Empress of the World (8 page)

Battle nods, slowly. “Yes—but there’s a problem.” She seems embarrassed. “I can’t braid my hair myself. You’d have to do it, Nic.”

Katrina starts to say, “I can—” and I interrupt, “Fine. Get me a brush and a rubber band.”

Battle hurries over to her dresser again, grabs the brush from on top of it, snaps open a small square tin and extracts a rubber band. She hands them to me like she’s the nurse and I’m the surgeon.

“Sit at your desk chair,” Stage Manager Nic commands. Battle does.

I move to stand behind her. There’s her lavender scent again. Keep it together, Nic.

Her hair is silk. Heavy silk. Silk you could weave into a rope to cling to while you climbed a mountain.

The lavender makes me dizzy. No more stage manager. No more surgeon.

I am a lady-in waiting, and she is the princess. No, the empress. The empress of the world.

“Your Imperial Highness,” Lady-in-Waiting Nic says, “do you truly think that shearing your golden tresses will foil the evil schemes of your deceitful parents, may they reign for a thousand years?”

“Nay, I fear not,” the Empress Battle responds, picking it up immediately. “I wish only for them to see that I am not a doll to be dressed and played with.”

“Indeed, you are no child’s plaything, lady.”

Divide it into three. Over, under, over. Gather more hair. Over, under, over. Finally, the rubber band. “Do you wish to inspect my handiwork before we proceed, Your Imperial Highness?”

Battle raises one hand regally to her head and carefully feels the braid. “It is well done. Now cut it off.”

“My lady, wish you not to wield the blades yourself?” I pick up the scissors from the desk.

Battle shakes her head, just barely. “Nay, I do not wish it. Do me the honor of performing this service, and you shall be well rewarded.”

“My lady, I wish no reward but to continue in your service.”

I open the scissors, holding Battle’s braid with my left hand. It takes me several cuts to get through the thick mass of hair. When I finish, I hold the braid in both hands for a minute. Then I go back around, still being Lady-in-Waiting, and kneel in front of Battle’s chair, holding the braid out to her. “What is your will for this, lady?”

“You may keep it, if you desire. I have no further use for it,” she says.

“Thank you, my lady!” We smile at each other.

“God!” Katrina says. “Would you guys get over yourselves? Isn’t it time for the clippers yet? I can do that part, unless you would prefer that I just leave.”

“No, no, that’s fine—I mean, of course, you should do the clippers—um, they’re in my dresser, I’ll get them,” says Battle all in a rush.

I have no idea what to do with Battle’s braid. I don’t want to throw it away, but I don’t have any place to put it.

“I’ll be right back,” I say. “I’m going to get some soda. Want anything?”

“Coke, of course!”

“Sweet tea, or whatever they have that’s closest.”

“Okay. Don’t cut off too much while I’m gone.”

I go to my room and shove the braid into the bottom drawer of my dresser, underneath a sweater Mom made me bring in case it got cold. Then I get the drinks and come back.

Katrina is doing stripes on Battle’s head with the clippers, making race-car noises as she does it.

“Do you want this now, or do you want to wait till you’re done?” I’m in the background again. Holding the props.

“Now!” Katrina takes the Coke, and Battle takes the bottle of frighteningly colored strawberry tea. I didn’t get anything for myself, but they don’t notice.

Battle runs her hands over her head and giggles. “I almost want to leave it like this,” she says.

“That could work,” says Katrina consideringly. “You could dye some of the stripes black, and it’d be this cool bumblebee effect.”

Battle shakes her head. “No.” She sounds serious again. “I can’t do this halfway.”

“Hon, excuse me for asking, but you don’t actually think you’re going to accomplish anything with this, do you? I mean, I totally am with you all the way, bald is beautiful and power to the people, but you don’t, do you?”

Before Battle can answer, I say, “It seems like it’s not about accomplishing something so much as it’s about sending a message, is that right?”

“Exactly,” she says.

“I just gotta get a message to yoo-oo-oooo,” Katrina sings. “Let’s finish it, then!”

Finishing it proves to be easier said than done. The clippers get clogged with tiny hairs, and we can’t figure out how to take them apart.

