Hair was everywhere on my sister’s pillow. I looked over frantically to my mom who looked back at me with pleading eyes and a finger to her lips urging me to stay silent. I couldn’t take my eyes off the scattered black strands layering the pillowcase. Seeing my sister lose a part of her suddenly made it clear that it was a real possibility I could soon lose all of her. At that moment, my perception of my sister’s situation shattered entirely. The monotonous beeping of the monitors that had never bothered me before grew unbearably loud as if to warn of an impending danger. Each repetition looked to throw me over the threshold of emotional eruption. In just one defining moment, everything in the hospital room that was seemingly idle and innocent was all of a sudden suffocating and heavy with the weight of my sister’s situation.
I shifted my attention back to my mom, and, for the first time, I could recognize the evidence of the months of stress that my sister’s diagnosis had put on her. How had I not noticed before? It was so obviously present in the lines on my mom’s forehead, the tangledness of her hair, and the steady furrow of her eyebrows. As my sister played contentedly on her iPod, my mom reached swiftly behind her with a lint roller to hide the fallen clumps of hair. So many questions were anxiously held at the tip of my tongue. The longer I had to stay silent, the stronger I had to will myself to hide my frustration.
Why wouldn’t anyone tell me what was going on? If there was nothing to be concerned about, then why are there bags under my mom’s eyes? Why does my dad’s voice shake during our morning prayers? I shouldn’t ask. They have enough to worry about.
I then felt my mom’s gentle touch at the back of my head, tenderly stroking my hair and admiring the strands. While the motion was meant to be comforting, I couldn’t help but feel the pain behind each stroke.
The loss of my sister’s hair was the first clear evidence I had of the reality of my sister’s condition. Before then, living with my cousins had felt somewhat like a vacation, and visiting the hospital after school was just a routine. Even after she began losing hair, as much as it panicked me to not have control over the situation or to know the depths of what was going on, I never asked for the details to spare my parents the heartache and additional stress. Eventually, my mom retired the lint roller, and together, we all helped my sister understand and work through her loss. Just as my mother did that day, my sister often stroked my hair and asked to play with it. She never complained that it was always tangled and frizzy. She found amusement in putting my hair into wacky braids and teased up curls.
Like that one night: I was sitting at my usual spot by my sister’s bedside watching the television, and I glanced over and found that she had stopped watching the show and was instead watching me. Her gaze was casual yet piercing, fixated completely on the top of my head where my ponytail rested. I said her name once quietly, breaking her trance. Realizing she had been staring, Jaymie signaled me over and tapped the bed next to her. She said nothing while her fingers slowly and nimbly undid my hair tie and let my hair fall to my shoulders. Like clockwork, she twirled a few strands between her fingers.
“What are you doing, Jaymie?”
She replied back plainly, “Nothing,” though I could hear the faintest hint of a smile present in her sweet voice. There was no tension or animosity behind her motions. Instead, she would pause every so often to examine and admire. I had never really thought much about the hair on my head before, but I loved my hair because she did.
When she was done with her first chemo treatment, we began exploring head wraps and wigs. Many times, I would open my phone to a text message photo of my sister with a new look asking, “How do I look?” Of course, I always thought she looked fabulous. All I cared about was that she was healthy and confident in however she chose to wear her hair. In the end, she decided not to cover her head. She wanted to wear what she had proudly. My sister never shaved her head completely, and I adored the way patches of her hair remained stubbornly in place, hanging down to her shoulders, unfazed by its lack of company.
****
A few years passed. Slowly my sister’s hair completely returned. We were in and out of the hospital less. My parents were around more. Life was normal again.
Until it wasn’t.
I was walking around the bathroom, preparing for the day, when I looked down to find a handful of hair scattered along the bathroom floor.
Is that mine?
Memories of my sister’s pillow case and my mom’s lint roller immediately came to mind. I felt the same horror and confusion I had the moment that I realized chemo was silently tearing through my little sister. I kept picturing my mom in the hospital room working to take the hair off of my sister’s bed; in that moment, I wished she could’ve been there to hide what was happening from me, too. At the same time, the thought of telling her made me sick to my stomach. She doesn’t need this.
Staring myself down in the mirror, I ran my fingers through my hair as I had a thousand times before when a sudden smoothness beneath my fingers caught me off guard.
What was that?
In a panic, I ran my fingers through a second time, trying to find that same spot just to be sure. There it was. I placed my pointer finger on top of the spot as a placeholder so that I could more easily find what I was looking for in the mirror. When I removed my hand, a small pale dot glared back at me.
This can’t be happening. Is this normal?
Horrified, I called out with a frustratingly shaky voice, “Mom?”
Over the next few weeks, circular spots slowly began appearing all over my scalp, all smooth to the touch. I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with alopecia areata. I learned that there was no way to stop my immune system from attacking my hair follicles, but that there was a way to treat the spots as they came: steroid shots on my scalp. Again, going to the doctor after school became a routine as I got shot after shot every few weeks. I watched over one hundred long needles go into my scalp, hoping that the steroids would be the cure for my hair. For my insecurities. Doctor Parker often nudged me and told me with the most believable smile and slight southern drawl, “Your hair is so thick, those spots will never be found!” For that, I had my mother and grandmother to thank.
But it didn’t matter to me that others could not see the polka-dots on my scalp. Every new day that I would find a spot was draining. Day after day I would change my hair part, attempting to hide what I was most ashamed of. Very soon, my lack of confidence began to spread. A part of me was missing. Sometimes the wind would blow just enough in the wrong way at practice to where I could feel a spot being exposed, or I would accidentally move my hair to reveal a spot and sense the subtle shift of someone’s eyes up to the top of my head during a test. I couldn’t express myself or make myself forget that the spots were there. The most frustrating part was that I cared so much about something that, in the grand scheme of things, mattered very little. Somewhere between my sister’s diagnosis and mine, I had lost myself.
It didn’t help that I had no control over it. For those who suffer from alopecia areata, it’s not clear why the spots come and go. We had no way of telling when the spots would appear or if they were done appearing.
Life carried on that way for a while—a life where I had lost control, where I had lost my own sense of self. Until, one night, I was doing my hair before our family dinner, and in stepped my sister into my bathroom. Out of habit, I moved in closer to the mirror and did a routine check to make sure that my spots were covered. I had gotten a new spot close to where I usually part my hair, and it was refusing to be parted in any other way that would hide the exposed area. I felt myself getting frustrated when my sister interrupted, asking, “What are you doing, Achi?”
Her question caught me off guard. I put my arms down and looked at her through the mirror. “Nothing,” I replied, smiling back at her.
“Okay, can you curl my hair, then?”
“Of course I will.”
And I left the bathroom with her, completely disregarding my own hair. In fact, that night, for the first time in months, I went out with my polka-dot spots freely on display. When Jaymie had asked me to curl her hair that evening, I was reminded not of the chemo that had torn through her, nor of my mother’s lint roller and silent pleads, nor even of my own worry and frustration. Instead, I was reminded of the Jaymie who smiled and loved twisting my hair into braids, who turned the tedious task of wrap-shopping and wig-shopping into an amusing fashion show. She had accepted change as part of her journey and viewed it as an opportunity for growth. She let go of what she couldn’t control. And she had given me a chance to do the same. Why worry about my hair when I could play with hers?
Discussion Questions
- How might you characterize the structure of this story? In what ways does that structure help Angtuaco convey her attitudes toward the events described? In what ways does it help to convey her themes?
- The thesis of this essay is not explicitly stated in the narrative. How would you articulate the thesis? How are we to understand the essay's final moments in relation to that thesis?
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