Hair on the Wall
Monday through Thursday, Shella would take the subway home from campus and arrive just before her father, Cedrick, left for his 9 o'clock shift. Usually, the sound of classic rock would welcome her home, quickly followed by her father's greeting and goodbye. But this time, as soon as she entered through the front door she was struck by how quiet the house was. While Shella set her stuff down and removed her shoes, she listened carefully for any sign of her father.
He wasn't in the living room watching the Knicks lose for the third time in a row, and he definitely wasn't in the partially abandoned kitchen that hadn't seen a hot meal for months. Shella made her way to her parents room at the end of the hall, peeking into the slightly open doorway. There she found Cedrick sitting right on the edge of the bed, already fully dressed for work but almost completely still aside from the motion of his breathing. From what she could see, he was simply sitting there with his phone in hand and an eerie thousand-yard stare. Cedrick was often more stoic and reserved, but this wasn't the same as his usual thoughtful gaze. There was nothing, no trace of emotion or life in his eyes.
Shella's worry overtook the fearful thoughts that floated through the back of her mind. "Pa? Okay ka lang?" Her words finally broke the spell over her father, his furrowed brow relaxed just a little.
She pushed open the door as Cedrick turned towards her. "Ah, Cecilia. I didn't hear you come in." His voice was tired. He's the only one who calls her by the name he gave her. "I'm fine. I just listened to a message from the doctors." Shella knew her father had just had his yearly checkup after her mother had insisted they go together, but she had no idea what could be wrong.
His gaze drifted to her face in an attempt at eye contact, but instead he looked right through her. She can't think of anything to say, so she gave her father's shoulder a light squeeze.
"Papa, are you sure-" Suddenly, he turned on his phone's screen to check the time and jolted up from the bed, taking Shella's hand from his shoulder.
"I'm late. I have to go."
His odd behavior only worried her more, her father was the affectionate one and he would normally have welcomed her attempt at reassurance. Cedrick made his way out into the hall to put on his shoes by the door, leaving her in the room still processing. Shella goes to stand near him, watching him tie his laces with his thick and calloused hands.
"You know you can tell me if something is wrong. You don't have to hide it from me," she said carefully, unsure whether or not she could actually handle whatever truth he's hiding.
Nervously, she starts to bite at a hangnail on her index finger, pulling the extra skin and leaving an open wound in its place. It stung, but she ignored the pain and pressed against the wound to check its sensitivity. She winced, she should have left it alone. With both his shoes tied, Cedrick stood upright to check his pockets. He still hasn't looked her in the eyes. With all his belongings accounted for he turns to her again, his brow scrunched slightly and his lips pursed. He opened his mouth to say something, but decided against it. Instead he pulled Shella's face toward him with both hands, and kissed her forehead. "Don't worry Cecilia. I'll see you tomorrow." His heavy footsteps carry him out the front door, away from his daughter and her worried looks.
Shella couldn't shake the feeling that something was off, not just because of her father, but because of a certain unidentifiable tension in the air. But she figured she would try to ignore it and return to her routine. Every night she would spend the two hours before her mother's homecoming just sitting by herself, existing in her home by disturbing the space as little as possible. The silence that followed her father's departure tonight was strange, unfamiliar but not unwanted. There was always something, anything playing in the background, but the quiet enveloped her and her fretful mind. She both longed for and loathed this time in between, the liminal space of her empty home was sacred to her, as much as it put her ill at ease. No one around to look at her, no one to comment on her appearance, no one to confirm her existence through judgment and ridicule. Just her and her thoughts.
She had changed into a big shirt paired with a pair of shorts before going to sit in the tiled kitchen with a hot cup of the same weight loss tea her mother always bought. She wanted to really enjoy it, to be glad that she can finally be alone, but she was still unnerved by her father's secrecy and the silence that reminded her of it.
Instead of drinking the tea, which was lightly honeyed but still too bitter from poor quality and oversteeping, Shella stirred it. The circular motions gave her something else to do with her hands, one to hold the cup and one to stir. Clockwise to call in, counterclockwise to banish. What exactly she was calling in or banishing, Shella didn't let herself think too hard about, though she knew what she was thinking of in the back of her mind.
She kept seeing the look on her father's face, the emptiness in his eyes, the blank expression he had held for who knows how long before she had arrived. With a shake of her head, she tried to recall what her father had said to her before, when she confided in him about her habit of overthinking. "If you can't do anything about it right now, then you should stop worrying about it." She knew that would be the best option right now, to shove her worried thoughts into the back of her mind, but doing so was always easier said than done.
She began to take careful tiny sips, and each time the bitterness of the tea bothered her still, almost running her throat dry with its touch, quenching and unquenching her thirst. It made the dry patch on her throat itch. A finger length oval of blotched red and textured skin she wished she could hide with her hair or her concealer, but neither would help with the itch. Ignoring the urge to scratch, Shella tucks a strand of her thick shoulder length hair behind her ear, but feels a stray strand lightly fall upon her thigh. She picks up the hair, and inspects it in the light, checking its length and its texture. Sometimes she finds a kinky and oddly contorted strand of hair amongst the sea of straight black locks, and she's tempted to keep them for her to touch and admire it. She never does, but she likes finding them anyways.
