“I’m sure Rapunzel is wonderful and not terrible,” emails a friend, “but also there’s something Sisyphean about Rapunzel …” She’s right. It cannot keep a man from being shot for his blackness. It doesn’t, like his hair does for Samson, give her god’s power or the strength to kill a lion with her bare hands. It can’t be thrown like a lasso so Rapunzel can glide from mountaintop to mountaintop. It can’t bring back the dead, or heal a broken bone, or keep a woman young forever. Other than Disney’s, in no version of Rapunzel is Rapunzel’s hair magical. “It’s not so bad.” She looks at my short hair, and a small forest grows between us. 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. 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. I put it in an envelope and send it to a dear friend’s brother, an artist who makes Torahs and animals and money out of human hair and skin. I throw the braid in the trash and then remove it from the trash. A twelve-inch braid long enough for nobody to climb. “Of course my life matters,” says Eli, “why wouldn’t it matter?” “Did you know,” says my sister, “that in Disney’s Tangled Rapunzel lives inside a kingdom called Corona?” “That can’t be right,” I say. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” says the Wig Man. “We’ve been here before so many times,” he says. My husband sits on the edge of the bathtub and cries. I can see my sister’s face gazing out from inside my mother’s, like a girl locked inside a tower. In the wigs my mother looks sad and incredibly young. My sister refuses to try the wigs on so my mother tries them on instead. Instead, my mother buys my sister four wigs made out of strangers’ hair. “Everything is ruined.” I never call the Wig Man back. “Should I add how after George Floyd was killed you sat on the edge of the bathtub and cried? Remember how you said,” I say, “‘We’ve been here before’? Remember when you said, ‘When will this stop,’ but you said it like an answer not a question?” I am following my husband around the kitchen. “I don’t remember your mother appearing.” “Eventually,” I say, “my mother always appears.” “Can I take out my mother?” “Does your mother appear?” he asks. “You can’t take out the racism.” “I know,” I say. “It’s because,” says my husband, “you are trying to use her to write about systemic racism, and protest, and cancer, and a global pandemic.” “Should I just take out the racism?” I ask. Of all the fairy tales, Rapunzel gives me the most difficult time. “Isn’t it strange,” I say, “that I write about fairy tales and you are a fairy tale princess?” She looks at me hard. On her nightstand are six glittering tiaras. I help my sister into bed, though she prefers I not touch her. I write six different essays on Rapunzel. She leaves behind a trail of blondish gold thread, like a princess coming undone. She yawns, rises, and climbs up the stairs. Instead she lets it fall out, slowly and then suddenly. “Of course my life matters,” says Eli my six-year-old. The knot is tight, and the net is manufactured.
#RAPUNZEL TIARA FREE#
Each knotted strand is like a person sewn into a free country. Ventilating a wig takes the patience of the dead. The needle goes in and then out like thousands of tiny breaths. With a needle you draw each strand through a lace net and knot it on itself. Sewing a wig strand by strand is called ventilating. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” he says. I am certain he is driving across a bridge. Like animals trapped inside their own freedom.
I imagine his Toyota Tacoma so stuffed with wigs that black and brown and blond hairs press up against the windows. “I want to help your sister,” says the Wig Man. “Because if it’s 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. “I filled my Toyota Tacoma with all the hair that was left. “My store,” he says, “was looted last night.” “My sister,” I want to say, “…” He tells me he gathered all the hair that was left on the floor. “My sister,” I say, “was diagnosed …” He interrupts me because he is driving and he is in a rush.
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