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It Makes Your Hair Curl

Nora McDonald

    “It makes your hair curl.”
    Sue didn’t know what had possessed her to say it. It wasn’t her place. It was the guide’s job. But all the woman in period dress had said before Sue’s outburst was,
    “See if you can find the curling tongs.”
    Once a teacher always a teacher, thought Sue. The habits of a lifetime die hard.
    She looked all around at the children she’d addressed. They were gazing at her suspiciously, unaccustomed to the Scottish voice.
    They don’t know what they’re looking for, thought Sue. A bit like me.
    The children scattered through the nineteenth century house, peering into every room, the next one more attractive than the last.
    One small girl with blonde, curly hair whined to her mother who was balancing a baby on her hip.
    “Mom, can we go to McDonald’s?”
    Yes, that about sums up education today, thought Sue. America or Scotland. There was no difference. Kids were more interested in going for a burger than they were in learning. Not that she blamed the children. They were no different than they had ever been. No, it was the adults, the education system and society that was to blame. But it didn’t make her job any easier knowing that. And she was tired. Tired of trying in her own small way to change things. That’s why she’d decided to give up teaching. She’d decided before she left home to come to America on holiday but now she knew for certain. Once upon a time she had had the foolish notion she could make a difference. But that idea had long gone, swallowed up by volcanic eruptions of paperwork and mounting disillusionment at the declining standards in education. After all, what difference could one individual make?
    Her eyes scanned the interior of the dark, gloomy room, searching for the curling tongs. But she could see no sign of them. She knew what they looked like. She’d seen them often enough at her grandmother’s house as a child. Fearsome, long metal pincers hidden in an old walk-in cupboard. But it was the smell she remembered. The smell of her hair singeing as her grandmother had removed them from the red-hot coals of her fire and twisted them around a clump of her baby-fine, straight hair.
    “My, aren’t you beautiful?” her grandmother had said.
    But Sue had known her grandmother was lying. She’d never been a pretty child. Not like her sister Jane. Jane had been the pretty one, always dressed in pink, her golden curls shining in the sunlight. Sue had been what her grandmother would have called “plain”. Her nose a little too pointed, her chin a little too sharp and her skin freckly. And her hair. Her hair had a will all of its own. She could see that when she looked at the results of the curling tongs in her grandmother’s mirror. Even the curling tongs couldn’t make her pretty. And she’d hated those tongs ever since.
    “Let’s go outside,” said a voice by her side.
    Her daughter, Fiona, pointed to the figure of the guide who had disappeared through the door of the house. “We can ask her some questions, like we asked the woman at the farmstead.”
    Sue was surprised. She hadn’t thought Fiona was interested in history. Not that Sue hadn’t tried to interest her in it. And in education in general. Even there she was a failure. Fiona was like John. The contents of the shopping malls were far more interesting to her.
    The guide in her brown, calico dress was sitting on a seat on the wooden porch.
    “It’s 1862 and I’m a teacher,” she said.
    Oh no, thought Sue, expecting Fiona to blurt out at any moment that her mum was one too. But Fiona was silent. Sue was silent too. She’s come away to escape from teachers.
    “Why aren’t you in the schoolhouse?” said Fiona.
    The woman smiled a warm, friendly Southern smile.
    “I don’t think I’d meet so many people there.”
    Sue knew just what she meant. Children wouldn’t want to go there in their holidays. Besides which the schoolhouse was an austere, forbidding building, occupying an isolated corner of the Historical Village. Sue had spotted it as she and Fiona had headed up the hill to the house. Even they had passed it by.
    “Is this your home?” said Fiona.
    “Yes,” said the woman.
    Sue thought she detected a tear in her eye.
    She’s a good actress, thought Sue. .
    The mother with the baby on her hip appeared on the porch.
    “Whad did they do for air-conditioning?” she drawled.
    Fiona dug her mother in the side and grimaced.
    Sue sighed. Was the woman serious? She looked at the baby balanced on the woman’s hip and thought how some poor teacher would have a lot of work to cover.
    Well, at least it won’t be me, thought Sue, gratefully.
    The guide looked puzzled and answered,
    “It’s 1862 and I’m a teacher.”
    The woman did not seem too concerned by the reply and turned back into the house again.
    I guess the question was more important than the answer, thought Sue, her eye following the woman, aware the guide’s was doing the same.
    “Why did you become a teacher?” said Sue, turning round and addressing the guide.
    The sad look on the guide’s face was replaced by a smile.
    She must have been a beauty in her day, thought Sue.
    The woman seemed to ignore her question.
    “They’re mine, you know.”
    Sue looked puzzled.
    “The curling tongs,” said the guide. “Every day, Sarah, our slave, tongs my hair with them. No one makes ringlets like Sarah. Not that my hair is hard to curl. I am blessed with lovely hair and good looks. Everything a Southern gentleman would want. And plenty want me.”
    Lucky you, thought Sue.
    She had never had that luxury. Only one man had ever wanted her. And now he was gone. And all she was left with was teaching.
    “And I hate it!” said the woman, suddenly and vehemently.
