Alice, I Think

by Susan Juby

  On the personal development front, I have begun reading The Fellowship of the Ring, which is the first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s the kind of thing that every cultural critic should read. We are often more interested in science fiction and fantasy than average people. I’m on page two and really enjoying it. So far I like it just as much as I did The Hobbit, which really says something about me, I think.

  HOME-BASED LEARNERS: DEFECT!

  July 25

  Today Death Lord Bob wanted to hear more about my Life Goals. For some reason I felt compelled to lie to him. I told him that my goal was to go back to regular school! I have no idea why I told him that. I guess I just felt like he was looking for something a little more substantial than reading a few books. Unfortunately, Bob took it quite seriously. He got all excited and said how honored he was to have been “a real catalyst for change” in my life, and he was so glad he chose to go into counseling as a profession and “days like this make it all worthwhile.” He was practically jumping up and down. He said he’s going to do everything in his power to make sure the “transition is smooth” and assured me that “we are going to make this journey together.”

  What have I done? How am I going to tell my parents?

  Later

  I didn’t have to tell my parents. Bob did. And here’s the incredible thing. They think it’s a great idea. You’d almost think they didn’t want to homeschool me anymore.

  My mom said it’s natural for me to move back into the world. My dad said graduating with a proper high school diploma will “open a lot of doors for me.”

  I don’t think I’m ready for school. My only confidence comes from MacGregor. He said he knows I can do it. I hope he’s right.

  July 28

  Bob doesn’t waste any time. He’s got me enrolled already! Well, almost. He spoke to the counselor, and they decided that based on my special background and unusual circumstances, I am going to have to go to the Alternative Solutions School rather than the regular high school.

  According to the brochure Bob gave me, the Alternative has a “partnering relationship” with the Teens in Transition Club. The two “solutions-based institutions” are supposed to “offer young people a seamless support network for growing.” When I showed my dad, he said that what they definitely offer is an “absolute flair for acronyms,” whatever that means. Bob arranged for me to take English in the regular high school, because I am supposedly advanced in that area, but my important classes, like Life Skills and Family Studies, will be in the Alternative. He told me that the other Alternative students are an eclectic mix. I asked what that meant, and he hemmed and hawed and said that all the students are special in different ways. Some are there because they are top-level athletes and have to travel a lot and need a flexible schedule. Others have talents that need special nurturing. Maybe my advanced vocabulary is going to be my special talent. I can’t decide whether I’m excited about going to the Alternative or disappointed. It should be interesting meeting all those athletes, though. Maybe I’ll be inspired to take up a sport other than reading and criticizing.

  HELMET HEAD

  August 2

  A mother-daughter shopping trip shouldn’t cause posttraumatic stress disorder, should it? Well, in my family any outing is cause for concern.

  My mother and I went shopping and got my hair done today. Mom dropped me at the New in View thrift store to find some cool, Frank-like clothes while she went to the health food store. I was amazed at how much macramé the New in View had. My mom has a couple of plant hangers made out of the stuff that are older than me. It must be indestructible. I could have bought a whole macramé outfit—vest, bell bottoms, hat, purse, and Bible cover—but decided against it. I figured it probably wouldn’t help my mood any to dress in a material that feels so much like hay.

  The New in View was a little short on what my Complete Guide to Thrifting book calls “scores.” The stuff was cheap but not very cool. The Zellers and Fields tags were still on all the stretch pants. I found a pair of red-and-blue-checked four-way stretch pants and an orange tank top from the kids’ bin. The store didn’t have many down-filled vests, but I finally found a green one that must have belonged to a very small logger. It looks a bit like a life preserver, but it was the best I could do. I also got some nursing shoes. They didn’t have any of those cool striped sneakers from the seventies, but I figured I could draw some stripes on the nurse shoes at home.

