A Bald Girl

My mom had it.

I know she had hair in all of the pictures of her before I was born. I know she had hair when I was little. I know she got her hair done at Menage e Trois Coiffers on Burton Way, and I didn’t know what “Menage e Trois” meant. I know styling her short hair as she got ready to go out was part of her routine that I watched with fascination. I know she had dresses and boots and jewelry that were my favorites. I know she wore Jean Nate After Bath Splash because I remember the scent and the bottle. I know those details aren’t relevant, exactly, but I’m just trying to remember what I know.

I know I was older than seven when she had alopecia because I know we were in our new house that we moved into when I was seven. I know that suddenly, she didn’t have hair anymore. I know that can’t be right–it couldn’t have been sudden. But to a small child who wouldn’t know all the in’s and out’s of her parents’ lives, it was sudden. I know that she had hair, and then she didn’t. I know that her hair was supposed to grow back, and it didn’t.

My mom had alopecia, and her alopecia was embarrassing.

I’m embarrassed to say that what I mean is: her alopecia was embarrassing to me.

I’m ashamed to say that what I mean is: her alopecia was shameful to me.

I’m humiliated to say that what I mean is: her alopecia was humiliating to me.

I’m actually relieved to say that. Because I could never actually say that.

At first, she wore this weird blue thing on her head. I’m going to try to be more specific. In Yiddish, it would be known as a “shmata,” a rag. Not literally a rag, but kind of a piece-of-shit-looking article of clothing. Imagine if a swim cap were navy blue terry cloth with a (decorative?) knot in the middle. It looked like that. Or imagine if you’d wrapped your wet hair in a navy blue terry cloth towel, but the towel wasn’t a normal-sized towel, and instead a towel that fit the shape of your skull, and it had a (decorative?) knot in the middle, and also, you didn’t have any hair, wet or dry.

I hated that thing.

I know. Don’t say hate.

I hated that thing.

It looked cheap and ratty. I know she was trying to cover her alopecia, but this particular covering only revealed the fact of baldness. I didn’t want to be seen with her when she wore it in public, which was always. Because people stared at us. I mean, maybe they didn’t. But I felt that they did, and that feeling shoved my eyes to the ground so I wouldn’t have to meet anyone’s stare. I mean, I’m sure no one was staring at me. They would have been staring at her, right?  But seeing your mom as someone whom others see as weird or gross or hideous can’t be unseen. And the worst part is, I would have sided with the vision of these people I imagined or maybe actually encountered. You know that expression, “I’m cold; put on a sweater”? Mine would have been, “I’m mortified; put on a silk scarf or something.” I don’t think my expression would have swept the nation. I hope it wouldn’t have. Her alopecia made me ugly.

I know. I made myself ugly.

At some point, she started wearing wigs. She had two. One was the “good” wig, and the other, without an official epithet, was, I guess, the not good wig. I know there was a wig store my mom went to to buy these wigs and periodically have them cleaned or styled or I don’t know. I never went into the store. As LA children, my sister and I spent a lot of time in a parked car listening to the radio while our parents did errands.

I don’t know why she chose these wigs. Despite her name for the first wig, neither wig was good. The dark brown color was the same as her natural hair had been, but the style–a short, curled helmet–wasn’t a hairstyle anyone was actually wearing. The wigs were too tight, too small for her face. They looked like wigs. Bad wigs.

I know she was angry. I remember once she and my sister and I were at the mall, and there was some small series of frustrations–maybe there was construction that was loud, and a store was out of what it was we had come to buy–I don’t remember–and she stopped at a balcony railing and screamed. Imagine if the doctor told you to say, “Ahhhhh,” and instead of saying it, you yelled it in her face with all your might. Or imagine if you were on a roller coaster and shouting “Ahhhhhh!” but you weren’t happy or deliciously scared. You were wearing your navy blue shmata and you were just so deeply, deeply angry and you needed to make a thundering noise in a public place to try to unleash the rage.

My sister and I didn’t know what to say. Maybe we asked if she was okay, or maybe we just stood there silently, not sure of what was going to happen next. In any case, our mom said, “Let’s go.” (How, though? Decisively? Dejectedly? Growlingly?  I don’t remember.) And we walked out to the car.

