My Ma rinsed her kitchen scissors with boiling water
and had me sat down in front of the kitchen sink,
where a mirror is propped vertically against the tap; though
the sink itself was glinting beneath the light so shiny
that I could see her movements behind: lowering her face
to my hair, frowning, lips pursed, hand parting my hair with
the same ruthless practicality she used to empty a fish’s belly;
for numerous time she has done that in the metallic sheen of the
blade and the sink. Now as I bend my head to the weight of her
hand, the scent of blood and raw meat rose up from the iron basin
and glided across my bow soft as a phantom fin. I could almost
materialize blood stains on the gleaming surfaces that Ma
polishes three times a day, a paranoia as if she is actually covering up
a crime scene. The scissors, her lethal weapon, pressed against her
hand
with a reassuring weight, exuding heat like a magical sword
re-forged and sharpened daily from the bellies of fish and chicken
and geese. Its edge warm as a mother’s hand was gliding between
my hair
draping over the back of my neck. I shivered and Ma’s other hand
landed
on my shoulder. It’ll come off ugly if you won’t stop squirming. Her
voice
rung above me, distant as an ancient deity. Swift, swishing sounds
like ragged breathing or a loud sigh erupted at the end of the wires
that connect straight back to my head. I thought about the noise
she makes when removing the scales of a fish still writhing
in her grasp – really, the kitchen is filled with mysterious sounds
Like metal chair legs scratching over a cold tiled floor, sounds
that the fish could never had heard in the water. Butchered
vegetables crying out in voices only Ma can hear; the soup
heating up on the soup is emitting nightmarish screeches of the
drowned.
The good thing about having your mother cut your hair in the
kitchen
is that all of it would end soon: efficient as one deconstructing a
ticking bomb
my Ma wields her blades, in her element in the only place
she cuts and bleeds like breathing. The only place, she’d insist
she can give me a good haircut. When its over my hair was strewn
all across the kitchen floor, trapped in the cracks between the tiles
inside the sink and in our slippers. Black strands of fiber as hard
to remove as the smell of the the kitchen on my Ma’s skin:
juice of fresh vegetables, raw meat, vinegar and her lemony blue
dish soap, on her clothes and hands like a persistent ghost. She
bent over towards me, our faces level in the sink’s reflection. Two
heads
of kitchen-scissored hair both looking like an uncanny
duplication
of the other. Ma raised a strand of my short hair to her nose and
dictated her verdict: now, even your hair smells like mine.
