Autobiography of a Face (12 page)

My hat was my barrier between me, and what I was vaguely becoming aware of as ugly about me, and the world. It hid me, hid my secret, though badly, and when people made fun of me or stared at me I assumed it was only because they could guess what was beneath my hat. It didn't occur to me that the whole picture, even with the hat, was ugly; as long as I had it on, I felt safe. Once, on television, I saw someone lose his hat in the wind and I immediately panicked for him, for his sudden exposure. It was a visceral reaction.

As the teasing continued, both from strangers and from the very boys whom I'd once regarded as friends, I began to suspect that something was wrong. I identified the problem as my baldness, as this
thing that
wasn't really me but some digression from me, some outside force beyond my control. I assumed that once the problem was solved, once my hair grew back in, I would be complete again, whole, and all of this would be over, like a bad dream. I still saw everything as fixable.

 

During this time my mother was working in the Occupational Therapy Department of a Hasidic nursing home, and most of my mother's coworkers were Hasidim. Hasidic custom dictates that once a woman is married she must cover her hair. This used to be done with kerchiefs, but now most of the women wore wigs. I imagine they grew tired of their wigs the same way other women grow tired of their clothes, because there seemed to be a surplus of discarded wigs in the community. As my mother's friends became aware of my predicament, they generously began to donate these hand-me-down hairpieces. My mother didn't know how to refuse them, and the first time she came home with a wig we all had a good time in the kitchen playing with it, trying it on ourselves first and then on the cats. When I put it on, I looked as ridiculous as my brothers and sisters, not to mention the cats, so it was all a big safe joke.

But more wigs kept coming home with my mother. Sometimes it seemed she had a new one every day, and the house began to fill up with them. Each emerged as more atrocious than the last; it was impossible to take any of them seriously. When her friends at the nursing home asked how the wigs had worked out, my mother politely but truthfully told them that none of them fit me properly. One of my mother's closest coworkers offered the services of her wig maker, who would measure my head and make one "just the way I wanted it, just like my real hair." Not wanting to appear ungrateful, I, coached by my mother, thanked this woman and agreed to go for a fitting, with the unspoken understanding between my mother and me that I did not really want a wig.

We drove to New City, a nearby town with a large Jewish population, and found the store in a small cluster of shops. I'd never been to a "parlor" before, and somehow I'd envisioned a fancy salon filled with glamorous women. But the room was harshly lit, with long overhead fluorescent bulbs, and instead of Warren Beatty, whom I'd seen in
Shampoo,
we were greeted by a small, old man who was bald himself. He affectionately beckoned me to sit in a chair facing a mirror framed with roughly carved pink and gold flowers. A large, dusty rubber plant with leaves as big as my head filled one corner of the room.

"So, the little girl wants a wig, eh?"

He smiled at me in the mirror. I shriveled inside, mortified beyond any realm I'd previously thought possible. He turned to my mother, and they began speaking, his hand resting on my bird-thin shoulder. I kept watching him in the mirror, not because I was fascinated by him, but because I didn't want to look at myself. I knew the moment was coming when he'd ask me to take off my hat. I knew there was nothing I could do about it except pretend I didn't care, and when he turned back to me and the moment finally came, I took off the hat as nonchalantly as possible and placed it in my lap. I kept my gaze directed at him in the mirror while he took out a measuring tape and ran lines over the various angles of my head. I liked this part. My hair was growing in at that point—it was about half an inch long—and his dry hand stroked the babylike fineness of it with a tenderness that made the back of my neck go all goose flesh.

After the measuring, he went to the back room to get different samples. Knowing I'd had long blond halt, he brought back wigs of varying lengths and shades of blond, ranging from bright yellow to almost brown. He placed each one in turn on my head and discussed with my mother which types were closest to my "natural" state. He explained that all of the wigs were made of human hair, which made me envision a bizarre blend of the Christmas story "The Gift of the Magi," in which a woman sells her hair for the sake of love, and the Holocaust, where I knew they'd shaved the heads and kept the hair of people about to die horrible deaths.

