Goldie didn’t complain.
She just waited until the child moved it.
She was nine years old.
That was the part I couldn’t stop thinking about.
Why did a nine-year-old have to organize so much of her day around her hair?
I never asked Goldie’s father.
For a while, none of us did.
That changed at the winter concert.
On that day, parents and children were packed into the corridor outside the auditorium.
They were waiting for the doors to open.
Goldie’s father had claimed his usual spot by the window.
Goldie sat on a chair while he worked.
Her costume was already on, and a silver ribbon lay across his knee.
He divided her hair into sections, fingers moving quickly and carefully.
Goldie kept glancing toward the other girls.
They were running up and down the corridor in their costumes, whispering and laughing.
“Hold still, sweetheart,” her father said.
“I’m trying.”
“I’m almost done.”
He wasn’t harsh.
That almost made the whole thing more confusing.
When he finished, he tied the silver ribbon around the end and held up the mirror.
Goldie looked at herself.
“Pretty?”
“Very.”
She grinned, kissed him quickly on the cheek, and ran toward her friends.
Her father stayed behind to put the pins back into a small case.
That was when one of the mothers spoke.
“Somebody should have let that child get a real haircut years ago.”
A few people turned.
Goldie’s father said, “Thank you, but we manage on our own.”
The mother folded her arms.
“That’s not the point. Look at her. She carries that around like a backpack.”
He closed the pin case.
Another mother joined in.
“You can see she’s uncomfortable. That’s not devotion anymore, that’s something else.”
I remember wishing they would stop, even though part of me agreed.
Then a third woman said quietly, “Maybe you’re the one who can’t let go of something, and she’s the one paying for it.”
Goldie’s father stood up. He suddenly looked sad.
Before he could answer, I noticed several people looking past us.
Goldie was standing at the end of the corridor.
