Trust
Jess sat on the edge of her bed and held the end of her wet braid taunt in one hand, and her penknife in the other. She was working diligently, sawing at the bottom three inches or so, which pulled painfully at her scalp but worked, more or less.
She had a system. She cut her hair on the 1st of January and the 1st of July. She liked things to have seasonal rhythms. The cyclical nature of it felt reassuring to her, controlled. Safe. She especially liked to have a rhythm for things that unsettled her, like her hair and her clothes.
She cut her hair twice a year. She replaced her underclothes and socks on Christmas of every even numbered year. On the first day of autumn, she’d buy herself a new shirt and a new pair of pants and use them to replace the most well-worn, sweat-stained set she still had in her rotation, which she’d shred into rags. Shoes were harder, because they didn’t always wear out consistently. Jess was yet to find a reliable system for them.
Joining the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League had ruined everything for Jess. Her system and her confidence. Her independence and her pride. And her good handkerchief, which was now stained with lipstick and smelled like hair elixir. A deer would smell it from a mile off. Useless.
Jess hacked at her hair some more, knuckles white around her knife, eyes tickling from the pain. Downstairs, the girls had the radio going. Esti was singing with someone. Terri, Jess thought. Lupe came by, and stuck her head in the doorway. No one could see Jess’s bed from the hallway, which she liked, but Lupe always leant in to check if Jess was there, to nod hello.
She did a double take when she saw what Jess was doing.
“You know we have scissors, right?” Lupe asked. She sounded a little amused, maybe.
Jess grunted, in a way that meant, I’m not trying to be a dick to you, Lu, but I don’t really feel like talking right now.
Lupe ducked back out again, which wasn’t really what Jess had wanted, but she supposed was the bed she’d made for herself with this, by this, off putting like always.
Jess very particularly and intentionally did not feel sorry for herself. She finished her haircut, and folded up her knife, and set the plait of hair down on her nightstand. She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes, and tried not to let the swing music from downstairs set her off. It was too much, too loud, too clangy. Unnatural and erratic.
Lupe came back. She knocked politely, softly at the door, but she didn’t wait for a reply. When she came inside, she had a pair of scissors in her hand, and a towel draped over her shoulder.
Jess found that she still couldn’t speak, but she nudged herself over on the bed. She hoped that would be enough. Lupe sat. Like she was approaching a wounded animal, she reached her hand out and ran her finger across the jagged new end of Jess’s braid.
“Let me fix that for you,” Lupe said gently, which made something inside of Jess seize up in a very bad way. She felt gear grinding up against rusty gear, and she said,
“What, I’m not pretty enough for you anymore?”
She met Lupe’s eyes and she stared her down, mean on purpose. She waited for Lupe to flinch away, or tell her off, or something worse.
Lupe smirked, in the special, shared way they liked to smirk at each other.
“You’re a real gnarly son of a bitch, how about that? Now turn around.”
Jess did.
Lupe lifted the end of her braid off of her shoulders, wrapped the towel around her neck. Tucked the ends into the front of Jess’s shirt.
She picked apart the three sections that made up the braid, like doing Jess’s hair in reverse. She smoothed the hair out, until Jess could feel it lay flat across her shoulder blades.
“You got a brush?” Lupe asked. Jess leaned forward and dug her black comb, snarled teeth, cracked on one side, out of her nightstand drawer. She passed it back, over her shoulder. Lupe took it from her, ran her thumb over the back of Jess’s hand.
Jess felt Lupe’s fingers on the back of her head. She directed it forward, as deliberately and precisely and Jess would watch her line up a pitch. She bent at the neck. Her chin rested against her chest.
When Jess would comb her own hair, she’d rip her way through it, as quickly as she could. She’d pull it out in chunks, which she’d pick out of her comb and flush down the toilet. It was worth it, to be done with it as soon as she could.
Lupe didn’t rip, or tear, or rush. She picked carefully through Jess’s hair, section by section, almost like she didn’t want to hurt her. Jess closed her eyes again, steaded her breath, tried to concentrate on not being a fucking freak over having someone touch her hair.
Lupe hummed a little, under her breath. Then she picked up the scissors and started to snip.
Jess could feel the cold metal of the bottom scissor blade run steadily across her back, through her damp undershirt. She felt Lupe hold the scissors level, and she felt Lupe’s other hand on her shoulder, not squeezing, just there. It didn’t take but a minute or two for Lupe to level out Jess’s hack job.
“That alright?” Lupe asked her. She pulled the towel back, carefully. Jess cleared her throat.
“Yeah,” she croaked out. She wanted to say more. Her gears were still bound up.
“You want me to braid it back again?” Lupe asked. Jess shook her head. That was. She knew Lupe was being nice, but she just couldn’t. She motioned for Lupe to pass her her ballcap hanging on the chair at the foot of her bed, and when she did, Jess shoved all her hair up in it, crammed it onto her head, needing to be done with it.
“Thank you,” Jess said, second time the charm. Lupe looked up from where she was folding the towel back up, on top of her thigh.
“Of course,” she said. “Probably wanna change your sheets now, though.”
Jess nodded.
“That was,” Jess tried, because she wanted to say it, and she knew that to Lupe she could. She felt like she had to admit it, even if she was sure Lupe already knew. “That’s hard for me to do.”
“I don’t have to do it again,” Lupe offered, dutifully. Jess ran her fingertips across the thighs of her pants. She made a noncommittal sound in the back of her throat.
She didn’t know if she wanted Lupe to do it again, even if she could tell that Lupe wanted to. She wasn’t always so good at new things, even with Lupe, who she trusted more than anyone. Sometimes she wanted to try, anyways, and sometimes it didn’t work out, anyways. Lupe didn’t hold it against her, because Lupe was the best person Jess had ever met.
“Maybe,” she said, because that was the best she could offer Lupe, now or maybe ever. Still, Lupe smiled to her, special and shared.
“Sure, maybe,” she agreed. She bumped her leg against Jess’s. Jess smiled back, just a little, and felt herself un-bind, the first tiny bit. Lupe leaned in, conspiratorial.
“You want to cut mine?”