The New Normal

by Ashley Little

  five

  It was six eighteen on Friday night, and I had forty-two minutes to come up with $902 or face certain torture and possibly death by Pug Face and his crew. I thought about forging a check, but I couldn’t find Mom’s checkbook anywhere. She must have taken it to yoga. Plus he’d said cash. Cash. Cash. Cash. The poster on Alia’s wall of Johnny Cash giving someone the finger popped into my head, and I found myself in her room for the first time since the funeral.

  I flicked on the light and there lay my salvation, shining on her unmade bed. Alia’s electric guitar: a metallic-blue Fender. Worth at least fifteen hundy. Pug Face would have to accept it. It was all I had to offer. Hell, I would even throw in the amp for good measure.

  I put on three sweaters under my winter coat to pad myself against the hail. I grabbed my bike helmet as an afterthought; the last thing I needed was head trauma as a result of hailstone impact. The theme song to Jeopardy! filled the house as I snuck out the back door with Alia’s guitar zipped safely inside its case.

  I lugged the guitar and amp to the bus stop, stopping partway there to put on my helmet. I pulled my hood up over it so I didn’t look like a total freak show, just someone with a very large head. The street was littered with fat white hailstones, and car alarms shrieked all over the neighborhood.

  I could see the orange glow of a cigarette as I approached the bus-stop bench. I could tell it was Pug Face by the spikes on his jacket. He was alone. And as far as I could see, he was not carrying a baseball bat. I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he would spare me after all.

  “She shows,” he said.

  “Here.” I thrust the guitar into his hands and set the amp on the bench.

  His eyebrows lifted into his hood. He unzipped the case and ripped out Alia’s pride and joy, examining it under the amber glow of the streetlight. “Wow. A left-handed Fender Strat. What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”

  “I don’t know. Sell it. Play it. Whatever. It’s yours.”

  “What about the cash?” He fiddled with the guitar strings.

  “This is all I have that’s worth anything, okay? And it’s probably worth more than a thousand. You can have the amp too.” I patted the amp for emphasis.

  “You know this wasn’t the deal, girlie.” He stepped toward me, and I opened my mouth to scream for help. But then this hot bubble welled up from somewhere deep inside me.

  “Look, man, my sisters made the deal with you, and they’re dead. My parents are broke, and I have a rare, incurable disease. There’s no money for you. This is it. Take it or leave it.”

  He looked down at his boots, then back up at me, a smirk smeared across his ugly face.

  “What?” I said.

  “You remind me of them. Little hard-asses, they were.”

  “It was Alia’s guitar,” I mumbled.

  “Well, I’ll think of her when I’m playing it then,” he said as he slung the case across his back. “Chin up, girlie. Life’s for the living.” He punched me softly in the shoulder, picked up the amp and walked away, his boots crunching over the hailstones.

  That night I dreamed that Pug Face kissed me. We were making out, but then he started eating my face. He swallowed my head and chewed it up and spat it out. Scraps of my head lay scattered on the grass; my eyeballs rolled down the sidewalk. Then I dreamed that my hair started to grow back, but it went crazy and kept growing and growing and growing like mad until it filled up the whole house. Abby and Alia were still alive and in their beds, and my hair grew into their rooms and encircled their throats and choked them to death in their sleep. The same thing happened to the parents, but they suffocated because there was no more oxygen to breathe, only hair. They drowned in hair.

  I woke up gasping for breath and sat up in bed. I rubbed my head to make sure it had been a dream. A few wisps caught in my fingers and came out in my hands. I turned on my bedside lamp and looked down at my pillow. There were two sad-looking clumps of hair on it. I looked into my mirror and then wished I hadn’t. I saw a pathetic alien creature. My hair was all gone now. All of it. I was completely bald. I stared into the mirror, horrified. My ears stuck out like an elf’s, and my nose was huge and bulbous. Even my teeth looked bigger. I shut off the light and closed my eyes in the darkness of my total and utter despair.

