The Chaos Of Creation

 It was my last day with long hair. Carefully trimmed strawberry layers cascaded over my tan shoulders in soft waves, covering the faint traces of freckles winter had forgotten. I stood motionless with my best friend, Randee, staring wide eyed at the task that awaited us. My room smelled of fresh paint and the coconut perfume I sprayed religiously on my wrists that year. Its walls were plastered with a flirtatious hot pink, my poetry graffiti written hastily in Sharpie marker on lonely closet doors. The bed was still unmade, soft checkered sheets hung over the side and dangled onto a black shag carpet. The fan buzzed as it swirled round and round, its blades gently brushing the tip of a wilting corsage that I had gotten at Homecoming freshman year. The corsage clung to the tip of my bed post desperately; its yellow leaves fragile and threatening to break with every gust of air the fan blew its way. I stared at that flower for a moment- I was wilting too.

            Randee and I were temporarily frozen. This room had been a sanctuary of sleepless nights-the two of us lying awake in my bed talking about pretty eyed boys with combination skin and eating midnight Ramen. It had been the prison cell that confined me on my many groundings, the salon where I learned how to properly apply lavender eye-liner, the studio where we had recorded countless videos of us with fake accents and outrageous costumes, shimmying our bodies and screeching the lyrics to “Love Is a Battlefield”. Soon, this room would be a vacant space.

            We started with the closet. My ringed fingers grabbed at anything and everything- long sleeved hippie blouses, tight fitting tube tops, oversized Mason hoodies, peace sign tee shirts, knee high boots. The two of us filled trash bags to the brim with my wardrobe, until the lacy sleeve of some abandoned dress I wore for Easter could be seen peeking out of the glossy black sack. Soon the closet was hollow, a forlorn Winnie The Pooh baseball cap the only item left inside. It sat hopelessly on the top shelf. I think it’s still there.

We moved on to the bathroom. We tore the pictures of me with Big Boy at the Winter Festival off of my mirror. We tossed pale pink Wet n Wild lip gloss into our purses. We worked as fast as we could fueled by pure terror- terror that he would come home. That we would hear the soft clicking of his black leather cowboy boots on the tile coming up the stairs, or the prominent hiss of his Mountain Dew bottle being opened. He would walk in and find his daughter robbing herself blind, hauling three trash bags full of her life into her best friends trashy Geo and flooring it out of her childhood paradise.

After the bathroom we started grabbing my knickknacks. The Cinderella music box I got at a garage sale when I was twelve that would only tinkle a few notes when it wanted to, the lamp I had made one eventless summer with a hot glue gun and too many flowers, my journals and a golden box with all my baby teethe and a guitar pick some nameless musician threw to me. All the fragments of my life, all the tiny treasures I deemed sacred.

“What about this?”

Randee held up a picture of me and my dad in a gold frame. I was thirteen and the gap in between my front teethe jutted out notably in my lopsided grin, screaming for braces we couldn’t afford. My dirty blonde hair curled above my shoulders and my face was plastered with pale foundation in a desperate attempt to cover my pre-teen acne. I was far from flawless and his leather jacket draped around my shoulders clashed horribly with the brown cowgirl hat perched on my head. He was perfect as usual. Younger, glowing with possibility and something else-a father’s love. I had almost forgotten how naturally that shine radiated from him. Lately he had acquired a faux-glow from too many tanning sessions and business trips to Florida.

 In the picture our eyes were exactly the same, an identical blue that I will never escape. To this day I look in the mirror and his eyes look back at me. I stared at the photograph for a moment, remembering the day it was taken at the mall. That Tuesday he let me skip school and bought me cheap Cajun chicken from the food court. Some frizzy haired blonde snapped that photo in a tacky Glamour Shots studio after our stomachs were full of rice and soy sauce.

            “No, leave it.”

I turned my back and stuffed the final remnants of my life into the last bag. My arms were forceful and determined as I scooped up all three bags and blew my bangs out of my eyes.

            “Lets go, I’m done here.”

We walked quickly out of my house. I did not stop to say goodbye, did not run my hands over the smooth surface of theVictorian Style bed from Pottery Barn I had begged for two years before, did not take one last breath to preserve the smell of my fathers mansion in my memory. My unpolished fingers were sweating as I punched the garage code for the last time and slid into shotgun.

In my mind I could see my room, completely bare-a forgotten picture of father and daughter the only item left inside its four walls, illuminated on the bookshelf.         “Where to?” Ran asked, turning the keys in the ignition and eyeing me cautiously. She knew I was aching to cry. I thought for a moment, then replied,

            “The salon.” 

She did not ask questions. She did not prod for an explanation. She just put on her black sunglasses, turned on my favorite song, and drove. A true best friend knows the value of silence.

A half hour later I was sitting in Mitchell’s in a sticky green smock. My father’s eyes stared back at me, a brunette armed with a lip ring and scissors chatting away about her punk rock boyfriend and Dalmatian who needs house training. I watched as my long strawberry layers fell to the ground. I bit my lip and whispered a farewell as I let go of all those pretty waves, as I let go of everything that had become familiar.

 When she was finished my hair gently brushed my chin, framing my face and exposing my shoulders. I took a deep breath and removed the smock. Randee smiled at me approvingly and I kicked the hair on the ground. I left my hair, and my memories, in a pile on the salon floor.