Lira1802
Havana Styles tried to focus on the task at hand but her mind couldn’t stop daydreaming about her younger days. She imagined herself back at her abuela’s house, playing with her toy horses on the porch or running through her elder’s garden, barefoot, with her precious dolly in her arms. Her abuela would watch on and smile at the young girl’s antics.
The girl stayed at her abuela’s house every summer. It was quaint, little house in the countryside. After Havana was dropped off, almost immediately, the girl’s grandmother would take her into the kitchen and seat her in a little, wooden chair. The old woman would wrap up her little one in a towel, keeping it tight around the shoulders with a clothespin, and place a bowl on Havana’s head. She then turned on the clippers and give her girl a neat and tidy bowl cut for her stay.
Every time the girl would come to stay with abuela, the routine would take its course. All through elementary, the girl would get the cut at the start of summer. Coming back from middle school was no different. Abuela was ready with the bowl and clippers. Try as she may, teenage Havana couldn’t persuade her elder to skip the haircut. The girl graduated high school and dreaded to go back to the house of abuela. Havana made excuses to her grandmother as to why she couldn’t come over but even those couldn’t evade the inevitable. One day, grandma came to Havana.
At first, the young lady received her grandmother with open arms. But it didn’t take long before abuela revealed her intentions for coming.
”I know you’re too busy to come visit me out in the countryside”,she said innocently,”And that’s okay. I come visit you one last summer before you head off to college. I’m proud of you, mija, and I want you to succeed but I must be blunt, that hair has to be taken care of”
Havana gulped. She didn’t want to but soon, she found herself in the kitchen being led by the hand by her grandmother to a wooden chair. The girl let herself be seated in the chair and have a towel tightened around shoulders. Abuela playfully fluffed up the girl’s shaggy hair with her hands. A hour struck and the bowl was placed on Havana’s head. Clippers were then plugged into the wall and turned on to a loud hum. First, abuela cut a line around the circumference of the girl’s head and then proceeded to drag the clippers down below the cut line. Nothing was left behind by the clippers.
After the bowl came off, the old woman trimmed up the haircut before turning off the clippers. It was over. This curse would never be broken until the girl was off to college.
That girl who was teased for her bowl cut all those years ago was now a successful engineer and businesswoman. Her black hair was now down to her shoulders in a long bob with professional looking bangs. She tried to convince herself that she was happy but something was missing.
In around the summertime, Havana went on vacation. She jumped on a plane and headed to the countryside. Her abuela welcomed her into the house in a loving embrace. Nothing was changed inside that house. As her abuela made the both of them some tea, Havana sat in a chair that she placed in the center of the room, intriguing her elder’s eye, and sort of stutter as she meekly said,”Abuela, yo quiero un corte de pelo por favor”
Her grandma smiled,”Bien”, as she left the room for a minute. She returned with a towel, which she wrapped around her granddaughter, and the clippers. The iconic bowl was once again placed on Havana’s head and the clippers whirred to life, giving the girl goosebumps. She felt alive as the clippers went around her head and then, took a majority of her black hair off.
The bowl’s job was done and thus, it was removed. The clippers finished up theirs before they two were put away.
”Tu eres bonita”,Abuela marveled at her work, removing the towel.
Soon after Havana’s haircut, her grandmother took the girl to her old bedroom. All the toys she played with played with long ago were in a chest which abuela opened. Havana took off her pantsuit and high-end heels and put on clothes that resembled those that she wore in childhood.
She went to do everything she did in her youth during that summer. Her inner child never truly died.