  After I finished shopping at the New in View, Mom and I went over to Irma’s Salon to get my hair trimmed so it would look better in barrettes. Irma’s been giving me the Special ever since my mom retired the bowl. Irma has only one haircut, and she gives it to every single customer. But this time I told Irma I was after something a little different. I wanted my hair to look old-fashioned, big toward the back, and really short, just like Frank’s. Irma acted like she knew exactly what I wanted, like she did alternative haircuts all the time. At first she and my mom were so busy talking that she didn’t even seem to be looking at what she was doing. Then Mom went over to the Grocery Giant to finish her shopping, and for about five minutes Irma made a big show of getting into my haircut. If a furrowed brow and look of extreme concentration meant a good haircut, I would have the best in town. She moved from side to side, snipping here and there, and pursing her lips. I was starting to feel sick from all her ducking and weaving around my head. Irma’s probably too old to move so quickly, and I was almost grateful when another customer came in and Irma went back to gossiping and barely looking at what she was doing to my head.

  The whole thing was beginning to scare me. I couldn’t see how the mess Irma was making on my head would ever look like the hair on those girls who hang out at raves or whatever those big dances are called. Finally Irma got out the blow-dryer and a big round brush shaped like a curler. She said that the brush was the key to getting the old-fashioned look. By then I had my eyes squeezed shut. I opened them again when my mom came in and said “Oh” in this strange way.

  My hair was huge. I don’t know what Irma did, but my flat, straight hair was the size and shape of a construction helmet. The big part, which was supposed to be at the back of my head, was actually right on top, and my bangs plunged daringly toward my right eyebrow. When my mom pointed out how uneven my bangs were, Irma made a little stab at straightening them, but even I could see that too much adjustment would make me bald on my forehead. It was like when I tried trimming Barbie’s hair and in trying to get her hair even ended up leaving her with only little plugs of plastic bristles coming out of her scalp.

  My mom was totally upset. She actually said, “My God, Irma. I don’t even know if I should pay for this. It looks absolutely bizarre.”

  Irma got defensive and said it was what I had asked for.

  It was bad enough that I looked like a monster, but a fight between my mother and the most spiteful, gossipy hairdresser in town was more than I could handle. Everybody who complained about an Irma haircut was later heard to be a lesbian, or an infidel who cheated on her husband.

  I went and sat in the car while they worked it out. We have an ocean liner of an automobile with fins and everything. It might actually be sort of cool if it wasn’t rusted and covered with stickers for every lame folk band that has ever come through town. My mom and all her Folk Music Society friends are always getting really excited about some band of middle-aged ladies getting in touch with themselves through second careers in music and singing about menopause and other things that no one really wants to hear about. And then there are the exploited children of folk music, like Fleet and Arrow, to consider. The audience and the performers all wear way too much purple, if you ask me.

  Sitting out there with my football head in the parking lot of the Smithers Shopping Center, I was feeling pretty low, even with my new cool clothes. I was trying to calculate how many barrettes it would take to weigh down the lump on my head, and whether it would be grown out by the time school started, when someone knocked on
the car window. Embarrassed, I tried to pretend I didn’t hear. I stared straight ahead with a mean look on my face, but the knocking continued. When I looked up, I knew I was in hell.

  Two boys were staring in at me. And standing with them was the dread blond menace of first grade: Linda. My heart gave a thud and then began to jackhammer.

  I hadn’t seen Linda for years. She didn’t look as though she’d mellowed any.

  I glanced at the three of them out of the corner of my eye, hoping they would just go away. The dark-haired boy in the Whitesnake T-shirt knocked on the window again, and I looked up and smiled weakly.

  Whitesnake Boy told me to roll down the window. I didn’t want to seem scared, so I did. He asked what happened to my hair. The blond boy in the Judas Priest T-shirt said it looked like somebody’d put my head in a wood chipper. Linda just smirked.

  “Jack, ask her why she won’t answer us,” demanded the dark-haired boy.

  “Why won’t you answer Kevin?” asked the obedient Jack.

  They reached their hands in through the open window, trying to touch my huge hair.

