Writers
and Ribbons: Cross Cut from Hair
Annie
Dillard describes in her essay: “Holy the Firm”, that a writer’s approach to life should be as with a “broadax”
(7). Yet many times the “broadax” of life
cuts us, sometimes, to ribbons. I
sat in quiet mediation of an assigned reading in an entry way and asked myself
a question. What is a writer to do with
the ribbons, these shreds of our lives? The scene that quickly unfolded
before my eyes supplied the answer.
A thin
mother stopped short outside the clinic waiting room’s exterior door. Her sharp tongue cut her tan daughter like a
paper’s edge. Voiceless, the girl stood
rooted beneath her mother’s gnarled haunch and pointy twig finger. I sat
exposed inside the aseptic entry way on a grainy plastic upholstered oversized
bench. The seat fit smartly between three clinic doors, the lab, and a
sanitized bathroom. One of my allergy
shots still bit at the back of my left arm. My wait stretched longer in the
entry way in the face of possible reaction. The woman screamed out matriarchal words. They
riveted past dodgy noises of late afternoon rush hour traffic. The feral tone
alarmed me through the thick tinted window panels. Almost baked savors twirled down from a sub
shop to the medical no nonsense air below. The manic woman chewed at the girl
without mercy, and demanded to know: who cut her hair.
This
child’s face arched her mother’s voltage, even though the attack remained
verbal. Cockeyed, the parent did not strike. Shrill questions continued. The
woman blocked the only entry to the medical offices, and in my case, the exit. The girl froze. Her gaze, level with mine,
pulled me to her marrow through the heavy sun heated jaundiced glass. Old cuts
from my childhood opened. A family pew
held me vulnerable to the way sharp tongues can make us bleed. Recollection dumped me to her side as if I
were a child again. Ruthless, I turned away, sifting my creative force from elders’ milled
words steeped in shame. My insides mimed a contortion: the girl’s panicky
downward turned face. I followed her
gaze, a cue to her shoe. A left foot drilled ineffectively at concrete. Her
toes pressed with random departure plans, devised for anywhere, maybe even
nearby traffic. The fiery interrogation continued. The queries flew like a hard
ball that smacked straight into a
mitt behind the girl’s ribcage. She felt
that one. My singed eyes did too.
Anger pulled my sinews up from a hapless inner child and stretched for
adult skin again. This maneuver
forfeited honor. Memory fought past fog
horns of sinking ships and cleared to times past I had spoken with harsh tones to
my daughters. Life cast me now, the mother, having imposed low self-esteem on
my own children with piously shorn parenting techniques. I cringed. The woman picked at her bangs like
a crow, pecking out spots that were shorter than others. The girl must have
mumbled a confession for the carrion bird screeched: “Who doled out the scissors? Had the teacher
known?” The door opened with the tap of
an oversized automatic handicap button.
My exhale finished, grateful this lady’s mouth snapped shut. The
matron’s stockpiled confidence stepped past, confirming her methodology had
broken the kid again. The girl slumped in faded musty clothes to push skeins of hair over
shorter bangs. She must have simply been trying to keep hair from her eyes. The woman loomed
wary and herded the child,
like an overzealous sheep dog against a disabled lamb to a lettered glass
office door.
Feeling
my thighs strengthen to stand, my tongue ready to defend . . . my mute voice could not escape. The mother and child slipped away. An epoch named me Coward then cast me as both players in the entryway opening scene. The
seated perspective submerged my stasis to that of progeny. Memory dismantled confidence to bare a
child’s wounds. Horror rebuilt bias to recite
arbitrary parental lines. Desolation
reminded escape from abuse is not an
easy path, whenever one walks away.
Although in an era past, still “broadax”
deep, these pangs cut me bare and keep my daughter estranged in a real time
infection of generational disease. Abusive parents were abused. They hurt others. The ‘others’
are their children, who from pain, eventually ~ cut themselves free. These cut ribbons twist around the
inevitable evening air and become a reflective fabric, the iridescence one sees
before a shock state, dazed. As a therapeutic bandage, I net our shredded lives
to paper before they fade away. Musings of my childhood, my parenting, and my
child control my pen. A salt tear and spit
wet finger turns each filling page.
Writing heals. Love letters tie
these life ribbons, ours and others, like a tourniquet or a tea rose, but they
tie. Vessels and variables mend as we
all shove aside another day. Words burst out of me, from writers too. We scribble on receipts or the back of
unopened mail just to get it out, put it down.
When it is down on paper, we
feel lighter. We still carry it, but not the whole load. We ask half
forgiveness and grant the same self-amnesty.
We remove the razor sharp voices finally from our heads, maybe to reach
up with literary defiance - a shining
blade in glory to cut our ties: to cut our hair.
for Deirdre~
for Deirdre~
Works cited
Dillard,
Annie. “Holy the Firm.” The Norton
Sampler: Short Essays for Composition.
Ed. Marilyn Moller. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, Inc, 2013. 7.
Print.
