A Wig for Natalie

"I'm bald!" The girl exclaimed as her blatant blonde hair flapped to the rhythm of her panicked skipping. Her long, youthful legs stumbled over each other, resulting in a beautifully disorganized dance. "I'm bald!" She screamed more loudly than before. Her terror seemed to gain momentum as her gait grew all the more chaotic. She was like a pale ball of pandemonium that scarcely noticed the staircase underneath it.

Her mother's face tightened with trepidation. "Honey, what are you talking about, you have beautiful hair." The girl stopped at the bottom of the stairs. "Mother, I. Am. Bald." She said this with a severe degree of condescending conviction. "Uh-h, I-" the mother was lost. She stuttered like a foreigner attempting to understand the answer to a question she had plucked directly from a phrasebook.

"I'm not going to school today, Mother. I'm not leaving my room till I have hair again." An entitled tone carried her words. "Natalie Amelia Pierce, what is this about?" It was as if she had learned how to be a mother from mediocre sitcoms, and was reading from a recycled script. "You expect me to go to school today? I'm bald, Mother. My scalp is on display for everyone to see." She said the word scalp as if she were allergic to it—physically struggling for air as she sensed her throat would soon swell up.

"Darling, calm down. You have hair. Look I can yank on it." She chose to yank, hoping to pinch her daughter out of the dreamlike state she was stuck in. Puzzled, Natalie watched her mother tug at what had already been torn out. "Look, you have gorgeous hair!" She pointed to the chunk of healthy hair she had clenched in her fist. The hair gleamed, reflecting light around the room. "I'm bald." The girl stood steadfast but somewhat concerned for her mother's sanity. "Honey, go back to bed. Sleep whatever this is off. I can't talk to you if you refuse to make sense."

Natalie trudged up the steps and back to her room. "What has gotten into that girl?" Her mother read from her script. Natalie stood in front of the mirror and saw her scalp naked, exposed. She brought her hand slowly to her forehead, and then moved it backwards, brushing her head lightly, caressing the cause of her discontent. Natalie backed away from the unhelpful mirror and collapsed onto her bed.

She slept until the next morning. Once again, the mirror brought her the same bad news. "Mom! I'm bald! I can't be seen like this!" She yelled, directing her voice down the stairs to save her the trip. "Natalie, whatever's going on, I can't help you if you don't make any sense! You're going to school! End of discussion." "Mother, I hate you." "You'll thank me later." Her mother's words belonged on cue cards, not in real life. In the real world people get more stubborn over time, it leads to meaningless gratitude, if any. Although her words were hollow, she had decided to indulge her daughter's imagination by buying her a hat.

Walking through the hallway to her first class, Natalie was given no strange looks, no one giggled snidely. She concluded that the hat must have successfully masked her hairless skull. "I just wish it wasn't so itchy," she thought. The bell rang, and the hallways were abandoned.

Every class was a struggle to not feel like everyone was watching her, just waiting for the hat to shift and reveal her depilated head. But what was even worse than the worrying was the unavoidable itch. At first it was nothing more a tingling sensation, but as the day progressed, the itch became more and more intense.

By lunch the tickle had spread. Her whole head felt it. Even her ears urged her to tear them off, hoping the pain would divert her focus. She sat alone at first but was soon greeted by the group of girls she had eaten lunch with everyday since 7th grade. "Hey, Natty! That hat is so cute!" "Is she mocking me?" Natalie wondered, but eventually decided to assume otherwise. "Thanks. How's it going?" A different girl answered for the first one without objection, like they were sharing a communal brain, the way people share a public bathroom. "I'm great! It's Friday, oh yeah!" The rest cheered emphatically, as if they weren't aware that Fridays are relatively common. "Where were you yesterday, Natty? We missed you." "Um, uh, shopping." "Oh, is that where you got that adorable hat?" "Yeah, sure." That was all the special attention the hat was granted. After that the other girls went back to chatting about things not worth being thought about, let alone uttered.

Fully concerned with her façade's stability, Natalie was not absorbed in these conversations like she usually was. She saw her supposed friends objectively and now never wanted to sit at that table again. She got up, ignored the confused whines of her past, and walked towards a vacant table. She sat down, feeling somewhat relaxed. She knew she was not being watched. Her comfort instilled a degree of courage within her and she motioned to appease the undeniable itch. Just before reaching her head, she was interrupted by the unforgiving itch. She immediately withdrew her hand and pretended to never have raised it.