  In the morning, I went downstairs and found Mom sitting cross-legged on the floor of the living room with her eyes closed. She seemed to be humming very, very quietly.

  “Mom,” I whispered.

  No response.

  “MOM!”

  That gave her a little jolt. She opened her eyes slowly, as if they had been glued shut, and looked up at me with zero recognition, which was scary.

  “Earth to Mom. Hello?”

  “Hello,” she said quietly.

  “Emergency wig shopping needs to happen today. This morning.”

  “Tamar, we talked about this. You know the financial situation.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. You can put it on your credit card. I’ll get an after-school job and pay you back, no problem. This needs to happen today, Mom. I’m not screwing around anymore. Are you taking me, or am I going alone?”

  She stood up and plucked the black woolen cap off my head. She examined my head closely and then pressed her palm flat against my scalp and rubbed it. She blinked her eyes hard, like she was blinking away tears. “I’m taking you. Get your coat.”

  “Have you had breakfast?” she asked when we were in the car.

  “No, I never eat breakfast.”

  “You need to eat breakfast, Tamar. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

  “I haven’t eaten breakfast in ten years,” I said.

  “And look where it’s gotten you!”

  I laughed and so did she, because it was wholly ridiculous. The entire situation was totally tragic and absurd. She pulled into the drive-through at the Hortons, and I ordered a peanut-butter donut and a coffee, even though I’m not supposed to drink coffee because it stunts your growth. That’s the least of my problems right now. I’ve got bigger fish to fricassee.

  When we got to the wig shop, which was called Uptown Hair ’n Accessories, there was a sign taped to the door that said Back in ten minutes.

  “Shit!”

  “It’s okay, honey, we’ll just wait.” She started doing some side stretches right there in front of the store.

  “Mom!”

  “We must practice our patience, Tamar.”

  I was running out of patience. With my mom. With my disappearing hair. With everything. We waited around, and then we waited some more. I started pacing. The longer we stood out there in the wind, the more upset I became. My heart beat faster as I paced in front of the store. I was hot and sweaty, so I took off my jacket. I couldn’t breathe through my nose anymore—I had to just suck in air through my mouth and then blow it all out like I was blowing up a balloon. I got dizzy and sat down on the curb so I wouldn’t fall down. I felt desperate and lonely and ugly and anxious and miserable and pathetic and scared.

  Mom came and sat down next to me.

  “How am I gonna do this, Mom? How am I gonna get through this?” I clung to her like a small frightened animal.

  She took my face in her hands and held my eyes with her own. “Courage, my love. Courage.”

  Finally, a woman with poufy yellow hair and a little rat dog came and unlocked the door. The dog was wearing a pink-and-black-checkered coat that matched the woman’s scarf. She unlocked the door for us and made some irritatingly cheerful comments about the weather. She had so much makeup on that you couldn’t see her skin.

  “Let me know if I can help you with anything!” she chirped.

  “Actually, my daughter needs a wig.”

  “Any color you like,” she said, waving her frosted pink
fingernails in the direction of the back wall, full of rainbow, fluorescent and sparkly costume wigs.

  “Do you have any human hair?” I asked.

  “Short or long?”

  “Medium.”

  “What color?”

  “Mahogany. With natural amber highlights.”

  “Okay…very specific.” She looked at my mom with amusement, and I wanted to slap the rouge right off her face. She had no idea.

  “You could try a different color, Tamar. You know, switch it up a little.” Mom peeled a blond bob off a plastic head and held it out to me. “Do you like this one?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, try it on.” She shook the wig at me like she was a cheerleader and it was a pom-pom. “Just for fun.”

  Fun? Fun? Because losing every single hair on my body and having to buy a wig and pretend like I hadn’t was fun? Right.

  She thrust the wig into my hands, and the saleswoman pointed me toward a full-length mirror. When I slid off my toque, I heard the woman suck in a sharp breath. I put the blond mop on and looked in the mirror.

