{"id":146684,"date":"2020-08-06T12:24:01","date_gmt":"2020-08-06T16:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=146684"},"modified":"2020-08-06T12:24:01","modified_gmt":"2020-08-06T16:24:01","slug":"rapunzel-draft-one-thousand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/06\/rapunzel-draft-one-thousand\/","title":{"rendered":"Rapunzel, Draft One Thousand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sabrina Orah Mark\u2019s column,\u00a0Happily<\/a>, focuses on fairy tales and motherhood.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo \u00a9 Sabrina Orah Mark<\/p><\/div>\n

I call the Wig Man. He picks up. \u201cMy sister,\u201d I say, \u201cwas diagnosed \u2026\u201d He interrupts me because he is driving and he is in a rush. \u201cMy store,\u201d he says, \u201cwas looted last night.\u201d \u201cMy sister,\u201d I want to say, \u201c…\u201d He tells me he gathered all the hair that was left on the floor. \u201cGlass everywhere,\u201d he says. \u201cI filled my Toyota Tacoma with all the hair that was left. I am driving home now,\u201d he says. \u201cIs you sister\u2019s hair long?\u201d he asks. It is. It is very long. \u201cBecause if it\u2019s long what your sister should do before treatment begins is cut all her hair off and I will sew it, strand by strand, into a soft net. It\u2019s called a halo,\u201d he says. \u201cI want to help your sister,\u201d says the Wig Man. I imagine his Toyota Tacoma so stuffed with wigs that black and brown and blond hairs press up against the windows. Like animals trapped inside their own freedom. He starts to cry. I am certain he is driving across a bridge. \u201cI don\u2019t know how much more of this I can take,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither do I,\u201d I don\u2019t say.<\/p>\n

Sewing a wig strand by strand is called ventilating. I watch a tutorial. With a needle you draw each strand through a lace net and knot it on itself. The needle goes in and then out like thousands of tiny breaths. Ventilating a wig takes the patience of the dead. Each knotted strand is like a person sewn into a free country. The knot is tight, and the net is manufactured. \u201cOf course my life matters,\u201d says Eli my six-year-old. \u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t it matter?\u201d<\/p>\n

My sister decides not to cut her hair. Instead she lets it fall out, slowly and then suddenly. She yawns, rises, and climbs up the stairs. She leaves behind a trail of blondish gold thread, like a princess coming undone. I write six different essays on Rapunzel. All of them are terrible. I help my sister into bed, though she prefers I not touch her. On her nightstand are six glittering tiaras. She wears one to chemo. Another to breakfast. \u201cIsn\u2019t it strange,\u201d I say, \u201cthat I write about fairy tales and you are a fairy tale princess?\u201d She looks at me hard. \u201cA sick princess,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Of all the fairy tales, Rapunzel gives me the most difficult time. \u201cIt\u2019s because,\u201d says my husband, \u201cyou are trying to use her to write about systemic racism, and protest, and cancer, and a global pandemic.\u201d \u201cShould I just take out the racism?\u201d I ask. \u201cNo,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t take out the racism.\u201d \u201cI know,\u201d I say. \u201cThat was a stupid question,\u201d I say. \u201cCan I take out my mother?\u201d \u201cDoes your mother appear?\u201d he asks. \u201cI don\u2019t remember your mother appearing.\u201d \u201cEventually,\u201d I say, \u201cmy mother always appears.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am following my husband around the kitchen. \u201cShould I add how after George Floyd was killed you sat on the edge of the bathtub and cried? Remember how you said,\u201d I say, \u201c\u2018We\u2019ve been here before\u2019? Remember when you said, \u2018When will this stop,\u2019 but you said it like an answer not a question?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThugs,\u201d says the Wig Man. \u201cThey destroyed my shop,\u201d he says. \u201cEverything is ruined.\u201d I never call the Wig Man back. Instead, my mother buys my sister four wigs made out of strangers\u2019 hair. Two brown ones, and two blond. My sister refuses to try the wigs on so my mother tries them on instead. In the wigs my mother looks sad and incredibly young. I can see my sister\u2019s face gazing out from inside my mother\u2019s, like a girl locked inside a tower.<\/p>\n

My husband sits on the edge of the bathtub and cries. \u201cWe\u2019ve been here before so many times,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen will it stop?\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t know how much more of this I can take,\u201d says the Wig Man. \u201cOf course my life matters,\u201d says Eli, \u201cwhy wouldn\u2019t it matter?\u201d \u201cDid you know,\u201d says my sister, \u201cthat in Disney\u2019s Tangled <\/em>Rapunzel lives inside a kingdom called Corona?\u201d \u201cThat can\u2019t be right,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

