It's She

51 hall Joan Joffe Hall It's She Shopping for my mother's groceries I see several short dark-haired women and each time think it's she. Until she retired my mother kept her hair black. From snapshots at two and four I know my hair was blond, blond in my family anything less than black, but from the time I could preen in the mirror black black black. I dream of being blond, straight blond hair and I'm the girl next door. Nowadays I catch sight of it out of the corner of my eye and I think there's a piece of cotton or some food stuck, but it's a gray hair after all— mine. Sometimes in the sunshine it seems on fire, closest I'll get to blond. The gray is on top at the part, flying out rough. When are you going to dye? my sister-in-law says with her three gray hairs. I'm thinking red, I lie. When she let it go my mother didn't look much older. She's at the beauty parlor, I'm five or six and peek behind the aquamarine electrolysis curtains, bad hair, get chased away to the manicures. All my life I've wanted cold red nailpolish. Don't want my hair a dead black. No younger. My grandma's hair was long and even at the end no grayer than mine now. Each generation grays earlier. Mother didn't want Grandma to live with us, get her long hairs all over, brushing anywhere, bad manners. Mother brushes right into the toilet. I help her walk upstairs, the soft skin above her elbows presses my arm. Her knees —she can't wear nylons, her ankle's too swollen — are whiter than in my childhood. Her hair is white. I am suddenly much too big. ...