Assistant Editor Jess Jelsma Masterton: Much has been written about the appeal of first-person narrators in fiction. In general, the narrative style creates a feeling of intimacy on the levels of voice and character access. The narrator has a story to tell and they want to share it with you, the reader. Good first-person narrators show us not only the chain of events, but also the way they think and feel about everything that has taken place. The speakers reveal themselves through the manner in which they construct events—complete with their own personal biases, potential logical fallacies, and information they may or may not withhold. Lindsay Reeve’s story “Classic Length” uses first person to all of these effects, gifting us a narrator who is both celebratory in her confession and marked by a deep, yet-to-be-explored grief. The narrator wants us to look at her hair, at its future length and sheen, but her revelation about an old friend points us to a far darker theme.
To hear Lindsay read her piece, click here:
Classic Length
I am trying to grow my hair classic length, which means to my butt. Every day I warm oil between my palms and run it from root to tip. I massage my scalp with my fingers, stand with bent head in the shower, pray to the hair gods: Make me strong, shining, resilient. People tell me long hair doesn’t suit me. They say, “I know a good stylist.” I ignore them. Long hair is my birthright. Free, like oxygen.
A girl I knew in college, Masha, had classic-length hair. Hers was as straight as a whip. It was the color of dirt. It smelled of vanilla and also of twigs. Every time she passed by you’d get a whiff, a mutual secret. She was the kind of girl who’d had a private tutor for everything—English and calculus and fencing. I never spoke a word to Masha. I knew something about her, though, because we shared a boyfriend, Devlin.
Devlin wore his hair high and tight. We had a game: How far can you go. How far past your limit, how far before you’re not yourself, before you’re no longer sure you have a self. It turns out, pretty far. And not far enough. I never spoke a word to Masha, but I recognized her picked-at cuticles, her too-tight clothes. My own strategies were different, but still—I knew. We had changed in ways we did not ask for and did not want. Separately, simultaneously. I never spoke a word.
The other thing about Masha is, she died. She was riding in a car that crashed in the dark a few nights before graduation. It happens.
It’s not true that hair and fingernails keep growing after you die. That’s a myth. It is true that hair takes a very long time to break down. We’re talking thousands of years. Which means Masha’s hair will be classic length practically forever. In the meantime the rest of us will grow hair and lose it; we will find it in nests under our beds, stuck to our car seats. We will cut it, bleach it, pick it out of our eyes a thousand times. It will accumulate in the corners of bathrooms, bus stations, classrooms; it will mingle with the hair of boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, and pets and strangers and friends.
These days, I am gentle with myself. I brush my hair with pliable boar bristles, protect it from the wind. Soon it will be all the way down my back, long enough to keep me warm in winter, long enough.
Lindsay Reeve received a Joseph-Armand Bombardier award for her PhD in English at the University of Toronto. She now lives in San Francisco, where she is at work on a collection of short stories.
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