If I Never Went Home by Ingrid Persaud Page A

next morning she showered and changed carefully, layering up against the cold. When she stepped outside she wished she had her sunglasses to face the dazzling, cloudless blue sky. Sinking her hands deep into her coat pockets she set off trembling with excitement and barely feeling the cold. People on their regular morning rush hustled past. They had no idea what it meant to be able to do what you like, go where you like, without your competence being constantly scrutinised and analysed. She breathed in the freezing air and didn’t mind that it burnt her throat. When you are floating, little can spoil the moment. She thought of taking a bus into the shopping centre of Boston but pulled back. That was too much to navigate. She would go where her feet took her: and her feet took her to a row of trendy Somerville shops she vaguely knew.
    After a while she found herself in front of Universal Cuts, a glass-fronted salon. Inside, an older woman was having a haircut and chatting intensely to the young woman with the scissors. Two other people, probably stylists, were sitting unoccupied. Bea stared inside. One of the idle stylists, an Asian woman, looked up and returned her stare, absentmindedly twirling the ends of her long jet-black hair. Bea suddenly felt intensely nauseous and dizzy. 
    The memories were as sudden as a violent earthquake. She clutched her stomach tight and kept walking. When she was young, friends would taunt her about her long rod-straight hair. Her mother had explained that eating tomatoes encouraged curls like those of adorable Carlene who lived on the same street. But munching a daily tomato instead of an apple had failed to cajole a single strand into a beautiful bounce or charming curl.
    As she got older, Bea’s hair had acquired another significance. Men in particular found it dazzling. The more praise it attracted, the greater her discomfort. Slowly she became aware that her hair merely crowned a blossoming body with breasts that filled a decent-sized bra.
    ‘Stop pushing yourself up so by every man you see,’ Mira complained.
    Thirteen year-old Bea hung her head.
    Mira continued to badger her. ‘You should see yourself laughing and carrying on like you is a big woman. Have some decency about you. You is still a little child.’
    If only she had inherited Alan’s coarse wavy hair, life would have been easier. She said this to her maternal grandmother.
    ‘Listen, little madam,’ her grandmother had replied. ’Stop right there. You don’t know how lucky you is to get good hair from we side of the family. That so-called father of yours have hair picky-picky and curl-up. Them does have to straighten it regular to make it good. You don’t have to do nothing and your hair come down straight. Young people today! They never appreciate what the good Lord give them. Always wanting what they don’t have.’
    ‘But, Ma, I want it bouncy like Carlene’s hair. Why can’t mine be like that? And it’s too long. I don’t want it past my shoulders.’
    ‘You mad or what?’ shrieked her grandmother. ‘Don’t let me hear a scissors touch that head. Cut it and it will never grow back long so again. Mark my words.’
    ‘Well, I don’t like it,’ said Bea, pulling it into a bun.
    ‘When you get to be a big woman you could do what you want. But right now I can’t see your mother letting you cut the hair. Take it from an old lady. Leave the hair alone.’
    ‘Daddy said I could cut it if I want.’
    ‘If your mother hear you talking like that she go wash out your mouth with blue soap. He does do anything for you? When was the last time he come and see you, eh? Mira tell me how he forget your birthday. I lie? Didn’t do nothing. Not even a card. That is any kind of father to have?’
    Bea did not answer.
    ‘School holidays come and gone and not once he say, well, he go take you to the beach, or take you to spend a two days by he. You think he give one shit about you? You hear me? You only have father in