Tara Troiano

Head-H

Last night, I dreamed temperatures climbed into the 130s, so they sold us extra-strength sunscreen and cars with UV windows and told us to recycle more and turn our ACs down. The government sent us ice pops in the mail, but they melted before they reached our doors. The sticky residue covered our fingers in artificial colors. Mine were red and his were green, and I worried it would stain the carpet (which is something my mother would worry about) but it all evaporated before we got inside. When I looked down at the unscathed carpet, I still felt sick to my stomach. 

While I tell him this dream, he scrolls, face illuminated by the glow of a tiny digital universe. So, my words become a soundtrack to videos of young girls dancing, men working out, how to make the best tikka masala, what bedroom you have based on your astrological sign, how to win big during a recession. He looks up at me when he realizes I haven’t spoken for a while and says, “Yeah, that’s crazy. Fuck the government.” But that’s not what I meant. 

I get out of bed. When I check the weather, the high is only 105 so I slip on my running shoes and jog alongside the toll road, hurdling ant hills and discarded chip wrappers. He hates it when I run too close to the cars. It’s dangerous. But it’s the only place to run. 

So, I jog along the shoulder, straddling grass and asphalt. It’s uneven. I’m certain one day I’ll misstep and break my ankle. In which case I’ll slump to the ground with the ants and squirrels and wonder who to call. 

If I told my mother about this concern, she would scoff, “The English language is self-absorbed. A person does not break their ankle. Uneven ground breaks ankles, gravity breaks ankles, bad footballers break other footballers’ ankles, but you? A person does not break her own bones. How absurd for someone to do so? How absurd, a language that blames someone for forces out of their control?” She would give this lecture through the phone, her voice crackling in and out. “This is the problem with America. Everything is I, everything is me. There are things beyond our control. Things like ankles.”  

Of course, she’s right. But I still take care not to break my ankle. It’s not something I can afford to do. 

Recently, the heat makes it hard to breathe. It forces its fingers down my throat and into my lungs. It melts the soles of my running shoes. Sweat drips down my forehead, through my mascara and into my eyes. It burns but I don’t rub it away. My phone shuffles through seven and a half songs before I stumble into the clearing tucked behind the suburbs. 

In the middle of the clearing, a high-rise towers over an empty parking lot. The sun glints off its rounded sides, making it too bright to look at directly. So instead, my eyes trace the perimeter of the empty parking, a moat-like circle of concrete.  

At the sound of a window opening, I look up, straining my vision against the sun. Through squinted eyes, the first thing I see is hair. Long, golden hair, reaching towards the ground. It’s mesmerizing. A liquidous solid, somehow both light and full. It moves in the wind as though alive, draped from the top floor window like a lighthouse beacon. 

I wait, motionless, hypnotized, until a woman leans out the window and stares down at me. Rapunzel in a tower of steel. 

When she raises a hand in greeting, I am pulled into her gravity, into the parking lot. As I walk towards the door, the soles of my shoes beat against the asphalt. I cannot pull my attention away from the hair. When I pass underneath it, I resist the urge to reach up. I shove my hands in my pockets and shoulder my way through the door.  

Inside, stairs wind upwards. I climb them, turning in circles. Loose strands of hair litter the steps, little threads of gold that snake across the walls and ground. They writhe and twist, tracing the same path as me, climbing towards the top, towards her. 

The temperature drops as I ascend. The air grows thinner. I wish I brought a sweatshirt, although I can’t remember the last time I wore something with sleeves. The only windows are small slits, no wider than my forearm. I pass one every few minutes, but I don’t peer down at the slowly disappearing ground. It is like walking along the spiral of a spinning top, impossible to know where the beginning ends, and the end begins. Hours pass before I reach the door. The final door, the only door. It is hers. 

By the time I push it open, she is waiting, sitting straight spined at a circular table. Two clear glasses leave sweat rings on its surface. A pitcher sits in between. The room is small, a pastel bedroom filled with plants and light-catchers. A twin bed rests against the far wall. A vanity waits at its side. 

“Iced tea?” she asks, gesturing to the table. I sit, resisting the urge to press one of the cold glasses to my skin. I’ve never liked iced tea, but I accept it anyway. 

When I sit across from her, our differences are as clear as words. Her dress is pale pink. The neckline dips like a mountain overturned. Sleeves puff over her shoulders and white gloves cover her hands. Pearls encase her neck. I look away. 

“Who keeps you here?” I ask. I know from the stories that Rapunzels are kept. 

She shrugs, watching the space just over my eyes. “I prefer to be high up.” 