I cut off all my hair. A twelve-inch braid long enough for nobody to climb. I throw the braid in the trash and then remove it from the trash. It\u2019s soft and dumb. \u201cI can\u2019t look at it,\u201d says my mother. \u201cGet it away from me,\u201d says my sister. I put it in an envelope and send it to a dear friend\u2019s brother, an artist who makes Torahs and animals and money out of human hair and skin. I mean it as an act of solidarity, but I get the feeling my sister and mother read it as an act of pointless sacrifice. To punish Rapunzel for betraying her captivity, the enchantress winds her braids around her left hand, cuts them off, then takes Rapunzel to a wilderness and leaves her there. \u201cSee,\u201d I say to my sister. \u201cIt\u2019s not so bad.\u201d She looks at my short hair, and a small forest grows between us.<\/p>\n

Other than Disney\u2019s, in no version of Rapunzel is Rapunzel\u2019s hair magical. It can\u2019t bring back the dead, or heal a broken bone, or keep a woman young forever. It can\u2019t light up dark water. It can\u2019t be thrown like a lasso so Rapunzel can glide from mountaintop to mountaintop. It doesn\u2019t, like his hair does for Samson, give her god\u2019s power or the strength to kill a lion with her bare hands. It cannot keep a man from being shot for his blackness. It\u2019s just hair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m sure Rapunzel is wonderful and not terrible,\u201d emails a friend, \u201cbut also there\u2019s something Sisyphean about Rapunzel \u2026\u201d She\u2019s right. I know what she means. Rapunzel\u2019s hair is no more magical than a mountain the enchantress climbs day after day, pushing the burden of her own spell. I know what she means, but now I am imagining rolling boulders up Rapunzel\u2019s back as she bends down to pick the roots and berries she survives on while pregnant in the wilderness. I roll the boulder up Rapunzel\u2019s back, and each time I reach the crest the boulder rolls back down. Rapunzel, the mountain. Rapunzel, my sister. I am using my sister\u2019s cancer to write about the impossible because it\u2019s impossible my sister has cancer. And it\u2019s impossible my sons cannot go to school or play with their friends. And it\u2019s impossible my husband could be shot for being black. And it\u2019s impossible the air is filled with tear gas and viral particles. I have stolen my sister\u2019s tiara to wear. I am covered in sweat and dust, and on my head the tiara is crooked. I stole the most beautiful one. I stole the one embellished with glass stones and little pink stars.<\/p>\n

It is late afternoon and my sister is sleeping. In the dining room, my mother has lined up all the wigs on their Styrofoam heads. Like four extra daughters. She keeps walking by them and smoothing their hair with her hand. She puts one to her face and inhales. The afternoon light lengthens her shadow. I don\u2019t know if she notices I am there. The story of Rapunzel begins with a pregnant woman\u2019s insatiability, her hunger for the finest rapunzel (also known as rampion, or the \u201cking\u2019s cure-all\u201d) that results in the barter and entrapment of her daughter. In Giambattista Basile\u2019s \u201cPetrosinella,\u201d one of the earliest versions of the story, a pregnant woman is caught stealing parsley from an ogress\u2019s garden. She apologizes, and explains she had to satisfy her craving. In the sixteenth\u00a0century, there was a widespread belief that if a pregnant woman\u2019s cravings weren\u2019t satisfied, the shape of whatever she craved would appear on her newborn. Birthmarks are called voglie <\/em>in Italian, which means longings. My sister and I have identical birthmarks on the right side of our faces. Near our ears. Like a handful of scattered acorns. I am twenty-five years older than my sister. We don\u2019t have the same father, but we do have the same mark of our mother\u2019s longing.<\/p>\n

Every two weeks my mother takes my sister to be infused with poison through a hole in her neck so she doesn\u2019t die. My mother looks over at me. I am writing a birthday card with butterflies on it. \u201cI hate butterflies,\u201d says my mother. \u201cIt\u2019s a stupid thing to put on a birthday card. They\u2019re barely alive and then they\u2019re dead.\u201d Every mother has the exact same single greatest fear. It\u2019s the boulder we push while praying for no crest.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course my life matters,\u201d says Eli, my seven-year-old. \u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t it matter?\u201d<\/p>\n

By now the Wig Man must have stopped crying and arrived home. I imagine he is working in the same afternoon light that comes in through my mother\u2019s window. He is bent over as he sews each of us, like strands of hair, into a soft net. Listen, we are breathing. You are breathing. My sons and husband are breathing. The Wig Man sews and sews. One piece of glass is still caught in a strand but he doesn\u2019t notice it yet. My mother is breathing. My sister is breathing. We will make a magnificent wig. Rapunzel will wear us in this lost version of her fairy tale. We are not magical, but at least we are alive. \u201cRapunzel, Rapunzel, \/ Let your hair down.\u201d When she lets us down what will climb up? We have one last chance to answer right. A revolution or the enchantress who keeps us?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read earlier installments of Happily here.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Sabrina Orah Mark is the author of the poetry collections\u00a0<\/em>The Babies\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Tsim Tsum.\u00a0<\/em>Wild Milk, her first book of fiction, is recently out from Dorothy, a publishing project. She lives, writes, and teaches in Athens, Georgia.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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