((TW:// Slur mention))
Early November 2019. I was living with my step-abuelos for a little over a year at that point. I was failing school, which I’d thankfully hidden from them thus far. I went to the library, I played violin, and did little else besides drink alone in my bathtub and smoke grass wrapped in bible pages on the roof. It was, what I thought at that time, my last option. I had used my final get out of jail card and ended up at the last place I thought I’d ever be: my step-abuelos' house that I seldom visited besides Christmas. My breathing room however, my favorite finger to my overly strict and religious guardians was the bisexual pride flag that hung over my bed which, ironically, my Abuelo had helped me hang up (obviously not knowing what it meant). I never fully understood why they didn’t like me. Maybe it was because I ruined their retirement, maybe I reminded them of my mother in some way, or maybe, they just hated me for me, I’ll never know. But I hope they’re doing alright today anyhow. It’s like Tupac says, “I still wanna see you eat, just not at my table.”
Besides my abuelos, I was allowed to talk to my Aunt and Uncle on my mom’s side, who were the only people they trusted me to be around. My Aunt lived in _______ (with me in _______ at the time), so I didn’t see her often, but my Uncle lived close to 15 minutes away. Every now and then, he’d take me to buy clothes, to eat, or to get anything I needed for school. This particular time, he took me to get a haircut.
I don’t remember much that transpired before the haircut. My old journal says it was a “normal day.” Coffee with my abuela's papas con juevos, and phone calls with my friend who lived in Georgia. Going into the situation, I knew I wanted short hair based off of the Pinterest board I made to show the hairdresser. I also knew that my abuelos would never in a million years consent to me cutting off the majority of my mid-chest length hair, but I think for a long time leading up to then I’d stopped caring what not only them, but the rest of my family expected of me.
I remember sitting in the chair, talking to the genial blonde lady who had a son that went to my school. She asked about my plans for college, and I of course spit out the now memorized monologue about how I wanted to finish my Associates degree and move on to a four-year college for a degree in Clinical Psychology. Impressed, she asked what I had in mind for my hair, and upon showing her, she asked if my parents were okay with it, to which I replied, “no, but they’ll get over it.” Sated enough with this, she began sectioning my hair and snipping away. I’ll never forget the memory of the first time I felt buzz cutters on my scalp, seeming to be buzzing inside of my head like a swarm of bees trying to fly through my ears into my brain. This was the poison my abuelos warned me about, and I embraced it, I wanted it. This excitement was partially tainted by the sideways glances from other patrons in the shop. A hispanic couple with their son. The father seemed to look at me with curiosity, and something that said, “Thank god you’re not my child.” The mother seemed to ignore me like how most people ignore the homeless at a red light. To her, I didn’t even exist. I couldn’t help but see my abuelos in them. I couldn’t help but feel the familiar foreboding in my stomach despite my insistent need to shed myself of the years worth of locks everyone in my family adored. Fear ran my life. I was afraid of the future, and afraid of the past. I was afraid of people at school, afraid of my family, afraid of my reflection.
Yet, for the first time looking at myself that day, I saw who I wanted to be. I remember recording myself silently screaming and jumping in the salon bathroom. It was perfect. It wasn’t long, and swept to one side like the hairdresser tried to convince me to settle with. It was shaved on the sides, talcum powder dusting my neck, with curls toppling over each other like a bunch of grapes. I touched the buzzed parts on the back and sides of my head, somehow soft, and not prickly like unshaved legs as I had expected. The air was cold against my scalp. It was a freedom of emotion. It wasn’t just hair to me. It was my way of saying that I wasn’t my mother’s mistakes, or my father’s past. It was my way of saying that I could dress how I want, sit how I want, kiss who I want, and be who I want.