My mom’s alopecia meant that we regularly engaged in covert operations. We knew the secret, that she had no hair, and we needed to work together to keep that secret at all costs. If the doorbell rang, we would rush around to close the door to my parents’ bedroom so no one would see her wig stands: those white, expressionless, styrofoam busts. Meanwhile, my mom would put on, as she called it, “my head,” so whoever-was-at-the-front-door wouldn’t see her baldness. We read weather reports worriedly; predictions of both wind and sunshine bred tension. On a blustery day, my mom would hold her hand tightly to her wig so that it wouldn’t blow away, and then she would keep futzing with it once we were inside or the wind had died down. The wig was hot on a day when the sun beat down, and a hat would look weird sitting on top of the wig–imagine a Shriners hat on a monkey, I guess?–so my mom suffered, sweating under the wig with no brim to shade her. On a blustery day, I couldn’t stand when she would preemptively hold onto her wig–or pat it, or pet it–at the slightest breeze. No one with hair attached to their head would act that way. On a day when the sun beat down, as I twirled my thick ponytail threaded through my baseball cap, I would try to pretend not to know the suffering, sweaty woman next to me. We looked just something alike.

You know how it was the worst when you were watching TV with your parents and a sex scene started?  You sat there frozen, body tightened, wanting the scene to be over as soon as possible, literally praying that your parents wouldn’t say anything to each other or try to talk to you about it after it was done, hating that you knew your parents knew you knew what sex was, and that your parents knew you knew that they had had sex themselves–at the very least that one time before you were born–hoping to be invisible and also fuming that you couldn’t, you know, enjoy the sex scene because your parents were there?

This was also the worst: when you were watching TV with your parents and a scene about your mom came on. Okay, not about your mom specifically by name, but still. About your mom. That storyline on Friends when Rachel has the idea for Ross’ new girlfriend to shave her head so that Ross would no longer be attracted to that girlfriend. And the idea works. Because Ross is visibly, comically horrified at his hairless girlfriend, an actress in a bald cap. That storyline on Arrested Development where Stan Sitwell (Ed Begley, Jr.!) and his daughter Sally Sitwell (Christine Taylor, the same actress whose character shaves her head on Friends!) both have alopecia. Fake eyebrows fall into bowls of jelly beans, land askew after convertible rides, and fall in drains, leading a befuddled boyfriend (Ben Stiller! Christine Taylor’s husband!) to mistakenly believe that there are an unusual number of caterpillars inside the house. There are crazy wigs. There are fake nipple tufts that fly off. Stan and Sally and the jokes about them are funny. But to the audience we were in our living room, they were excruciating. And embarrassing. And also funny. At least that’s how I felt. My mom never said anything, so I don’t know how she felt. Or, okay, I probably do.

The absolute worst, it turned out, was listening to Free to Be You and Me, a revolutionary album about being yourself, slashing gender stereotypes and embracing difference. The second piece on the record, “Boy Meets Girl,” features Mel Brooks and Marlo Thomas as just-born babies trying to figure out what makes a boy and what makes a girl. (Might an updated version push beyond the gender binary?  Yes. But the song was outstanding for its time.)  The written dialogue announces each line with “Boy” and “Girl,” but I’m going to say “Mel” and “Marlo” because I want their voices to be in your head.

MEL:  Let me take a little look around. Hmmm, cute feet, small, dainty…yep, yep! I’m a girl, that’s it! Girl time.

MARLO:  Well, what do you think I am?

MEL:  You?  That’s easy. You’re a boy.

MARLO:  You sure?

MEL:  Of course I’m sure! I’m alive already four or five minutes, right?  I haven’t been wrong yet!

MARLO: Gee, I don’t feel like a boy.

MEL:  That’s because you can’t see yourself!

MARLO:  Why, what do I look like?

MEL:  Bald. You’re bald, fella. Bald, bald, bald. You’re bald as a ping-pong ball. Are you bald.

MARLO:  So?

MEL:  So?  Boys are bald, and girls have hair.

MARLO:  Are you sure?

MEL:  Of course I’m sure! Who’s bald, your mother or your father?

MARLO:  My father.

MEL:  I rest my case.

MARLO:  Hmm. You’re bald, too!

MEL:  You’re kidding!

MARLO:  No, I’m not–

MEL:  Don’t look!

MARLO:  Why?

MEL:  (sigh) A bald girl?  Yuch! Disgusting!

