keep
Courtney Elizabeth Young
"Georgia O’Keeffe" by Alfred Stieglitz; platinum print; 1919/20; open source from the Art Institute of Chicago
keep
The work days continue, long, but not as long as the waits in waiting rooms where I wait with you. Today, we wait for the woman my doctors call The Wig Lady, who specializes in wigs for women who have the type of breast cancer I have, who have the same limited treatment options I have, who have a baldness I will have.
When we get to her salon, I notice things I know you do not. I have not met her yet, but I already do not trust The Wig Lady.
I don’t trust her secretary either, her demeanor as soft as the pastel walls. My leg bobs involuntarily as I stare at the “Living with Cancer” pamphlets that line the tables. The women in these brochures don’t look like me. They’re older, they’re heavier, they’re blinding white. One cover smiles at me like the loss of eyelashes are a liberation; like the pink scarf over her head is the latest fashion to which she has some sort of exclusive, coveted access to. My eyes bore into her until I hear my name.
The Wig Lady looks nice enough and you smile in pleasant greeting while my face is set in speculation, holding my judgments against her against me like a shield. She leads us into her studio: where wigs line the walls. Wigs all pressed and flat and straight and all the things I do not want to be. They frame the soft-featured faces of mannequin heads that I look nothing like, that you look everything like, looking down on me.
I take my hair down from its tight bun and it tumbles in wild wavy tendrils all around me, taking up half of the mirror I sit in front of. My hair betrays the illusion of careful composition I strive to maintain. My hair takes after me.
“Wow! That’s a lot of hair!” The Wig Lady exclaims as she clicks on her high heels, fetching a wig cap to tie up and tame and tamp down my mane.
“Yes, I’ve only cut it once in my life,” I try to ignore the unblinking eyes above me staring — model-polished and tame, smooth cuts and crops and cherub-faces, contrasting with the ribbons of refusal that sprout from my head.
“She’s my wild child,” you sit next to me on a chaise lounge, like the one I used to sit on when I would go to the hair salon with you.
I am 8. Mary and I are watching you get your hair done at Taylor & Taylor, a fancy, stuffy salon in one of those old Victorian houses you wish you had instead of the one we live in.
Mary and I sit still and silent, admiring you while you look in the mirror, fanning out your beautiful blonde hair along your shoulders as the stylist comments on how healthy it is. The scent of your hairspray makes my head buzz as you casually run a hand through. The look in your eyes is one of disgust as you casually speak of cutting things away.
I touch my own wavy tresses, sun-bleached and straggly with wild waves, then reach to touch Mary’s, who swats my hand away.
Mary and I will keep growing our hair until she is 14 and I am 13; until she wants to get her hair cut for the first time. When she does, it is a special occasion, it is a rite of passage. You take her to Taylor & Taylor and when you come home I see you went out for lunch together. You had fun together. You are both a bright blonde to my dull brunette, but maybe if I got a sweet face-frame, too, the darkness wouldn’t matter.
I want to get my hair cut, too. I want to get lunch with you, spend time with you, smile into a mirror with you. But you do not take me to the place where there is a baggie waiting to catch your hair before it falls to the marble floor, tie it and give it back for you to keep, to donate. You do not take me anywhere at all.
Dad takes me to Cost Cutters. When they cut it off it all falls to the floor too quickly. I reach up to touch the place my hair should not end but now does. The woman behind me tells me to put my hands down. I stare at my palms no sooner than she barks at me to look straight ahead. My eyes snap back to the mirror where Dad stands off to the left. He smiles, but I cannot. I look back at myself and do not see sweetness and softness, but instead a botched attempt connection.
I watch her sweep away my locks. They curl into a dustpan, kicking up in flight during the quick walk to the trash; still moving, still wild, still answering to the wind, until she dumps them into the garbage.
When she is finished, I run over to the trash can and stare down at what mirrors my innards: a thousand broken pieces that still pull at me but cannot reach me; cannot do anything except twitch toward each other.
Cutting my hair didn’t get me closer to Mary or you. I came to know by the way neither of you noticed me when I came home, that Mary wanted to cut her hair for the reason opposite of mine. I was holding on, and she was letting go.
Back in the mirror at The Wig Lady’s, I watch her wrinkled and liver-spotted hands strain to stretch the wig cap meant to compress my wildness, but I am tired of tamping myself down. You both laugh, but I am tired of people laughing at me.
I shrug off her hands, duck away from her fumbling fingers, hair spilling out as the cap slides to the floor. I don’t like how it looks on me, and if that’s any prelude to how I will look bald then I want no part of it. The Wig Lady doesn’t have wigs for women like me, women who wear their hair wild and long and free. The longest lengths are just past the shoulders.
