Free The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay by Beverly Jensen Page A

seven boys. Christ. He pressed the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and sat for a long time before lighting it. Well, they’d offered.
     
    One afternoon all three girls had baths in the tin tub in the kitchen—for the men were mostly gone during the day. They were sitting upstairs on the beds untangling strands of wet hair with their fingers and passing the one comb between them. Suddenly Maddie looked up at the two girls, her eyes wide. “I want to look more . . .” They sat and waited for the next word, but it never came.
    “Pretty?” Avis asked finally. “You mean you want to look more pretty?” Maddie nodded, barely moving her head.
    “You want us to cut your hair for you, me and Idella?” Avis was excited.
    “You could do that?”
    “I guess.” Idella shrugged.
    Avis ran down the stairs, came back with Mother’s best scissors, and handed them to Idella, who was already combing and making a part down the middle of Maddie’s hair.
    “Hold still,” Idella said. “You’ve got to put your head up, not down, Maddie, or I can’t see which way the hair falls.” She carefully set about to trim the ragged edges of Maddie’s hair into as even a line as she could. “This will certainly be an improvement.”
    “Your mother,” Maddie asked, keeping her head still. “Was her hair very beautiful?”
    “Oh, yes.” Avis talked while Idella concentrated on her snips. “She had long, long hair, and she wore it up on her head with ribbon. You should wear your hair up, Maddie.”
    “I don’t know how to do that.”
    “Don’t look at Avis.” Idella was bent in concentration.
    “There’s a special top drawer where Dad keeps Mother’s things.” Avis scooched in front of Maddie so that she could talk to her. “Sometimes me and Idella go in there and look at them. Her clothes and her brushes and hair things.”
    “Mother’s hair was a lovely light brown.” Idella put down the scissors and started to gently comb. “When the sun was on it, there were streaks of blond. She’d wash it from the rain-barrel water and then let it dry in the sun. We’d all put our faces in her hair to smell it. Dad, too. He came out of the barn once and saw us laughing ’cause Mother would tickle us by brushing her hair soft across our faces. He walked right up to us and said he wanted a turn. And he got one. A long one.”
    “They kissed with us right there in front of them.” Avis stood up suddenly. “Aunt Francie made a fancy braid of Mother’s hair when she died, and we all got a piece of it. Do you want to see mine?”
    “I don’t think you should,” Idella said.
    “Why not? It’s my piece.”
    Avis went to her drawer and pulled out a cigar box. Dad had given them each one for their birthday for treasures. Idella knew what was in Avis’s. Dried flowers from Mother’s grave, as there were in her own box, and shells and rocks they’d found down on the beach—mostly little bits of nothing.
    Idella’s box had truly valuable things. Besides her own lock of Mother’s hair, there was a handkerchief that had been Mother’s, and sewing scraps from one of her dresses, and beautiful buttons Mother had cut off an old blouse and given to Idella. There were eight of them, and they were blue. She planned to use them someday on a special dress, maybe even her wedding dress.
    Avis riffled through her box and removed a carefully folded handkerchief. She laid it on the bed. Slowly she took from the folds a thin braid of soft brown hair. It was clipped at each end with a tiny knot of velvet ribbon. “When you hold it to the light, you can see the blond of it.”
    “Can I touch it?” Maddie asked.
    “If your hands are clean.”
    Maddie rubbed her hands into the folds of her skirt and then placed the tip of her thick, rough finger onto the lock of hair. “It’s so soft,” she murmured.
    “Avis, put that away. There’ll never be another strand of Mother’s hair. Never.” Idella turned away and stared hard out the