238
BOB HAUGEN
Grandma lets
all
her air out. "Oh."
Mother picks up a brush. "That's settled, then." She dips the
brush in a bowl of water.
Grandma crouches, waiting. Her hands crawl up and down
her cane.
Mother dances slowly around Grandma, Grandma sniffing,
running her bulges in twitched tracks, twisting her squeezed-in head
around as round Mother wraps Grandma's hair in coils, wet coils,
hair springs with spikes for bottoms in a dome of bald spots growing
white and red scales.
Mother dances with a bristling piece of mesh and wire and
plastic bits to snare in Grandma's coils. Grandma thumps her cane
and screams.
"No!" She wriggles her coils free, snarls and crouches deeper.
"But Grandma. Grandma. We have to put the curlers in."
"No no, it hurts!"
Mother moves again with the rolled spiked thing. "All I want
is to make your hair pretty."
.
Grandma rolls back on her poached haunches, wraps her head
in stalks and hands and poker. "No no I don't want to
be
pretty.
It hurts!"
Mother holds the curler over Grandma's head.
"No no no no no no no!" Grandma writhes, bellows, crabs at
the thing. Mother dances, round Mother. "No no! No! It hurts, it
hurts!" Grandma scratches at the curler, her spiked head wagging
and dangling jaw, jaw chews, flapjaw; she whines and the leg stalks
and poker whip the Grandma-smelling air. Grandma
~
a crab, tipped
upside down. No, a spider. No.
"No! I don't have any hair, I don't have any! Cut it off! Cut
it all off, I don't want any hair! It hurts, it hurts, cut it off, it hurts!
It hurts it hurts it hurts hurts hurts hurts hurts!"
.
Mother sinks into the couch. She's dropped the curler. Father
carries whining Grandma to her bedroom and slides himself back
into a chair. We are silent.
Mother wheezes. "My god, my god, what am I going to do
with her?" She snaps her hands from the wrist, limply.
"She must
be
driving the rest of you buggy."
Father says
this
softly. "No. No."
"It's not fair to you." She pulls a Kleenex from her sleeve and