Ultimately, in “Boy Meets Girl,” a nurse checks their diapers, they realize Mel Brooks is a boy and Marlo Thomas is a girl, and they conclude, “You can’t judge a book by its cover!” The message is supposed to be an uplifting and commanding one: don’t make assumptions about people based on outdated gender expectations. “Boy Meets Girl” aims to disprove the notion that bald girls are “Yuch! Disgusting!” But, in my Encino living room, where Mel and Marlo were talking to us from our record player, the words hurt as soon as they were spoken. “Bald” repeatedly pounded our ears. The question, “Who’s bald, your mother or your father?” led my sister and me to silently answer, “My mother,” when we knew “My father” was the correct response. No chirpy “You can’t judge a book by its cover!” could erase the words on the record that had resounded before.

 Part of what makes “Boy Meets Girl” so hilarious are its terrifically silly idiosyncrasies. The babies don’t know what a tooth is or what “You can’t judge a book by its cover” means, but they are familiar with the concepts of ping-pong balls, shaving, patience, secrets, mice, fear, firefighters, the implications of having a penis or a vagina, and, my favorite, cocktail waitresses. I’m sure that in most households listening to the record in the living room, the talk about baldness was funny, too. But that talk in my living room made my shoulders tighten, my teeth clench, and my eyes take turns between maintaining full focus on the carpet and darting up to see if my parents were reacting. Not wanting to see if my parents were reacting. Because the babies’ (okay, just Mel Brooks’) seemingly innate recoiling at the notion of head-hairless females made me feel that the whole world found my mother to be a freak of nature. “A bald girl?  Yuch! Disgusting!” was painful to hear coming from the record player; it was even more painful to admit that the record player was amplifying my own mean thoughts.

Once, my mom fell. We were outside the entrance to some big building, and she tripped and landed face down on the pavement. I don’t remember if she was wearing pants or a skirt and hose, but I remember she skinned her knee and there was blood. Her wig flew off. We (she?  I?)  rushed to retrieve it and put it back on her head. I said to her, “Are you okay?” and then, quickly, “Nobody saw.”  Maybe the latter was a lie. And maybe the former was tinged with impatience and self consciousness. I saw, and I wasn’t okay. Nobody wants to see her mother felled, especially when that Nobody is a little kid and doesn’t really want to know that her mom is vulnerable and weak and helpless: mortal.

My parents went to a Dodgers game in July of 1977, when my mom was in her ninth month of pregnancy with she-who-was-not-yet-me. Family legend has it that she looked around the vast stadium and marveled to my dad, “All of these people were born.”  My dad would tell that story with love and pride, beaming at his wife’s self-soothing revelation that if birth had been successful for all of these thousands and thousands of people, her own child would be born successfully, too. In our family, “All of these people were born” were cheerleading words invoked on any occasion when one of us was feeling worried about an impending challenge and needed a “You can do it!” boost. As a grown-ass woman who continues to feel worried about impending challenges, I still whisper to myself, “All of these people were born.”

When I myself was pregnant, I tried calming my fears with, “All of these people were born”: if birth had been successful for all of these thousands and thousands of people, my own child would be born successfully, too. But I started to think, what about me?  Yes, everyone I see around me survived their own birth, but their visible existence doesn’t promise anything about their mothers’ lives. My baby will be okay, I could assure myself, but will I?

On the Free to Be You and Me album, Marlo Thomas sings to kids about their mothers: “When mommies were little, they used to be girls

Like some of you, but then they grew

And now mommies are women, women with children

Busy with children, and things that they do

There are a lot of things a lot of mommies can do.

Some mommies are ranchers, or poetry makers

Or doctors or teachers, or cleaners or bakers

Some mommies drive taxis, or sing on TV

Yeah, mommies can be almost anything they want to be.”

 It was the “almost” that got me. As a kid and now. Harry Belafonte quickly swoops in to explain the caveat: “Well, they can’t be grandfathers, or daddies,” and then launches into, “Daddies are people, people with children,” etc. The song, “Parents Are People,” concludes:

“There are a lot of things a lot of mommies

And a lot of daddies, and a lot of parents can do!”

Marlo Thomas and Harry Belafonte stick the landing, extending that “ooooo” with confident harmony. I heard the upbeat words and the joyful tone, and I also would hear my own inner voice adding, with worry and resignation, “But they can’t do everything.”