  “Aaagh,” said Kevin, “my hand’s stuck.” He’d put his fingers through the shell of Aqua Net into the rat’s nest of tangles Irma had back-combed underneath for volume.

  Just then my mom came charging out of the salon. She took one look at Linda in her acid-wash jeans and the boys in their heavy-metal T-shirts, grabbing at my hair through the windows of the Wonderwagon, and went ballistic.

  She stormed over, a whirlwind in purple and pink cotton, tie-dyed scarves flying every which way.

  “Hey! Hey!”

  She was moving into her truly pissed shriek. I couldn’t believe it. There I was, trapped in the rust wagon with monster hair, and my hippie freak mother was about to do battle with the local head bangers.

  Mom started yelling, “Are you touching my daughter’s hair? Are you touching her hair? You had better not be putting your low-rent hands on my daughter’s hair!”

  She sounded like that guy in Taxi Driver, only even more psycho.

  Jack looked at Kevin and backed away from my mother. “She’s wiggin’, man,” he said. “Hey, we weren’t doing nothin’.”

  Then Linda brilliantly told my enraged mother that not only was I dead meat, but she (my mom) was a bitch. My mother, whose grip on herself isn’t the tightest at the best of times, got even louder. She started screaming at Linda about sociopaths and pacifism. It was a pretty incoherent performance, even for her.

  I took the opportunity to roll up my window.

  People started to come out of the shopping center to stare blankly at my hysterical mother. Linda coiled up, and before I knew it, she moved in and slapped my mom, hard. Then she sprang back, arms open at her sides, hands in loose fists, like some kind of martial arts fighter.

  Mom stood still for a moment. I don’t think Kevin and Jack were even breathing at this point. Then my mother launched herself at Linda, grabbed her by the lapels of her jean jacket, and threw her on the ground. On the ground, if you can believe it! Linda kicked viciously until she knocked my mother down with her. They pummeled each other like a couple of kindergartners in a fight over who gets to eat the Play-Doh, only it wasn’t children, it was my pink-and-purple mother and the worst girl in town rolling around in the parking lot of the Smithers Grocery Giant.

  I had this moment where I could see it all from outside. Me and my hair in the vast, finned station wagon staring out like a caged alien at a forty-year-old woman in hippie garb in a catfight with a small, blond-feathered head-banger girl. It was a defining moment, the kind you worry about in those nights where you can’t sleep, the kind that can ruin any hopes a person might have of a normal life.

  Anyway, Mr. Scott, who works in produce, and Ralph from canned goods broke it up. Mr. Scott waded in and lifted my mother off Linda. Mom immediately burst into tears. Ralph caught Linda as she tried to go after Mom again, and Linda bit Ralph’s hand right to the bone. He needed five stitches to close it up. Some bag boys came to Ralph’s assistance, and together they held Linda, who, by this time, was grunting and snarling and spitting like an animal.

  When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police showed up, my mom was still crying and Mr. Scott was awkwardly patting her on the back and looking embarrassed, yet manly and concerned. Jack and Kevin had disappeared. Linda was surrounded by a collection of hyper bag boys, and Ralph, white as a ghost, was being tended to by a group of checkout girls. Me and my hair were still sitting in the car with the windows rolled up.

  With the entire Grocery Giant staff giving assistance, I really didn’t think there was much I could do. After all, they’re trained to help.

  The police officer spoke to a couple of people. When he approached Linda and she called him an “f—ing pig,” his eyebrows rose slowly and he moved in a little closer to her.

  In a quiet counselor-to-mental patient voice, he asked Linda what was going on, and all the bag boys started talking at once. He listened, nodded, and then asked her again what happened. When she tried to kick him, he sighed and said, “Okay, Linda. If that’s how you want it.”

  Then he picked her up, screaming, yelling, and kicking, and put her in the prisoner part of the cruiser. After he locked her in, you could see her enraged face screaming silently. Then her head disappeared, and her feet, with only one high-top sneaker on, appeared and began smashing at the windows, hard enough to make the car shake.

