6

When Josie came home from work, she didn’t even have a chance to kick off her high-heels or flop down into Eli’s chair. I walked right up and put the present into her hands.

For me, Mala? she smiled, and standing right there by the front door, she pulled the ribbon loose and tore the paper.

She stared at the gift. Slippers. I had used red and yellow and blue yarn in nice wide stripes. The dingleballs on top had all three colors in them and were made especially large. For the space of time it took the wrapping paper to trace a fitful trail to the carpet, I wondered if she might drop them, turn around, and leave.

You knit? Her voice held as much enthusiasm as if she had heard that Aunt Anna was now moving in with us.

Gram taught me.

Ah.

The dingleballs are kind of large … I admitted.

My beloved dingleballs now looked sinister, as if they could devour the slender, dark hand that held them. The slippers’ stripes seemed to glow and throb, lurid and over-bright. Josie raised her eyes from the slippers and blinked at me. I didn’t know that look, what it meant, what she saw. We were two strangers, staring at each other in an unfamiliar room.

She took my hand and pulled me through the house, holding the slippers out in front of her and away from her body as if contagious.

I just thought … It’s cold in the nights and mornings … I could …

In the kitchen I tried to redirect her attention.

Look. I made a cake! I said brightly. On the kitchen table a large chocolate sheet cake splayed beneath a weight of frosting the unfortunate color of Pepto Bismol. A little too much food coloring, I thought too late.

Sweet Jesus, Josie commented grimly and thrust me into her room. Still holding me, she closed the door and turned me around. I was confronted with myself in the full-length mirror on the back of her door.

I could make the dingleballs smaller … I look up hopefully into her reflection.

It’s not the slippers, Mala, she said, and I had the slight satisfaction of knowing she had at least recognized them beneath the monstrous puffs of yarn that sat astride them.

Look at you, she said insistently. Compelled, I followed the line of her vision and looked at myself. Trussed-up in Gram’s flowered apron, feet swimming in stretched-out house slippers, head anointed with cake flour, I was an awkward, unconvincing imposter.

You’re thirteen, Mala. Thirteen-year-olds don’t knit. They don’t bake sheet cakes, and they sure as hell don’t sit around gabbing with a bunch of old crows! You’re becoming one of them, an honorary member of the widows’ club! You should be doing stuff with friends, giggling over boys, getting into trouble, for God’s sake! What are we going to do with you?

I put too much food coloring in the frosting. I know. Next time …

Josie was not listening. She was no longer seeing me.

Look at this hair, she muttered to herself. No one under seventy-five wears her hair like this!

I do, I yelped too late.

With quick, deft fingers she was pulling the hairpins from my braid, unwrapping the coil from my head, unbraiding thirteen years of ritual, every morning, first Gram’s hair, then mine, the brushing, the braiding, wrapping the head, hiding the tattered end, securing the crown with pins. By the time I was ten, I could do it myself, and Gram could sit for the first time in her life, fussed over, every morning, like a queen. Josie ran long fingers through the kinked strands. My head tingled from the release.

Come on. She dragged me from the back room.

You don’t like sheet cake. I don’t have to make sheet cake!

Don’t say another word, Mala, Josie warned.

She propelled me, silently, inexorably, in front of her, down the hall, into the bathroom. She turned on the taps in the sink and tested the water with her wrists, made slight adjustments and tested again.

I make a great nut bread, you know, povitza … Just like Gram.

That’s it! she countered grimly and thrust my head under the warm, rushing water.

Josie added shampoo, hers, not Gram’s, and worked up lather. Her hands worked my head as if it were my morning bread dough. She was creating. Awash in suds and water and Josie’s determination, I clung to the sides of the basin as if I might be swept away and lost. She rinsed and squeezed the last of the water from my long hair and wrapped a towel around my head. She took me by the hand and led me, still sputtering, to the kitchen. She pulled out a chair and bowed me into it with a flourish, and then she unwrapped my head, leaving the towel around my shoulders to keep the dampness from my back. She fetched a comb and scissors and started in. The comb drew clean, deep furrows. She played with possible parts: center, right, settled for the left. She took up hunks of hair and used the old hairpins to hold them in loose loops against my head. A thin layer of hair was left to hang down. She began cutting, somewhere between chin and shoulder. My neck sensed the nearness of the cold metal blade, felt vulnerable, naked.

Did Gram ever tell you about Yuban?

Josie paused to consider, Yuban? No. She released a few pins, began cutting a new layer of hair.

Yuban was a blacksmith in her old village, in Yugoslavia. He was the most stubborn man in the village. And ornery, too. Mean as a devil, Gram said. One time, Yuban was shoeing a horse. But, this horse was just as mean as Yuban, and he didn’t want to be shoed. Yuban had bent the old horse’s front leg up and was crouched over its hoof pounding nails into the new shoe. Bam! Bam! Well, that horse just stretched its head back around and bit Yuban right on his fanny.

