The Year of the Permanent Wave

There was a time when you could light up anywhere - restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, airplanes, office buildings and of course, beauty parlors.  At the time, both my mother and grandmother had separate hair dressers.  Nana went to Joseph, an elegantly silver haired gentleman with manicured nails and a slight accent,
tall, slim, always well dressed and courteous to a fault.  His salon smelled of flowers and polished wood, a quiet place where people spoke in low voices and listened to the strains of classical music from Boston's public radio station while sipping tea with lemon and nibbling delicate sandwiches with the crusts neatly removed.  My mother, loudly claiming that Joseph's was suffocating and gave her a migraine, found Lorraine - a brassy, gum chewing blonde who favored stiletto heels and capri pants and smoked like a chimney.  When the lipstick stained butts overflowed the plastic ashtrays, she simply tossed them to the barely swept floor and absentmindedly crushed them under one spike heel.  Her salon reeked of stale pizza and ammonia and the high pitched chatter of gossip was always competing with with a Sinatra song - everyone sang along.


The year I turned eleven, my mother decided that I was to have a permanent wave and that only Lorraine should be the one to do it.  I protested fiercely - it was the year that the then prominent school photographer Olan Mills Studio was to do our school pictures and I hated the idea of having to dress up and have my picture made - but it was useless to argue and in the end I sullenly consented to being dragged to the salon and deposited into a swivel chair.  Lorraine covered me with a ragged plastic cape, jammed a filter tip into one corner of her mouth and began the process, oblivious to the ammonia stinging my eyes and the paper wrapped rollers that seemed to set my scalp to burning.  I couldn't remember being more miserable and the hour spent under the dryer almost seemed a mercy - its heat made the burning and itching worse but at least the noise blotted out the music and the chicken yard of gossippy, giggling, empty women.  I had no idea that there was far worse to come.


Back in the swivel chair an hour later, Lorraine unwrapped the nasty little rollers and with my mother watching, began brushing out the tight curls with enthusiasm.  It took her several minutes to realize that every brush stroke brought with it a clump of frayed and fried hair - it was only when I opened my eyes and burst into wild tears that she stopped - the filter tip, now hanging loosely between her wide open and startled lips, fell to the floor and in seconds the stench of burning hair drifted everywhere.  Stunned and speechless, she turned to my horrified mother whose own cigarette had fallen into her lap and ignited a tiny, smoking flame.  The entire salon fell suddenly silent except for Frank who began belting out a heartfelt, Rat Pack rendition of "Birth of the Blues".  


Don't worry, honey, Lorraine finally said hoarsely, I can fix it.


Fix it?  I shrieked, Fix it?  With what?  I thought I heard an edge of hysteria in my voice and I broke into fresh tears, There's nothing left to fix!


It grew back, of course, although not in time for the school pictures and not before I'd endured months of torment and name calling.  Lorraine had sheared and cut as short and as close as she'd dared, creating an overall impression of a marine buzz cut gone terribly wrong and a wealth of opportunity for cruel teasing and taunting.  The school year was only half over and I cried every day - my daddy did his best to console me while my mother, who had gotten over her shock in no time and come to put all the blame on Lorraine, snapped at me to grow up and stop making such a fuss.  When the Olan Mills proofs were ready, I cut them to shreds and burned them piece by piece in the kitchen sink - with every match strike, I hoped and prayed for my mother to appear and try to stop me - I imagined I might stab her eyes out and then set her on fire.  Not long after, an order form and a bill came in the mail and I defiantly admitted what I'd done and said I'd do it again.  


We can't get the deposit back! my enraged mother snapped as she began clearing the dinner table with wild abandon, and since money doesn't grow on trees, it'll just come out of your allowance!


No, my daddy said quietly, It won't. And remarkably there was something in his tone or the look he gave her that ended the discussion before it began.  She gave him a brief glare then ordered me to my room to think about what I'd done.  You're excused, she said coldly.


Well, you're not! I snapped back before I had a chance to think it through, It's your fault and I hate you!  It may have been the first time I'd said the words outloud and I knew better than to wait and see if they would harmlessly dissipate like fog under a bright sun or catch fire and burn everything in their path.  Regardless, I knew I would never take them back and they'd left with a desperate need to hurt something - I slammed my chair into the table's edge and ran blindly for the stairs - the sharp edged sounds of breaking Corelware and glass followed me, then there was crying.  I closed and locked my bedroom door and turned my small radio as loud as I could stand to drown it all out and after not too long a time, fell almost peacefully asleep with no dreams and no regrets.