Purple Hair

“Purple?” Her daughter, Melony, didn’t seem convinced by the choice.

“Just highlights, not the whole thing.” Rachel huffed. She ran her fingers through her fine graying brown hair.

“It’s just that.” Melony swiped through the pictures Rachel saved on Instagram. “I love you with brown hair; what about doing some darker shade?”

Rachel snatched her phone back, wondering whether the images she had saved were of real people or AI, and whether her daughter was right: purple would look tacky. “Just say it, you think I’m too old for purple hair.” Lately, she’d found herself restless, wanting to do something for herself rather than simply drift past mirrors unchanging. The house would be extremely quiet when Melony left for college in September, and her husband had been away more than present. Days blurred together with work, laundry, keeping the fridge stocked; nothing felt like her own. Somewhere in the middle of routines and responsibilities, she longed for something unexpected, something that made her feel more than just wallpaper to everyone else’s life. Purple always felt like a calm rebellion, tinged with lavender. To her, it spoke to her inner desire to be out there, bright but beautiful.

Melony pulled herself onto the counter. “You never do crazy stuff; it’s just not your style.” She flipped open her phone to pictures of middle-aged women in moo-moos with nicely styled brown bobs and pointed to one for Rachel.

Rachel touched the side of her nose. She once rocked a nose ring. It was short-lived after she took it out at her college boyfriend Jeff’s house one night. “I’m giving it a try.”

Melony slipped on her rainbow flip-flops, the hem of her bellbottom jeans skimming the floor, reminding Rachel of when she had the same pair a few decades back. “I’m off to CVS; want me to grab some semi-perm from the store to see if you even like it?”

Rachel felt like the seventeen-year-old between the two of them. “No, I’ve got an appointment this afternoon, and I’m going.”

She idled in the parking lot, thirty minutes early for her appointment. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and stared at her reflection in the rearview mirror, debating if it was too late to just ask for brown. The stylist didn’t know what she wanted, only that she was getting a cut and dye. A hint of sharp acetone drifted through the air from the salon doors, pulling her back through time. Rachel remembered the first time she ever dyed her hair: freshman year of high school. She and Kate bought Sun-In and spent the summer at the beach between shifts at Gratos Pizza. Rachel’s hair turned a burnt Henna color. Trying to fix it, she dyed her hair over a backyard hose. The bleach broke her hair, and she had to return like a lost sheep to an uncomfortable chair so the stylist could assess the damage.

The door chimed as she walked in. The stylist waved her to a chair. “What are we doing today?” The stylist's long, manicured, hot-pink nails ran through Rachel’s mousy hair. “Purple, please, and a trim.”

If the stylist thought her crazy, she didn’t show it on her face; instead, she held strands of hair on either side of Rachel’s face and asked, “How much are we taking off?”

Rachel touched the ends. “Just a half inch, please, but layered.” The scissors glinted overhead as small snippets sprinkled down. Hair she’d pinned back for pickleball, styled for work dinners and let fall on her wet cheeks when his side of the bed remained empty all night. As she watched the pieces fall, she remembered her long hair in college.

In her junior year of college, the cute guy, Steve, told her she looked good with long hair. His dark mane made his blue eyes stand out. Every time she walked into class, he smiled and moved his bag so she could sit beside him. He talked her into dropping bio statistics and studying abroad in England with him. Tangled in the bedsheets every night, she wondered if this would be her forever. He got into King's College's Economics program and nudged Rachel into a year-long lease. She took a year off and applied for a Finance internship because numbers always came naturally to her. Her hair down her tailbone swished in a high ponytail, glistening brown with deep sweeping bangs that bounced with her red lips. She contemplated getting a resident visa when he sat down with her at dinner one night to say he’d met someone and felt he needed some time on his own to process what he wanted to do with his life.

On the flight home, she pulled her hair into a tight bun, tears running down her face. She curled up, wrapped in anger that Steve’s choices directed her life but left her with the one-way ticket back home with nothing to show for a year abroad. Her mom picked her up at the airport, and they drove back to the University of Delaware so she could finish her senior year. At a small salon on Main Street, she got an edgy bob cut just below her ears. Her hair stuck out at odd angles. When the stylist asked if she liked it, she pretended to be happy, but later cried in her car in the parking lot while eating a Hershey’s bar. The sting of being left and the aftermath felt encapsulated in every layer of her hair. Her decisions to change somehow always connected back to someone else’s opinion of her, never her own. The risks she took with her appearance were always reactionary. The chocolate bar suddenly gave her a stomach ache, and she puked behind the dumpster. 

