Better As You Are
Nicole Cabrera
“Mami, what does gay mean?” My prepubescent legs kick the air under our dining room chair as I lean forward in my seat, curious and expectant.
“Where did you hear that word?” My mother is at the stove, mixing a big pot of caldo de pollo. The salty scent fills the air and waters my mouth, like Mrs. Rushnack taught me happens when you think of the word lemon.
“Emilio and I were playing at recess, and he said that girls that play with cars are gay, and so that I’m gay.” She sighs and glances at me, pausing her stir. My wide eyes follow her figure out the door and back in, little red book in tow. She sets our dictionary on the kitchen table and pulls up a seat. Tucking a loose curl back into place, she riffles through the browned pages, stopping at G and setting it before me.
“Aqui,” she points. “Gay means light-hearted and carefree,” she reads the definition aloud, covering the line below with her thumb.
“So..happy?” I look at her. She nods.
“Yes, mama. He was just saying you’re happy.” She shuts the book and returns to the pot, stirring methodically. I nod. I guess I am pretty happy, I think.
A few weeks later I’m sprawled on our couch, flipping through channels. After zooming through 100-odd channels, I stop on the news. Big bold letters fill the lower half of the screen. RICKI MARTIN COMES OUT AS GAY. White anchors in pressed suits bicker back and forth in strong tones and big words I don’t understand. My mom stands behind me and gasps, arms wrapping around her, cradling herself. I turn my head back, perplexed.
“Mami, why are they so mad? He’s just happy.” She looks down and sports a pained smile, taking the remote out of my hands and pressing the neon glowing numbers. Blackness fills the screen before PBS flits on. Her cold fingers smooth down my straight hair.
“I don’t know mama.” She leaves the room, hand to her head.
***
I’m 14 years old and sitting in Pupi’s chair. My waist-length hair is wet and held back in a claw-clip, towel resting on my shoulders. Mami stands to my left and they both stare at me as I show them what I want. A YouTube video on my iPod touch shows a girl in her late teens getting her long caramel curls cropped, the final look a bouncy brown pixie cut. I pause the video and look up, a sharp silence filling the stuffy basement-turned-studio.
“Bueno,” Pupi pauses.
“I can do it, if it’s what she wants.” She holds cutting scissors limp in her left hand and looks to my mother, who has sat into a waiting chair, leaning forward and biting the nail on her thumb. Mami makes eye contact with Pupi and sets her hands onto my black-aproned lap.
“Isa, are you sure? You know your quince is coming up soon. Would you want your hair like this when you take your photos?” She motions to the iPod and I hold it close to examine the after photos, the sheared curls on the screen filling my stomach with doubt.
“I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking about my quince,” I whisper, dejected.
“Marcia, hair grows back,” Pupi argues. My mother shoots her a look and counters.
“What if we just do to here?” she holds a frigid finger to my collarbone, satisfied with her compromise. I keep my eyes down and nod, taking one last look at the smiling teen and tucking the device under my thigh. Pupi sighs and glances at my mother, getting to work.
***
We’re arguing and I’m going back and forth on the same topic over and over.
“I just don’t understand. Gay – maybe I understand. Lesbian, sure. But bisexual? Choose one or the other. No pueden ser los dos. They just want to feel special.” My mother grips the steering wheel as she spouts her bullshit and I struggle not to take it personally.
“Mom, did you ever have a crush on a boy when you were young?” She nods. “And how did it make you feel?” I look at her from the passenger seat, staring her down. She shrugs.
“I don’t know. Good?” she replies, and I sigh.
“Like, what kind of good? Butterflies? Happy? Nervous?”
“Yeah, sure.” She nods.
“Now imagine feeling that for both boys and girls,” I smirk and sit back, letting the question marinate.
I know it makes her uncomfortable – humanizing those she cannot understand. I see the frustration bubble up in her and watch her pushed between a rock and a hard place, lips pursed, no quick or easy reply in sight.