  The officer took notes while he talked to my sobbing mother and the gray-faced and bleeding Ralph. Kevin and Jack were nowhere to be seen. When the cop knocked on my window, I rolled it down, looking, I hoped, innocent of any involvement.

  “Can you tell me what happened here, Miss?”

  “Oh. Um. Hard to say, really.”

  “Well, is that your mother over there?” he asked, pointing to my tear-stained mother, who stared at me with this horrified look.

  “Oh. Her. Well, yes. I guess so.”

  “Look, young lady,” he said. “Maybe you should tell me what went on here. You know, your mother is pretty upset. Does this have anything to do with your hair?”

  I gave him the whole story, helped along by my mother’s indignant promptings.

  “I can’t believe you! These kids were attacking you! Of course you know who they are!”

  She obviously didn’t remember Linda from my brief school career.

  “You saw that girl attack me. You were right there in the car.”

  She turned pathetically to the officer. “You have to understand, officer, after what Irma did to her hair …”

  Apparently Officer Ross felt quite sorry for my mother having to deal with me, so he sent us home and asked Mom to decide whether she wanted to press charges against Linda. Ralph was adamant that Linda was too crazy for him to consider charges. He said he would never be able to relax in the parking lot again if he thought she might be after him.

  That was our mother-daughter Saturday at the mall. I have to go to bed now due to exhaustion at reliving the trauma. My parents have decided that my behavior was unnatural. Even my dad said that it was completely unacceptable to sit in the car with the windows rolled up while my mother was attacked by “marauding white trash.”

  Before she stopped speaking to me, my mother asked me if I thought she should press charges. I said something along the lines of “Oh, that will really make my life fun when I try and go back to school.” She asked me what I thought we should do, and I told her I’d like to forget the whole embarrassing incident. She said she was just trying to protect me, and I said why didn’t she just kill me and get it over with. Then she cried and told my dad she couldn’t take it anymore. Shades of Mrs. Freison, if you ask me. Next thing you know she’ll be after the boy down at the Shell station.

  Whatever.

  It strikes me that perhaps what I learned today is that I would be a good observer of some kind. You know, one of those people who watch things happen and don’t feel the need to get involved. What are they ca
lled? Oh yeah, impartial observers. They go to wars and demonstrations and things and just watch. I could be quite good at that. I’m already in the late stages of advanced detachment where my mother is concerned. With a little practice I could feel that way about everyone.

  August 3

  I spent all morning trying out my new look. It certainly is radical.

  Colorwise, at least, I think I look pretty good in my orange tank top and red-and-blue-checked stretch pants. The green vest would probably look better over a turtleneck or at least something with sleeves, but I want to wear as much of my new stuff as possible.

  My hair still looks really bad. I washed it and let it dry naturally, but it is still lumpy and uneven. There are huge chunks missing here and there that just look like mistakes instead of the radical hairdo I was hoping for. I would like to get my hair fixed, but I would have to get my head shaved to even it out.

  I tried wearing barrettes at the front like Frank, but there really isn’t enough hair to hold them properly, so I put a few clips on the lump at the top of my head to try to hold it down. Maybe I would look better with my eyebrows plucked all thin and arched like Frank’s. I won’t get Irma to do it, though. She’d have me looking like an especially ugly extra on Star Trek.

  My parents still aren’t speaking to me. Dad stared at me hard when he saw my new look, but he turned away fast and didn’t say anything.

  Mom isn’t looking too great today either. She has a black eye and a couple of big scratches on her face. To be honest, she looks sort of tacky. She has been deep into her granola routine—meditating, playing sucky New Age music, and drinking gallons of Wandering Serenity tea in between phone calls to all her friends, telling them what happened. I expect the bean casseroles to start pouring in any minute to help her get through this time of trouble. I overheard her telling one that she’s decided not to press charges because there might be “repercussions” and the “authorities don’t seem to be able to do anything about the level of violence in this town.” You’d think she was Gandhi, rather than practically the instigator of the whole thing.