Seattle Press on Line - Black and Blonde

Black and Blonde

By C. P. Kempton

May 31, 2001 -- Before my hair turned gray it was black. By the time I reached adolescence I had more or less accepted it. But as a child I hated my straight black Dutch bob. I yearned passionately for long blonde curls just like those of Sally Ritter, who sat in front of me in the third grade.

I used to stare jealously at the back of her head, not two feet in front of me, watching her play with her hair, poking her fingers into the long golden tubes, piling them on top of her head and then letting them tumble down her back. It wasn't fair.

Some people had everything.

Whenever I whined to my mother about wishing I had blonde hair she said, "Lots of famous beauties had black hair. Look at the Mona Lisa and Snow White. Snow White's hair was black. Black as a raven's wing."

"Mona Lisa was an old lady," I wailed. "And what about Cinderella and Goldilocks? They had blonde hair."

"'Well, your hair's black and that's that."

I might have borne my cross with more grace if my hair had at least been curly.

But each unyielding strand was as straight as a broom handle. Now and then, picturing myself running around the schoolyard tossing my bouncy curls just like Sally Ritter, I begged my mother to wind my hair around rags. "What for?" she always complained. "I'll only have to get up later and unwind them."

But she usually relented and I lay in bed happily anticipating the envy and admiration of my schoolmates until the tight, rag-bound coils pressing into my scalp made me whimper with pain. My mother got out of bed with a sigh. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she grumbled, unwinding the rags. "I should know better by now. Giving in to a foolish child."

I couldn't hope to bleach my hair when I grew older either. In my family circle, bleached hair on an actress or circus performer was grudgingly acknowledged as a tool of the trade. But on an ordinary woman it was a sign of loose morals.

As my relatives became more Americanized, however, and the older ones died off, few women went to their graves with hair the color it was when they were children. Mostly, they dyed it a dull intense black that brutalized their wrinkles, and if a really daring woman changed her hair color to blonde or--gasp--red, it was a sure sign she had gone to the dogs.

How times change. Nowadays hair comes in every color of the rainbow. We have adjusted to messages carved on the head, hair as big as a storm cloud, or a single tuft sprouting from the crown. And hair that is pink, green, blue, or purple--or all of the above--has lost its power to shock us.

Of course I wasn't miserable all the time about my hair. When I was playing or otherwise occupied I was perfectly happy. And when school ended for the day and Sally took her hair out of my sight I never gave her a second thought. If Stella and her family hadn't moved into the vacant house next door to us I would never have faced the possibility of going to jail.

Stella was five to my eight. Her hair was even blonder and curlier than Sally's. After her mother washed it, they sat on the back porch, Stella nestled between her mother's knees while her mother brushed the child's hair, winding each tendril carefully around her finger and easing it off into a perfect golden curl.

This procedure took hours, eliciting from my mother the observation that Stella's mother would do better to feed Stella's prodigious appetite instead of her vanity. But it made me green with envy to see them engaged in this companionable occupation and to see the shining curls growing like a halo on Stella's head.

I only played with Stella when no one else was available. She was a pest. Always at the back door wanting to know if I could play. Always asking for something to eat. One day when I had been kept at home after an aching tooth had been filled my mother opened the door to Stella hoping she'd provide a distraction and thus improve my temper.

"What'll we play?" Stella asked as I flopped down on my bed determined to ignore her.

"I don't feel like playing," I told her.

"Why not? Play with me. Please. Let's play with your paper dolls."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't feel like it, that's why."

"Why not? Come on. Pleease, pleeeease. What do you want to play?"

"Nothing."

"Come on. Come on," she pleaded, hands clasped in earnest beggary.

I looked into her hungry blue eyes, at her face framed in a mass of yellow curls. My eyes narrowed. "Did you ever play barber?" I said.

