Chapter 6: Cousin and Billy Goat Gruff
He’s in here somewhere. A cousin, but not really. Taller than me, shy but kind, half-shaven head, like a young Army recruit, or a post-war refugee.
There’s a picture of him watching over my little brother in his little playpen, while I snuck furtive peeks up at the most beautiful boy in the world, inside a sliding paper-door hut in the middle of Sonyuri, South Korea, circa 1969.
The gauzy sun has lit us up sideways, as in a prelude to a really good k-drama rom-com — back to where the two leads started off as ragtag children who would later meet up in college to rekindle a new love.
I wonder what my life would’ve been like had I stayed. If I’d married that friend’s son, my calabash cousin, or just enjoyed a fling before moving on.
Maybe I would’ve suffered the same fate as my mother, with a worse outcome (than marrying a white Army sergeant out of convenience, not love). One date rape too far, and a life on the streets giving blowjobs for drug kingpins, learning to like the taste of nicotine and poison in my lungs. Becoming someone else, someone entirely different.
One or two years later, after the cousin, I went gaga over Billy Goat (not his real name, but I can’t remember anymore) in Louisville, KY, where we landed after the military shipped my father off to debtor’s prison.
I remember a blond boy and his many toy trucks in a grey bedroom overlooking a great, big weedy field, and playing doctor with sticks in a nearby ditch between military houses and a main road going off to the railway tracks of my old school, and the bright in-between summer-autumn sun, lighting us up.
We never got farther than our underpants, which is just as well, considering…
One day out of the blue, Mommy Dearest got it into her short, hair-sprayed, wig-wearing head to cut off all my hair, up to the shoulders. My precious hair…went down the length of my back, touching my butt…gone.
She hated long hair, not only on herself but anyone she could get a hold of, which included me, her only oldest daughter. I didn’t even get a say in the matter, although, lord knows I tried.
I screamed, cried my bloodshot eyes out, thrashed on the floor, screamed some more, knowing Billy wouldn’t like it, but it didn’t matter. It never did with her.
Once she wanted to do something, it was done. She never asked what I wanted. Why bother when I was just her trophy, her little baby doll to play with, then toss aside when she got bored?
What I wanted didn’t matter, because, back then, in the 1970s, I was just a kid and children should be seen, not heard, “and not even that,” my dad added after beating me senseless — in front of all my horrified friends — for not vacuuming one of the corners of the dining room after my 8th birthday party, while the Four Seasons bleated out, “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” on the stereo speakers.
After The Dreaded Haircut, I went to the neighborhood playground, sat on the swings, hoping against hope, and waited for Destiny to come kick my ass.
Billy showed up eventually. He took one look at me, and said what I knew he would say: “Why did you cut your hair?!” like it was my fault. “I liked you better with long hair. You’re ugly now.”
I pleaded my case, anyway, ignoring his hurtful words — a habit that would haunt me later.
He just turned and walked away. I never saw him again. No, that’s not true. He found another girl with long hair, blonde this time, the very next day.
But, I didn’t cry. I was all cried out. Besides, what’s the use?
I watched him leave, then began spinning around on the swings, listlessly pulling at my hair, wishing I could go bald just to spite him and my fucking mom. I would, from 4th to 7th grade, stop washing and brushing my hair altogether.
Out of nowhere, I launched into “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night — a song I’d heard earlier that morning on the radio — in a loop, another habit, until I felt better.
It didn’t really help.
I didn’t feel better for a long time. Not until Brannan Koballa.