I feel your hand on my leg.
“Sweetie,” you plead, accentuated by raised eyebrows. “Think of Dolly Parton, how much fun she has with her wigs.”
Fun? Dolly Parton? My neck jerks toward you. “Oh she had wigs? Did she also have fucking cancer?”
Even The Wig Lady retreats as we stare at each other as if in a stand-off. She busies herself by grabbing another wig-cap, another wig. I set my jaw, straighten my shoulders, look away. You look at me as I imagine I looked at my hair in the trash all those years ago.
I turn back to the mirror and settle into the chair as you sink into the chaise lounge. I let The Wig Lady wrap up my hair again and simulate my baldness. I let the tears from her pulling burn my eyes. I do not blink.
cut
I bite my nails as I wait for you to arrive in the blistering cold.
When we open the door the wind kicks up behind us, ushering us out of the empty parking lot and inside where the flickering sign blinks at our backs, buzzing as if on its last breath. My face is fixed but my eyes dart from the shears to the blow dryers, from the combs to the brushes. The fluorescent lights we stand under deepen the lines on our faces.
Kenzie clicks forward in her high heels. I stare at her her name-tag instead of making eye contact, no sooner than she approaches the counter do I clear my throat and smile tightly when I say, “I want to cut it all off.”
“Oh! But it’s so beautiful, why would you want to cut it off? I wish I could grow my hair that long,” and before I lose composure, before she makes me say it, “I can’t donate my hair after I get pumped full of chemo,” I am pushing my debit card toward her and saying, “all of it off, please,” over her pleading.
I walk away, choosing a chair at random, the tattered cushion heaving a sigh through its cracked leather when I drop into it. I glance in the mirror, see you behind me, your eyes heavy, your voice soft. When her face falls I take out my phone. I pretend your kindness means nothing to me. I pretend I do not even see it.
Nervous tics counter the swell inside me that I cannot combat while sitting in a hair salon: I bob my leg, I flip through travel photos.
In all of them, there is me and my hair, thus, my honesty: I hold onto things long after they need to be cut off. I do not have any rhyme or reason that is not of the wind or the water or the world’s hands tousling it. Instead, I tumble wildly, grow every piece of me as long as I can so that I can feel more of life in the wind, in the water, in the wild.
You come and sit in the chair where a draft still blows in through poorly insulated windows. You are still in your winter coat when you pull out your phone. “Sweetie,” you say gently, gesturing for a photo.
I give a weak smile and hear the camera click. Later when I look at this picture, I will see the single tear that I shed, knowing then that you saw it, too.
But for now, Kenzie pumps the pedal on the back of the stool silently, flipping the open sign to closed before pinning the bib around my shoulders.
There is no yanking or pulling and tugging the snarls out, just gentle caresses with the comb, the shampoo, the conditioner. She brings me back to sit down, asks if I’m ready. I nod, jut out my chin, and look straight ahead. The tears that fall do not belong to me but to you and Kenzie, this stranger who takes my mane, the one who works in silence aside from a quiet sniffle.
You, I watch from the mirror. You do not wipe your eyes because your hands are busy holding the ponytail you do not let fall to the floor.
I don’t notice what you did until it’s over, until I look down and into my lap. My hair, a whole three feet of it, tied with a bright pink ribbon.
The work days continue, long, but not as long as the waits in waiting rooms where I wait with you. Today, we wait for the woman my doctors call The Wig Lady, who specializes in wigs for women who have the type of breast cancer I have, who have the same limited treatment options I have, who have a baldness I will have.
When we get to her salon, I notice things I know you do not. I have not met her yet, but I already do not trust The Wig Lady.
I don’t trust her secretary either, her demeanor as soft as the pastel walls. My leg bobs involuntarily as I stare at the “Living with Cancer” pamphlets that line the tables. The women in these brochures don’t look like me. They’re older, they’re heavier, they’re blinding white. One cover smiles at me like the loss of eyelashes are a liberation; like the pink scarf over her head is the latest fashion to which she has some sort of exclusive, coveted access to. My eyes bore into her until I hear my name.
The Wig Lady looks nice enough and you smile in pleasant greeting while my face is set in speculation, holding my judgments against her against me like a shield. She leads us into her studio: where wigs line the walls. Wigs all pressed and flat and straight and all the things I do not want to be. They frame the soft-featured faces of mannequin heads that I look nothing like, that you look everything like, looking down on me.