    Sue looked at her in surprise.
    “I’m suffocating. I don’t want to be the ideal woman, docile and submissive, a homemaker like my mother. I want to do something with my life.”
    She paused then went on.
    “I’ve thought about dressing up as a man and running away to fight the Yankees or becoming a spy for the south in the Civil War but I don’t think I’m strong enough. I want rights like men have. The right to do what I choose. I don’t want to be beautiful and admired – an asset for some man. I want things to change and I want to change them.”
    She’s a good actress, thought Sue.
    But then all the guides in the buildings in the Historical Village had been good. But somehow this one seemed almost real.
    “Is that why you are a teacher?” said Sue quietly, suddenly remembering why she’d become one.
    “It’s the only way to change things,” said the woman. “Has it worked?”
    Sue looked startled. What did the guide mean by that? Did she know she was a teacher? No, there was no way she could know.
    “Can we go now?” said Fiona.
    Yes, that was about Fiona’s span of interest used up too, thought Sue then felt guilty.
    After all it was Fiona who had taken her here on holiday. They started walking back down the hill. As they reached the old, deserted schoolhouse, a group of tourists accompanied by the man who had taken their entrance fee at the park gate, appeared walking towards them.
    “Would you ladies like to join us?” he said, indicating the house they’d left.
    “Oh, we’ve already seen it,” said Sue. “The guide was really good.”
    “Guide?” said the man, looking puzzled. “What guide?”
    “The one at the house,” said Sue. “The teacher.”
    “There’s never been a guide at that house,” said the man, looking at Sue, strangely.
    “But she’s still there now,” spluttered Sue. “The lady in the brown, calico dress.”
    “Brown, calico dress,” he repeated. “A teacher, you say.”
    He paused.
    What’s wrong with the man? thought Sue. Didn’t his brain function properly?
    “Well, I guess you’ve had a guide after all,” said the man.
    Of course we have, you silly man, thought Sue.
    “The owner of that house was a teacher. She lived there in 1862.”
    The man’s words took a moment to sink in.
    What was the man saying? thought Sue, but, before she had time to ask him, he went on.
    “The ghost of the lady appears from time to time. In a brown, calico dress. Some say she came back to find her house.”
    The man waved his hand round the village.
    “All these houses here came from other parts of the state and were moved here.”
    “But others saw her. She’s still there,” protested Sue, waving her hand towards the house on the hill.
    “Everyone says that,” said the man, “but when they return, she’s gone.”
    “It’s 1862 and I’m a teacher,” said Sue, some five minutes later, standing at the teacher’s desk in the old schoolhouse.
    “Don’t! You’re giving me the creeps!” said Fiona who was sitting at one of the old wooden desks, gazing at the Stars and Stripes flag draped in front of her.
    Sue had been surprised when Fiona had said she wanted to look in the old schoolhouse after the old man and his party had left them at the bottom of the hill.
    “Do you think she was really a ghost?” Fiona said.
    “I don’t know,” said Sue, confused.
    The older she got, the less she knew.
    If she was a ghost, thought Sue, why did she appear to them?
    She idly opened the lid of the teacher’s desk. An object was lying in the desk. A strange ripple ran through Sue. She put her hand under the lid of the desk and withdrew the object.
    “It makes your hair curl!” said a small triumphant voice.
    Sue spun round, the object held high like some symbol of freedom.
    There in the doorway of the schoolroom stood the little, blonde girl who had wanted a McDonald’s, her face lit up like the Statue of Liberty’s torch.
    “It sure does!” said Fiona, crossing to the little girl, taking her hand and pointing to the tongs in her mother’s hands.
    “Do you want to try it?”
    Sue handed the tongs to the little girl and watched as she and Fiona had fun curling the metal barrels around her hair.
    She’d been wrong about everything. And everyone. She looked at Fiona showing the little girl how to wind her hair round the curling tongs. She was a good teacher. Patient and kind. With a heart.
    And teaching. She’d been wrong to think she should give that up. She knew that. Just as the woman in calico had known. As long as there was one individual out there that she could help. Her only reward that light of knowledge in someone’s eyes.
    She thought of what the woman had said.
    “It’s the only way to change things. Has it worked?”
    That’s why she came back, thought Sue. To find out.
    She looked at the smiling face of the pretty, little, blonde girl. The child she’d misjudged.
     She has the right to make choices, thought Sue. But she can’t make them unless she has the knowledge. And the role models.
    It was an ongoing battle, all right. Just like the Civil War. With some victories and some defeats.
    But she’d been wrong to think she should give up. The woman in the calico dress hadn’t. And neither would she. She’d been right to say it. She’d been right to speak up. Even if one word could make a difference. But in her case it was five.
    It makes your hair curl.
    And she knew, looking at the wonder and the joy on the little girl’s face that they had. She looked at the curling tongs in the little girl’s hands. She didn’t hate them any more. Pretty or plain. They didn’t make the difference.
    It was what was inside that did.

 

first published in “The Storyteller” in 2011 and “The Pink Chameleon” in June 2014.

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