The ride home was mostly silent, my uncle realizing the mistake on his part of letting me get any haircut I wanted. He asked, like the upbeat hairdresser, if my abuelos would be okay with it. Less brazen now, I gave him the same answer. After he pulled away, I grabbed my phone and called a good friend of mine. As I stared at the door, I knew I couldn’t go in alone. Once he reassured me I wouldn’t be, I walked in and went straight upstairs to my room with my hoodie over my head. It was then my friend asked, knowing how my abuelos were, if I might be kicked out. It hadn’t really occurred to me until then. A wave of dread washed over me. My face went hot, and my stomach fell cold and heavy. Thinking it over, I remembered one of the many times I eavesdropped on my abuelos talking about me. I’ll never forget the irony of the statements, “If [he's] pregnant, [he] can go out that door right now ‘cus I sure as hell ain’t gonna take care of no baby. And [he] better not be dating no n*gg*r or no d*ke. I don’t get why [he] can’t understand that I just want what’s best for [him]. I just want [him] to be [himself].” I laughed to myself at hearing this because I was crushing on my (then, a stud) friend from Georgia (who was black), and was pregnant and figuring out how I’d tell them.
I knew what would happen when I went downstairs, and just like all the times I’d known I was leaving someplace before, I was unfazed and terrified at the same time. I put my phone charger and journal in my hoodie pocket, and went downstairs with my friend muted and listening through my pants. I scarfed down the cold pupusa that was for dinner hours earlier in the dark kitchen, failing to sate my turning stomach. Then I approached their room, which I was never allowed in. I knocked, hearing the tv volume lower, and the dogs barking as my Abuela came to the door. After she asked if I had eaten dinner, she asked to see my hair. Managing not to shake, I lowered my hoodie to reveal my head, cold and wet from the products the hairdresser put in it. In the dark, she squinted for a bit, then her eyes widened.
“Why did you do that to yourself?” she demanded in her sharp tongue.
I remember staying silent, not knowing what to say.
“It looks horrible.” she kept repeating.
“What’s wrong with my hair?” I tried to reason.
“What’s wrong?! It looks so ugly ____!” she said, raising her tone.
This time, it wasn’t my Abuelo yelling at me like it usually was, it was my Abuela. My Abuela, who taught me how to make chile, and carne guisada. My Abuela who let me drink coffee on weekends, and was always dampened in her husband’s wicked shadow.
After she stopped yelling, my Abuelo told me,
“You know how I feel about girls who look like boys ____”
Then I started. Why were things this way, why was no one ever happy in the year that I’ve lived here? Why couldn’t I just live somewhere else?
“If you have a place to go, then get the f*ck out.”
His final words to me. They should’ve stung, but instead of letting their poison infect me, I ran out the door, and onto the street. I knew where I was going, the only place in my life that didn’t have chaos, or shame attached. It was dark by this time. I ran in my house shoes, stopping to pick them up when they fell off. Breathless, and flying across the pavement. When I got to the spot behind the library dumpsters, I told my friend to pick me up, which he’d offered before I even went downstairs. I sent him the address, and waited, hanging up before my phone died.
I wasn’t afraid until then. Knowing my friend was there with me, knowing he had my back. But in the freezing damp night behind the dumpster, I ran through it for the first time. I wasn’t just afraid of my Abuelo's dogs barking up and down the street, or the passing police cars that sent a chill down my spine, or even the messages from my step-dad asking where I was, a man who I hadn’t spoken to since my little brother’s birthday earlier that year.
I was afraid of what seemed to be my life. It seemed, not even this time would I be able to settle in one place, with one set of people. Was this my fault? Was it something I had to wear like a scar, the fact that I’m a leaf in the wind but less free and more like a circus animal being paraded across the country. I wasn’t a bird, or an explorer of distant lands like I tried to tell myself, the fact of the matter was, I was alone.
I knew after this, that no one would want me anymore. And I planned for a life of sleeping in playground tubes and drinking from sprinklers like the times I’d been on the streets before. It seemed like forever I spent those frozen hours shrinking myself into the shadows so no one would find me before my friend could.
Then, the blue van pulled up, and I ran to the open door, climbing inside the warm vehicle. My friend and his grandmother talked, to me, and amongst themselves about how “It’s 2019,” and “How can people be so cruel?” I stayed silent, and lay down in the back seat so no one could see me through the windows. The sunroof revealed the sky, littered with stars. I knew it was the next chapter of my life, again. Like it was a stutter. A broken record. It was as war is to mankind and as reruns are to box tv’s on late weekend nights. This was old now, still painful, but it was the last time I had to accept that home was a place you had to make for yourself when you were old enough.