Sensation stung like lighting, scurrying about her scalp. Her heart beat with deafening strength. Her pulse seemed to be coming from inside her ears. The pounding felt like a hundred hammers, while the itch scratched at her scalp like sharp fingernails. It whispered while her pulse screamed. She squeezed her hand tightly, but felt nothing. There was no shaking the incessant itch. Left with no alternative, she fiercely ripped off the hat. Instantly, the feelings that had urged her to do so vanished.

The pulse in her head ceased. Natalie sat there alone, her scalp visible. As she gazed out at the rest of the lunchroom, waiting for a reaction that never came, she thought about her situation. The itch had prevented her from thinking straight, but bald she was free to ponder. She stared at the hair of her peers, and a profound revelation popped into her mind. Was their hair not just as easily removed as her own? Deep down weren't they all bald? Natalie decided to find out, to reveal the truth by revealing scalps.

So she tied a string to a hairclip she had found in her back pocket, and then secretly clipped the tool to one of her old friend's hair. She sat a table away and yanked, and yanked, and yanked. With a final tug, Natalie pulled a wig from the girl's head and the entire room sat in awe.

The bald girl stood up and faced Natalie. Before being exposed, the girl was regarded as strikingly beautiful but hairless, she looked disfigured. She tried to say something but nothing came. Wigless, she had no words. Wigless, she was no one.

Frenzy ensued. Everyone grabbed at his neighbor's hair. Wigs were being thrown everywhere. Friends no longer recognized each other. It was a wonderfully anarchic massacre of manes.

When no wigged student remained, they left. The attendees of 6th period lunch sloppily wandered out into uncertainty. The cafeteria was left devoid of the students that gave it life, populated only by a multitude of disheveled wigs.

Stillness soaked the air. Chairs were tipped over, trays left discarded and alone. Wigs laid like corpses on a battlefield, relics of the preceding hysteria. The wigged wasteland was grotesquely quiet. Even the pungent aroma that normally pervaded the room had withered away. Layers of nothingness coated the cafeteria. Beneath the desolation, a bell rang. Its sound buzzed throughout the lifeless room, signifying the end of a period.

Natalie returned home, feeling compelled to approach her mother.

"You're home early." Natalie's mother said as she descended down the staircase. "Mom, I'm bald." Her mother shrugged. "Oh, Darling, not this again, please." "I'm bald." "No you're not! You have a beautiful head of hair. I've already told you this." "Mom, you're bald." Natalie stood strong. She was confident and elegant at the same time. Her mother flinched and spoke staccato. "I am not bald! You are not bald! Jesus Christ! What is wrong with you?" "Mom, you're bald. And I'm going to prove it."

She had no intention of harming her mother. Natalie lunged at her to try to free her from the wig's clutches. For Natalie and her peers, the wigs came off with little effort, but her wigged mother had witnessed and celebrated far more Fridays than Natalie or her friends. Her wig was a part of her. The society she grew up in reproached the very idea of baldness. Natalie's hairless freedom belonged to the new. The old had grown obstinate. Her mother's generation rigidly accepted only the wigged, just as Natalie's generation would grow to rigidly accept only the bald.

She tackled her mother, and then pulled vigorously on her wig. Natalie's mother screamed in agony, but Natalie ignored her screams, writing them off as the pangs of change. Leveraging with her feet, Natalie put all her strength into freeing her mother. Just before the end, her mother cried "Natalie, Honey, Mommy loves you." It was the last line she got to before her script was ripped from her grasp; it was the last thought she had before her scalp was ripped from her skull.

Natalie gazed upon her mother's corpse, unaffected by this repulsive form of freedom. Wigless, she wasn't sad, or angry, or happy. She was simply unsure. She squatted in front of the body, still holding the bloodied scalp. Vacant eyes glared back at her. Her mother's face still expressed terror. Natalie tilted her head, continuing to show no emotion. A giggle burst from her lips. The giggle grew into a fit of laughter. She toppled over. Lying in a pool of blood next to her murdered mother, Natalie chuckled innocently. The pleasant sound of a child's laughter daubed the disturbing moment. Certainty lay slain; confusion was king.