Don’t Let Me Go(20)

Grace could see them both in the mirror.

“Can you brush it out?” Rayleen asked.

“Oh, honey, that would hurt like the devil. And she would lose a lot. I think we should cut it.”

Grace watched Rayleen in the mirror. Watched Rayleen furrow her brow.

“I’m not sure what her mother would think about that.”

“What do you care what her mother thinks? Where is her mother when this decision needs to be made? Something needs doing, and somebody needs to decide to do it, so let that somebody be you.”

The more Bella talked, the more Grace liked her accent. Even though she wasn’t sure she liked what Bella was saying about her mom. Still, it would be nice to get a haircut, instead of having all those knots pulled out, which was vicious. Grace hated that more than anything. So it would be nice to just have them decide. Right here and now.

“I’ll end up being the one who has to hear it from her, though,” Rayleen said.

She was thin, and pretty, Rayleen. Grace looked at her as though she’d never seen her before, because it was different, seeing her in the mirror and all, and because of the way Bella was standing right beside her. Not that Bella wasn’t pretty. Grace thought she was. But she wasn’t thin. And she wasn’t as pretty as Rayleen.

Grace felt Bella’s long fingernails raking lightly through her hair — at least the part that could still be raked through — and along her scalp, and it felt good, like a massage.

“You sure she’ll even get up from her bed long enough that you’ll have to hear about it? Have you even gotten her to call the county yet?”

“She says she did,” Rayleen said, like she wasn’t very sure.

“She did!” Grace piped up. “I know she did, because I was right there.”

“Oh. Good. Did she say what she was supposed to say?”

“Yeah. That you were my babysitter and all. Yeah.”

Rayleen furrowed her brow even more deeply. “Was she…did she seem…pretty…awake?”

“Medium,” Grace said.

Rayleen and Bella looked at each other’s eyes in the mirror, and Bella rolled hers a little bit, so Grace could see the whites of them.

“I guess we just keep our fingers crossed,” Rayleen said.

And Bella said, “So, let’s focus, girls. What about the hair?”

“I think we should let Grace decide. It’s her hair. Grace?”

“Hmm,” Grace said. “I think probably we should cut it. Because I hate that thing where somebody brushes out my hair when it’s knotty. It pulls. But…I don’t know. Will it look OK?”

“Will it look OK?” Bella howled. “Oh, my goodness! Little girl! You don’t know who you’re talking to! If I cut it, it will look superb!”

“I don’t know what superb means,” Grace said.

“Like good,” Rayleen said, “only better.”

“Oh. OK, then.”

So Bella put one of those drapes around Grace, and snapped it tightly at her neck, and Grace made a mostly pretend noise like being strangled.

“You don’t want to get the hair down there under your collar, though,” Bella said. “That’ll itch like crazy.”

“Right, I hate that,” Grace said. “I hate that worse than anything.”

“We should teach her how to brush her own hair,” Rayleen said.

“I know how to brush my hair,” Grace said, a little too loudly.

She was distracted, looking at the image in the mirror of a woman customer in the chair behind hers, because the woman held a little tan Chihuahua dog on her lap.

“Perro,” Grace said, but nobody was paying much attention.

“Then why didn’t you?”

“We only have one brush, and it’s up on top of the dresser in my mom’s bedroom, and I can’t reach it. When I was a little kid, I tried pulling out the drawers and using them like steps, so I could climb up there. Not to get the brush. To get something else, but I don’t remember what the something else was any more. I forget now. It was so important at the time that I climbed up there, but now I don’t even remember. Isn’t that funny? Anyway, the whole thing fell down on top of me, and I was screaming and crying, and my mom had to run get one of the neighbors to help get it off me. That was before we lived here. That was back when we lived right off Alvarado Street. Anyway, I wasn’t about to try that again.”

“I can’t really wash it properly until I get these knots out,” Bella said, as though she hadn’t even been listening. She pulled out a long, sleek, pointy pair of scissors and held them, paused, over Grace’s head.

Bye-bye hair, Grace thought. But it was better than all that brushing and pulling.

“I’m surprised no one noticed at her school,” Rayleen said. “Wouldn’t you think her teacher would notice that nobody brushed her hair for weeks?”

“Maybe she did,” Bella said, still holding the scissors paused. “After all, you still don’t know who called the county.”

“Hmm,” Rayleen said. “Right. I hadn’t thought of that.”

? ? ?

Walking home with Rayleen, Grace couldn’t stop looking at her fingernails. She held them out in front of her, both hands at once, and admired them. It made her trip over a crack in the sidewalk twice. Well. Three times.