I take my hair down from its tight bun and it tumbles in wild wavy tendrils all around me, taking up half of the mirror I sit in front of. My hair betrays the illusion of careful composition I strive to maintain. My hair takes after me.
“Wow! That’s a lot of hair!” The Wig Lady exclaims as she clicks on her high heels, fetching a wig cap to tie up and tame and tamp down my mane.
“Yes, I’ve only cut it once in my life,” I try to ignore the unblinking eyes above me staring — model-polished and tame, smooth cuts and crops and cherub-faces, contrasting with the ribbons of refusal that sprout from my head.
“She’s my wild child,” you sit next to me on a chaise lounge, like the one I used to sit on when I would go to the hair salon with you.
I am 8. Mary and I are watching you get your hair done at Taylor & Taylor, a fancy, stuffy salon in one of those old Victorian houses you wish you had instead of the one we live in.
Mary and I sit still and silent, admiring you while you look in the mirror, fanning out your beautiful blonde hair along your shoulders as the stylist comments on how healthy it is. The scent of your hairspray makes my head buzz as you casually run a hand through. The look in your eyes is one of disgust as you casually speak of cutting things away.
I touch my own wavy tresses, sun-bleached and straggly with wild waves, then reach to touch Mary’s, who swats my hand away.
Mary and I will keep growing our hair until she is 14 and I am 13; until she wants to get her hair cut for the first time. When she does, it is a special occasion, it is a rite of passage. You take her to Taylor & Taylor and when you come home I see you went out for lunch together. You had fun together. You are both a bright blonde to my dull brunette, but maybe if I got a sweet face-frame, too, the darkness wouldn’t matter.
I want to get my hair cut, too. I want to get lunch with you, spend time with you, smile into a mirror with you. But you do not take me to the place where there is a baggie waiting to catch your hair before it falls to the marble floor, tie it and give it back for you to keep, to donate. You do not take me anywhere at all.
Dad takes me to Cost Cutters. When they cut it off it all falls to the floor too quickly. I reach up to touch the place my hair should not end but now does. The woman behind me tells me to put my hands down. I stare at my palms no sooner than she barks at me to look straight ahead. My eyes snap back to the mirror where Dad stands off to the left. He smiles, but I cannot. I look back at myself and do not see sweetness and softness, but instead a botched attempt connection.
I watch her sweep away my locks. They curl into a dustpan, kicking up in flight during the quick walk to the trash; still moving, still wild, still answering to the wind, until she dumps them into the garbage.
When she is finished, I run over to the trash can and stare down at what mirrors my innards: a thousand broken pieces that still pull at me but cannot reach me; cannot do anything except twitch toward each other.
Cutting my hair didn’t get me closer to Mary or you. I came to know by the way neither of you noticed me when I came home, that Mary wanted to cut her hair for the reason opposite of mine. I was holding on, and she was letting go.
Back in the mirror at The Wig Lady’s, I watch her wrinkled and liver-spotted hands strain to stretch the wig cap meant to compress my wildness, but I am tired of tamping myself down. You both laugh, but I am tired of people laughing at me.
I shrug off her hands, duck away from her fumbling fingers, hair spilling out as the cap slides to the floor. I don’t like how it looks on me, and if that’s any prelude to how I will look bald then I want no part of it. The Wig Lady doesn’t have wigs for women like me, women who wear their hair wild and long and free. The longest lengths are just past the shoulders.
I feel your hand on my leg.
“Sweetie,” you plead, accentuated by raised eyebrows. “Think of Dolly Parton, how much fun she has with her wigs.”
Fun? Dolly Parton? My neck jerks toward you. “Oh she had wigs? Did she also have fucking cancer?”
Even The Wig Lady retreats as we stare at each other as if in a stand-off. She busies herself by grabbing another wig-cap, another wig. I set my jaw, straighten my shoulders, look away. You look at me as I imagine I looked at my hair in the trash all those years ago.
I turn back to the mirror and settle into the chair as you sink into the chaise lounge. I let The Wig Lady wrap up my hair again and simulate my baldness. I let the tears from her pulling burn my eyes. I do not blink.
cut
I bite my nails as I wait for you to arrive in the blistering cold.
When we open the door the wind kicks up behind us, ushering us out of the empty parking lot and inside where the flickering sign blinks at our backs, buzzing as if on its last breath. My face is fixed but my eyes dart from the shears to the blow dryers, from the combs to the brushes. The fluorescent lights we stand under deepen the lines on our faces.
Kenzie clicks forward in her high heels. I stare at her her name-tag instead of making eye contact, no sooner than she approaches the counter do I clear my throat and smile tightly when I say, “I want to cut it all off.”
