The Girl With Nine Wigs Read Online Free PDF Page A

did leave with a wig for my mother, but it all felt very mechanical. There was none of the joy or relief that comes with finding what you have been looking for. A woman in despair, deprived of her hair and her femininity. A saleswoman holding a soft hazelnut-brown wig that came closest to the hairdo my mother had said good-bye to. Then the sound of a bank card being swiped. My mother rarely wore it, preferring to wrap her head in a scarf. I never told her this, but to me the wig always looked unnatural.
    This morning there was hair on my pillow when I woke up. Clumps of hair in my hairbrush. Despair in the sink. Nurse Bas was right. Three weeks to the day. It’s the strangest thing: Yesterday my hair was still glued to my scalp. I even believed for a minute that maybe chemo wouldn’t affect me the way it affects others.
    While the saleswoman leaves to search for wigs that would suit me, I gently run my fingers through my hair, a new bunch of strands coming out in my fingers. I look at a brush lying on the table. It’s evil. The clumps, the brush, the mirror.
    The wig shop is situated in the central lobby of the hospital. Handy for the oncology patients, who can stop by straight after being unhooked from the IV. Sitting beside me are my mother, sister, and Annabel. We’re all quiet and uncomfortable, until Annabel breaks the tension by trying on one of the wigs. It looks ridiculous. We burst out laughing.
    I see the saleswoman taking a wig out of its box. Be positive, Sophie! I fail. “I’m losing tons every day,” I say as she combs my hair. She looks at me in the mirror. I’ve brought pictures with me of how I like to wear my hair. They are the ones Jan took three weeks ago, when I still had a full head of it. I look less and less like that girl from the pictures now that my hair cells are losing the fight against the chemo. The pictures are lying on the table, next to a brochure for wigs and a sample of yellow-blond hair that has just appeared. Maybe something like this? Not even close. All these hairdos make me look like a drag queen, and when she presents me with a bunch of long dark hair, all I can think of is that guitar player in Guns N’ Roses. It might work for MTV, but not on my head.
    What a fucking disaster.
    I look at my sister, with her dark hair twisted up in a bun. She looks beautiful. Like me, she prefers to wear her hair up and pushed back, slightly messy. I look at Annabel’s thick black hair, again at my sister’s shiny locks, then at my mother’s short do and back to the few pathetic wisps left on my head. The past three weeks whiz through my mind, but I still can’t quite grasp how I got here.
    I want to escape, to hide behind the safe walls of my home. Not just from this disease, but also from the reactions of those around me that confirm everything I want to forget. Neighbors with pity in their eyes. The man in the grocery store sneaking an extra bunch of vitamins into my shopping basket. Friends hugging me tight. Family crying along with me. I look into the mirror with glistening eyes and let the lady fiddle around with my hair. Of my full lips, only a sad stripe remains, running straight across my face. The more she pulls at my hair, the thinner my mouth becomes and the more lost I feel.
    In the end, nothing looks right and I choose a prissy head of hair that comes closest to the way I used to look but that somehow doesn’t look like me at all. It’s ugly and it itches like crazy.
    The woman is talking to me encouragingly.
    â€œIt will take a little while for it to feel like ‘you.’ A wig never feels right on the first day, but play around with it, try it out, and within two weeks it will be totally you.” She’s been in this business for twenty years and claims she’s one of the few who works with the hip, young wigs from Japan. “That’s where all the fun, fresh looks come from. Perfect for young girls like