“Maybe the last stage is Nair,” suggests Katrina.

Eventually we decide that the last stage is a razor and shaving cream. We relocate to the bathroom down the hall and occupy one of the sinks. Fortunately, no one else seems to want to take a shower at eleven P.M.

This is the hardest part, and the least fun. It seems like every time Katrina thinks she’s done, she discovers some new patch of stubble. Finally she steps away from Battle and says, “Nic, I think I’m starting to hallucinate hair that isn’t there. Feel her head.”

I wipe my hands on my jeans and tentatively put them on Battle’s head.

“Your hands are like ice!” she says. Her voice sounds very loud.

“Sorry,” I say, and immediately remove them.

“You don’t have to take them away—it was just kind of a shock,” she says quickly.

I put my hands back. Her head is warm, and her scalp is pink and looks a little raw. It feels smooth and strange. I move my hands over her head, feeling the skull underneath her skin, and I find myself wondering if my fingers will leave some kind of slimy track behind them, like ten snails.

I can hear her breathing—is it louder than usual? Faster? Or is that mine I hear?

I swallow a couple of times. I really should have gotten myself something to drink, too.

“I can’t feel any hair,” I announce, and step away.

I remember when I first saw Battle and thought of her as Beautiful Hair Girl. It seems so long ago. She’s still beautiful, of course. But now she looks much more vulnerable. Smaller. It makes me want to protect her. I don’t know from what.

“Ooh yuck, I have little tiny hairs all down my shirt,” Battle says rapidly, in a higher voice than usual. She uses both hands to pinch her shirt at the shoulders, then shakes it in an attempt to dislodge the hairs.

“That’s not gonna work, you’ll have to take a shower,” I say automatically. Then an incredibly vivid picture of Battle in the shower forms itself in my brain. Special effects, cue the Lancaster Special Neon Blush. Again? Yep, again.

“You’re probably right. I guess I will,” says Battle, after a moment. Did she look at me strangely before she said that? Oh, god. Please, let her not be able to read my mind.

“Get in the shower,” says Katrina. “Nic, let’s go to my room. I need another cigarette. That was hard work.”

Katrina seems to have forgotten my part in the enterprise. I don’t think I mind.

“Will y’all still be up when I’m done with my shower?” Battle asks.

“Are you kidding? The night is young! The riot has barely begun!”

“All right then.”

Almost immediately after we leave the bathroom, Katrina says, “Nic, I’m going to ask you a question, and I want an honest answer. Would you have been happier if I left?”

“I—when?” I look intently at the carpet as we walk.

“You know when. When you were having your little balcony scene without the balcony. Should I have taken off?” Katrina sounds brusque, more New Yorkish than usual.

She unlocks the door to her room aggressively, and yanks it open, gesturing at me to go in before she does.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Well, you better figure it out. I do not enjoy feeling like a third wheel.”

“Katrina, I’m sorry—but I don’t even know if there are two wheels for you to be the third of. I mean, I don’t know if it’s . . .” I don’t want to finish this sentence, but now that I’ve started I can’t stop: “. . .if it’s just me.”

“You mean you haven’t done anything?” Katrina sounds shocked.

I shake my head. Katrina collapses onto her beanbag chair.

“God, Nic—I thought you two were having this secret dyke thing behind my back, and you didn’t want me to know. I thought you thought I was this fucking homophobe or something.”

I have the tightness at the back of my throat and the sting behind my eyes that means I’m going to cry. “I wish,” I say. “I mean, not that it was happening behind your back—” I put my head in my hands. No tears come, yet.

“Oh, you poor thing!” Katrina launches herself out of the beanbag chair and hugs me. “Don’t take that as a come-on,” she says, giggling a little nervously.

“I won’t,” I say. “But listen, Katrina, I don’t know—”

There’s a knock on the door. Katrina and I step away from each other as though we’ve actually been doing something we didn’t want to be caught at. “C’mon in!” says Katrina, and Battle walks in.

She’s flushed from the shower, and her head is shiny.

I think about the braid in my drawer, underneath the sweater. The braid of Her Imperial Highness.

