Painter Black

The following is one in a series of intermittent excerpts from Coma residents’ blogs published by Coma News as a community service

By Sadie Cracker

I realized today when I went to get my hair cut that I am the same age as my mother when she would color her hair black.
I realized it because the “hair dresser” — a word you can only say in quotes because it’s Coma– went to the how-to-fry-your-hair-in-place-cosmetology school and her hair is jet black like my mother’s hair used to be.
Anyway, she said,”Whadda ya want me to do with this?” As she pulls up three long gray hairs.
I dunno. Turn back time? Let me keep what I know now but be young and hot so I enjoy the stuff I missed because I didn’t understand how special that time was? Do that.
So I say, “Pull them.”
“Look Sadie. If I pull them more will grow in.”
I’m annoyed. I’m as annoyed as I feel right now hearing “Paint it Black” blast through the shop’s speakers and I wonder who made the music for my generation because all I hear about is my parents generation. Who speaks for me in music? Dave Matthews? Kermit the Frog?
“Just paint me black then.”
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Stella laughs. She smells like bubble gum and Purell hand sanitizer.
“What color do you really want? You got some blonde in there.
“Paint it black.” I said.
“That will look really weird with your coloring,” Stella said.
And I want to scream at her about how my hair has been black many times to match my mood or when I felt like goading my mother by stealing her hair color.
“Paint it black,” I said.
And the Stones sing even though everything isn’t black. It’s silvery gray and I am soft and old as my mother when she painted it black to cover up her age.
“I’m not sure you will like this,” Stella said. And I want to scream STELLAAAAAAAA and tell her to do it.
“You want to be cute. You’re not old enough to start looking bad.”
I want her to paint my fear of aging, my fear of being lonely, a life without my mother with me, of taking care of my father who is losing his mind, the way it feels to try to take care of boys who don’t have a father. I want to scream at her ‘STELLLLLLLAAAAAAAAA PAINT ME BLACK.’
And luckily I don’t have to. Jamilla is sitting under a dryer in the back of the shop with curlers in her hair and she pulls the dryer off her head and says, “Paint her black Stella. Paint her black.”
So Stella walks to the back of the shop to mix the color and I look in the mirror under the harsh light that makes my face look lined by what we like to call “smile wrinkles.” I’m excited Stella will paint me black like my mother, like my failing. She walks back and I see the bowl with the harsh black color mixed inside.
And then the song ends.
I look at Stella and said “You know what, let’s just do some blonde highlights.”

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