Polished Freewrite: Rite of Passage

Draft Two. Word Count 930

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We had never been to the little salon on Main Street before. I had picked out a rather fancy new hairstyle that I wanted, and my mother decided we shouldn't rely on the well-meaning, yet ineffectual people at Supercuts to get it right. Instead, we headed off to "Mane Street Studios," trusting that there we’d get the job done right. In retrospect, I should have known anyone who thought that pun was clever probably shouldn't be allowed anywhere near my head with a pair of scissors. But, I was ten at the time, and trusted my mother's judgment implicitly.

The shop was small, with four chairs and a multitude of eighties' hair posters hanging dustily, advertising outdated hair products. The proprietress was a disturbingly fat woman in her mid-forties whose sole joy in life seemed to stem from gossiping to complete strangers about her cousin's "wayward" children. Her creased mouth opened the instant we entered and didn't shut until I called her an incompetent bitch forty-five minutes later.

I sat down in the chair and stared at my hair in the mirror, preparing to say goodbye. It was shoulder-length and scraggly, light brown, with bangs that fell to my eyebrows and that I insisted on parting in the middle. Looking at it in the mirror made me feel mousy and dull, quite the opposite of the glamorous woman sporting the new style I had chosen. This haircut was a step toward maturity for me. Not only was it short, but it was also a real style. I'd never had a real style before, and I was so excited I had asked my best friend to come along for the cutting. She was sitting to my left, gleefully inspecting the various tools used in the hair business scattered about on the counter in front of us. We grinned at each other in the mirror.

The stylist plodded toward me with her scissors, still chattering nonstop about other people's children, and began to shear my hair up to my shoulders. Moments before, she had looked at the picture and proclaimed over the different parts of the style, flinging jargon about expertly. “We'll need to do a lot of shag here at the ears.” It sounded like she knew what she was doing, which made me happy. Within minutes, however, it became clear that I was mistaken. Her attempts to create the feathery effect she had referred to as "shag" was doing nothing more than giving me the hair texture of an eighty-year-old Schnauzer. She had also cut the front too short and left the back shapeless and long as if to compensate. My mother's lips were growing ever thinner on her face, and my friend was beginning to look quite uncomfortable. I felt myself get very upset as I watched this horrible woman slowly destroy my hair. I couldn't go to school looking like I'd been gnawed on by a pack of angry ferrets! I could already hear the mocking from the older kids at my bus stop, echoing in from the future. There was nothing I could do to stop it.

“You know, that is nothing like what we asked for,” my mother said tightly when the woman had finished defiling my hair.

“No, it's exactly what you asked for. Long in the back, cut along the line of the neck, going shorter toward the front, with lots of shag around the ears.”

“That's not shag. You've shredded her hair.”

I couldn't help it. The humiliation I felt already was compounded by this description, and tears began to slide down my face. The hairstylist noticed and crowed triumphantly. “See what you've done? She's crying because she's ashamed of your behavior! I hope you're happy!”

“No,” I said reflexively, “I am crying because you're an incompetent bitch.”

The hairstylist’s jaw dropped heavily onto her chins. My mother looked at me coolly, but said nothing. My heart pounded insistently, instinctively priming my body to flee the inevitable repercussions of this outburst. Instead of chastising me, she turned back to the huffing woman standing before us defiantly, hands resting on her thick waist.

“I don't think we'll be paying you for this, and we certainly won't be coming back.” Without another word, she gathered us up and headed for the door. I surreptitiously wiped my face dry as we stepped out into the afternoon sun.

When we stepped outside, she turned to me. “Normally I would be quite angry with you, young lady, but in this case I think your language was justified.” My pulse slowed joyfully as her words made me feel as adult as I'd secretly hoped the haircut would.

“I cannot believe she tried to blame you, Samantha!” My friend said to my mom. My mother smiled back, seemingly amused at how fiercely we were defending her from the hairstylist. I grinned as well, pleased to see how much she loved my mother. But the faint horror I felt in the pit of my stomach lingered, and I lamented again that I couldn't go to school like this.

My mother didn't need to read my mind. “Let's take you to grandma's salon and see if they can't fix what that woman did to your hair, okay? We can go get shakes after and celebrate.”

Instantly, I felt better. My mother always knew how to effortlessly solve all problems. It is a trick she has always had, and in that moment I was sure she always would.