  “Whoa.” I looked like a scrawny Marilyn Monroe impersonator. I tried a pout. Then I got a weird feeling inside, like I was one of those ultra-vain Barbie wannabe-princess types. I didn’t like it. I looked at the rat dog. It growled at me and started to vibrate. I turned back to the mirror and shook my head around a little. Maybe it’s true what they say, I thought. Maybe blonds do have more fun. In any case, I wasn’t going to find out. The blond didn’t match my skin tone or my eyes. Plus, it was just so…blond.

  “Do you have anything darker?” I put the bob back on the creepy plastic head.

  “I think you might like one of these.” The woman had lined up three brunette heads. “This one is dark chocolate with caramel highlights.” She fit it onto my head and adjusted it around my ears.

  “Sounds good enough to eat!” Mom said, laughing a little too loudly.

  The three of us looked at my reflection. It was pretty hair, but it still looked fake, too overdone. I slid it off and handed it to the woman.

  “This one is called burnt sienna. It’s a really lovely piece—lots of red undertones.” She winked at my mom. I hated the wig woman and her matching dog.

  The red one was stick straight and nearly reached my bum, way longer than my real hair would be. Too obvious.

  “I like that one on you, honey.”

  “Yeah, it would be okay if this was nineteen seventy-four!” I curled a piece of the hair around my pinkie. It felt thin and dry. It was too long and too straight. I took it off and scratched my head. I was getting itchy and hot.

  “Now this one is called double espresso. We just got it in. I think it will look stunning on you.” The woman put it on me and adjusted a few strands around my face, then stood back and looked at me and clapped her hands together. “Ah! I was right!” She beamed.

  I stepped around her to look in the mirror. The wig was dark, dark brown, almost black. It shone when the light hit it. It fell to my shoulders and was neither too straight nor too curly, nor too thick or too thin. I touched the individual strands. They felt soft but strong. I gathered them into a ponytail, looking at it from the sides. I let it down. It was good. It made my eyes look shiny and bright. I turned to Mom. She nodded once and a quick smile lit up her face.

  “How much is it?” I asked the lady.

  “This one is seven sixty-nine plus tax.”

  “Ohhh.” I looked at the rat dog sprawled in the middle of the floor with its tongue hanging out. It let out a little groan too and wiped at its eyes with its paws.

  “We’ll take it,” Mom said, slapping her credit card down on the counter.

  I grinned and turned back to the mirror.

  The woman sat me down and thinned the wig out a bit with a razor tool so it would look more natural and shapely. Then she gave me wig-care instructions and threw in a roll of special double-sided adhesive tape to keep the wig from falling off. While she was talking, I realized that she was wearing a wig, and it made me feel a tiny bit smug. Because I knew that my wig looked better on me than hers did on her.

  “Want to wear it out, or should I box it up?”

  “I’ll wear it.”

  As Mom reversed out of the parking stall, she said, “Tamar, your dad and I will contribute five hundred dollars toward your new…accessory. But you’ll have to make up the difference on your own.”

  “That’s no problem.”

  “Great.”

  “Mom?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Thank you.”

  She looked at me, her pretty green eyes glistening with tears, and I hoped she wouldn’t cry, because then I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I was getting sick and tired of crying.

  When we got home, Mom went upstairs to change for yoga and I went to the bathroom to fiddle with my wig in the mirror.

  “Where’s your dad?” Mom hollered.

  I shrugged into the mirror and tossed my head around a bit.

  “What?”

  “I DON’T KNOW!” I yelled.

  I heard her thump down the stairs and go to the kitchen. Probably checking the fridge for a note. Come to think of it, Dad hadn’t really left the house since the twins’ funeral, and it was strange that he wasn’t in his usual spot on the couch. But it was good that he had gone out. He needed to get out. Mom pushed the bathroom door open and we stared at my new hair in the mirror. Then she took me by the shoulders and turned me around. She searched my eyes for something—I don’t know what—and then a smile cracked her face open.