"No. How do you play that?" she asked eagerly. "Well," I said, sitting up, feeling a slow, heavy thrill course through my blood, "you pretend to be a lady going to get a haircut, and I'll be the barber."

"Let's play that!" she cried, clapping her hands.

I leaped up and fished my little scissors out of the paper doll box. "Sit right here," I said, patting the bed. "You have to sit still so I'll be sure to do a good job."

"I'll sit still! I'll sit very still!" She was twitching with excitement. I lifted one of the curls and sawed at it with the dull round tips of the scissors. As the first curl tumbled onto the bed I felt a powerful jolt of victory. "You can talk if you want to," I said, remembering that my mother always came to investigate if she thought my playmates and I were being too quiet.

Stella jabbered away as I hacked at her hair. After a while she began to fidget. "When are you going to be finished?"

"Hold still. Just a little bit longer." I took a few steps backward to get a more balanced view. I stared at the pile of golden curls surrounding Stella and felt my scalp prickle with the first twinges of doubt. At that moment my mother, carrying a bunch of hangers with my freshly ironed dresses on them, came into the room. Her eyes widened in shock. Her mouth fell open. "Jesu Cristo!" she shrieked, dropping the dresses and clapping her hands to her cheeks.

I lunged past her out of the room, out the back door and down into the cellar where, trembling, I hid behind a wine barrel oblivious of the spider webs I normally dreaded.

Above me, terrified by my mother's reaction, Stella began to howl. I heard steps thumping across the floor and then I heard Stella's mother's scream.

My mother, abject, groveling, tried to explain but Stella's mother cut her off. "Your child is an abomination! A fiend! A malediction!" Then, because there was no equivalent in Italian, she added, in a triumph of English, "She's a end up in a juvenoo haw!"

Her words filled me with horror. I cowered in my dark comer shivering with fear. I covered my ears to shut out the sound of the two women screaming at each other. Juvenile Hall was the ultimate punishment. Bad children were sent there to be starved and tortured, never to see daylight again.

I sniffed and sobbed, wiping my nose on the hem of my dress. When my mother appeared in the shaft of light from the open cellar door I shrank in terror.

"Come out of there," she sputtered, breathless with rage.

"No! No!" I sobbed creeping further back, knowing her girth would make it impossible for her to squeeze behind the barrels and grab me.

"All right then. Sit there," Muttering to herself she stomped up the stairs. Later, when my father came down with her, I was too cramped and exhausted to put up a fight. They took one look at me and led me out of the cellar and into the house.

I woke up a few hours later surprised to find myself in my own bed, still alive. I thanked God that it was just a bad dream. Then, from the kitchen, I heard my father's laugh. My mother laughed too. "Oh, my God," she choked. "You should have seen us. What a spectacle. We were ready to kill each other."

"We'll have to move," my father said.

"Not on your life. I told her that if she wasn't always palming her kid off on the neighbors to feed and watch over it wouldn't have happened."

"What got into our daughter do you think?" my father asked.

"Who knows? Maybe it was the poison from her tooth."

"Ah, that must be it."

Stella was no longer a problem. Our mothers never exchanged another word. If they accidentally encountered one another at the grocery store or at church their chins jerked up in a mutual snub. As it happened both families moved away at about the same time.

Stella out of Los Angeles to San Jose and my family to a house closer to a maternal aunt.

Stella's hair, I knew, would in time grow back to its former beauty while mine, well, a couple of those early frizzy permanents made it curly, and then some, but only age would change the color. I learned to accept it.

I stopped praying to God for blonde curly hair. I wasn't getting through to Him anyway. Besides, maybe sometime when He wasn't too busy He might remember that He hadn't punished me. Why remind Him?

My hair was black and that was that.

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Angela	Jan 28, 2004	Fort Sill, OK	college student
Simply adorable- I could really visualize each and every detail. The characters came to life and the entire story danced around in my imagination.


Anonymous	May 09, 2006
Oh please, balck hair is GREAT! Get over it lady...