“Why do you even care so much?” she snaps, whipping her head to look me squarely in the eyes. Her words bite like a rabid dog’s. I avert my gaze quickly to my jeans, fingering the frays at my knees.
“Just think it’s unfair, that’s all,” I mumble, and let the conversation come to an unresolved close, as it always does.
***
When I first crop my hair at 22, my mother tells the whole family.
“Lesbiana,” she whispers to my tia Mayra on her porch, who chain-smokes her third cigarette in one seating, “She has to be.”
When my tio calls for the holidays, my mother passes the phone to me on speaker.
“Hey kiddo! I heard you cut your hair! How short?” he shouts over the phone.
“Hey tio,” I reply, feigning enthusiasm. “Yeah, I did. A lo machito.” No pause follows before his smarmy voice fills the line.
“What, you playing both teams now?” I laugh. For all his shit, this might be the funniest thing my tio has ever said. Purely because of what an idiot he is.
“Anyways,” I start, brushing over the attempt at a joke, “Feliz Navidad, tio.” I do not wait for the response before I thrust the phone towards my mother, who watches the ordeal in horror. She has her fingers raised to her mouth as she scurries out of the room to end the call, a caricature of distress.
As I’d booked the appointment for the cut, she’d still fought me on the same battle. Yet now, instead of Pupi’s wet-walled busy basement boutique in North Bergen, I go to a women’s only barber on 10th street and Avenue A, and instead of her lopsided compromises, I can make my own decisions.
***
“I wonder what you’d look like with long hair,” Marcus fingers my cropped cut, smoothing down the cowlick at the back of my head. I pull out my phone, balancing it on his chest from where I cuddle him, head nestled into the crook between his neck and left shoulder.
Opening my photos app, I scroll repeatedly, past 8 years worth of coffee photos, graduation pictures, countless boyfriends, a couple of vacations, and a handful of cotton-candy sunsets to a picture of 17-year-old me, posed in front of an apple blossom tree. I’m wearing light blue jeans, a multi-colored striped shirt, and a genuine smile. My eyes are bright as I look up at the falling pink petals. Dark brown hair hangs to my mid-back, straightened and soft. He laughs.
“Yeah, but y’know, I mean you now. Not baby you,” he retorts, zooming in on the photo.
“Well, tough shit. You’ve got what you’ve got,” I shoot back, looking at him with a grin. He flicks my forehead, smiling back.
When he’d met me 4 years ago, I’d sported a wavy bob, lopped abruptly at my chin. Now, a traditional pixie sits atop my head, mussed and messy from a Sunday spent in bed. No photos past 18 had ever seen my long-haired self, and as a result, he surely hadn’t either.
“Maybe I’ll get a wig,” I joke. He pauses and studies my head, the sharp black tufts that jut out from the follicles.
“That would actually be pretty cool,” he says seriously, lost in the thought. I’d never even thought about going back to it. On multiple occasions I’d rambled about how I could never go back to long hair. Not with how low maintenance it is! I’d boast.
That night when he leaves to get our nightly mint chip pint from the bodega two corners down, I search up Long Black Hair Wavy Wig with Bangs and buy the one with the best reviews for $26.13.
Half a week later the package sits in our P.O. box. I walk the freezing 5 blocks there and back from our apartment and rush back up the stairs upon my return to our 4th-floor two-bedroom, anxious and overly eager. Locking the door behind me, I throw the package onto the marble kitchen island and circle around it, seating myself into one of our high chairs. I give it a good once over before tearing into it, pulling the wig out of the packaging and smoothing the synthetic hair in my lap. It is jet black, and when I raise it to my head, falls squarely at my mid-back.
That night when Marcus gets home I stand in front of the mirror, pulling down at my eye bags and lining my square jaw with my nubby fingers before smoothing concealer down, around, and up my eye in one fell swoop. Tucking the tufts of my natural hair into a cap, I place the wig on and fidget with it, trying to make the bangs look natural. Maybe, I think, I should cut them so they sit above my eyebrows. Instead, I just inch the hairline back a little further. Marcus sits in the bedroom on his phone, awaiting my grand reveal. He’d assured me I didn’t have to do myself up all fancy, but I insisted.