After looking at the piece of hair for long enough, she wraps both of her pointer fingers with either end of the strand and pulls the hair taut between her fingers until it snaps, breaking itself and the frozen silence of the kitchen. Shella lets the strand fall to the white linoleum, already forgotten.
Her two hours of silence always end with the clatter and jingle of her mother's keys, jammed into the doorknob and yanked unceremoniously upon entering. "Shellaaa!" Her mother's voice pierces her eardrums, she winces and braces herself.
"In here Ma!" she replies.
Still swathed in her coat and one of her many sets of monochrome scrubs, Cassandra enters the kitchen hurriedly from the doorway. Shella's mother is a short and pale woman, not skinny but not fat either, just firmly in the middle. She rarely leaves the house without a bit of makeup and always pulls her long hair into a neat bun, though Shella likes it when her mother leaves her hair down in the mornings.
"What have you been doing? Have you eaten yet?" Each of her mother's questions feels like a stake being firmly shoved into her chest, not because the answers are difficult or painful, but because the conversation they lead to always is.
"Nothing Ma, I've been sitting here drinking your tea. And I didn't eat dinner, I wasn't feeling hungry." Even though her cup was half full and cold at this point, she gulps the remainder of the tea down and walks over to the sink to wash. It's easier for her to avoid eye contact with her back turned on her mother.
"Well good, you've been gaining weight from all the sweets and junk you eat ha. You know we have your cousin's wedding coming up and you still need to find a dress, one that will fit this time I hope. Hmph!" Shella rinses the suds from her now clean cup, setting it to dry on the rack alone, she grips the edge of the sink, breathing carefully. "If you just listened to me and exercised a little you'd be so much prettier! It's such a shame, you've outgrown my closet as well. I wouldn't have to waste money on new dresses for you." Cassandra clicks her tongue. "When I was your age I was tiny! Just over 110 pounds, and I made sure to keep it that way for a long time. Even now, look at me! I'm 54 years old, and I'm still smaller than my 20 year old daughter." Her mocking laugh sends a needle into Shella's chest, but she continues through her daughter's tense silence, her accent and tone deepening with disappointment. "Seriously Shella. I work so hard all day long, I take care of the patients, my coworkers, my family and you only have school to worry about. You can't even try ha anak? It's not healthy! You know there was someone who came into the clinic today..."
Shella learned a while ago to tune out her mother's voice once she reached this part of the conversation. She didn't need to be compared to another slightly obese patient her mother had seen, though she certainly didn't have the energy to endure the lecture she'd get if she told her mother she left at this point. Theoretically, this part of her nightly routine could be avoided if she just went to her room as soon as her mother arrived, but not greeting her at all and ignoring her prying questions meant Shella had to risk her mother entering her room to check on her. In that case, her privacy meant nothing to her, for Cassandra it was a matter of respect and a type of filial piety.
At the moment, despite tuning out her mother's words, Shella felt them digging into her. Her chest felt like someone had grabbed onto the musculature with their bare hands, gripped it tight and twisted. She tried to focus on breathing, but that made invisible hands twist so tight that she felt her heartbeat thud in her ears, right behind her eyeballs. She bent her head and leaned slightly into the sink so that her hair covered her face from view completely, squeezing her eyes shut.
Cassandra had stopped talking, momentarily distracted by a call from her husband. "Cedrick? Kumusta ka na? What time will you be home?"
Seizing her chance, Shella wordlessly made her way down the hall where a set of stairs led to her room in the basement. Once she was safely inside her windowless room, Shella felt the pain in her chest start to migrate to her tear ducts, and the tension in her limbs turn into blind anger. In her head, everything her mother said started to replay, each of Cassandra's criticisms overlapping and crowding out any other thought from Shella's mind. This is why she kept her room dark with the only light in the room coming from an old lamp from her brother's old dorm. The darkness helped her think when this happened.
Grabbing an old composition notebook and sitting herself in her twin bed, she takes a pen to a fresh page and starts to write furiously and without care. Her urge to cry is forgotten as she scribbles and scratches out the words, pouring the acid her mother gladly spit at her onto the lined page, writing with a fervor and a fury that was the closest she could get to escape. She needed it out of her. Now.
"YOU'RE GAINING WEIGHT FROM SWEETS AND JUNK, FIND A DRESS THAT FITS THIS TIME, JUST LISTEN TO ME, YOU'D BE SO MUCH PRETTIER, IT'S SUCH A SHAME, I WOULDN'T HAVE TO WASTE MONEY ON YOU, YOU CAN'T EVEN TRY? JUST TRY! GET THINNER, YOU WON'T BE SUCH A WASTE OF FUCKING SPACE."