***

Most people thought my mom wore a wig because she was an Orthodox Jew or a cancer patient. She wasn’t Orthodox. Our family practiced Reform Judaism–my dad was a Reform rabbi–and our only consistent religious head covering was my dad’s: a rotating, colorful collection of kippot that he wore everywhere except bed and the shower. No shmatas on him. But his head covering did draw attention, and the tension I felt in public with him was often even more acute than what I felt when I was with my mom. With my mom, the fear was discovery of the hiding of what she didn’t have. With my dad, the fear was discovery of pride and belief in who he was. In a way, I guess the result was the same. Ridiculing and laughter. But with my dad the laughter would be worse. Unleashed hatred. I wasn’t imagining this outcome; I experienced it. The first time was on a broiling LA summer day, when I was in the front seat with my dad in our Chevrolet, windows down. The traffic on the 405 was, as it often was, at a standstill. People were hot and pissed. The driver of the massive truck next to us looked over at us and yelled, “Get off the road, Jew! Get off the road, kike!” I put my head down in, I guess, shame.

My dad, on the other hand, leaned over me, waved to the guy, said cheerily but firmly, “Thank you!” and said to me quietly, “Sarah, roll up your window.”  My dad was used to people’s anti-Semitic comments and could brush them off as an unfortunate part of life that didn’t need to stop him from being who he was. I just cried.

My mom was not Orthodox, but she was, eventually, and for a long time, a cancer patient. When I was about fourteen, we were visiting my grandparents’ house, and my mom bled through the towel she had folded between her and the couch. “No biggie, just a heavy period,” she said. Another day, we were in the car, and my mom kept snapping at my dad, who was driving, that the ride was too bumpy, it was hurting her stomach, and why couldn’t he be more careful. Sitting in the backseat, I rolled my eyes, gritted my teeth, and silently fumed that it wasn’t my dad’s fault that there was road work, and why was she blaming him. The next day I asked her how she was feeling, and she said much better. “If Tylenol can fix it, it’s nothing!”  She wasn’t lying, exactly, but she was wrong. It was a biggie, it wasn’t just a heavy period, Tylenol didn’t fix it, and it was something. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and she went through surgery and grueling years of chemotherapy.

At one point, she and my grandfather were in the same hospital at the same time. My grandfather died in the hospital, and someone–I don’t know who–made the decision to wait to tell my mom this news. So when I talked to my mom on the phone and she asked me how Grandpa was doing, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and lied, “He’s okay.”  The next day, my dad told my mom the truth, in person in her hospital room, that her father had died. I felt sick imagining how devastated she must have been–when she was ill herself–and that in learning the truth about her father, she also learned the truth about her daughter, who was a liar.

If she hadn’t started chemotherapy, I don’t know whether my mom’s hair would actually have grown back, as her doctors had originally promised. I don’t know how my mom felt about her alopecia once she had a cancer diagnosis. Maybe she took it all in as a horrible, laughable, self-fulfilling prophecy that after the years of others’ false assumptions that she was bald because of cancer, she actually had cancer. Maybe she felt her alopecia was small potatoes in the face of a deadly disease. Maybe she felt Godforsaken that her body had been doubly afflicted.

I don’t fucking know.

I’m sorry.

My mom’s cancer went into remission, she still had alopecia, and then, years later, her cancer returned. I was wearing a red blouse when my parents called to tell me that news, and I threw the blouse away so I wouldn’t have to wear a reminder of that call. Obviously, that didn’t work. I don’t have the blouse, but I still have the memory. My mom had intense surgery–the cancer had spread–and stayed in the hospital for weeks. At first she was adamant about keeping her wig on, and I was enraged, because my dad and sister and I had to keep coming over and adjusting it, because it would so easily land askew and look ridiculous, and because, I thought in furious bold letters, THE JIG IS UP! WHY ARE YOU STILL TRYING TO HIDE?  WHY ARE YOU MAKING IT ALL WORSE?  At some point, she stopped wearing the wig in the hospital. She allowed not just doctors and nurses, but also visitors, to see her baldness. I was relieved and embarrassed and worried she was giving up.

My mom worked throughout her second bout of cancer. She would leave her office for chemo and return afterwards. She had pain in her feet and neuropathy in her hands and for a while, needed a cane and shoes of two different sizes. She tired easily. She had a boss who seemed to fear and loathe illness. This boss, let’s just call her Amy, would physically avoid my mother, I guess because Amy didn’t want her cooties. Amy’s fears for herself translated into cruelty towards my mom. At one nighttime donor event, she hissed in my mother’s ear, “I’d better not see you sit down once tonight.”

