A RIVER SWELLED
By Hannah Tello
Val squishes up her mouth into a tight wrinkled circle while she snips and cuts Jolene’s hair. Big uneven chunks, thickand sticky with waxes and gels, plop onto the dirty linoleum. She pulls the hair in pieces away from Jolene's head, pinching the sections between her first and second fingers, and then chopping off ends in haphazard angles. The left side of Jolene's head, tilted down to the floor, has already been shaved clean, just a few patches of fuzz visible.
Jolene is perched on a wooden stool beside the kitchen sink, overburdened with mismatched dishes. The kitchen is colored by faded yellows and oranges. The cabinet above the sink has a Sex Pistols poster as a door. Atop the yellow laminate counter that divides the kitchen and living room is a box of white wine and a beaten up record player. The needle rolls along the grooves of a worn vinyl copy of Clash’s London Calling, and the audio chaos fills the room. Jolene reaches for the wine; her orange and white striped mug sloshes full beneath the plastic spout. “Want some?” she asks after she’s resettled herself on her stool.
Val shakes her head, scissors slicing through a strip of hair. “Not now,” she says. Val, barefoot, pivots around the stool. Val’s right ear is adorned with six studs and one gold hoop; her left bears a single onyx earring. Her auburn hair is buzz-cut until the nape of her neck, where it wisps off in thin, airy strands against her bare skin. A homemade belt of bottle caps and pins with slogans like “Tits Are for Kids” and “Feminism is Awareness is Feminism” sit around her waist. The front of her dress and the knees of her torn leggings are speckled with frizzy tufts and spiky barbs of other people's hair.
She steps back from Jolene; she sets her thin hands on the swelling cusp of her hips. “I think you're good,” Val says.
Jolene hops down from the stool. She scans the room quickly before settling for a sufficiently clean pot. and holds it in front of her face, craning her neck from side to side and shifting her wavy reflection. “Dye it?”
“Nah. It's done,” says Val. “Wear it a few days. If you don't like it we can just chop it off and start over.”
Jolene hops down from her perch and kisses Val, quickly, on the mouth. “Do you want me to see who else wants one?”
Val kicks the remains of Jolene's hair around on the floor. It sticks to the bottom of her feet. “I know Charlotte and Bill went down to meet someone about fixing the van. See if Sweeney is around. She was on the stairs last time I saw her.”
Jolene resettles the pot in the sink. “Where’s Steve?”
Val slides her fingers up and down the blades of her scissors. She shrugs, a motion that involves her entire upper body. “Out. He left early this morning.” She pauses and briefly bites her bottom lip. “He had an interview.”
Jolene crinkles up her brow and smacks her hands, palms down, onto the counter. “He’s quitting his job at the group home?” she asks.
Val lays down the scissors and fiddles with the hemline of her dress. She pulls the fabric away from her body and then smoothes her hands down the front, flattening the dress against her abdomen. “No. It’s not a job interview. It’s at the university.”
“You’re shitting me,” Jolene says, eyebrows shooting upward. Val just shakes her head.
“Well,” she continues, “that’s totally out of left field. What inspired him?”
“He’s been thinking about it for a while,” Valy says.
“I guess.” Jolene pauses. “But why now?”
Val looks at her feet and hooks her thumbs in the straps of her jumper. “Things change.”
Jolene lingers for a bit, but eventually she shuffles out of the kitchen towards the porch. Val bends down and starts scooping up hair. The clumps come in shades of burgundy, blonde, and blue. She carries them over to a trash bag hooked onto the refrigerator door. Val quietly sings along with Joe Strummer, opening her mouth wide to imitate the thick accents. London calling to the underworld! Come out of the cupboards, all you boys and girls!
A woman with a long mess of blonde hair marches into the kitchen and plops onto the stool-turned-salon-chair, a smoldering cigarette dangling from her mouth. “I can't believe you turned downed our offer for lead vocals, Val.” Sweeney’s men’s pants hang loosely around her waist, the tattered ends dragging across the floor. Her tee shirt is really the front of one shirt and the back of another, held together up the sides by a ladder of safety pins. She grins with the left corner of her mouth and the outer tip of her right eyebrow.
“Oh, please,” Val replies, a laugh somewhere beneath her words. “I’ll just stick to banging on flower pots with wooden spoons.”
Sweeney teeters on the stool “You don’t want to be front and center?”
Val wipes her palms down the front of her dress. “Someone has to play percussion, right?” She moves behind Sweeney and pulls multiple clips from Sweeney's thick mess of hair. Val reattaches the arsenal of clips to the shoulder strap of her dress. “Besides, I think Charlotte does just fine.”
Sweeney pulls what has become a stub of a cigarette from her mouth and presses it into
her slacks, leaving a black ash blotch and sending stinging smoke up into Val's nostrils. “Touché, sister. Touché.”
Val’s scissors make crisp slicing sounds as she lifts and drops big chunks of Sweeney’s hair. Sweeney lolls her head from side to side, but Val’s hands are deft and quick enough to catch the parts of hair that she wants. “So,” Sweeney begins, bulbous eyes rolling around to look at Val, “where is Steve?”
