Clearly, this was a different sort of Friday night than I was used to. But then, everything was different here.
Kristy and Monica’s house wasn’t a house at all but a trailer, although, as we approached it, Kristy explained that she preferred to call it a “doublewide,” as there was less redneck association with that moniker. To me, it looked like something out of a fairy tale, a small structure painted cobalt blue with a big sprawling garden beside it. There her grandmother Stella, whom I’d met the night I was lost, grew the flowers and produce she sold at her stand and to local restaurants. I’d seen lots of gardens before, even fancy ones in my neighborhood. But this one was incredible.
Green and lush, it grew up and around the doublewide, making the structure, with its bright cobalt color and red door, look like one more exotic bloom. Along the front, sunflowers moved lazily in the breeze, brushing a side window: beneath them were a row of rosebushes, their perfumelike scent permeating the air. From there, the greenery spread sideways. I saw a collection of cacti, all different shapes and sizes, poking out from between two pear trees. There were blueberry bushes beside zinnias and daisies and coneflowers, woolly lamb’s ear up against bright purple lilies and red hot pokers. Instead of set rows, the plots were laid out along narrow paths, circling and encircling. Bamboo framed a row of flowering trees, which led into one small garden plot with tiny lettuces poking up through the dirt, followed by pecan trees next to geraniums, and beside them a huge clump of purple irises. And then there was the smell: of fruit and flowers, fresh dirt and earthworms. It was incredible, and I found myself just breathing it in, the smell lingering on me long after we’d gone inside.
Now Kristy slid another bobby pin over a curler, smoothing with her hand to catch a stray piece of hair that was hanging over my eyes.
“You know,” I said, warily, “I’m not really a big hair person.”
“Oh, God, me neither.” She picked up another roller. “But this is going to be wavy, not big. Just trust me, okay? I’m really good with hair. It was, like, an obsession with me when I was bald.”
Because she was behind me, fussing with the rollers, I couldn’t see her face as she said this. I had no idea if her expression was flippant or grave or what. I looked at Monica, who was flipping through a magazine, not even listening. Finally I said, “You were bald?”
“Yup. When I was twelve. I had to have a bunch of surgeries, including one on the back of my head, so they had to shave all my hair off,” she said, brushing out a few of the loose tendrils around my face. “I was in a car accident. That’s how I got my scars.”
“Oh,” I said, and suddenly I was worried I had been staring at them too much, or she wouldn’t have brought it up. “I didn’t—”
“I know,” she said easily, hardly bothered. “But it’s hard to miss them, right? Usually people ask, but you didn’t. Still, I figured you were probably wondering. You’d be surprised how many people just walk right up and ask, point-blank, like they’re asking what time it is.”
“That’s rude,” I said.
“Mmm-hmm,” Monica agreed, stubbing her cigarette out in the windowsill.
Kristy shrugged. “Really, I kind of prefer it. I mean, it’s better than just staring and acting like you’re not. Kids are the best. They’ll just look right at me and say, “What’s wrong with your face?” I like that. Get it out in the open. I mean, shit, it’s not like it isn’t anyway. That’s one reason why I dress up so much, you know, because people are already staring. Might as well give them a show. You know?”
I nodded, still processing all this.
“Anyway,” Kristy continued, doing another roller, “it happened when I was twelve. My mom was on one of her benders, taking me to school, and she ran off the road and hit this fence, and then a tree. They had to cut me out of the car. Monica, of course, was smart enough to have the chicken pox so she didn’t have to go to school that day.”
“Donneven,” Monica said.
“She feels guilty,” Kristy explained. “It’s a sister thing.”
I looked at Monica, who was wearing her normal impassive expression as she examined her fingernails. She didn’t look like she felt particularly bad to me, but then again so far I’d only seen her with one expression, a sort of tired blankness. I figured maybe it was like a Rorschach inkblot: you saw in it whatever you needed or wanted to.
“Besides the scars on my face,” Kristy was saying, “there’s also one on my lower back, from the fusion, and a big nasty one on my butt from the skin graft. Plus there are a couple on my scalp, but you can’t see those since my hair grew back.”
“God,” I said. “That’s horrible.”
She picked up another curler. “I did not like being bald, I can tell you that much. I mean, there’s only so much you can do with a hat or a scarf, you know? Not that I didn’t try. The day my hair started to come in for real, I cried I was so happy. Now I can’t bring myself to cut it more than just a tiny bit every few months. I relish my hair now.”
“It is really nice,” I told her. “Your hair, I mean.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m telling you, I think I appreciate it more than most people. I never complain about a bad hair day, that’s for sure.”
She climbed off the bed, tucking the hairbrush in her pocket before crouching down in front of me to secure a few loose wisps of hair with a bobby pin. “Okay,” she said, “you’re almost set, so let’s see. . . . Monotone.”