Getting rid of these thoughts onto paper didn’t make her feel better, mostly it was a means of keeping her from spiraling any further into the deep end. Eventually the words slowed to a stop, allowing Shella to see what she'd done to the page. Barely legible handwriting across the first half of the page quickly devolved into entire patches of black, angry scratched out sections that made the words that could be read make less sense.
Shella hated it when her mother came home and reopened this can of worms day after day. As of late, Cassandra never had a kind word to share with her daughter, only an endless supply of judgments and sidelong glances for her. With a quick yank, Shella tore her mother's words out from the notebook. Something in her spoke unprovoked, "Tear it up, like before. Keep the pieces." So she did, ripping the page into a fine mince of pieces, before finding the jar where she kept the rest of her handiwork. She figured sealing all that poison in a jar was fine for now, even if she'd love to watch it all burn. She could feel the cold tea she had turning in her stomach, settling into the cracks after finally making its way down.
Secretly, Shella blamed her mother for it all. Everything wrong with her was because of her endless derision. Her mother bought all the food and the hygienic products that Shella used, but she never listened to what she wanted, which made taking care of herself feel like a double-edged sword. Cassandra insisted she use the imported purple bottle of Palmolive three in one shampoo, even though it did nothing for her split ends and dandruff-ridden scalp. If she didn't use it, her mother would blame her for lack of trying, but if she did and complained it didn't work, she would be blamed for not washing enough. She either used what her mother gave her or nothing at all, and either way she was guaranteed to get an earful about it. And her father was never around to defend her anymore. No, Shella didn't want to blame her father. Her mind rushed back to the moments before he left, what was he hiding? Why did he always leave her alone with her? What was wrong with him?
Her hands were restless. She kept picking at her cuticles, despite the fact that the unevenness of the open and healed over flesh drove her thoughts back to a darker place. She didn't want to think about her father or her cuticles. Or how much weight she'd gained in the past year. Or how much she wanted to scream. Shella runs her hand through her hair repeatedly, an uneasy feeling seemed to engulf her without warning and all she could do was think about that strand of hair. She knew she had split ends and dandruff and eczema and that she weighed more than most of her cousins. She knew because her mother never let her forget, and it wasn't like she really wanted to help in the first place, all she wanted was to talk at her.
Split ends could be fixed though, you just had to weed them out, right? Taking small strands of hair, Shella examined the silhouettes of each piece for any signs of breakage or splitting. It doesn't take long, she spots an otherwise healthy hair with a tiny split at the tip and picks it out from the bunch. Holding the strand firm, she tugs to find where the follicle is, before yanking it out with one motion. She can almost feel it pop from her scalp. The end she had just pulled from her head still has the follicle attached, a thin black gel-like layer around just the tip from which the hair grew out of. For some reason, Shella needs to know if it will stick to her wall, so with slight precision she gently places the now dead piece of keratin on her empty wall, where it sticks easily.
The urge to pull is stronger now, her fingers are eager to search through her scalp. It doesn’t matter why, or to what end, she just needs to find the split ends right? Or the hairs that will pop out like the first one. Quick, painless, nothing crazy. And if the follicle is still attached, add it to the wall! Shella likes that the hair sticks. It's not permanent anyways, and it's not like there's much to see on her walls anyways. Plus then she can keep track of how many hairs she has on the wall. If it doesn't stick, straight to the trash. Easy peasy.
It almost feels fun to do this, even though the spots where she pulls her hair are left a tad bit tender, it's nothing serious. Find a split end? Pull it out. Find a loose strand? Pull it out. Find a hair that you know will pop. Pull. It. Out. It doesn't matter anyways, I have a ton of hair and it's just like weeding. Banish the bad to call in the good. Make more room for healthy hair right?
Pull a hair with the follicle intact? Add it to the wall! No fuss no muss. No snarky comments, no mocking laughter, no fucking lecture.
Pull a hair, add it to the wall, yank it out, put it with the trash, pop it out, to the wall, pull it, pop it, take it out, I need it out get it out, GET IT OUT GET IT OUT GET IT OUT OF ME pop POp PoP pop Pop pOp pop pop Pop pOp pop pop Pop pop pOp pop pop pOp pop POP PPOPpOpPOpOPPPOppPpPPpOPPPopOPPPPopoPopOpOPOPoPopOpopOpPOpoPoPOPOPOpOPOPOPoPoPOPOPOPOpOPOPOPPopPPOppOppopPopopopPOPOpPoPoPoPoPOPO POPOpOPOPPopOPPPPopoPopOpOPOPoPopOpopOpPOpoPoPOPOPOpOPOPOPoPoPOP
She actually sleeps before 2 AM for the first time in a long time. When she wakes in the morning she is bleary from her well spent night. The right side of Shella's head feels sore. She shuffles upstairs to the bathroom, eyes half shut and looks into the mirror to see what she's done.
She lost count of the hairs on her walls.
Edited by Madison Case. Cover Photo by Julia Malushko.