Hairbrushes; a story written in 2007

The Seven-Eleven on the corner sells hairbrushes. And combs. For a dollar or so, any kid can have a brush.


The little Hispanic girl I tutored—years ago, for English vocabulary and writing—hid her face behind matted tangles of dull, black hair. It would fall onto her paper when she leaned down to write, veiling her pucker-lipped profile. She never touched it. Sometimes she wrote right over the top of the strands that dropped across her homework page. I began trading with her. For every Spanish word she could teach me, I brought her a trinket. Nail polish, elastics, a toothbrush, items sold at dollar stores. The first thing I bought her was a hairbrush.

They weren’t always widely-accessible. Comb sets with matching mirrors used to be precious gifts to new brides. My grandmother has a porcelain-handled brush (never to be used!) that sits atop an antique wardrobe next to her bed. Seeing it fills my mind with images of long nightgowns, lantern-lit bedrooms, a distinguished husband smiling at his wife as she combs her hair before bed.



My grandmother only uses the Phillips Light Touch-1 hairbrush, manufactured in France. “You can’t buy them anywhere, now,” she tells me as she takes a medium-sized brush out of the toiletry pantry (they’ve got a fair supply of toilet paper, hair dye, toothpaste, and hotel shampoos and conditioners). She gave me the brush, and I thanked her for it, and I use it. I didn’t tell her that the Taylor Maid store on Center Street still sells them, because she was very pleased to part with one of her dear brushes. I know about the stock at Taylor Maid because I buy one for my father (raised with my grandmother’s preferences) every Christmas. His hair is as long as mine, thinner. He wears the bristles out about three times faster than I do—I’m not sure how. He must brush oftener, which may advance the thinning.

Sometimes, when we lived in the house I grew up in, he would brush my hair for me. I loved this; he took his time, started at the ends, and gently, gently untangled any snarls. I always thought he could make my hair grow longer because when he finished, and put my hair in a ponytail, he twisted the elastic around my hair at the base of my neck—Mom always pulled the base of the ponytail up to the crown of my head. She pointed the difference out to me after I insisted that Dad knew more about my hair.

My mother always started at the crown of my head—she brushed my hair from the top down. I would wrap my arms around her waist, grab the back of her shirt, and she’d rip the brush down through my long hair. I screamed and cried and yelled at her, and she told me stories about what happened to little girls who didn’t brush their hair. One character had to chop all her pretty hair off because birds and mice started to make nests in her un-brushed locks.

By the time I was seven or eight, I did my own hair. I also started braiding my dad’s hair before he went to work, so that it would stay out of his face. I haven’t seen him wear a braid for ages, I just realized. Strange. Now, I style everybody’s hair. My roommate, for her wedding. My mom, for her Halloween costume. I cut my brother’s hair for school pictures, and I help my sister dye hers every month. And every once in a while, I’ll ask my sister to brush my hair while we sit and talk. There’s something nice about that.