She sips and a droplet of tea rolls over her lips and down her chin. It disappears into her dress. “Hair is worth a lot you know. Yours is very pretty.” 

My hand finds a strand of my hair, matted down by sweat. 

“Has it always been that color?” 

I nod, tucking the strand behind my ear. “I’m told I got the color from my mother.”

“You’re told?” 

“I’ve never seen my mom’s natural color. All through my childhood she dyed it.” I sip again on the bitter tea. It burns in my nostrils. “Every few years, she changed it. Whenever she dyed it a new shade my father would look at her. I mean, really look at her and say, ‘Jenny, you’re like a brand-new woman.’” Like she was some wall in the house that faded into the background until given a fresh coat of paint. As the paint dried, my father would pause at it and scratch his chin. 

Rapunzel tops off my glass from the pitcher. The cold sweat soaks into her glove, she doesn’t seem to mind. 

“I want you to be comfortable. Let me know if it’s too cold in here for you.” She gestures to a small fan oscillating in the corner. “I like to keep the room at sixty-five. The heat makes my hair frizz.” She crinkles her nose like a candy wrapper. “Heat is no good for hair.”  

I don’t notice any frizz, but I don’t mention it. 

“Neither is running,” she continues. “I hate running. Great for the body, but awful for the complexion. Who were you running from?” 

“My boyfriend,” I guess. “Carter.” 

She nods. “Men have a tendency to keep us on our toes.” 

The tea sloshes around in my stomach. Every time I sip, she drips more into my glass. I drink dutifully and don’t complain. 

“It’s exhausting,” she decides. 

I nod in agreement. Although, she looks like the type who could handle the exhaustion. 

I always knew I’d get worn down. 

I knew from the first time Carter flipped on the car races. I sat next to him for hours, silently watching the drivers turn in circles, wearing down their tires in tight paths to nowhere. He knew their names, their colors, what companies paid for their cars. He idolized them, wanted to be them, but I knew I could never do it; I could hardly bear to look. 

He was entranced, so we watched the races every year, our legs stretched over the ottoman, stacked on top of each other like little Jenga pieces. I never mentioned how much it reminded me of my parents on their couch, watching the news night after night, listening to the same messages from the same hosts with the same voices. 

We’ve done it three times. Every year the same track, the same circles, the same men in the same cars. Our legs stacked one on top of the other. 

“He’s never cheated, but sometimes I wish he would. Sometimes I wish he would mess up, so I’d have a good reason to leave.” I take another sip, and it coats my teeth like cough syrup. “One time I found messages on his phone to some girl. Really, he was probably messaging a bot or some old man in a basement. The account was fake, but I guess Carter didn’t realize. They’d been messaging for weeks. He’s not very bright, I guess.” 

“What did she look like?”

“Oh, you know. The usual. Skinny, big tits, blonde hair.” My eyes catch on Rapunzel’s hair and I feel ashamed of my tone. “Anyways, even after that I didn’t have the guts to break it off. Because what would I say? ‘We need to break up because you were texting some woman.” 

The day I found the messages I booked an appointment at the salon. It was $450 which seemed crazy, but my sister said it was reasonable, inflation and all. I found a hairdresser with four and a half stars and sent him Pinterest pictures of long, layered, highlights. He said it would take three hours and I paid $200 in advance. On the drive over I listened to Dolly Parton, missed two turns, and eventually just went home.  

“Every day I worry we’re becoming my parents. Complacent and unhappy. Sometimes I look in the mirror and can almost see my mother.”

“Mm, the pitfalls of being multi-celled.”

I look up.

“The single-celled organisms cut out the middleman,” she explains, grazing a finger along the rim of her glass. “They know it’s their destiny to serve the same role as their parents, they’re just smart enough not to fight it. I suppose at some point in history, we all understood that unspoken rule. Sometime before words or fire we floated around in the ocean and had no thoughts but to multiply. But then we got bigger and crawled out of the sea and grew hair and brains and cocks. Then we started wanting. It complicates things to want. We want love and passion and respect. And we forget along the way it doesn’t matter what we want. It’s the universe that makes the rules.” 

I take another sip because I don’t know what to say. She tops off my glass again, so quickly I barely notice.  

“What do you do?” she asks. “To dull all that want.” 

“I’m a writer.” 

“Ah, a girl with character.” She smiles at her joke and I wonder what shampoo she uses. It must cost a fortune. I scan the floor for those loose strands of hair but it’s spotless. Maybe she has one of those vacuuming robots or a little cleaning crew of elves. 

“You want to change your destiny. Write a new story,” she predicts.  

