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“Okay,”
Needless to say, it was not the answer she had been expecting.
Sasha’s head was swimming with thoughts and somehow Shea knew that she couldn’t reach her. She knew that if she spoke now she would merely add to the clutter in her girlfriends head and that she would be a hindrance rather than a help. She had seen Sasha like this once before; when something had overtaken her mind so fully that she couldn’t think of anything else or focus on anything else until the problem was solved or the thought had run its true course. She had seen her like it several times actually- when Sasha had lost her job, when they had finished watching ‘Suits’, when she had fallen out with one of her childhood friends.
Sasha was an introvert by nature; she wouldn’t share her thoughts until she was ready to share them and Shea somehow knew exactly when she needed gentle probing and when she needed to be left alone.
So they hadn’t spoken.
Shea had ordered food so neither of them had to cook, drove to pick it up herself so that Sasha had time alone. When she had returned she put on a film they had watched over and over so Sasha wouldn’t have to focus on it and could think instead. She offered to do the dishes but Sasha had frowned and insisted that it was her turn, and had ignored Shea’s protests as she carried their plates out into the kitchen.
For the first few weeks she had hardly spoken, she had just cried.
Shea understood. Not explicitly- how could anyone, when it was something so personal?- but had been so supportive she had stemmed Sasha’s grief by months. She had spoken into their gentle silence, reassurances and advice when it was required or something completely unrelated when that was required. She brought her girlfriend tissues and ice cream, sat up with her at 5am, brushed her hair at least once a day and forced her into a shower every so often.
“People must do the ordinary things in extraordinary conditions,” She muttered as she insisted Sasha brush her teeth.
She took time off work and for the first month completely indulged Sasha. She slept whenever she could and tried to stay awake for as long as she could. Neither of them could keep a sensible body clock so Shea tried to make sure they both got enough sleep in a twenty four hour period and ate something from each of the food groups at least once a day.
At first, Sasha had completely rejected food. She had refused to eat for nearly three days until Shea looked her in the eye and said in a low calm voice, “You’re going to die if you don’t eat, Sasha,”
It could have been completely detrimental, but it had worked.
Sasha forced down yoghurts and soups and things that slipped down her throat. She was sick repeatedly but Shea hushed her and cooed her and fed her once she was calm enough to swallow. Sasha lost a lot of weight but she stayed alive, despite everything. Shea washed her bedding and her clothes and didn’t once complain.
“Will it ever get better?” Sasha asked once- croaked into the darkness when she believed the other inhabitants of the room to be asleep.
“Of course it does baby,” Shea had replied, her speech slurred with sleep, “It has to,”
“How?” One word that broke Shea’s heart.
“Time,” She replied simply, rolling over with her eyes still closed and wrapping an arm around Sasha who cuddled into her. “Time takes everything in the end- including grief,”
The next morning Shea had woken up to an empty space and breakfast waiting for her on the bedside table.
“Morning,” She heard a mumble and looked up to see Sasha standing in the doorway- dressed for the first time in over a week- with a worried look on her face. Shea communicated her pride with a beaming smile that Sasha didn’t (couldn’t) return.
“I like that skirt,” Shea said, digging into her eggs, “The blue brings out your eyes,”
For the first time since it had happened, Sasha smiled.
That night they had smoked a joint between them and Sasha had asked Shea about her views on the afterlife.
“I believe in a heaven and a hell I guess,” She said slowly, “I don’t know, like, if it’s necessarily a Christian thing but I don’t know… I guess that’s what I believe. What about you?”
“I do like the idea of reincarnation, but I don’t know if I believe it,”
“Why not?”
“It seems a little far-fetched, don’t you think?” Sasha looked at Shea who took a drag and shrugged. “Anything’s possible,”
Shea is struck with an image- Sasha, silent and stoic in the funeral, her red-rimmed eyes telling stories that don’t make it to her mouth. Her hair curled and falling over her face in a way that was almost angelic, wearing a beautiful black dress that Shea had convinced her to buy with a cocktail party in mind, not her mother’s funeral.
