The Color Of Her Hair

Her name was Scarlet and there were certain things she knew and didn’t know. She was six years old. She did not have red hair. She did not know what her favorite color was and she did not think anyone liked her. Her middle name was Red because her father thought it was funny, and she guessed that was why her mother left. Her mother, Lucy, probably didn’t appreciate her father’s kind of humor, even though Scarlet thought it was quite charming and she loved it. Her father quoted her mother a lot, and that’s how she knew he still loved her. Well, that and also the fact that one bright morning, when she had been playing in the attic with her dolls, she found his pictures of her mother.

Scarlet wasn’t even supposed to be in the attic, because the one rule her father kept in place was the attic-is-off-limits rule. But her father had been out at the hardware store looking for roofing nails, and Scarlet had stumbled upon the attic door hidden in the back of the hallway closet. There hadn't been much up there, just a couple of suitcases and a silvery box with cursive font spelling out L-U-C-Y. In there she’d found her mother’s pictures, and Scarlet spent hours staring at her mother’s face. That’s how Scarlet came to know that her mother had red, red hair and green eyes and skin so pale you might mistaken her as a piece of fine porcelain. Scarlet herself often thought her mother’s picture perfect skin really was the skin of a china doll. Scarlet had been so entranced by her mother’s seeming presence that one afternoon, when her father was out grocery shopping, she investigated his closet for her mother’s clothing and found three different dresses: one green, one pink, and one white. She’d asked him when he returned what the dresses was for and he said he’d bought them thinking they would look good on Scarlet when she turned seventeen. But she knew he was lying, because his mouth was shaped like a pear and when his mouth went into pear mode, he was always lying.

Scarlet knew her mother had a beautiful voice that sounded like ice cream and pudding sliding through the mind. There was a tape inside the silvery box too labelled simply as “Lucy singing” with the date in slipping handwriting she couldn’t read. The next time her father went to the grocery store, Scarlet tip-toed into his office to place the tape on the gaping tongue of the tape player, and watch as the spirals unwound, her mother’s voice slowly winding into the room. It made her unexpectedly empty to hear the lovely voice singing alone in the silence, so plain and bare that she reached for someone’s hand to hold. Her tiny fingers closed around the emptiness of the room and she started to cry, because it seemed to her that her father was always gone. She had too many toys made for sharing and not a single person to share it with. Her name was Scarlet and she was lonely.

Once she asked the kindergarten teacher what color scarlet was. The teacher looked to the clock and Scarlet heard the seconds tick by as she watched the smile piece itself together on her teacher’s face. When the smile was finally aimed down at her, it was so empty of true pleasure that she almost took a step back. Still sporting her strained smile, the teacher told her to ask her parents about it since they must have an interesting story for such a dear little girl. Then, the teacher ushered Scarlet back to her seat, reminding her not to interrupt class or ask unrelated questions or bother the teacher with Scarlet’s personal life. Three curly haired boys labelled splotches of dusty, mud-colored brown “scarlet”. They thrust the papers at her as she walked through the door after class, giggling madly, while the girls around her glared at her, whispering and pointing at her lopsided ponytails and mismatched clothes. Scarlet tried everyday to wear something acceptable and comb her hair but her wispy hair only slid out of her short fingers and her father never noticed when her clothes became too small. Thus she had come to the conclusion that nobody liked her because the boys were forever making fun of her and the girls looked down on her shabby appearance. She wished she was as beautiful as her mother. She stared up at the sky and wished on the cloud shaped like a star. Dear Mr. Cloud, I wish to have china doll skin and long red hair and big green eyes. Also some pretty dresses. She crossed her fingers and thought harder. P.S., I hope Daddy plays with me and I also hope to get a mother for Christmas. It’s okay if I can’t be beautiful but I would really, really, really like a mother. If you happen to float past the North Pole, please tell Santa. Love, Scarlet.

After school, she slipped into her father’s study and hoisted herself into his lap, all angles and bones as she climbed up his long, long legs. She asked him what color scarlet was and he did not reply. He did not reply for such a long time she thought he might not have heard, and she opened her mouth to ask him again, the syllables already forming sweetly on her tongue. His big blue eyes looked down at her and his beard wiggled as he smiled and shushed her. “Run along and play,” he said in his crying voice. When he spoke his beard didn’t wiggle and his twinkling eyes seemed extra shiny, like he was trying too hard.