Rachel recalled that memory as she leaned back in the rigid chair that dug into her thigh, forcing her legs to cross. This was the first time back in one since that hair fiasco. She’d opted to cut her ends at home and box-dye her hair over a bathroom sink.

“Do you part here?” the stylist asked, pointing to a spot just left of Rachel’s center. Rachel nodded; it didn’t really matter to her.

She had chosen a side part back in sixth grade, sitting nervously in a stiff chair. That day, she was pressured into getting a perm. For weeks, tight, limp curls stuck to her scalp in the summer heat while she worried about getting her hair wet. She couldn’t keep up with the care instructions, so by fall her hair hung loose around her face, back to its usual shapeless style. Her mother disliked it and teased her until she gave in and started braiding it every day.

Water misted around her face. She felt the gentle pull of the comb. Spots of gray sprouted from her scalp and snaked through her longer ends, making her feel old. The stylist tapped the brush against the rim of the bowl. A white cream marbled with purple dripped from the end of the brush.

On the first day of her first job out of college, she let her hair grow to her shoulders and added blonde highlights using a plastic cap and determination, finally understanding that no amount of citrus would make her a natural blonde. Her chin held high, in a pencil skirt that let her sway her hips as she walked down the hall with the other new associates, made her feel like fire. He noticed her from the communal kitchen. “I like your hair,” he’d said while pouring coffee. Rachel gave it a light flip. “Thanks, I’m with the summer cohort.” By late August, he’d kissed her in the copy room.

She turned her ring around her finger. Twenty years into that marriage and having a daughter together, he is now up in Maine most of the summer, “figuring his life out,” after Rachel found out he had a fling with his receptionist. How unoriginal, she thought, but maybe she’d become too predictable, a side character in the book she thought she was writing but was now realizing she co-authored with people that walked out mid-sentence. The train of thought stung.

Rachel swallowed as the wet brush glided across her scalp. What if purple was a big mistake? Would she look foolish like Melony suggested? An old person trying to keep up with a fad. She wasn’t a risk taker. She lay her head back into the bowl, unable to undo her choice. She wondered if there was a CVS nearby for her to buy a chocolate bar to cry into as she did all those years ago. She could come back the next day with a different stylist and dye it brown. But then it would be just like before. She’d put on a uniform of sameness and long for something different, unique. She needed purple hair to finally be the person she wanted to be. The warm water washed over her scalp and dripped down her neck. For a minute she forgot where she was and closed her eyes. The gentle pressure of the stylist's fingers, the warm water, the feeling of being touched. She missed it.

She thought back to her favorite memory. He took her to Paris for their honeymoon. Cliché, but Rachel loved every minute of it. His fingers intertwined with hers as they walked down the Seine. He kissed her unabashedly on the Pont Neuf bridge. Her hair clumped in his fists as his lips caressed hers. She’d cut it like Rachel in Friends, hoping it framed her heart-shaped face. Rachel felt like the most predictable of all, definitely going to end up with Ross, and they shared a name, so why couldn’t they share the same perfect story? Her bangs danced across her eyes as he whispered in her ear, “Never change, I love you just the way you are.”

The hairdryer clicked on, muting the world around her. She watched the woman next to her’s hands flap around her in a silent movie as foils flopped on her head like a deck of cards. She looked her mom’s age. She gave Rachel a wink. It forced a smirk across Rachel’s face.

“All done.” A gentle brush stroked her shoulders, dusting off the loose hair. She looked back at a woman with bright, fun violet running through her brown-gray hair. She saw the confident accountant associate, unafraid, flaunting highlights. “I love it.” She stepped out of the chair. She looked beautiful and ready for what purple hair would offer her.

“Great hair!” A young woman lifted her sunglasses as she entered.

“Thanks!” Rachel stepped out onto the sidewalk. A convenience store did conveniently sit next to the salon. She picked out the Hershey bar. Her reflection caught her off guard in the checkout line. Tears pricked her eyes. She’d wished she’d done this years ago.

“Anything else?”

“A pack of True cigarettes?” Rachel didn’t smoke, but the women in France did with their espressos. She opened the browser on her phone. She’ll book the trip without him this time, to experience Paris herself. Two flights were available next month; she scrolled down and, without checking her calendar, booked a round trip for just her and her purple hair.