“Oh! But it’s so beautiful, why would you want to cut it off? I wish I could grow my hair that long,” and before I lose composure, before she makes me say it, “I can’t donate my hair after I get pumped full of chemo,” I am pushing my debit card toward her and saying, “all of it off, please,” over her pleading.
I walk away, choosing a chair at random, the tattered cushion heaving a sigh through its cracked leather when I drop into it. I glance in the mirror, see you behind me, your eyes heavy, your voice soft. When her face falls I take out my phone. I pretend your kindness means nothing to me. I pretend I do not even see it.
Nervous tics counter the swell inside me that I cannot combat while sitting in a hair salon: I bob my leg, I flip through travel photos.
In all of them, there is me and my hair, thus, my honesty: I hold onto things long after they need to be cut off. I do not have any rhyme or reason that is not of the wind or the water or the world’s hands tousling it. Instead, I tumble wildly, grow every piece of me as long as I can so that I can feel more of life in the wind, in the water, in the wild.
You come and sit in the chair where a draft still blows in through poorly insulated windows. You are still in your winter coat when you pull out your phone. “Sweetie,” you say gently, gesturing for a photo.
I give a weak smile and hear the camera click. Later when I look at this picture, I will see the single tear that I shed, knowing then that you saw it, too.
But for now, Kenzie pumps the pedal on the back of the stool silently, flipping the open sign to closed before pinning the bib around my shoulders.
There is no yanking or pulling and tugging the snarls out, just gentle caresses with the comb, the shampoo, the conditioner. She brings me back to sit down, asks if I’m ready. I nod, jut out my chin, and look straight ahead. The tears that fall do not belong to me but to you and Kenzie, this stranger who takes my mane, the one who works in silence aside from a quiet sniffle.
You, I watch from the mirror. You do not wipe your eyes because your hands are busy holding the ponytail you do not let fall to the floor.
I don’t notice what you did until it’s over, until I look down and into my lap. My hair, a whole three feet of it, tied with a bright pink ribbon.
About the Author
Courtney Elizabeth Young is a 33-year old internationally published author and photographer who holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Southern New Hampshire University. She has lived on and backpacked 6 continents and over 30 countries alone so far — but isn’t done yet. A proud owner of both the DRD4 and MAOA gene, she has lived out loud her wild ride through life on everything from cocaine to camels, from crocodiles to cancer.
Her work has won awards, is featured, or forthcoming in: The Los Angeles Review, Inverted Syntax, DRIFT Travel, Barren Magazine, Palooka Magazine, Cleaver Magazine, The Write Launch, Elephant Journal and Tipping the Scales SHE SPEAKS! and Hour of Women’s Literature.
About the Work
"This work details the complicated relationships young women have with their hair: woven into the thumbprint of their identities. Triple negative breast cancer, only impacting about 10-20% of women, has treatment options limited to chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery — unlike other breast cancers with more options for hormonal treatment. Thus, a diagnosis of TNBC almost always guarantees the survivor will, if she undergoes the type of chemotherapy necessary to survive, lose all of her hair."
About the Author's Process
"I take photos for inspiration, write about the scene they came from to get my wheels turning. Or, I peruse older work and make edits, reminding me how much I have grown as a writer. I am by trade a photographer, so the colder months are a bit slower, and more ideal to focus on my true love, writing."
Courtney Elizabeth Young is a 33-year old internationally published author and photographer who holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Southern New Hampshire University. She has lived on and backpacked 6 continents and over 30 countries alone so far — but isn’t done yet. A proud owner of both the DRD4 and MAOA gene, she has lived out loud her wild ride through life on everything from cocaine to camels, from crocodiles to cancer.
Her work has won awards, is featured, or forthcoming in: The Los Angeles Review, Inverted Syntax, DRIFT Travel, Barren Magazine, Palooka Magazine, Cleaver Magazine, The Write Launch, Elephant Journal and Tipping the Scales SHE SPEAKS! and Hour of Women’s Literature.
About the Work
"This work details the complicated relationships young women have with their hair: woven into the thumbprint of their identities. Triple negative breast cancer, only impacting about 10-20% of women, has treatment options limited to chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery — unlike other breast cancers with more options for hormonal treatment. Thus, a diagnosis of TNBC almost always guarantees the survivor will, if she undergoes the type of chemotherapy necessary to survive, lose all of her hair."
About the Author's Process
"I take photos for inspiration, write about the scene they came from to get my wheels turning. Or, I peruse older work and make edits, reminding me how much I have grown as a writer. I am by trade a photographer, so the colder months are a bit slower, and more ideal to focus on my true love, writing."