She closed his door and sulked in her room. She didn’t want to play because she had no one to play with. Instead, she snuck into the attic and opened the silvery box, remembering the wish she had made to Mr. Cloud who looked like a star. The mementos of her mother stared back at her as she reached in, looking for something to amuse herself with. Finding nothing, she contented herself with looking at the pictures, feeling like every picture was a puzzle piece that made her world function properly. Leafing through one album after another, tongue sticking out as she worked to free the difficult pages, she smiled while tracing her mother’s features and wondered if she would recognize her mother if she saw her on the street. Yes, Scarlet decided, she would recognize her mother. Because it was meant to be. She had read that phrase in a fairy tale. It was a version of Cinderella and at the end the king smiled at his son and new daughter-in-law and said that their marriage was meant to be, and that’s why all their troubles had been solved- so that they could get married, of course. She wasn’t going to get married to her mother, obviously, but she wanted to believe that their being a family was meant to be. Hearing footsteps, she recalled the attic-is-off-limits rule and barely had time to squeeze herself behind the old refrigerator box of her baby clothes when the peppery gray head of her father emerged from the stairwell.

Her father knelt by the box and laid his large palms over the lid. Scarlet watched a tear roll down his cheek as he slowly reached for the clasp and lifted the lid. Seeing his tears, she wanted to cry as well. She wanted to cry because her father loved her mother so much even though her mother didn’t love him. If her mother loved her father, she never would have left. Scarlet loved her father because he loved her, and if he did not love her, she didn’t think she could love him either. It was like when her old doll, Nancy, found out that Scarlet liked the new doll better. Nancy couldn’t bear not being loved and that was probably why she ran away. Scarlet still hadn’t found her. Her father reached under the pictures of her mother and seemed to struggle with a something, until he finally pulled out a small envelope. Smiling sadly to himself while wiping his tears away with the back of his calloused palm, he carefully closed the box and returned down the staircase, never noticing Scarlet’s pale face glimmering in the dark.

Scarlet tiptoed after her father down the stairs. As soon as her father wandered into his study down the hall, she crept out and raced into her room, a tiptoe of butterfly footsteps vanishing into the air. She had barely sat herself on her bed, panting with adrenaline and curiosity, when her father called for her, his deep voice resonating through the house. She took two deep breaths and then another because she did not feel ready for some reason. Maybe because she had never seen her father looking at the silvery box and didn’t think anyone but her ever did, until today. Maybe she was too young to know the meaning of her name. It seemed too heavy a weight, knowing exactly why she’d been named Scarlet, a weight she would have to carry whenever she heard her name. Or maybe she was just tired of staying awake and tired of being so, so lonely. The doorknob tingled under her hand and she simply knew that something magic was going to happen. A miracle, like in Cinderella.

Her father was sitting at the kitchen table with his hands folded tightly in front of him and his back pressed into the chair. He kept twisting his thumbs around his pinkies and then his pinkies around each other until his fingers were a jumbled knot of elastic bands, like the one she had begged for at Walmart. She thought about the rubber band ball, lying in the dust clouds under her bed. It was probably old and disgusting now and suddenly she didn’t think it resembled her father’s fingers. She tapped her father’s shoulder slowly, watching his hands curiously as the fingers flew apart and pressed themselves against the table for a count of three, then protectively flattened themselves over the little white envelope.

“Scarlet,” her father said in his important voice, his beard marching solemnly as his eyebrows descended into an expression of utmost sincerity. “Scarlet, this envelope is for you.” He handed the white envelope over, his fingers trembling. She accepted it cautiously, her small fingers barely touching the paper as she stared down, wishing to know what it was yet wishing she didn’t have to. “It’s from-” he seemed to choke for a second- “your mother,” he continued, his fingers tightening and loosening, “but first we must go somewhere.” He tucked the envelope into her sweater pocket and took her hand.

She got out of the car, her boots sinking lightly into the moist ground. “Daddy, this is the cemetery,” she whispered, her voice hushed and startling in the eerie silence of the lot. Her father didn’t respond, just took her hand again and began walking down the brick path. The walk seemed to last forever as they passed thousands and thousands of weeds and hundreds of big and small grey stones marking people’s lives. Finally, just as Scarlet was feeling tired and hungry, they stopped in the very back of the cemetery in front of a white, marble stone. It was simple, with nothing engraved, just the years and a name but both were so worn by the weather that Scarlet could not read it.

