FIVE OF US WENT to the beauty parlor together. There was Karen, of course, and Maya, and two other friends who live in the next apartment building, Meg Sharpe and Nancy Goodman. The beauty parlor is about three blocks from our house. All the way there I kept wondering if I was doing the right thing.
The receptionist at the desk had the whitest blond hair and the longest fingernails I had ever seen. Karen’s mouth dropped open when she saw those fingernails, which were painted with a purple polish.
“Yes?” the receptionist said. “May I help yew?”
Everybody looked at me, so I cleared my throat and said, “I’d like a haircut?” It came out more like a question, and I spoke in a tiny, squeaky voice.
“Pardon?” said the receptionist.
“An angle haircut,” I said, more firmly this time.
She looked at Karen and Maya and Nancy and Meg, and raised one thin penciled brow. “Only one?”
“These are my friends. They just came along to watch.” Karen was still staring bug-eyed at those fingernails, and I had to pinch her to make her stop.
The receptionist told us to wait, and we all sat down in the front section of the beauty shop. There were three hairdressers working on three customers. The radio was playing very loud and one of the hairdressers was singing along with the music. He was teasing his customer’s hair into a big cotton-candy pile. Another woman had giant rollers on her head and I wondered how she would ever fit under the dryer. Further back, there were two women with some blue stuff all over their hair.
There was a pile of magazines on the table next to me. “Did you see that lady’s fingernails?” Karen said in her loud stage whisper.
“Shh,” I said, opening one of the magazines on my lap. There was a picture of a famous television star on the first page, THE NIGHT THAT BOBBY PRAYED TO DIE, the headline read. Well, that looked interesting, and it would take my mind off the haircut while I waited. I started to read the story and it was all about when Bobby was a little kid living on a farm in Iowa, with no idea in the world of ever being a big TV star. It told how he loved animals so much that he talked to them, just as if they were people, and that he had a pet pig raised on a baby bottle, because its mother kept trying to eat it for some reason. Anyway, the pig grew up and Bobby’s father decided to have it butchered because it was too big to keep as a pet and too old to have any more litters. “I wanted to die,” Bobby recalled. “If Susie was going to die, I wanted to die with her.”
I was just turning the page to find out what happened to Susie when all my friends began calling my name at once. The blond receptionist was standing in front of me holding a pink plastic cape, as if she were a bullfighter. “Mr. Tony can take yew now,” she said.
I stood up very slowly. I was really going to get a haircut. What if it looked terrible? What if everybody laughed when they saw it? After all, Shelley didn’t know everything. I looked at Karen’s long, silky, straight hair. I looked at Maya and tried to smile. Her eyes were shining with envy. “I wish it was me,” she said. “It’s going to look great, Teddy.”
The receptionist fastened the cape around me and led me to the chair of the singing hairdresser. “Let me ki-iss your waiting li-ips,” he sang, while he dipped combs in a cleaning solution. “Parted in the middle, darling?” he asked, when I was sitting in his chair.
I could only nod yes without speaking, I was so nervous.
“Oh, let me stay here in your arms!” he sang, as he pumped the pedal on the chair, making it climb higher.
I looked in the mirror. I could see Karen and Maya standing a few feet away. Nancy and Meg were behind them. They were all watching. My hair didn’t look so bad the way it was.
Mr. Tony took a long pair of shining scissors from a drawer. I opened my mouth to say, Forget it, I’ve changed my mind, but before I could say anything, he had combed my hair forward over my face. I shut my eyes. It was too late. What if it took about three years to grow back? Snip snip. I opened my eyes. Through the veil of hair hanging in front of them, I saw little furry clumps clinging to the pink cape. Snip snip. I shut my eyes again. I could hear Karen (or was it Maya?) gasp behind me. It must look awful.
Mr. Tony never stopped singing for a minute. He squeezed some water out onto my head from a plastic bottle. Some of it ran into my ear and tickled. And he continued to comb and cut. Comb and cut. “How does it look so far?” I asked, but nobody answered.
“My heart beats just for you-ou,” Mr. Tony crooned.
The telephone kept ringing and the receptionist kept saying, “Good afternoon. Charmant Coiffures. May I help yew?”
“Am I dry yet?” a woman called from under the dryer.
I opened my eyes again and saw that Mr. Tony was plugging a little blow dryer into an outlet on the wall. I looked in the mirror, but it was hard to tell anything. My hair was so wet it stuck to my head, and I looked the way I did after swimming.
Maya and Karen and Meg and Nancy kept moving closer and closer, but they still didn’t say anything. Then the dryer was turned on and my hair was whipping all around my face. “Don’t break your promise to me-ee,” Mr. Tony sang, above the noise of the dryer, “if you don’t want to break my heart!” Layer by layer, he brushed all the hair into place.
“Oh, you lucky stiff!” Maya said. “It looks great, Teddy.”
Was it really me? I couldn’t stop staring at my own reflection while Mr. Tony brushed the loose hairs from my neck and arms with a little whisk broom.
It was an angle cut, all right. There were soft wings of hair along both sides of my face. Mr. Tony held a small mirror behind me and I saw that the back was still long, but it had been cut on a slant, so my hair looked thicker and shinier. It did look good. It looked wonderful! “Do you like it?” I asked the other girls, but I could see by their faces that they did.
They told me anyway. “Just lovely,” Karen-Bunny said. “Neat,” Meg said. “I’m going to get mine done tomorrow.”
“Very nice, dear. Thank yew,” the receptionist said, when I paid her.
I couldn’t wait to get home. What if I met Marc Singer on the way? What would everyone say in school the next day? Shelley was absolutely right. I looked older. I didn’t look so plain any more.
When I said goodbye to Maya I could see that she was upset. “I don’t know why I can’t get a haircut if I want one,” she said. “I’m surprised they still don’t make me wear it in pigtails.”
I thought she was right, but I didn’t say anything. I just squeezed her hand when we said goodbye on the third floor.
“Is that you, Maya?” her father called from their doorway.
Ezra came for dinner that night. “You’re a knockout, Teddy,” he said. “And you look at least fifteen.”
I kept looking in all the mirrors. I was getting even worse than Karen.
When Mother came home from the bank, she had news of her own. She had been made supervisor of the credit-and-loan department. She had stopped off for a small bottle of red wine on the way home, to celebrate. “You look very cute, honey,” she said to me, as she dished out the meatballs.
Then Ezra stood at the table with his napkin in one hand and his wineglass in the other. He cleared his throat. “I’d like to propose a toast,” he said. “To my charming and successful Aunt Jean.” For once Mother didn’t make a wisecrack. She simply smiled at Ezra. Then he turned to Karen and me. “And to her beautiful daughters. Good health and happiness!”
Karen jumped up from her seat, making all the water glasses tremble. “I second the motion!” she shouted, and everybody laughed.