Toupee

          Stella no longer sleeps. If she’s not rocking Lila in the nursery, she’s surfing the internet. Lila, our two-year old, is beginning to sound demonic.

          Stella’s used coffee mugs leave dark stains on the burled walnut desk, like aged rings inside a tree trunk. The coffee-stained rings make me cry—I’m a sodden mess. Yes, grown men cry. They cry in secret. They cry with blood-red eyes, without tears.

          Stella is calm. At night, the glow of electrons illuminates her luxuriant red locks. So beautiful still, her cascading pelt like a thing that never grows old. If you sever hair from the head, it will never die.

          Stella barks instructions at me. In the space between our silences, foreign words infiltrate —chromosomes, mucopolysaccharide, lost enzymes. Treatment schedules for Lila are scrawled on paper, affixed to the fridge by a magnet of the Rome Colliseo. What is Stella doing on the internet night and day? When I peer into the study, she turns the monitor away.

          Huddled whispers, horror mingled with sympathy. The neighbors in our condo can’t help but stare at Lila’s abnormally large skull, hollow eyes, and emaciated body. The question on their lips: how old is she? They gasp when we tell them. Next, what’s the prognosis? We don’t answer this one.

          One night, Stella comes to bed, equipped with printed pages from the computer to show me. It’s not perfect, she says, but it’s something. The printed pages rustle, all speaking at once. All from a website called Babytoupee.com, offering products such as these: the Bob Marley rasta with dreadlocks, the Donald Trump smoothed-over front pate, the Lil’ Kim golden curls abounding. 

          “Is this a fucking joke?” I realize I’m yelling.

          Stella shouts back. “I just want her to feel what it’s like to have hair. I just want them to stop staring. Is that so wrong?”

          Stella doesn’t cry. She’s full of anger and kinetic energy. She throws all her hair accessories into a shoebox. Banana clips, barrettes, tortoiseshell combs, fuschia hairbands, Sofia claws, rainbow scrunchies. 

          “What are you doing?” 

          Stella doesn’t answer.

          The next day Stella shaves off her hair. She comes home, and I stare at the hard knuckly bone of her head. I’ve never really seen the shape of her skull before, although I’ve felt it up every time we kissed. Her skull is architectural, with shadows and planes that I never knew were there, that I long to explore. She doesn’t even notice my staring.

          A week later, she brings home a wig for Lila. Made from Stella’s hair, it’s a burnished red, as red as Lila’s lips were when she was born.

          The next day, I stop off at a vintage clothing store in the West Village. I go crazy. Onto the counter I pile a leather rocker jacket, a T-shirt with a logo of an inverted crucifix, bondage trousers, spike bands, clunky boots. This is to protect my family, that’s what I tell myself.

          At a barber in the Tenderloin, I ask for a Mohawk and green dye. When he’s finished, I hardly recognize myself. My hair clippings lie on the floor, useless for a wig, useless for anything. As I watch the barber sweeping it out, I think about sheer waste and I try to say goodbye.

          What a picture we make. When we go out, the neighbors really get an eyeful. I stroke my jacket, expand my chest, angle and thrust my Mohawk. Stella, Lila and I—in the mirror, I see how we resemble the last members of a tribe.  









Elaine Chiew lives in London, England. Her work recently won First Prize in the Bridport International Short Story Competition, and has also appeared in the following anthologies: See You Next Tuesday: The Second Coming (Better Non Sequitur Media), Best of the Web 2008 (Dzanc Books), Hobart (the Games Issue), Alimentum (Issue 6), as well as a variety of publications, including  Wigleaf and Night Train. She blogs at www.elainepchiew.blogspot.com.