Now it was unavoidable; I had to look at myself in the mirror. As each wig was put on and adjusted, both the man and my mother would ask me what I thought, but all I could manage was a sullen nod or shake of the head. Looking at myself in these wigs, with their dull, however human, hair, horrified me, and each time the man commented on "how natural" it looked I could only see him, and eventually myself, as that much more alien.

How long was this going to go on? How many wigs were there in the world, anyway? Though inside I was growing more and more petulant, I made halfhearted efforts to look happy, and when the last wig was finally tried on, I actually smiled when the old man asked how I liked it. I hated it. At last the issue of cost came up, which in my mind signaled the end of this charade. I knew my mother would never want to pay for something as ludicrous as a wig, and besides, hadn't we more or less agreed we weren't really going to get one? The man quoted an astounding sum, far higher than we could have even joked about. I sat in the chair, my feet swinging, ready to leave, and watched the reflections of my mother and this man talking in the mirror. To my great amazement, I saw a look on my mother's face that seemed to say she was actually considering ordering one of these overpriced, custom-made patches of hair. Could she be serious? I looked on in amazement, and when we finally left the store it was with a promise that she would think it over and call him tomorrow.

Once we were in the car, I thought she would look at me and we'd both laugh, share our private joke, but instead she turned and addressed me seriously. "Well, do you want one? It's a lot of money, but if you want one, I'll buy it for you."

What had happened? I thought we'd only gone to be polite to her friend. Wasn't it obvious how hideous those wigs were, how alarming? I didn't know how to reply. Back at home she called up her friend to tell her what had happened, and I heard her say, "It was the first time in a long time I've seen her smile. She hasn't smiled in so long."

So that was it. Normally I was intuitive and could guess what was going on behind people's words and actions, but if my own mother could be so wrong about me, how could I know I wasn't mistaken in my own interpretations?

To keep the situation from getting too far out of hand, I went to my mother and told her outright that I didn't want a wig, that I thought they were ugly. She looked relieved because of the expense, but as she looked at me and smiled I thought again of what she'd said on the phone. I smiled at her, sick in my heart at this newly discovered chasm opening up between me and the rest of the world, as if there weren't enough chasms already. But out of my compulsion to continually seek the truth I questioned her about her conversation with her friend, which I saw as a betrayal of me. I insisted I was okay, happy even, that the wig was a big joke. She smiled back at me even more broadly, relieved to see my old self, and for that moment I was happy, content that I could at least give her that.

I kept on wearing my hat. But I couldn't shake the image of my face staring back at me with that ludicrous, grotesque halo of a wig. Did they actually mean it when they said, "Now doesn't that look nice?" I felt quite certain that I looked awful in those wigs, yet why did my belief not seem to match up with everyone else's? Were they lying to me? Perhaps they didn't want to hurt my feelings. It was dawning on me that I might look much worse than I had supposed.

One morning I went into the bathroom and shut the door, though I was alone in the house. I turned on the lights and very carefully, very seriously, assessed my face in the mirror. I was bald, but I knew that already. I also knew I had buck teeth, something I was vaguely ashamed of but hadn't given too much thought to until this moment. My teeth were ugly. And, I noticed, they were made worse by the fact that my chin seemed so small. How had it gotten that way? I didn't remember it being so small before. I rooted around in the cabinets and came up with a hand mirror and, with a bit of angling, looked for the first time at my right profile. I knew to expect a scat, but how had my face sunk in like that? I didn't understand. Was it possible I'd looked this way for a while and was only just noticing it, or was this change very recent? More than the ugliness I felt, I was suddenly appalled at the notion that I'd been walking around unaware of something that was apparent to everyone else. A profound sense of shame consumed me.

I put the mirror away, shut off the lights, went back into the living room, and lay in the sunlight with the cats. They didn't care how I looked. I made a silent vow to love them valiantly, truly, with an intensity that would prove I was capable, worthy of ... I wasn't sure what, but something wonderful, something noble, something spectacular. I repeated the same vow to the dogs.

My father worked odd hours, leaving late in the morning and not arriving home until long after dark. He'd cook his own dinner and eat it standing up near the sink while staring contemplatively out of the viewless and dark kitchen window. Some nights I'd get out of bed and go visit him there. He'd hear me pad into the room and stare at me, his face surprised for only a moment before it transformed into genuine pleasure at seeing me. "Lucinda Mag," he'd announce, as if he were only just then naming me, and I'd sit down on a chair, pulling my nightgown over my knees, stretching the material tight. He'd sit down at the table with me and eat in silence while I watched, both of us perfectly content.

