Free All the Finest Girls by Alexandra Styron

word about my hair. I’d thought she didn’t see the fuzzy knots, the patches that had become sticky to the touch. Or maybe I looked like a black girl now. I wanted her to notice, but now that she has, I run to the bed with a screech.
    I stuff my head beneath a pillow. The truth is I hate my hair this way but can’t admit it. I keep it wrecked for my mother, because it makes her sad. Too many ideas and feelings jab at me. I’m anxious, unhappy, and I’m ashamed for disobeying Louise. But what is strangest is what I cannot find. There’s no red anger rising, no prickly skin, no sandpaper tongue of the enemy. I wait for Cat, but he doesn’t come. Louise doesn’t sit on the edge of the bed the way Mom does, doesn’t plead, doesn’t offer a leg for me to kick at, an arm to twist away from. With Louise, there is no inky darkness, no place to go. I’m at loose ends, and the air beneath the pillow quickly becomes hot and thick.
    I turn the pillow aside in search of fresh air. Beyond the open bathroom door I can see Louise at the mirror, adjusting the pins in her small round hat. In the reflection, she catches my eye.
    “Yah don’t wanna be raging against me,” she says, her voice quiet and simple. “A child’s always got the power to break her mumma’s heart. But yah cyaant break mine; not yet, Addy.”
    I lie on the bed and listen to a bird calling outside the window. Bob White, says the bird. Bob White.
    “All right den, Addy, I’ll see yah after service.”
    Before she can walk away, before I can think anymore, I walk, head bent, back into the bathroom.
    The first stroke of the brush brings tears to my eyes, and Louise must take a scissors to three impossible nests. When she’s done she fastens the top of my hair with a blue ribbon. I can’t stop a smile when Louise looks at me head-on.
    We walk down the long hall that separates our rooms from the big center of the house. I get up on my tiptoes as I pass my parents’ door and am rounding the corner to the top of the stairs when I catch the smell of frying bacon coming up the stairwell. Louise’s eyebrows are raised in surprise. Grabbing the bannister, I clatter down the stairs.
    The kitchen is a cloud of blue-brown smoke. Louise pushes past me and turns off the burner that flames beneath a cast-iron pan. Five or six tar black strips of bacon spit their last, drowning in a pool of hot grease. I look to the far end of the room, where the table is set for four, crowned at the center by a clutch of forlorn daisies in a crystal vase. Mom sits at her place with her back to us, turned to face the sliding glass doors that open to the back lawn. A half dozen sooty cigarette filters fill an ashtray at her elbow. In her lap is a script open to the last pages.
    At the sound of my hard-soled shoes on the tiled floor, Mom turns around. Her skin and lips and hair seem to disappear, papery and pale against the blushy collar of her robe. The delicate skin beneath her eyes is ashy gray.
    “Good morning!” she calls out, her voice faltering on sleep and smoke. Her face looks confused when she notices the haze between her and us.
    “Oh,” she says, frowning. “Whoopsy daisy.”
    She walks to the stove, and Louise steps out of the way. When she finds the knob already in the off position, she tugs on it anyway and then peers into the bottom of the pan.
    “Oh, well,” she says turning to us with a quick, tired smile. “My gosh, Addy.” My mother looks me up and down. “You let Louise brush your hair!”
    I feel I’ve lost something. I turn my ankles and say nothing.
    “Thank you,” Mom says to Louise, extravagantly. “Well. Hmm.” She turns back to the stove, as if she is looking for something but not sure what, then returns to us, her greenish eyes watery and bright. “Don’t you look lovely. Where are you off to?”
    “Church. Dilly’s coming to carry us dere. Addy says she’s never been.”
    My mother laughs gently.
    “Oh Louise, that’s totally