, but not with the truth.
“You’re cruel,” he hissed at me. He had the same harsh whisper as our mother. Perhaps our father had it too; I don’t remember his voice.
“Chicago.” I said stiffly, hoping Sam would come straight home from work. I needed someone real to talk to.
“They wouldn’t tell me,” his blood pressure seemed to lower a bit as I answered his question. “I never saw the note, only the body.” I could hear our mom whispering something in the background, ready to take the phone away at any moment. If we had another line in the house I’m sure she would have been on it, listening.
“Don’t tell mom I asked, but how did he do it, did he shoot himself?” I was really morbid, and fascinated, wondering what could make my own brother kill himself.
“Yeah.” Bruce didn’t say anything else. I decided to change the subject.
“Does Vicki still live in town?”
“I think so, yeah, I see her at school.”
“Put mom back on, okay?” He handed her the phone.
“Tell him what the note said.” I hissed and hung up. I hoped she was afraid for me. I wondered if she still loved me in the same way she used to. I wondered if she was capable of slapping me. Sometimes I needed it.
Using 411 I found Vicki’s number. I had to call her up. The house was too quiet
.
“Is Vicki there?” I asked when her dad picked up.
“No, she’s at soccer practice. May I ask who’s calling?”
“When will she be back?” I knew soccer practice always ended at six. It was a dumb question. Sam would be home by five.
“Six thirty.” They lived a ways out of town.
“Thank you,” I hung up. Half an hour. Sam had taken his motorcycle to work, so I couldn’t go ride that. I decided to write.
Unaware, a raven hops from ground to ground
Searching for something
At home her nest burns
Her greed spies flame, a shiny bit of treasure
With speed she races, wanting all she can grasp
Curiosity
The raven tastes flame
Her charred beak proof her nesting years are over.
I pictured myself as the raven, unsure if everything in the poem fit. It took me almost half an hour to write, counting my syllables, making each phrase say all it could. When Sam arrived home I was drinking black coffee and smoking. He kissed me tenderly on the cheek and I began to cry. I guess the poem hadn’t helped me much with my emotions after all. I hated crying. I don’t think Sam had ever seen me cry, though twice he had cried in from of me.
I don’t think he knew how to react. He didn’t touch me, or say anything. I was sitting on the floor, so he sat down right across from me and just looked at me. I managed to stop sobbing, but tears were still running freely down my cheeks. He continued to look at me, not staring, not smiling, just looking into my eyes. I looked back, feeling so naked and safe, emotions I had never felt together before.
I handed Sam the poem that I had been holding. My cigarette had extinguished itself in the ashtray where I had put it when Sam came home. He read over my poem carefully, then glanced at the phone. When our eyes met again I nodded. He knew I had called home, he knew something was wrong there. He never asked what. If he had asked I would have told him willingly, but I felt I didn’t need to at that point. It would have been a superfluous explanation. Sam understood. Whatever had happened meant less to me than it was supposed to. Somehow I had battled my fears of being evil, though. I had come to terms with the fact that I was not connected with my family anymore, except in some way long forgotten.
Sam took me out dancing that night. Or at least he tried to. I wanted to wear this long flowing dress, but I wouldn’t have been able to ride the motorcycle in it. Instead of changing we stayed home, dancing on the porch to the radio. We got so hot from dancing and the city air and each other we ended up naked, still dancing, still enjoying ourselves. We drank a lot and made up songs about our names, Sam and Jan, San and Jam. We slept in each other’s arms on the floor of the living room. Our roommates were camping for a week. It was the happiest we’d every been.
A month later I was living in California again, back in my home town. Sam was in the hospital. We had ridden his motorcycle for twelve hours straight, stopping only to fill up on gas. He had fallen asleep, even with the wind in his eyes. We were both lucky I guess. He messed up his knee and was had to have surgery. I had sprained both wrists breaking my fall as I hit the pavement. It was hard to open doors or hold a fork properly, but other than that I was fine.
No one knew I had come home except Vicki. She lived above her garage, so even her parents didn’t know I was staying there. I had plenty of money with me, Sam and I had sold everything we owned and left Oregon for good. His medical insurance was covering the hospital costs. I didn’t have any insurance, which made me even luckier to come out so unscathed. Vicki insisted that I call my mom. She loved having me around, but she knew her parents wouldn’t like it if they found out.
I told her about everything that had happened in Oregon. Sam had lost his job after refusing to take the order of someone he would later swear was his father. I quit mine the following day. Oregon had become boring.
We had been heading to Mexico unless anything caught our interest on the way. I wondered why fate had let us end up back in my home town. I stayed with Vicki for three days, until the hospital let Sam out. I borrowed Vicki’s car to pick him up. It hurt to drive, but I couldn’t fathom trying to drive him anywhere on the motorcycle.
We drove straight to my old house. My mother’s car was in the driveway, assuring me that they still lived there. I didn’t care that she was home or not, though it would have been easier if she hadn’t been. I helped Sam up the driveway and let us into the house without knocking. The couch was still right next to the door, so I sat Sam down, covering him with the Afghan that laid the couch. He was still using painkillers, and fell right asleep. I could hear my mother’s voice coming from the back room.
“Bruce?” I didn’t answer, not sure of what to say to her when I had to talk. I imagined asking to move back in, then decided to state that I was going to. She couldn’t say no that way. As she walked into the kitchen she saw me standing by the front door. She gasped and I realized that the bandages on my wrists must have looked like a suicide attempt. I decided immediately not to tell her otherwise.
“This is Sam,” I pointed to the figure on the couch. Until then I don’t think she knew it was me. It took my voice for her to realize that I was her daughter. I guess she didn’t recognize me with long blond hair.