One night when I walked in he was wearing one of the wigs. They littered the house by then, and we'd grown careless with them. The cats slept on them, the dogs played tug of war, and they were still good for a few laughs when visitors put them on.

My father was standing over the stove, stirring a panful of something sizzling. "Lucinda Mag," he announced, grinning, inviting me to tell him how silly he looked. I didn't. I simply sat down as always and watched him finish cooking and eating his solitary meal until finally I couldn't stand it anymore.

"Daddy, take it off."

"Take what off?"

"The wig."

"What wig? I'm not wearing a wig."

"
Daddy.
"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

It went on like this. I knew he was joking, and I knew he had no idea how much I
really
wanted him to take the wig off. I gave up. Freeing my knees from my nightgown, I walked over to him, pushed the long hair aside, and kissed him good night.

 

I was still experimenting, unsuccessfully, with making myself ill. Pneumonia remained my pet plan, though I was still unable to inhale the water. Summer had arrived, so there was no hope of catching cold outside, but I'd seen enough trapped-in-the-desert movies to hope for heat stroke. I didn't have a clue what heat stroke was, but the word
stroke
made me envision some sort of tender caress. I did know that it involved seeing mirages. I wasn't allowed to go into the sun because of the extra radiation, so any exposure that might give me a tan was out.

I wrapped myself in a blanket and went to lie in my private spot in the back yard. I lay there and felt the ants crawl up on my skin. Although I liked ants and bugs in general, I occasionally tortured them, then felt guilty and sinful afterward. I'd vow not to, but I always did it again. I was finally cured after reading a German fairy tale that described a horrible little girl who liked to pull the wings off flies. When she died and went to purgatory, she was doomed to have all the flightless little lives she'd ruined crawl all over her and get in her mouth and eyes. I stopped my tortures not out of morality but from a combination of self-preservation and disgust.

Sunlight came through the blanket in pinhole streams. Birds and chainsaws sang and wailed in the background. It was sweltering. I sat up and pulled the blanket cowl-like around my head and stared into the distance. Sweat rolled down the side of my rib cage, a rib cage so skinny I could feel the drops momentarily rest above the ridge of each bone. I stared into the distance. I was looking for my mirage. In the movies they saw either water holes or beautiful women, sometimes both. My eyes scanned the back yard: nothing. My T-shirt now was drenched with sweat. Even the backs of my hands were sweating, and my scalp, which itched against the blanket. I realized this wasn't going to work. Lifting myself up with great effort, I walked back into the air-conditioned house, the wave of cold hitting my face like a bucket of water when I opened the door.

The one time I actually got out of having chemotherapy, I wasn't even feeling particularly ill. But when the blood test showed a high white blood cell count, I was overjoyed. Deciding I should be put into isolation for a bit, a porter came down to the clinic to collect me in a wheelchair. I loved riding in wheelchairs, and I waved gaily to Dr. Woolf as I was chauffeured past him.

"Better not look too happy," my mother advised me. Immediately I went into my waif mode, a style I'd been perfecting for some time. Since becoming slowly aware of my odd appearance, I'd decided to use it for all it was worth to have an effect on people, to matter somehow.

Isolation wasn't such a thrill after all. Because my admission was unexpected, I hadn't come prepared with books or toys, and, horror of horrors, the room had no television. I wasn't permitted to have any of the ward's shabby toys brought in because of germs, and there was no view, because the only window was blocked by a broken air conditioner. I kept opening the door to stick my head out, but someone always yelled at me to shut it, to stay inside and get back into bed. I felt perfectly fit. How could I really be ill? Lying face down on my bed, I felt my hipbones jut down into the overstarched sheets. Sleep was a long way off. I saved myself only by pretending I was a prisoner put "in the hole," which I'd read about in a book about a group of men in prison, a book I knew I wasn't supposed to read because in it the men had sex with the prison's mascot, a donkey. I lay there and pretended I'd been framed.