Dreadlocks

WHEN I ENTERED THE APARTMENT I STOOD OUTSIDE HER DOORWAY, WHICH USED TO BE MY DOORWAY, TOO. Vicki had just returned. She sat on the edge of her bed, fully dressed in socks, jeans, and an open neck top. She only peered at my feet.

“Look at her hair,” Chloe said. She lifted her small shoulders and gazed at me with big green eyes.

Chloe and I had never looked each other in the eyes. But whenever I came by their place she busied herself near me, tidying tabletops, even reaching inside the refrigerator, in minimal clothing, like boy’s boxer shorts and a wife-beater, as I held the door open, never touching me with more than the scent of her light perfume.

I kept my hands by my side, my snow jacket fully zipped. A heat rose around my shoulders. The room began to tilt, but I didn’t trust myself to lean with it.

Vicki’s bedroom was surprisingly clean. The bed covers were tucked in at all the edges. Every single pillow had been stacked at the head of the bed. The carpet, cleared of any clothing, seemed to glisten. A thin fabric hung over the dent I had head-butted in the wall. I wanted to be happy for her. She had cleaned away the drinking glasses that typically cluttered the nightstands. Gone, too, were the glasses that left rings on the television stand, and the only glass in the room swayed in Vicki’s two hands, half full of bourbon and ice.

“I have dreadlocks,” Vicki said. She lifted her head, blinked slowly and raised her eyes to reach me in the doorway at the foot of her bed. The ice clinked in her glass.

“I have dreadlocks,” she repeated. She swallowed, blinked again, and when I didn’t answer, she closed her mouth and lowered her face. Her dark hair was dry and stood crinkled off the left ear.

“Look at her hair,” said Chloe, sitting erect, smiling, bouncing in her seat on the bed.

Vicki’s tattered purse hunkered below her on the floor, her furry coat spread out on the bed.

“Stand up,” I said.

“I have dreadlocks,” she said to the floor.

“Stand up.”

“Dreadlocks,” she whispered.

“Stand up so I can see them.”

She swallowed, sneered, and said, “No.”

Stepping forward I sunk a knee into the bed. “When did you clean your room?” I said, not waiting for her to answer as I inspected the hair. Raven black hair that covered her breasts when she was naked now knotted into groupings behind her head. Thready entanglements pulled at her crown, revealing slashes of white scalp. The thin messes matted into thicker twists. Strings angled across the sides of her head to make full bunches down her nape. How much restlessness had caused these ropy coils? Chaotic and askew, the dreadlocks were forming all the way down her back.

I gripped one and pulled her head. She did not even moan. I had stayed away for too long. I let go of the vine and her head tipped.

Chloe waved her blond hair. “Were you trying to do this?” she said.

“What, to my hair?”

“What else would she be talking about?” I said.

Vicki swallowed. “No, they just happened. I don’t know how, they just did.”

She smelled like sweat. I didn’t want to touch her.

“This one’s really thick,” Chloe said. “You could name this one.”

“Name it?” Vicki’s head rose, then she curled forward with her laughter. Chloe smiled and started to talk, but Vicki cut her off, saying, “Okay, I’ll name it Kassandra, like the song.” She fell forward laughing. “Kas-sAAN-dra,” she sang, like someone talking in her sleep. Then she had to swallow, slow and deep. She turned to me on the sunken bed because I knew the song reference, too. Her eyes only flitted over me, before she swung forward and let her head loll. Silence ensued, and I let it brew.

“Well, you got your dreadlocks,” I said.

“I know, right? I got dreadlocks.”

“Have you seen them yet?” Chloe asked her.

“What do they look like?”

“Dreadlocks,” Chloe laughed, bouncing. Vicki, delayed, laughed, too.

“I’ll get a mirror.” Chloe got up and the bed shifted only a little because she was so skinny. She left the room.

We sat still for a moment. I would not ask her where she had been. I knew where she went for drugs. I knew the men who lived there. Even more, I knew what love had made of her. Hadn’t her heart always been with her ex during our time?

