One of the worst things about living in rural Ohio was our very long lane. I can't even begin to count how many times I had to run to the end of that lane to catch the approaching schoolbus. Sometimes, when the icy air froze my nostrils together, my mom would wait with me in the warmth of our Volkswagen van, but most often, I was on my own. Even now, as a forty-year-old woman, I still have nightmares that I'm standing at the storm door in the front room, and I miss the bus, because I either don't have my schoolbooks together, or I'm in my Scooby Doo undies, or I don't have my hair brushed.
And having my hair brushed was a very, very big deal, so I certainly couldn't have gotten on the bus with my tresses in a tangle.
Most times, when I was very young, my mom would tame my stubbornly curly hair into two sections and pull them into pigtails on top of either side of my head. It was the only time my hair looked cute. Usually, it was a stubborn mess, a "rat's nest," as my mom would call it.
On one occasion, when I was in kindergarten, my pigtails and I took that long driveway to the end and got on that big bus full of kids who were all older than I, and I found my seat. I don't think I was particularly bratty as a little child (my pictures of me look sweet enough) but something prompted one of the eighth grade boys (who were absolutely GIGANTIC when I was five) to use my pigtails daily as a source of entertainment. I was so intimidated and afraid of losing this older kid's attention that I didn't even tell my parents that my hair was being yanked. Then again, I don't think I told my parents much at all.
But one evening, as my mom was removing the rubber bands from my pigtails, she noticed that my tender young head was red and swollen, which, believe it or not, was not a normal thing. She finally got it out of me that this big kid...let me see, what was his name...Gary, I think (I feigned, knowing his name full well), had been, once in a while, accidentally tugging on my hair a little bit. She didn't say much as she finished brushing out my rat's nest.
The next day, I rode home on the bus, as usual, and Gary may or may not have pulled my pigtail, as he normally did, and the busdriver, Gib (who was my busdriver from the time I was five until I graduated from high school) made a left turn onto Lovebury Road, just like every day. But what was very NOT normal was that, when we got to eighth-grade Gary's stop, my mother was there, at the end of eighth-grade Gary's driveway, with her hands on her hips. Wow, I thought, I wonder why my mom's picking me up here? But it turned out that my mom wasn't there for me, but for my vengeance. She stomped onto that bus. She pulled big eighth-grade Gary out of his seat. She grabbed two fistfulls of eighth-grade Gary's beautiful black hair. And she yanked. Hard. Again. And again. And again. She yanked until eighth-grade Gary screeched like a little kindergarten girl. And then she stuck her finger in that big kid's face and spoke between gritted teeth.
"If you every touch my daughter again, I'll take each of your fingers off with my teeth." And then she took me by the hand, pulled me off that bus, and walked me home.
And then she took a pair of scissors from my dad's barber kit and lopped off all of my curls, cutting my hair so short that everyone thought I was a boy, including the cute older boys that I wanted to kiss.
