University of Northern Iowa

Allison's HairAuthor(s): Monica WoodSource: The North American Review, Vol. 271, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), pp. 40-41Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124729 .

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N A R

Monica Wood

ALLISONS

HAIR

-Deing pregnant ruined Allison's hair. It used to be very blonde, naturally wavy, and full of highlights. Now it is

limp and the color of shredded wheat. She stares at it in the mirror, trying to perk it up with some combs her

mother bought at the hairdresser. Nothing works. She looks at her face, the unlovely hair, the blotchiness of her

complexion. She looks down at her body, naked and

white, flabby in the middle, and says aloud: "I am

twenty."

Jonathan is a slow child. He was slow to roll over, slow to crawl, and even now is unsteady on his feet. He totters

into her mirror view, carrying the yellow truck and Kermit the Frog that he is rarely without. His nose is runny, his

mouth and cheeks smudged with jam. She turns her back to the mirror to really see him.

"Mummy hot," he says. Jonathan is four, and these are his only words, learned when he was two, when

eighteen-year-old Allison refused to hold him all summer.

"Mummy hot," she told him, "go play in your pool." He had obediently retreated to the blow-up wading pool, saying "Mummy hot" to the yellow truck and Kermit.

Allison had not told anyone about his first words.

Jonathan looks like a homely little girl. His face is

flat and pale, his mouth thin and red. He is towheaded; Allison has never cut his hair. It falls in fine curls over the sides of his face, over the soft indentations left by forceps.

He is dressed in a striped shirt with matching shorts, and

slippers with cats on them. When Jonathan stares at her

nakedness, Allison gets up to put on a robe. "Hi,

Jonathan," she says, touches his head, and leaves the

room. Jonathan toddles over to her bureau and uncorks her perfume bottle. He pours it over his shirt and leaves the stopper on the floor.

In the kitchen Allison pours her own coffee. "I'm not

helpless," she says to her mother. "There's my baby," Allison's mother says, seeing

Jonathan at the door. His eyes are small and close-set, red-rimmed. He has many allergies. "Whew! What have

you been into?" Allison knows that Jonathan has taken her perfume

and dumped it on himself. She knows her mother knows.

They have both stood at the door in silence, watching him, many times. Allison's mother thinks this ritual

means something. Allison gets up from the table and takes Jonathan by

40 June 1986

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FOUR-MINUTE FICTIONS

the shoulders. There is no expression in her eyes. "Stay out of my perfume, Jonathan," she says, quietly. "Do you hear me this time?"

Allison's mother says nothing. She loads the dish washer and moves toward the basement door. "Do you have enough clean uniforms, honey?" she asks. "I'll need one for tomorrow," Allison says. Allison's mother and

Jonathan descend the steps together.

Allison works at Henry's diner, three T-stops from home. She enjoys the clatter, the smell of grease, the old fix

tures, the talk. It was Henry who convinced her to finish

high school at night. She is a good waitress: quick, friendly to customers, neat and clean. At Henry's Allison acts the way she did before she got pregnant.

Henry's is not popular with young people, but yester day two of Allison's friends from high school came in for coffee. They were on a break from classes at North eastern.

"Your mother saw my mother at Jordan Marsh and said you'd been here two years. I couldn't believe it was that long since I'd seen you," Holly said.

"I heard you got your diploma," Jean said.

"Night school," Allison answered, rubbing the coun ter with a wet cloth. She could have attended school right through the pregnancy?lots of girls did. She hadn't

wanted anyone to see her fat belly. She spent the entire

eight months and one week in her mother's house. "How's Jonathan?"

"Fine."

They ordered two muffins and left a five dollar tip. Allison was angry.

"They think I'm some kind of welfare mother," she said to Henry in the kitchen.

"They don't know nothing," Henry told her. Allison stays at Henry's because it makes her feel as if

her life is on hold, waiting for something to happen. Restaurant work is temporary. It is what artists and actors

do in New York, between shows. It is something college kids do when they are full of plans. She is working at

Henry's "for now," she has told her mother repeatedly during the past year.

Allison regrets that Henry gave her the day off for her

birthday. She thinks she has outgrown birthdays. She is an adult who pays room and board to her mother, who is at this moment suggesting ways to get Allison out of the house so she can bake a cake in secret. "Take him for a

walk, Allison. You see him so seldom." It is hot in the park, and Allison feels sticky and

irritable. Seeing Holly and Jean yesterday made her ugly, and she has been thinking of them ever since. Jonathan sits on the bench next to her, watching her with his

rheumy eyes. Goldenrod. Or smog. Or milk. "Here," she

says, unpleasantly, taking his ball from his hands and

throwing it a short distance. He goes after it silently, a

little skip to his step, and falls over when he nearsj it. She

sighs heavily, trudges over to him. "You're all right," she

says, and returns to the bench, Jonathan trailing behind.

Jonathan does not cry. Allison thinks he was born without emotions. She thinks they both went into a coma

at the moment of his birth and have never recovered. She thinks her mother is waiting for a cure.

If Allison had not gotten pregnant, she would be at the

university now, rooming with Holly or Jean, studying philosophy, going to concerts, bringing her laundry home

every other weekend. She hates Jonathan for ruining her life.

Sometimes she thinks if Jonathan had been a girl, she would have been all right. At the end of the pregnancy she had begun to imagine a baby girl, putting her in hair ribbons and pink dresses. She began to think of being a

mother as fun. Then Jonathan came, the homely boy. Jonathan's father lives in Colorado now. Sometimes

he sends money. He is younger than Allison, and when he offered to marry her it was with such a pained expression she told him to leave her life, which he did. She is not

sorry about that part of it. She expects nothing from him,

having never loved him. The pain and complications of

Jonathan's birth she remembers as punishment for all her bad choices.

Jonathan climbs into Allison's lap, digging his small shoes into her calves for leverage. "Stop that," she says, and lifts him to her. He will not get down. She carries him

home, his face deep in her hair.

Allison's mother is decorating the cake, a spice cake with

peanut butter frosting. The decorations are the same

every year: pink candle holders with pink and white

striped candles. The cake decorating chatter is also the

same, except now she addresses Jonathan instead of Allison's father, long dead, or Allison herself. "On the day your Mummy was born," she tells him, "the mercury hit one hundred. The hospital had no air conditioning and I

thought I'd pass out." Allison smiles out of pure habit.

Jonathan sees her and shows his narrow teeth.

"Do you want to come with Grammy?" Allison's

mother asks Jonathan. "Grammy has to get Mummy a

present."

"Don't," Allison says. Allison's mother looks angry for the first time in years.

"Life goes on," she says, and takes Jonathan's hand.

Allison is on the couch drinking a Tab when they return.

"Grammy and Jonathan have a surprise for Mummy," Allison's mother says from the door, and something in the voice makes Allison turn around. Her mother stands

behind Jonathan, whose curls are gone. He looks like a little boy with a man's hairstyle. Allison has seen pictures of first haircuts, and this is what they look like. His hair is

parted severely on the side, closely cropped around the ears. The haircut magnifies the shape of his head; he looks like a slow child.

Allison stands up and opens her mouth. Jonathan's own mouth turns from a tentative smile into a wavy line, and his tiny eyes become moist and shiny. Allison stares at

him, begins to walk toward him. Her body feels pliant and

stringy, she feels blood swirling in her head. As she drops to her knees in front of him, something breaks in her

body. "My hair! My hair!" she cries, her hands in fists at her sides. "My hair," Jonathan says, pressing himself to her breast. D

June 1986 41

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