Our time together wasn’t something I thought about. After a year and a half, I only worried what love for me had made of her.

The fuzzy dreadlocks laid on loose locks of hair.

“When was the last time you worked?” I answered.

“Uhm. Just a few days ago. I think.” She was dragging her words. “I worked two days. Then I got some days off. I work tomorrow.”

“Are you going in with dreadlocks?”

She giggled, but not like a child being tickled. It was more like the titter of someone willing to tell her story. I hadn’t seen her drink from the glass of bourbon and ice.

“Do they look bad?” she asked.

“Hmm.”

“Chloe says she can brush them out.”

“That’ll hurt.”

“Oh-hh, you think so?”

“Do you have scissors?”

“What? You want to cut my hair?”

I let her laugh. She tilted and almost fell into me, but caught herself and slowly righted. She swallowed. “I thought you wanted me to have dreads.”

“You don’t know what I want.”

“You want to cut my hair.”

“You,” I stated, “want to cut your hair.”

“You’re going to fuck it up.”

During our time together she had followed me when I asked her to. I had trailed her when she told me not to. Without the other, we wouldn’t be free.

She leaned and bobbed on the edge of the bed. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

She knew where the scissors were in her dresser, two sets. She moved and stepped precisely into the closet that had a door and was like another room. She plopped onto the floor before the long mirror leaning against the wall. She sat there without moving.

“I don’t know if I should do this to my hair. I like my hair.”

“Your hair is fucked.”

She took a deep breath that raised her posture. The hair reached down her back to the crescent of skin shining where her cotton shirt had lifted. She exhaled. “Okay!” She went straight to her non-dreaded bangs and snipped them at the brow.

I knelt behind her. I cut right at the knot of the dreadlocks.

“Oh!” she cringed at the sound of my scissors.

“Here’s Kassandra,” I said and handed it to her, brawny and twiny at the top.

“Oh, that’s a good one.”

“She’s a dirty one.”

“Shut up!”

“You’re a dirty one.”

“Fuck off!” she exhaled in a high pitch. Then she swallowed.

I kept cutting. She flinched at the sound of a solid snip.

“I can’t believe I’m letting you cut my hair.”

“Shut up.”

“You want to cut it. You don’t want me to have dreads.”

“Shut up. You want to cut it.”

She straightened the bangs in the mirror. I maintained an even line at her neck.

“You want to be the one to cut my hair.”

“Please stop talking about the hair.”

“Oh, I’m gonna hate it.”

I wanted her to like it. I wanted others to like it. Then she could ditch her fake friends. She could get a new start. I wanted her away from my name.

Chloe came into the mirror, into the closet behind us. “You guys are cutting it.”

We said nothing to her, and kept cutting.

“Where’s Kassandra?”

The long dreadlock lay fallen beside Vicki. I picked it up and turned slightly so Chloe could see the strand. I sliced the lock into six equal clumps.

“She’s gone,” I said.

“What!” Chloe’s voice was bouncing. She had no idea what had happened to Vicki. “I’m going to make tea,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Not for you,” she said.

“Face the mirror,” I said. I chopped the dreadlocks where they formed, and continued trimming her hair, blending the holes, so that no one could say, ‘Oh, here is where they were.’ Or, ‘Look, you can tell they were here.’ There would be no proof. There would be no story.

“Okay,” Vicki said, “no more. Stop. It’s good. No more for now. Oh-hh, it’s so short.”

“Okay, okay.” I got up out of the closet and fell on the bed. She brushed her hair.

“You cut my hair. You’re so proud. You wouldn’t let me have dreadlocks.”

I went to the kitchen and made a glass of ice water. The kettle sat silent on the stovetop set to HI. Chloe’s door was open. She was taking off her shirt. Her bare back was to me, and she spun her head around and hit me with her eyes. I stood up straight, drank the top off the water, turned, and returned to Vicki’s room.

Vicki was placing the clippings in the basket. I poured bourbon in my glass and lay on the bed.

