My fingers reach the tip of my hair all too soon. Running my fingers through my hair again I attempt to get a good grip on the already too short handful I’ve been grasping for a while now. Just a few snips here and I’m in the clear I whisper to myself. I hate the way my hair falls. Just above my shoulders and just below my chin. I want it short, much shorter. Short so my mother can never braid it again. Short so she can never complain when it’s full of knots and bumps. Shorter. Shorter than when two months ago, after a particularly awful argument with my mother; I ran to my pink tile bathroom, picked up my pink grooming scissors, and cut off my wavy waist long red hair just below my ears. My mother had never looked so defeated. She didn’t scream at me, she didn’t ground me. She simply picked up the kitchen phone and said into the receiver “hello this is Ellen Hawthorne…yes I’d like to cancel our arrangements for tonight… no you see Henelie is…sick”. Never again did my mother speak to my modeling agent, because from that day forward Henelie Hawthorne was no longer a model. Now it is the day before Thanks Giving. My mother’s Stiletto’s clack up the marble staircase to my room. I hear her enter. “Henelie, we’re meeting your uncle Barge in an hour at Gassepo’s can you please try to look… Henelie! Are those scissors!?” I quickly tuck my tiny red pair of school “barrowed” shears under my leg. “No mom, it’s...it’s a…It’s nothing mom, geez!” “Henelie Elizabeth Anne Hawthorne I swear to God in Heaven if I ever catch you with another pair of scissors again I’ll… I’ll…” my mom sighs in defeat. She knows there is nothing she can do, no freedom left to take away. She has no choice but to let me be me. “Hennie, dear, please get ready. I’ll be in downstairs.” My mother turns to exit “oh and Henelie, please wear something nice, preferably something that covers …that” she points to the small heart shaped tattoo on my neck. My mother’s voice drips with such distain I swear I can see it on her lips. She hated the day I got that tattoo, almost as much as she hated the day I dyed my newly shortened hair black. “Ok …mom.” I mumble. As If I have something mom approved to wear. Deciding on a grey turtle neck and my finest pair of tattered jeans, I head out.
An hour later my mother and I are sitting in one of the nicest restaurants in town across from my uncle Barge, cousin Leana, and my uncles brand new trophy wife Margarita. As I listen to Barge and Marge drone on and on about how wonderful their new life is and love at first sight and yadda yadda I cant help but notice that Leana’s bored and hopeless facial expression matches mine. A lot about Leana and I used to match. We had the same icy green eyes, the same slim figure and the same parentally consented whitened smile. But above all we had had the same long, flowing waist long hair. Now only Leana is still considered a family beauty. Now only Leana has worth in our parents eyes. But I know that look. Leana’s face is painted with the same masked anger and aggression I saw in the mirror the day I cut my hair. The overpowering feeling of being sick of being beautiful. I clear my throat to get my cousin’s attention, and as if she can read my mind she stands and fallows me to the bathroom. Standing in front if the mirror, Leana runs her hand through her hair. “I hate it Henelie. I hate doing what he says, what they say. I don’t want to order another salad, Henelie. I don’t want to be perfect anymore. I want to taste something different in my life.” I reach into my grey messenger bag and hand Leana my scissors. “Here Lee…” I watch her face slowly light up “…taste rebellion”