good morning girls I said and I opened their bedroom door… same as any day… same as every day… and the floor… and the room… everything… everywhere… covered in curls… baby curls… and the girls sitting together on a bed… huddled together on a bed… looking bald… looking like french collaborators after the end of the war… looking like american pioneers scalped by natives… looking guilty… looking worried…
oh I said… what I said… no I said… this cant be…
oh but it was…
took a while to work out the details… took quite a while… they were not yet two at the time… vocabulary not wonderful… willingness to share even less so… seems my youngest… even now I cannot mention her name… she smuggled a nail scissors upstairs in her nappy… she cut her hair… she cut her sisters hair…
why I asked… why… why would you do that…
afraid her sister said to me… she had scissors… I sat still… scared to move…
and my youngest… her sister… said what she always said… what she always says… I dont know… I dont know why I did it…
and baby curls never grow back…