Months later and Sasha is almost back to normal, except for a profound melancholy that strikes her at odd moments and leaves her eyes glassy and unfocused, and Shea knows that she thinking of her mother, or their relationship, or the cancer. Shea knows there is a battle going on that could end in tears or could be abandoned for favour of Shea’s company. Sasha is chewing things over and Shea knows soon all her thoughts will come to fruit.
When Sasha returns to the sitting room and finds Shea asleep, for the first time since the advent of their relationship she doesn’t half carry, half drag the girl to their bedroom, undress her and clean the house before retiring to bed herself. Instead- swallowing her guilt- she nudges Shea gently until she opens her eyes and blinks in the light.
“Shea,” Sasha begins, before just coming straight out with it, “I want to shave my hair off,”
“Okay,” Shea replies, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. When she blinks them again she sees that Sasha is frowning a little and she can’t supress her chuckle. “Okay, that’s cool,”
“I’m serious,” Sasha seems put out, unsure of whether she’s being teased or not.
“I know,” Shea replies, all trace of smile gone as she takes Sasha’s hand in her own. “I know you are,”
“I just need…” Sasha rolls her eyes, “Closure, I guess,”
Shea judges it’s safe before sucking air through her gritted teeth. “The c-word, eh?”
“Yes, I thought I might give it a shot. And if this doesn’t work I could always try something more drastic, right?”
“You could cut off a limb?”
“Or join a cult?” They both collapse into fits of giggles, and for Shea it’s a beautiful, beautiful sight.
Despite all their jesting Sasha is very serious and Shea is too.
“It’s definitely a statement,” Shea said the next morning as she brushed out her girlfriends blonde locks, “But that’s not why I think you should do it,”
“Why then?”
“Not for its public value but for its personal value; it means something to you, to show support for your mother and the struggle she went through,”
“Exactly,”
“You can raise money if you want?”
“I… no. I don’t want to make this a big thing,” Shea nodded in understand and caught Sasha’s eyes in her mirror.
“You’re so brave baby, I’m so proud of you,”
Tears well in Sasha’s eyes as she turns and grasps Shea’s hands- the hairbrush fallen, forgotten- and searches her eyes.
“No Shea, I’m proud of you. Without you I… I don’t know what might have happened to me, I don’t think I would have ever recovered. I- thank you so, so much Shea,” Shea smiles softly and Sasha leans forward, placing a chaste, wet kiss onto rosy lips. They stay there for a while, locked in each other’s embrace, Sasha crying silently and Shea stroking her hair.
Shea offers to take her to a salon and pay for the entire thing but Sasha just rolls her eyes.
“Honey, I’ve never been to a salon in my life,”
“Never?”
“Nope; why would I pay a ridiculous amount of money for something I can do at home,”
“Suit yourself,”
“Or,” Sasha turns with a grin, “Something you can do at home?” Shea groans dramatically and rolls her eyes.
“Bitch how did I know I was gonna end up doing it?”
“It’s not hard,” Sasha protests, seizing the razor and a pair of scissors and carrying it into their bathroom. Shea follows her slowly. “Just hack it all off,”
They tie Sasha’s hair up into two pontytails, so they can cut most of It off before the razor does its job. Shea teases her, pulling on the ponytails and laughing at her appearance. She pauses with the scissors held open, her hair massed between them.
“Are you sure?” Shea asks and she’s not sure why she’s whispering. Sasha catches her eyes in the mirror and she doesn’t look nervous, or worried, and for the first time in days she isn’t crying. Instead her eyes flash dangerously and Shea is reminded of the cheeky girl she fell in love with at a house party.
“Snip snip motherfucker,” She replies and without further ado, Shea closes the scissors.
It’s not as dramatic as she wants it to be- it takes nearly ten snips for all the hair to be cut and once she’s done them both Shea can’t help but mess around, pinning them into her own hair and joking about highlights, and fluffing up Sasha’s hair and laughing at how ridiculous she looked with uneven layers from where the ponytails have been cut out.