Val turns her lips in tight, but doesn’t miss a beat in her cutting. “At an interview.”
Sweeney nods; a clump of hair slips from Val’s fingers. “Yeah,” Sweeney says. “Jolene told me. The university, hm? That’s serious business.” Val resituates herself around the stool and nods. “What’s his plan?”
Val runs her fingers through what is left of Sweeney’s blonde locks. “Who knows?”
“Well, if anyone does, you do.” Val just shakes her head and shrugs, keeping up the quick work on Sweeney’s hair. “Things change,” she says. Sweeney smirks but says nothing. Val lifts and drops pieces in interlocking waves and angles until her feet are covered in the soft blonde fluff. She slides around the stool as she cuts away, mouthing lyrics to herself. A nuclear error, but I have no fear! London is drowning--and I live by the river.
Soon, Sweeney's head has been completely transformed. What was previously an overwhelming blonde mass is now tightly and jaggedly cropped right against her scalp. When Val steps back from the stool, Sweeny runs her fingers up the sides of her head, pulling what little hair is left up through her fingers; when she lets go, the pieces stick into the air for a moment before sagging and curling back down.
“Nice work, lady,” Sweeney says. Val smiles and pulls strands of hair from her worn scissors. “Feels good once it’s all gone, you know?”
“Mm,” Val replies, still looking at the blades in her hands. “New. Fresh.”
Both women turn towards the click and squeak of the front door opening. Steve tosses a flimsy canvas bag onto the Mexican rug in the living room. “Looking good, Sweeney,” he says. He tucks the toe of one foot onto the heel of the other to kick off his scuffed loafer while he shuts the door. Val turns at the sound of his voice, smiles, and walks to the sink to begin rinsing her scissors.
“Shit, Steve, look at you!” Sweeney remarks, glancing up and down his body. Steve’s pale green button down is half tucked into a pair of chinos, and his mop of black hair is combed back and wetted down.
Steven chuckles. “Yeah, every now and then I clean up.”
“I didn’t know you had an interview,” Sweeney says, tilting her head dramatically to the side.
Steve collapses on the futon. “Yeah, it kind of just came up, I guess.”
Sweeney swaggers over to him and plops onto the wooden arm. “So college, hm? Jumping into the game a little late.”
Steve shrugs, leaning down to shuffle in his bag for something. “It’s always been a possibility.”
“Well, you never talked about it.”
“I’ve thought about it.”
“Oh, man,” Sweeney says. “He’ll be in sweater vests in the first semester!”
“Fuck off,” he replies.
Sweeney punches Steve’s shoulder. “No, no, no. It’s true. Remember Amy? Remember her, Steve? She stayed with us for months, a total dirt bag. She did the piercings when Rockers Against Reagan was here, remember? I saw her downtown the other day. I walked right past her--didn’t even notice at first. She was wearing a pant-suit and carrying a leather briefcase. I swear it. I saw her. Eerie.”
Steve leans back, hands up in front of him, palms out. “It’s just an interview, ok?” He pauses, glances towards the sink, towards Val, and says, “Things change.”
Val scrubs away at her scissors, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. London calling--and I don't wanna shout. But when we were talking--I saw you nodding out.
“That’s what I’ve been hearing.” Sweeney stumbles through the living room’s scattered array of zines and candles and notebooks. She sends one last grin at Val over her shoulder before she leaves.
Val turns off the water and settles her scissors on a towel by the sink. She turns to Steve, hip against the counter. “How did it go?” she asks.
Steve stands up from the futon. “Pretty good. I can’t really ever tell, you know?”
“I’m sure it was fine.”
They stand with the counter between them, watching each other and nodding. The needle on the record player bumps steadily along, at the end of its song now, sending scratchybits of static into the room. Val picks the needle off and sets it in its notch. Smoke from the porch, like sweet, tangy sage, wafts into the room, filling up the space to its corners.
Val motions to the stool behind her. “Haircut?”
Steve nods and grins. He pulls his shirt over his head without unbuttoning it and comes around the counter to sit on the stool.
Val picks up her clean scissors and runs her fingers through Steve’s hair a few times, loosening it from its pomade or wax. Starting at the top of Steve’s head, Val lifts up bunches of hair, stretches them away from his scalp, and slips them through the blades of her scissors. The black strands relax in their new places, somehow softer and more carefully situated. Steve closes his eyes while she works, his head rocking slightly every now and then. Val’s face relaxes as she moves, only her eyes are fixed and focused. The work takes a little longer for Steve; when she is finished, his hair is arranged in well-placed locks and layers.
“Done,” Val says, almost in a whisper.
Steve opens his eyes slowly, a little glazed and with a sleepy smile. He meets Val’s eyes, their faces close. “Feels good,” he says.
“Looks good,” Val says, and runs her open hand down the back of his head. Steve sighs and rests his ear against the front of Val’s dress. His earrings clink against her belt. Val hesitates, only slightly, before tucking her hands around his head and holding him there. Faraway laughter seeps in from the porch.
After a moment, Steve presses his open hand to her belly, whisper-singing, “London calling at the top of the dial. After all this, won't you give me a smile? I never felt so much alike.”