“You wanted to be the one to do it. Didn’t you?”

“You need a shower.”

“No. If I take a shower you’re going to leave.”

“I just made a drink.”

“You’re going to leave and then I’ll be all alone with this shitty haircut.”

“When was the last time you showered?”

“I have to show them my haircut.”

I lay still while she wrote a text. Two men came to mind while she held the phone. One of them would only talk to my friends, and the other one probably had another new tattoo. But I knew she met new ones every day.

A whistle began from the kitchen and pierced the room. I shouted, “Kettle!”

“Ouch. Don’t yell. Okay, I’m going to shower.”

“Wash your pussy real good.”

“What?” she said. Then she tittered.

She went out and I heard the bath water start.

I drank from the glass and poured more bourbon on the ice. On the floor, a row of books lined the wall beside the audio speakers. I pulled out one of mine that I had started reading again, the Bible, and I opened it. Inside rested three twenty-dollar bills. I folded all three bills into my hand.

Chloe came into the bedroom with a steaming mug. She had tied her hair back and taken off her long sleeves. She took the Bible from me, handed the mug to me and said, “She didn’t want to call you. She was afraid of what you’d say.”

“Vicki needs a friend she can count on,” I said.

Chloe put the Bible in a corner. I couldn’t see it. She sat down on the bed. Her arm touched my arm, her hip my hip. “She counts on you. She let you cut her hair.”

All was quiet except the shower spatters a room away. Chloe was like a flower that you have to sniff at the bud to consume. The aroma of the tea relaxed my urge.

“I told her not to call me.”

“She’s still your creation,” Chloe said, “Everyone will see that now.”

I inhaled, lifting my shoulders. She leaned into me and I didn’t know what she was up to so I shook my head and said, “I got my own gig. I’m staying away.” I waved the dollars in my fingers before I knew what I was doing. Hot tea splashed onto my jeans. “We’re not talking about me right now.”

She stood up and laughed, “Don’t worry, we never do.”

“That’s a lie,” I said, but she left the room without turning around.

I remembered that once I had found my unopened bag of potato chips in the garbage, and another time my snow boots placed outside the front door – both times Chloe had claimed that she didn’t know whose they were.

I grabbed the Bible and put two of the twenties back into it.

Vicki came in with her hair wet and said, “It’s so short.” She held her sweating glass and I still hadn’t seen her take a sip yet.

“It’s cute,” I said.

She tightened her towel. She found panties in her dresser and put them on under the towel. She chose a bra and walked around the bed to the closet.

“Where’d you get that bruise?” I said to stop her.

“What bruise?”

“Right here.” I jabbed her thigh with my finger. She walked right through it.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m always getting bruises. You know.”

She went into the closet and closed the door. She wasn’t changing in front of me tonight. I heard her phone chime go off, then her titter. I sat up, poured one more shot and watched the ice float and melt away completely.

The night was over. My work here was done, and I didn’t want to be here when one of her guys walked in. Because then I would not leave. I went out of the room and put on my boots.

“She’s your creation,” Chloe said from the couch. “Why are you destroying her?”

I stood up. She lay with one skinny leg over the armrest. Her bare arms crossed, grouping her small breasts. I said, “Be a friend to her.”

Her gaze went past me. “She just wants you back.”

“She’s not ready for that,” I said.

“Not ready?” She dropped her foot to the floor. “Who are you? God?”

Vicki marched out of her room dressed in her coat with her purse on her shoulder. I’d never seen her get ready so quickly.

She said, “Come to the pub with me.”

“Where are you going? I thought you had work tomorrow?”

“I will. I have to show them my hair. No one’s going to believe it.”

She put on a stocking cap, and without looking back we pushed down the front door, into the cold night. The skin of her neck gleamed in the street light. I watched the wings of her hair lift from her beanie. She was going her way at her pace, and I was going mine.

“Vicki,” I called out to her. “Don’t say my name tonight.”

She turned, tittered, and turned away.