  “You’re beautiful. You know that, right?”

  I shrugged.

  She kissed me on the forehead and smoothed strands of hair away from my eyes. “I’ll see you in a couple hours. There’s some leftover stir-fry in the fridge.”

  “Okay.”

  She tousled my hair. “It looks really good, Tamar.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Very natural.”

  “Good.”

  “Do you want to come to yoga tonight?”

  “Nope.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure don’t.”

  She sighed. “All righty, I’ll see you in a bit.”

  “Yep.”

  I heard her close and lock the front door. She always did that when she left, but it had the disturbing effect of making me feel trapped inside the house. I unlocked the door and went to the fridge for a glass of milk. As I was pouring it, from the corner of my eye I saw some bushes moving in the backyard. I thought it might be a deer eating the new crocus shoots and went to investigate. I slid the glass door open and saw a ladder leaning up against the side of our house, and then I heard a low groan. I stepped outside and saw my dad lying on the ground. His right leg was twisted under him at a sickening angle. “DAD!” I ran to his side. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  “I fell down.” His eyes were bleary, and his skin was pea-green. There was a rip in his pants, and I could see the pale, jagged bone of his shin where it had burst through the skin of his leg. It glistened with droplets of blood and tissue. I turned away from him and vomited onto the grass. Then I ran inside to call 9-1-1. The dispatcher told me to put a blanket over him and wait with him until the ambulance got there, so that’s what I did.

  I was scared. I had never seen my dad hurt before. He mumbled a lot and wasn’t making sense.

  “When are they coming home?”

  “Who?”

  “The girls.”

  “Dad, it’s okay. Just be quiet. You need to rest.”

  He grimaced and closed his eyes. “They’re way past their curfew.”

  I sighed and tipped my head back. I saw two vultures floating in smooth circles miles above us.

 
“How long have you been like this, Dad?”

  “Forty-two years.”

  The ambulance screamed up and two paramedics—one male, one female—hopped out and put Dad on an orange spine board and loaded him into the back of the ambulance. I was impressed by the speed and efficiency of their movements. There was something graceful about it, like an emergency-medical-team dance. They had him strapped in there in less than a minute.

  “You’re the daughter?” the female paramedic asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “No one else home?” asked the male paramedic.

  “No.”

  “Come with us, please.” He held open the back door of the ambulance for me to climb in.

  I sat beside Dad, and he reached for my hand. He kept asking questions, and the woman had to keep telling him to be quiet and take it easy. Finally, she put the oxygen mask over his face so he couldn’t talk anymore. It was kind of funny because he hadn’t said much of anything for months, and now that he was talking, he wasn’t allowed to.

  There was an amazing amount of equipment in the back of the ambulance, and as I looked around, I wondered if they had anything that could stimulate hair growth, like those electric-shock paddles or a shot of adrenaline or something. I didn’t ask them, though, because I knew they had to focus on my dad. The paramedic asked me if I was okay. He gave me a bottle of water and a smile.

  I called home from the waiting room and left a message for Mom on the answering machine. I didn’t know the number of the yoga studio or even what it was called, so I couldn’t reach her there. The parents and I didn’t have cell phones because my mom thinks they give off radioactive waves and cause brain tumors. Maybe she’ll change her mind after this. There was nothing she could do for Dad right now anyway. I wasn’t even allowed in the room until the doctor was finished examining him.

  I wandered around a bit and found the hospital chapel. I pulled open the heavy door. Candles flickered at the front of the room, and there were flower arrangements all over the stage. No one else was there, so I went in and sat down in one of the hard wooden pews. The air felt heavy and stale, but at least it was quiet. The solid oak doors blocked out the hospital beeps and buzzes, cries and shouts. I sat in the thick silence for a few minutes, then closed my eyes and bowed my head. I said a prayer for my dad. I prayed that he would be okay. I prayed that he wasn’t paralyzed. I prayed that he didn’t have brain damage. I didn’t know if I could handle it if he did.