“Quit!” I implored my mom. “Report Amy!”

“I can’t,” she would always say. She needed the medical insurance, she wasn’t confident she would get another job at her age and in her physical condition (“That’s illegal!” I interrupted. “Honey, get real,” she retorted), she could deal with Amy.

She could and she did deal with Amy, but I can’t overstate the toll navigating her boss took on her. I absolutely believe that Amy holds responsibility for my mom’s death. You can’t bully and harass and intimidate a person without killing her at least a little bit.

The cancer took away a lot of my mom’s weight. She got a new wig, one that had some blond in it and fit her thinned face well. She wasn’t well, but she looked good. Her oncologist promised that she would dance at my wedding. She did. Her oncologist promised that she would see my son’s first day of kindergarten. She didn’t.

My sister and I made it to the hospital about an hour before my mom died. She was unconscious and intubated and bald. We held her hand and hugged her carefully around all the equipment surrounding her and sobbed I love you I love you don’t go don’t go and then she did.

Her oncological nurse visited and kissed her, which I thought was loving but mostly horrific, because my mother was now a corpse.

After my mom died, my dad went to her office and confronted Amy face to face. He told her that he held her responsible for his wife’s death. He said you can’t bully and harass and intimidate a person without killing her at least a little bit.

My dad died three years after my mom.

***

In the hospital where my mom and her dad died, my sister and I were born. Praying for a little sister is my earliest memory. I got what I prayed for–“my baby,” I called her– so I was sure I was magical.

I know. I’m not.

My dad took me to Cedars-Sinai to meet my sister and visit my mom. I remember walking into the hospital room and freezing up with fear at the sight of my mother in a hospital bed. To help ease my worries, my mom let me play with the remote control on her bed so that I could move her up and down and up and down. This activity probably resulted in something between mild discomfort to excruciating pain for her. “See?” she smiled. “All good!”

My parents and sister flew to New York to be here when I gave birth to my child. In the hospital, I remember a nurse coming in as I was only half awake, and my mom telling her, “Not now. She needs to sleep.”  The nurse persisted, saying she needed to do something or other to my body, and I heard my mom double down: “Let her be.”  Mothered, I slumbered.

My mom was with me when my milk came in. I had naively assumed that breastfeeding would be easy, natural, and joyful, and though there were certainly times when it was, breastfeeding for me was mostly laborious, excruciating, and miserable. I was gobsmacked that, all of a sudden, my breasts were supposed to serve as serenely visible sources of nourishment, after a couple of decades since puberty of being objects of desire, sources of sexual pleasure, and objects to flaunt, minimize, cover, and/or strap in. How was it suddenly fine to just pull out a boob and have someone suck on it, while others watched?  I definitely wasn’t comfortable with this startling nudity-in-front-of-of-everyone-including-your-parents-is-cool vibe, and especially since what everyone was staring at was not going particularly well, I felt humiliated to be a living display of physical and emotional denudement. A bald girl?  Yuch. Disgusting.

We were back at home, and I was trying to breastfeed my baby on our couch. My mom just happened to be standing behind me, unintentionally mortifying me by watching my naked struggle. Suddenly, white fluid gushed from my nipples. Gushed. Shocked at the 873rd weird thing my body was doing, I looked up at her. “My milk came in!”  And even though I was embarrassed, still, to have my mom staring at my breasts, I joined her in laughing with wonderment. My son, drinking the mindfuck that was my body’s milk, was named for my grandparents, her parents. We were daughter and mother both.

***

I called my sister because I couldn’t remember if we buried our mom in her wig or not. My sister remembered that we did.

I asked my sister, “Do you remember that time when we thought she was asleep in the hospital, but then she turned her head to me and opened her eyes and said, ‘You’re a fucking bitch’?”

“That…didn’t happen,” my sister slowly responded. “She never said that to you.”

“What? Yes, she did! I think about it all the time; I can picture it.”

“I think you dreamt it,” she said gently.

I think I did dream it. But I think about it all the time; I can picture it. There are a lot of things a lot of mommies can do.

***

You’re a fucking bitch.

I know.

My mom was with me when my milk came in.

Who’s bald, your mother or your father?

All of these people were born.