Josie stood still, scissors poised.

Yuban started swearing a blue streak and dropped the hammer and the hoof and stood up, looking that horse right in the eye the whole time. Then he walked around, behind the horse, and bit it right on its big, brown butt.

Josie grinned with satisfaction and began cutting again, releasing the last pins, swiftly finishing with strong, sure strokes.

The horse kicked Yuban so hard he flew in a giant arc out of the barn and into the yard. When he finally stood up he had to lean over and spit out teeth, all of them except two in the way back, on the top. He was never able to chew a piece of meat again the rest of his life.

Josie moved around in front of me. We stared at each other a long time, eyes narrowed.

Close, she ordered quietly and combed damp hair down over my face. She cut thin bangs in a neat line from temple to temple and gently brushed away the strands that clung to my nose, cheeks, and eyelashes. She used the towel to further dry and fluff my hair, then had me stand while she flicked the last of the hair from me. The long strands floated, glittering in the silent kitchen.

It just goes to show you, Josie said. Pick your opponents wisely. Her laughter was the sudden sound of wings, a flock of birds taking flight all at once.

You’ll like this, Mala. Come see.

We went back to the mirror in her room. She placed her hands on my shoulders, possessive of her new creation.

Your hair’s a beautiful color, Mala.

Pink.

What?

Gram called it pink. Pink hair.

She laughed again, a wheeling of joy through the air.

Gram had a limited vocabulary. It’s strawberry blonde. It’s the color of fire! There are actresses in Hollywood who would kill for that color!

She ran her fingers through it, separating the still-damp clumps, molding the ends into a pageboy, holding the weight of it up to my chin.

You’re a new girl, Mala. She smiled down into my eyes. You need a new name. Mala, what’s that? It just means ‘little one’ in Serb. She was holding my head now, checking its size and shape. I don’t even know your name! she laughed, and gave my head a slight shake.

Rebecca.

In my mind I was hearing Rebecca Jean Talovich. It was the first day of every school year. Rebecca Jean Talovich? The teachers lived above Main, in houses the colors of Easter eggs. They always looked through the back rows for this Talovich girl, the back rows with their dark glossy heads and bright brown eyes. Rebecca Jean Talovich? They skipped over the pink-haired one in that sea of brown. I wanted to correct the teacher, tell her I was not Rebecca Jean Talovich, the pale, pink, and white American girl standing in front of her, unnoticed, a pastel mint left untouched in a china dish. I was Mala Talovich, a dark, fierce Serb. Rebecca Jean Talovich!? I raised my arm. Oh, there you are. Speak up next time, dear. Nickolas Udopolous? Someone always told her later. Everybody calls her Mala, they said. The teacher would focus on me, weak blue eyes behind thick lenses. Why?

Becky. It’s perfect! Josie hugged me as if she was greeting a long lost relative. Let’s clean up all that hair, Becky, she added.

We swept the hair into a soft mound of shining gold.

You know, Josie said, considering the pile, sometimes the birds have a second clutch of eggs in the summer. We should scatter all this outside. I bet the birds would love all this for their nests. Won’t those eggs be happy!

She gathered the hair and carried it to the back door. She lifted her arms and spread her hands and the hair drifted down and out into the cool evening. All through the rest of the night, Josie glowed, warming me with her attention. She wore the slippers. We ate cake, and she told me about what she thought college would be like.

You’ll be ready to take on this whole town, she said, adding gently, when I leave.

Leave. The word floated in the air in front of me, then sank slowly under its own weight. Josie reached over to run her fingers through my hair, fluff my bangs, train a strand behind my ear. She was pleased with her work. She had peeled back the stubborn shell and let loose a bright, new chick. Birth is a matter of timing.

The next morning, I woke up early to make bread. With the sun not quite over the cliffs above town, I kneaded dough in the blue air. I wore Gram’s apron, a new name, and new hair, hair that the actresses in Hollywood would kill for. In the quiet kitchen, I planned my day. I would sit in a circle of old women and listen. Perhaps I would tell them about my hair and the actresses in Hollywood. They would like that. In the afternoon, I would call some of my cousins and Carrie Price, my best friend and motherless like me. Maybe we’d go watch a ballgame up at the park. Then we’d come back for cards when the wind kicked up. I’d let them stay until Josie came home. She could kick them out. She’d like that.

Out in the back yard, the birds fluttered and squabbled, gathering each strand of hair until the ground was bare. They lined their nests with gold to warm temporary children. With a flash of wings, the children would rise, soar, leave.