Kaitlyn Greenidge

My mother had good hair, a term she would never use herself because, she said, it was so hurtful she couldn’t possibly believe it. But my mother’s hair was undeniably long and thick, a mass of loose curls that Callie and I did not inherit and that she was determined to cut off before we began our new life.

She tried to talk both of us into joining her, but only Callie took the bait. My mother got her with the promise of hair made so easy and simple, you could run your fingers through it. When it was all over, Callie was left with an outgrowth of stiff, sodden curls that clung in limp clusters to her forehead and the nape of her neck and made the back of her head smell like burning and sugar.

If I am being honest, I like the girls in the Police Gazette the best. Murder is interesting, but I save my copies so that I can study the girls again and again. The one with the curls piled on their heads and the fat thighs crossed or tossed across the back of divans. The ones with the cinched-in waists. The cover girls I like the best, not the girls on the inside pages. I like the way they hold their arms curved over their heads, and their backs arch. It makes their large bosoms rise up, this is certain, but I like it, too, because they are so vulnerable, so open. The very beating hearts of themselves are wide open to the world if the world would have them.

As soon as she was finished, Charlie looked down at the ball in his own lap, then up at the reflection of the chimp with the red ball in his lap. He didn’t make a sound, just stared for a few moments at the face in the mirror. His eyes flitted for a second to Callie, to my mother, both of whom were nodding, holding out their hands for him to roll the ball back. Charlie glanced again at his reflection, and then he drew his little bullet head deep into his neck, hunched his shoulders, raised his fists—and my mother, on instinct, lunged quicker, lunged faster, held him back before he could beat up his own shrieking reflection.