I shrug, disliking how trite she makes it sound.  

Of course, I do, but I’d never been brave enough to try. Instead, when I felt claustrophobic on the couch next to Carter, I’d untangle my legs from his and go on a run. I’d escape, if only briefly, and dial the number I knew by heart. My complaints would soak through the phone like spilled tea, dripping through the wires and into my mother’s ear. She would listen for a while before cutting in, “You give me a head-H with your worrying. You must stop, worrying ruins the skin.” She’d sigh as though the answer to my problem was obvious. “In English pain consumes you. Every feeling becomes the whole. You say to me, mama, I am sad. Mama, I am hurt. No. When I was young, I said mama, I have sadness. I have hurt. Io ho triste. Io ho male. These are things I carried but could let go of when I was finished with them. This is the problem with America. You do not own your emotions, they own you. You gather them inside yourself and let them fester. In Italian emotions are fleas you brush aside after they bite, in English they are parasites.”

“Are you ready?” Rapunzel asks. “You can change your mind. I try to give people the chance to change their minds.” 

I lift the glass to my lips, but there’s nothing left inside. I set it back on the table, careful not to disrupt the ring of sweat. 

“I’m ready,” I say. I’m tired of driving the same track. I have made up my mind. Although, in this moment, I have fear. 

She nods, and pulls her gloves higher on her forearms, like a surgeon preparing to get her hands dirty. 

“You should start to feel the tea soon. Heavy eyelids, slower limbs.” She stands and twirls a strand of hair around her finger. “Lean into it. Don’t fight it. That’ll make it all easier.” 

As she walks towards the window, her hair trails behind like an obedient animal. “Let’s see if we can make this space a little more comfortable.” 

She pulls the curtains, plunging us into darkness. My head spins at the change. I raise my hand to my mouth to cover a yawn.

“That’s much better,” she decides. 

I yawn again. This time, my hand is not quick enough to cover it. I hear her sit down before a match scrapes to life. A single, long candle illuminates the room. It is only in the dim light that the visage falls away. 

I blink at Rapunzel’s hair, trying to clear my head as the golden waves part and strands of every color emerge. They poke and twist towards the candlelight, parting the sea of gold, consuming the blonde locks. Reds and blacks and browns, even purples and blues wind down like thick rope. Curly and straight, soft and straw-like, tangles of every texture erupt from her head like a murder of vultures before swarming towards the ground. 

“Hair is a funny thing. The power it holds over a person. The ways it shapes what people think of you,” Rapunzel says, unfazed by the metamorphosis surrounding her small frame. The hair snakes across the ground and move towards me, thrashing and writhing. Before I can form words, it wraps around my ankles. 

“When you think of a Medusa, the first image that comes to mind, really, is hair. And that’s not even where her power is. The hair is a gimmick. A pretense.” 

Rapunzel’s hair tickles my legs before tightening around them, claiming my shins and then my thighs. It climbs higher and wraps around my torso, a python’s embrace.  

“If I asked you to imagine a Rapunzel, you’d struggle to think of anything besides long, golden locks. But that’s quite reductive, isn’t it?” She tsks. “It’s dangerous to be reductive. So very dangerous.”  

The hair pulls tighter, sinking into my skin, a suit of every color, every fabric. When I open my mouth to breathe, a strand slips over my tongue, exploring the inside of my cheek before reaching further. It bristles against the back of my throat, turns hungrily towards my lungs, before the room goes dark. 

* * *

As the needle dips in and out of Rapunzel’s skin, droplets of blood bloom on her scalp, a crown of little red pearls. She sits at the vanity, watching herself work in the mirror, sewing the damp brown hair into her own, adding to the strange tapestry. 

I do not need to raise a hand to my head to know there is nothing left there. It is a canvas stripped of paint. I can only imagine the look of horror on my mother’s face when I tell her what I’ve done. When I mention it casually over the phone her hand will move to clasp her hair, to hold it possessively, to protect it from harm. She’ll cry as though something has died. She’ll cry, all over hair. 

I look down at my body, still limp from the tea. Rapunzel’s hair has retreated, leaving red lines indented in my skin. It sits patiently in her lap, undulating softly. Occasionally, she smiles down at it, brushing her hand against it like a sleeping dog. 

My mouth tastes bitter, but my head feels light, airy. If I weren’t so exhausted, I would laugh. 

Instead, I watch as Rapunzel holds the brown strands, reverently stitching one piece at a time into her crown. I smile to myself at the thought of it blending into that untameable mass. When it blows out the window, the sun will hit it, transforming it into a pillar of gold, a beacon to lost ships in the night.