“Honestly I think you should leave it like this,” Shea shouts over the music they are blasting. She takes a sip from her Coca Cola and offers some to Sasha before continuing, “It’s a great look for you,”
“Shut up bitch,” Sasha replies with a giggle, turning and saying, in a voice dripping with sex, “Shave me,”
Shea bursts out laughing at her expression but before either of them can move the razor is on and vibrating in her hands, and Sasha turns back around and looks at her reflection and the chunk of hair that is now missing right at the top of her scalp. Shea watches emotions flick across her girlfriend face and waits before speaking.
“Actually you know I’ve changed my mind; this is a better look for you,” Sasha lets out a barking laugh and settles down so Shea can get to work with the razor.
When they’re done the first thing Shea notices is how much weight Sasha has lost in the few months since the death of her mother. She remembers reading somewhere about how you meet someone completely unremarkable and over time as you learn more and more about them and fall in love with them more and more they become extraordinary. She remembers how she never believed in love at first sight, and when she first met Sasha she hadn’t liked her at all. She had found her loud and obnoxious, and she thinks that if she met her now she’d probably think she was crazy.
She thinks that perhaps she has met the most extraordinary person on the planet.
Sasha doesn’t say anything as she studies herself in the mirror; running her fingers over the soft expanse of her exposed scalp and moving her head to try and catch herself at all angles. The first thing she realises is that it’s chilly. She blinks and for a second disappears; instead her mother is staring back at her; tired from Chemotherapy but still so strong. She doesn’t cry, however, as Sasha returns to the mirror because she knows her mother is still on the other side of the glass, waiting until she is needed once more.
It strikes her that the biggest change in store isn’t for her; she caught her own reflection maybe three times a day, it wasn’t a change she was going to notice massively. The real person it would affect was standing behind her, silent and calculating.
She turns and grins at Shea.
“Well?”
She wonders what Shea’s response would be. She wouldn’t lie to her; she would straight up tell her if it was ugly. “It looks shit but who cares?” Would be her words, “It wasn’t about looking nice. Besides it will grow back,” Or maybe she’ll pull a joke; something about dressing up as Gollum every Halloween from now on.
Shea raises a sceptical eyebrow and Sasha prepares to hide disappointment.
“Well… it’s definitely going to take some getting used to but… I like it,” Shea grins “You look beautiful,”
Sasha leaps forward into her arms, seizing Shea’s face in between two small, delicate hands and kissing and kissing and kissing her. She only stops when Shea pulls her away, spitting and spluttering and pulling hair out of her mouth.
“Take a shower, bitch,” She snaps with a smile.
From then, everything becomes easier.
Sasha isn’t sure if the act of shaving her head itself has eased any of the pain, or if it’s just psychology making her feel better but whatever it is, it works. She finds herself a lot stronger emotionally; less likely to break down at a sad scene in a terrible sitcom. There is more laughter in the flat, more sarcasm and bad impressions. She also becomes more productive; she settles a date to return to work and does much more cleaning- more than her share, in fact, to try and make up for all the extra work Shea had done.
The grief hadn’t left her- once, she had found a birthday card from her mother and had been inconsolable for the best part of forty eight hours. One day she had woken up and couldn’t find the strength to get out of bed or get changed or even eat. Her weight had dropped so fast she was incredibly ill and the common cold left her bedridden for days. Once, she couldn’t find a necklace her mother had given her and accused Shea of stealing it in a moment of anger. When she calmed down she felt so guilty she had cried for another day and had done all of the cleaning for the next three consecutive days.
Shea told her that was how grief works. It could lay you fucking low on some days and barely touch you on others but the main thing is that you power through; and then the bad days become fewer and fewer until they all but disappear.
Occasionally, Sasha would wake up and go to grab a hairbrush, forgetting what she had done.
It had already began to grow back; her hair was cropped so short Shea had mocked her and said she looked like ‘Eleven’ from Stranger Things. It surprised by growing back a mousy brown, rather than the blonde she become accustomed to. Soon it was long enough to tangle again and Sasha used her mother’s old comb to brush out the knots. Shea said she was glad of something to hold on to once again.
Sasha’s heart had been broken, but day by day, Shea was fixing it.