“How many cigarettes do you smoke in here?” Battle asks, coughing a little. “Isn’t that against all the rules? Doesn’t anyone ever—check on you?”

Katrina shakes her head. “My RA smokes, too,” she says smugly. “I don’t tell on her, she doesn’t tell on me.”

Battle sighs, and sits down next to me. She reaches over and takes one of my hands in both of hers. “Don’t you start,” she says, gripping my hand urgently.

“Um, I, I wouldn’t dream of it,” I manage to say, hoping that she can’t feel the speed of my pulse.

“Good,” she says, and drops my hand. Then she looks over at Katrina’s Erté calendar. “I just remembered something. Isn’t tomorrow the evil Fourth of July volleyball game?”

“Oh no,” says Katrina, sounding genuinely stricken. “Oh god, I’d forgotten about that. What is it about this place that they think it’s a good idea to force perfectly innocent youth to perform brutal and fascistic acts like hiking and playing volleyball?”

“Should we go to sleep, then? So we won’t be totally wiped out when we have to get up to play?” I ask.

“Are you saying you would give up the joyous companionship of your loved ones for the sake of a game?” Katrina has her hands on her hips and is glaring at me.

I laugh, trying to catch her mood. “Okay, okay, forget I said anything. Bring on the chemically processed snacks!”

Katrina distributes various oddly shaped and colored sweets, including chocolate computer disks and chili-mango lollipops. I don’t expect to like the lollipops, but I do. They come in two parts: the actual lollipop, which is purely mango-flavored, and a small, thimble-shaped container full of salt and chili powder, into which you dip the lollipop. There are also M&Ms. Katrina is about to dump them onto the floor when Battle the neat freak shrieks, “Put something down so they don’t get ground into the carpet!”

Katrina obligingly produces an Indian cotton blanket, which she puts down without moving the books and clothes that are already on the floor. Then she pours out the M&Ms. I immediately begin to sort them by color. Katrina says, “No green ones for you!” She winks at me.

I could kill her, but two can play at that game. “Why not, are you going to save them for somebody? Like . . .Isaac maybe?” I ask, scooping up a handful of brown M&Ms and popping them into my mouth.

“Would you drop the Isaac thing? Even if I was interested, which I am not, he’s totally freaked out about his parents, and he has a girlfriend back home!”

“I doubt that he does any more, after that phone call we heard, remember? Besides, he’s probably going to end up moving, so that means he won’t stay with her, right?” Battle asks.

“Oh, I see. He won’t want a long-distance thing with her, but he will want one with me. Have I mentioned that you are totally delusional?” Katrina raps gently on Battle’s shiny head.

“Maybe he’ll end up moving to where you live!” I suggest, pleased that the focus of the conversation is now squarely on Katrina.

“Oh god. He’d fit right in. He could sell the traditional handicrafts of his people in the Plaza. Or perhaps he could attend services at one of our many fine Catholic churches—or, better yet, at a Mormon tabernacle!”

“My dad has a thing about Mormons,” says Battle. “He says they should just become professional genealogists, since that’s obviously where their talents lie, and leave the religion out of it.”

“So do you have to go to church, like, every week?” asks Katrina.

Battle sighs. “Will you promise not to laugh?” she asks.

“No,” Katrina and I say at the same time. Battle smiles wryly.

“Ha ha. Well, here’s the deal. I have to go, but I don’t attend the service. I take care of the babies that are too little to go to Sunday school. I read to them. Or sing.”

Katrina says, “That is so adorable! I can just see you with a roomful of them. Especially now! ‘Okay, kids, today we’re going to make hair shirts!’”

Battle scoops up a big handful of M&Ms and puts them all in her mouth at once. Then she makes a horrible face that involves sticking her tongue out while it has a bunch of chewed-up M&Ms on it.

“Do you ever dance?” I ask. I picture Battle twirling gracefully through a room full of cribs and playpens, while all the babies watch with wide-open happy eyes, cooing and gurgling.

Battle shakes her head. “It’s mostly about changing diapers.”

Katrina says, “Hmmm . . .diapers. I don’t know about that. But it’s basically a nice dodge—it makes you look all virtuous, but
have to listen to the nonsense.”