I used to wear my hair in a ponytail every day. It was a nuisance if it wasn’t pulled back—always tangled and in my face—but if it was up in a ponytail, it was sleek and pretty. Mom would take a hairbrush and an elastic to it in the morning, and I wouldn’t think about it for the rest of the day. My ponytail would bounce and swing like Betty Cooper’s as I walked down the hallways at school, and I never even had to look at it.
No one else in my family had hair like mine. Mom’s was thin and the color of milk chocolate. Dad’s was impossibly thick and pitch black. My sister inherited Mom’s thin. I somehow inherited both—Dad’s thick underneath and Mom’s frizzy on top. My sister got milk chocolate; I got 80% cacao. She got “I wish it had more volume,” and “Maybe I should get bangs to make it interesting,” while I got, “Oh my god I’m so done like it never does what I want it to do and I always end up looking like Natasha Lyonne.”
I started to hate my hair. It would get puffy and huge when I let it air-dry, and Dad would jokingly compare me to the lion from Narnia. I got so frustrated with it that by the end of kindergarten, I was asking Mom to put my hair in a ponytail before school every day. Sometimes she’d complain about how tangled my hair was because of how I slept or that she was going to be late for work, but she never stopped making it. She was so reliable and just so good at it. Because of her, I never had to learn how to do it myself.
I remember that she went on a work trip when I was in first grade. The morning after she left, I had to ask my uncle to do my ponytail for me. The one he made was lumpy and loose in all the wrong places. I ended up going to school with my hair down for those few days. It was frizzy and I was miserable, but Mom was back by Monday, and then my hair was smooth and perfect, and all was good again.
Then second grade came around. Mom started sleeping in more instead of getting up early to make smoothies for breakfast, and Dad started making instant oatmeal instead. He packed my bag for me and sent me off to school in the morning, telling me to have a good day but not giving me that familiar lipsticked peck on the cheek. On the weekends, he made waffles with sausage and bacon instead of her grapefruits and yogurt bowls. She started sitting on the couch a lot more, reading or watching TV. She couldn’t stand up long enough to get a glass of water, much less make my sister and me food or get us ready in the morning.
She started talking more, yet somehow saying less. She started forgetting things, like her coworkers’ names and her phone number. She started criticizing and complaining, all the time.
She started doing a lot of things. She stopped doing my hair.
So there I was every morning before school, standing at the bathroom sink for half an hour trying to get my hair to behave. I tried brushing it smooth. I tried wetting my hands to tame it down. I found video tutorials and WikiHow articles, but none of those girls had hair like mine. I tried lemon juice, cocoa powder, and even Vaseline. Nothing helped. No matter what I did, my ponytail was never good enough.
Extended family started visiting us more often, and they would stagger their trips, so at least one of them was with us at all times. We moved my stuff into my sister’s room so we could have a proper guest bed. Adults I had never seen before started coming by to talk to my mother, not interrupting her as she called them by the wrong names and talked about nothing for hours.
She started walking less. Dad bought her a walker. Then she lost the ability to walk, so he bought her a wheelchair. Eventually, he bought one of those remote-controlled beds with rails on the sides. He let my sister and me try it out when it was first set up. When they moved Mom into it, he took a leather chair from the living room to put in the corner so he could sit with her while she slept.
I sat in that chair too sometimes, and Mom and I would watch TV together. There was this one time Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was on TV, and they were just getting to the good part when Mom threw up all over herself. I ran from the room to get Dad, but he was working. One of the nurses would clean it up later. After that, I couldn’t bring myself to go back and sit with her for a whole month.
In third grade, I got into this fancy ballet school where all the little girls had to look and act the same, and all their mothers were fussy and wore huge sunglasses. The whole scene was like Dance Moms but somehow worse: Ballet Moms . (A shiver just passed down Abby Lee’s spine.) The mothers would make these identical ballet buns for their little girls—it was almost like a source of pride if your daughter looked exactly like all the others. My aunt was worried that I wouldn’t fit in, so she came over one Sunday afternoon and taught Dad the whole hair procedure. He got the bun down just fine, but he couldn’t do the ponytail—the first step. I reluctantly agreed to do that myself.
Over the next few months, we perfected the ballet hair routine. I would do my best with the ponytail and pass it off to Dad for the pins and hairnet, before it was back to me for hairspray and finishing touches. But Dad was getting too busy to make my bun every day. He was certainly home more often, but he just didn’t have time to help anyone but Mom.
I had to start doing my ballet hair myself. Sometimes my buns were lopsided. Sometimes they were a little too high or a little too low. Eventually I could make it look pretty good with the help of some extra pins and clips. I could fake it well enough to not stand out.
I’m pretty sure I was in fourth grade—about a year after Dad stopped doing my hair—when he told my sister and me that the two of us needed to go sit with Mom for a bit. He said we could tell her anything we wanted because she couldn’t speak or move and it might sound like she’s in pain, but she’s not, and don’t worry, she can still hear you.
Just make sure you tell her you love her.
My sister and I squeeze into the leather chair together. Neither of us knows what to say. I can hear my heartbeat. The two of us sit there and watch our mother’s chest rise and fall.
Rise, fall. Rise, fall. Rise, fall.
I try to breathe with her.
Rise, fall. Rise, fall.
“Hi, Mom.”
Rise, fall.
“I’ve been doing my own hair for ballet.”
Rise, fall.
“My bun looks just like all the other girls.”
Rise, fall.
I’ll be fine.
Rise, fall.
If you really have to go, I can do this myself.
Rise, fall.
I finally learned how to do my own ponytail.