“Scarlet, meet your mother. You would have loved her and she would have loved you,” her father said, and Scarlet could not comprehend. She looked around wildly, waiting for the pale skinned, beautiful woman in the photo to step out of the shadows and fold her into warm, loving arms. “She’s dead,” her father continued, his voice an extreme version of his crying voice. “I’m sorry.” She looked up at him, aghast, watching as tears trickled out of his blue, blue eyes. She would not believe him. Her mother wasn’t dead. Scarlet sat down hard, lost. She would never tell anyone but she always thought that one day her mother would return and she would be loved by not one but two parents. She put her head in her lap and crouched there, listening to the air move around her. Finally, she lifted her head to look for her father. He was immobile, glistening with tears from head to feet. She crawled towards him, needing to know she had one parent and not zero. He sunk to his knees and held out his arms, folding her into his chest. She felt him take the letter from her pocket and press it into her hair, murmuring for her to read it. She shook her head, snatching the letter and stuffing it into his pocket.

“Mother is dead. I won’t read letters from dead people,” she sniffled, her voice muffled by her father’s coat. She was afraid to admit that she was afraid of what her mother had written. Perhaps in some time, she’d ask her father to read it to her. But not now, because she was starting to grow angry. Her father patted her back but she didn’t feel comfort anymore. All she could think was that her father had never really hugged her before and he didn’t know to pat her upper back, not her lower back, and that Scarlet never really liked having people pat her back anyways. She would prefer holding his hand. She pushed away from him as he stared wide-eyed at her, full of sorrow. “Tell me why you never play with me,” she commanded, her voice going shrill. Above her, an ocean of birds took flight, flooding the sky with momentary darkness. Her father kneeled there in front of her, his face closing off. She had never seen this expression before. His beard seemed to grow whiter and his eyes more sunken, the wrinkles around his eyes slowly growing into his forehead, his cheeks. His lips were whiter and thinner and his eyes tired. She thought of herself after running in recess away from boys with snowballs and taunts and saw that this is what he looked like, weary and tired of being chased. “Tell me, Daddy, tell me,” she said again, but this time she too had grown tired and her eyelids started to droop. She stumbled forwards and he caught her, scooping her up in a tiresome sort of manner. He let out a tired groan which rippled through her hair, catching on the breeze and floating into the trees.

“She named you Scarlet because that was the color of her hair. Her hair was scarlet, you know. She wanted you to have a token of her forever,” he whispered as he started the long trek back to the car, cradling her head against his shoulder. She would have fallen asleep if it weren't for the fact that his knobby fingers were lodged into her spine and his arms were so thick with worn muscle that she couldn't find a soft spot. “How come you didn’t give me a token?” she said into his chest, hoping the words would go backwards from his heart to his ears. He was silent for a long time, and she would have spoken again, if she had the energy. She felt like she had been running in recess for a long time and was suddenly caught lying on the ground, too tired, only to find that the jeering boys had become her father, weary as well.

“I don’t know,” he finally said, shifting her in his arms. Her mouth drifted away from his heart and she looked up at his ear, wondering how long it took for the words to go from his heart to his ear. His eyes were glistening. “How come you’re crying?” she inquired, feeling knowledge sitting heavily on her quavering chest. She counted to forty-nine until he finally replied, his breath coming out in puffs of smoke. “I’m crying because I miss your mother,” he sighed, pausing, “and I also cry because I haven’t been good to you.”

“Will you tuck me in when we get home?” she asked again, her voice becoming simple, aiming her words at his ear. She watched as time trickled down the sky and waited, counting one, two, three, four, all the way to fifty-three when he finally answered, “Yes”. He stopped walking then, and looked down at her, and she could see the words shuffling in his eyes. She waited, counting the seconds it took for his words to assemble. Twenty-two. “I’m sorry,” he said to her, and his important face marched its way past the weariness. His beard stood stock still now as his eyes darkened to their most grave color, gray. This time, she let the silence run deep. She counted, one, two, three, four, five, all the way to seventy-two. Then she lost count, accidentally skipping to seventy-nine, and decided to start over, this time counting her father’s heartbeats. She counted so many she could only see darkness and starlight falling through her mind. Just before she drifted off to sleep, her father spoke one last time.

“I never made space in my life for you after Lucy died,” he rasped, his voice growing fainter, “but I was wrong, and I love you, Scarlet. I’m sorry.” Scarlet couldn’t understand him but she heard I love you and sorry and let her eyelids slide shut as she smiled in the direction she hoped his face was.

“I’m sorry, too.”

ha good job...you finished...now tell me if it sucks, please. :) <3