“I look so funny,” I call to him.
“It can’t be that bad!” he yells back.
“I didn’t mean bad funny,” I reply. “Just weird, I guess.”
I tuck one long curled strand behind my ear. The color match is incredible. Even though the edges of my shorn sideburns peek out, they manage to masquerade themselves into the larger picture. I smooth down the summery dress I’ve squeezed over my body, two summers too tight. It ends high on my thigh, lilac with puffed sleeves. Looking pretty is so foreign that it feels like an act. Everything must go right. I scrub a stray dot of mascara from my eyelid.
“Wow,” he says as I appear, slipping out from our bathroom door. “That’s weird.”
I frown and cross my arms and he springs up from the bed to my side.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” he reassures, “I’ve just never seen you like this before,” he whispers, caressing my tucked arm.
“Do I look pretty?” I mumble the words lightly, embarrassed by my own need for approval.
“Of course you do. Very pretty.” He kisses my forehead.
“Actually,” he comments, “you look really Hispanic right now.” I scoff in response.
He kisses my forehead and takes me into his arms. Pulling back, he cups my face like I’d taught him I’d liked and draws me to him, softening his lips onto mine. Sometimes I wonder if I were prettier, daintier, skinnier, had longer hair, if he would be nicer to me – not that he’d ever been anything but. Yet this time as we have sex, I imagine he is somehow gentler than usual. I allow myself to believe this low-cost wig has imbued me with all that I have lost. I drape a lock over my chest. I am delicate. He kisses my thighs before he eats me out and runs his fingers over my body like feathers. I fuck Marcus with the cheap Amazon wig on, long black tendrils covering my nipples like Venus. The manufactured curls bounce haphazardly as I ride him. Leaning down to kiss him, I pull wiry strands from our mouths, the plastic-y scent of the wig enveloping our sweaty bodies. He grips into my plush hips, small hills of pale flesh burgeoning from his clamping fingertips.
“I miss your short hair,” he whispers, and I place my finger on his lips, kissing him harshly. My body feels pretty, my face feels pretty, everything about me feels pretty again. I will not let him take this newfound womanhood away from me, no matter how fake, fragile, and fleeting. I ride him until my legs give out and his nails are sinking into me and he’s moaning my name and the walls vibrate. I collapse onto his chest and he wraps his arms around my body carefully, steadying me.
Sitting there in post-coital bliss, the heat of the wig threatens to choke me. I slide it off by the middle parting, short hair emerging ruffled in every which way.
“There’s my girl,” he coos, taking me in for a kiss. I fling the tangled wig into a hairy heap on our nightstand.
As I rush to the bathroom to clean myself up, I stop at the mirror. Seeing myself now, it’s strange. A face I’d wholly missed stares back. I trace the edges of my soft jaw with a finger, wipe the smudged mascara with ease. My features, once drowned by the weight of the synthetic hair, now appear large and vibrant when forced to the forefront. I muss my hair, and even though the wig has been removed – a half-forgotten item soon-to-be doomed to a dresser drawer – that feeling stays. For the first time in years, I feel pretty as myself.
In our queen-sized bed, we envelop each other in our arms, heat radiating from our bodies, sleep tempting us. Marcus pets the back of my head, smoothing my hair and soothing my soul. “I think you look better as you are,” he murmurs, lips smushed to my hairline.
“Me too.” I wrap my arms around him tighter and whisper the truth into the warm dark.
Nicole Cabrera is a student at Rutgers University, graduating in Spring 2023 with a BA in English. She is the Secretary of Demarest Hall and creator of The Johnnies, a monthly student-submitted literary and art zine. In her free time, you can find her crocheting, playing rhythm games, or performing with her band, Something Odd.