The Necklace

Jane Edberg copyright 2003

1998

Naked and dripping I drag a brush through my wet hair.   I stand with my feet pressed flat to the white tiled floor. The air is cold. No light. No fan. Just quiet. Over and over, I pull the brush front to back as I dissolve into a faceless form in a fogged mirror.

I can't remember a word that anyone said at the memorial service. I recall bouquets of flowers piled up on tables and shelves, in corners, on people's laps, at the front door, at the back door, in the aisles, and rows of them up in front where I stood to talk about him.

All those flowers.

"What shall we bring?" they asked.

"Flowers! Nanda loved flowers," I said.

I push the brush past my temple up over the rim of my ear. Again and again, curving downward over my shoulder. Cool drips of water roll down my back, down my legs to the floor.

I think of Leslie, all in black, draped head to toe like a Catholic nun. Jon in shorts, his sunburnt skin radiating. My heavy eyes reflected in his dark sunglasses. Rows and rows of young people looking awkward. Boys in wrinkled dress shirts. Girls in tight summer dresses. My husband Roger sitting at the back, his face bloodshot from crying. Photographs of Nanda as a baby, and as a boy. One of him as a young man sits on a table at the entrance.

My brush grows heavy in my hand as I place it against the back of my neck. I lean over. Hang my head. Stroke downward.

Reverend Bill's eyes, bluer than ever. My dear friend George and his boys, speechless. Nanda's father Robert sits to one side, his brother Arian to the other. My mother, my father, opposite sides. People crammed together inside and outside, all the way from the front of the pulpit to the outer edges of the parking lot. All facing me.

I flip my hair as I stand straight up and proceed to brush it from front to back again.

Candles, incense, and more flowers. I distinctly remember Robert's wife Susan, and her spirit pond where she floated little leaf boats with lit ghee wicks.

I whack my brush against my hand to shake out the wetness.

Mikivey, Kris's dog, nudging me. Putting his wet black nose under my clenched hands, trying to break them loose.

I glance down at my brush, stare for a moment. Oh, my hair, my brush is full of my hair. Loosening the strands free, pinching it out bit by bit, I manage to gather a handful. As I fall apart, I wonder: is this how I am letting go?

When I was a kid my grandmother Bibby had a method for dealing with loose hair. After a proficient hair brushing she would pinch and gather the hair out from the brush tines. Between both hands she would roll the hair into a tight ball and toss it into the waste bin. " It's quite nasty discovering stray hair" she instructed. "This prevents the hair from wandering." She winked with a nod and grinned with her gappy teeth. I have always rolled my loose hair into a ball. I have always tossed them into the trash.

Still naked, I cup my hairs between both hands, rub them together in opposite circular motion till the delicate threads are neatly and tightly centered and woven into a perfect spongy ball. A ball composed of knotted strings of cells.

I cannot bear to lose anything more, not even a hair. I hold my breath and stare at the ball.   I will not throw it away. I open the vanity drawer and shove the brush down between a lotion bottle and a box of tissues. I tuck the hairball into a corner and close the drawer.

2003

One late evening my husband Roger, who never goes into my vanity drawer, had ventured in to look for tweezers. The drawer's wooden squeak alerted me and then I heard a disgusted gasp come from the bathroom. "What's wrong"? I asked from my studio down the hall. "What in the world, ooh, what are these"? "Oh," I replied. Nothing more was said.

Somehow I had managed to save every hairball since Nanda died. Balls from pea to grape size, varying colors from red to brown. In every nook and cranny of my vanity drawer lay a hairball tucked away. Groups of them stuffed and wedged between lipsticks and cream jars and under nail files and dental floss. Packed up against the edges and crammed in all the corners.

So it was suddenly obvious that I had to make sense of this collection. Two hundred and fifty two hairballs. There needed to be order and relevance. Since they reminded me of my grandmother's necklace beads, big oval red carnelian and orange ambers, I decided to make a necklace. Bibby always wore necklaces and she had once shown me how to restring a strand of amber beads. She would divide them evenly, separate the sizes and organize them into two rows saving the largest bead for the center. She'd start with a tiny bead, work up to the center largest bead and then back down to the last tiny bead. Between each bead she would tie a knot. When both ends were tied a lovely necklace would hang gracefully.

So I took the balls of hair and organized them by size. I carefully tapered the various sizes, small to large and back down to small. Across my studio floor, bead to bead, the strand grew nine feet long. Needle and thread in hand I strung and knotted each bead in place. It was a task.

With both ends tied my hairball necklace, light as a sparrow's wing, hung beautifully just below my knees.