Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Part 1
When I was in 7th grade, I was trying to make sense of a A LOT of things; 1. my mom’s depression, which left her hiding in her bedroom for 8 months, 2. where my father would live once she filed for divorce, and 3. if I was going to be able to kick Jamie Johnson’s ass after school or not.
Let me preface this by saying that I grew up in NoCo, North County St. Louis, five minutes from the airport. (Everyone knows what the neighborhoods are like by the airport.) I’m from where Nelly “gonna shine his shit up at Natural Bridge and Kingshighway” and where Chingy tells Snoop Dogg and Ludacris he “on highway 270 needin’ Natural Bridge…”. Yup, that was home.
And in NoCo, there was a school called Ritenour, where the baddest of the bad walked the halls. To be called a “Ritenour bitch” was a badge of honor. Ritenour bitches wore fighting rings to school…just in case. Not every girl had to fight, but there had to be a fight in every girl. And on this particular day, it was my turn to unleash it. Jamie Johnson had it out for me since 5thgrade and the time and place had been set: after school, somewhere along the bus route, we would exit the bus and fists would fly.
As the bus plodded along its normal route, most of the kids weren’t getting off at their usual stops and the bus driver’s suspicions began to grow. Jamie’s eyes met mine and what I thought was going to be some sort of hate stare seemed to morph into more of a what-are-we-doing stare. I’m sure my eyes answered with a there’s-no-turning-back-now stare. When the bus stopped at the corner of Endicott and Engler, everyone piled-out. It was THE moment of truth.
As soon as the bus driver drove off, the crowd of wild-eyed pre-teens circled Jamie and I. I barely put my bookbag down when I felt a push and then I swung. As my right fist met her cheek, I felt a tug at my hair and something rose up within me; a kind of animal instinct that goes with the pull of the mane. Everything after that was a blur. Three minutes later my friend Dominic was breaking it up because the cops were coming, thanks to the bus driver, and the crowd dispersed like ants whose hill had been trampled on.
Dominic ran with me all the way back to my house saying things like, “Dayum Lisa! You beat the shit out of her!” and “Girl, I didn’t even know you could fight!”. But I could still feel the tingling in my scalp of where she pulled my hair. It was sore and I reached up to touch it to see if there was any blood but it was worse; a handful of hair came out as I pulled my hand back. And then another, and then another. Little did I know that the fight had been the least of my problems. I was going bald.
As I rushed up the hill to my house, I saw my mom’s car in the driveway and realized it was Thursday. Shit. Would she see the fight on my face? On my knuckles? Was I noticeably bald already?! Dominic assured me that I looked unscathed from the outside, but on the inside I felt shame, guilt, power, exhilaration, and scared, all at the same time.
I said goodbye to Dominic and barreled into the house, straight to the bathroom to check my appearance. He was right; almost zero evidence…almost. I decided to pull my ponytail to one side to hide the glaring hole. My mom didn’t notice. No one in dance class noticed, not even my teacher who was more focused on my fouettes than my stupid hair, but I noticed.
I lost more than my hair that day. I lost a piece of innocence, the kind you can never find again. Though I won the fight along with all the bragging rights of a tried and true Ritenour bitch, I was actually the long-term loser. Jamie’s parents moved to another state after 7th grade, freeing her from any shame of losing the fight and I was left staring at that damn bald spot all the way into high school.
Looking back at that first stint with the hell of trying to hide hair loss, I realized that that was the easiest bout I would have with this thing that seems to plague women more than society would have us believe. Hair loss fucking sucks. I know it sucks for men too, but it sucks more for women because we aren’t “supposed” to have male-pattern baldness. We aren’t “supposed” to just, shave our heads like men do over 40. We suffer through the literal thick hair and thin hair from pregnancy. Then we hit menopause and deal with even more loss and, speaking of menopause, tune in next week for part deux.