A daring skirt, that came to just below her knees, showed off her shapely calves, made long and elegant by her spike heels. Uncle Gabe, invited with Pearl for the occasion, gave a wolf whistle when Mama came into the living room in her new outfit.
Papa grumbled, “Does this mean you’ll finally stop cleaning up on our friends at cards?” Still, he couldn’t stop staring at Mama.
And she hadn’t finished astonishing us. The next day, Pearl came over after lunch to stay with Barbara, Audrey, and me. She and Mama whispered together, and Mama said, “Pearl, are you sure?”
“Positive,” Pearl replied. Finally Pearl said, “Charlotte, go already!” and almost pushed Mama out the door.
I was on the porch when she returned, walking fast and dabbing her handkerchief at her eyes. “Mama!” I cried, but she ran up the steps into the house and let out a sob. I ran in after her, but I was too frightened to ask what was wrong.
Pearl rushed to Mama, too, and hugged her. “Don’t worry, Charlotte. It’s how I felt right after, too. Everyone does. Oh, I can tell already it’s gorgeous.”
Pearl eased off the wide-brimmed summer straw hat that Mama had pulled down so it covered her whole head.
She had cut her beautiful hair. The heavy, dark, wavy blanket that she let me brush sometimes had been shorn into a flapper’s bob. Pearl’s hair was bobbed, but Pearl was different—she and Gabe danced the Charleston, and she smoked cigarettes. And her bob clung sleekly to her head, only poufing out a little when she set it in pin curls. Mama’s hair, cut short, was thick and springy, as if the energy that used to wiggle to the end of each hair no longer knew where to go, and now the strands shot out from her head.
I couldn’t help it. I gasped in horror.
Pearl gave me a dirty look and fluffed Mama’s bob with her fingers. “It’s perfect! I knew you had the right kind of hair, Char. So much better than mine—you’ve got that beautiful natural wave. Doesn’t your mama look beautiful, Elaine?”
Barbara—where was she?—might have zipped past the crack that opened in the world, through which I glimpsed the broken places in my mother and knew I had to fix them. But what about the rip threatening to open inside me, the sense of betraying some essential Elaine-ness, if I said what they wanted to hear?
“Yes, beautiful!” I tried to sound enthusiastic, and even though I’d hesitated, Pearl smiled, and Mama said, “I’m a modern lady now, aren’t I?”
“Like a movie star,” I said.
“See?” Pearl said. “Let’s see how it looks with this.” From a big shopping bag she’d brought with her, Pearl took out a hatbox.
“Oh, Pearl!” Mama clapped her hands. Pearl had bought Mama a dark brown bob hat, its bell shape fitted close to her head to show just the edges of her hair at her cheeks.
Barbara came in then; she must have been in the garden. “Let me feel,” she said, and ran her hands through Mama’s bob. It hadn’t occurred to me that the wiry helmet would feel anything like hair.
Mama seemed happy until Pearl had to go home to make dinner. “Can’t you stay just a little longer?” she asked.
“Don’t worry, Bill will love it,” Pearl said. But Pearl knew, just as I did, the story of how Mama and Papa had met—that she took the English class he used to teach at night, and he noticed the dramatic fervor with which she recited poems … and her abundant, almost-black hair.
I heard later that Pearl went straight from our house to Fine’s and warned Papa that he’d better compliment Mama, or Pearl would make him sorry for the rest of his life.
We didn’t need to worry about Papa. No matter how attractive he had found Mama’s long hair, his passion was for modernity. “No more old country,” he said.
It was Zayde who murmured, “Your pretty, pretty hair.” Still, Zayde—who was, after all, an older man, for whom Mama had her greatest appeal—liked everything she did. In fact, he wanted her to keep coming to his card games, but she’d promised Papa she would stop when she got the money for school outfits, and she declared herself finished with all that.
The minefield of the bob crossed, Mama threw us into a euphoria of anticipation. She lectured us constantly on how to behave in school: Always respect our teachers. Never hit or push other children. Never, never fight