The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico by Sarah McCoy Page B

at Titi’s salon, and I seemed to fit easily into the pink picture of the room in the mirror.
    “You want it cut, too?” Titi Lola asked.
    “I want it just like hers.” I pointed again to the picture. “Straight and blond to my shoulders.”
    “Your mamá say okay?”
    Mamá hadn’t bothered to ask me anything about my hair. “She doesn’t care.”
    “Okay.” Titi Lola yanked out my elastic band, along with a few corkscrewed strands. “I think you’ll look very beautiful with this blond hair. Oh, sí . I think so.”
    My chest zippered from my navel to my neck. This was it! I was going to be beautiful like the girls in the States—more beautiful than Mamá. Titi Lola brushed out the snarls, and my hair expanded, rising like a black sea sponge. I hated that reflection. Ugly and dark with island hair and island dirt. I was glad that when the day was done, it would be gone.
    She trimmed my ends, then told me to lie back in the sink and squeeze my eyes shut. She applied a thick cream. It burned my forehead, the tips of my ears, and the back of my neck; even the hairs in my nose hurt from the smell. She combed; my scalp stung and itched, but Titi Lola assured me that it was a natural part of the process. She had to brush out the curls, had to show my hair how to behave, punish it for being unruly and disobedient. It was bound to hurt a little, like when Papi punished me. So I held my breath and dug my nails into the chair cushion until she finished and rinsed the fire from my head.
    Water dribbled down my temples; my nose itched with no relief. Torture. Titi Lola cut squares of tinfoil from a long roll, poured a couple different bottles into a bowl, and mixed it with a paintbrush.
    “Here we go. Magic time,” she said and began painting and wrapping my hair in tin shingles until I looked like a cartoon spaceman on television.
    I had to sit and wait for my hair to take the paint and change color. Titi Lola gave me a stack of magazines. I flipped through all the Spanish ones until I found anEnglish headline. A TV Star Parade with Cynthia Pepper on the cover saying, “The biggest fights with my parents ever.” I liked her. Cynthia was blond, like Id be; she had bangs that curled open like a flower, with the rest of her hair in two braids on each shoulder. I decided I’d wear my hair just like that tomorrow, and I wanted to rip out the photo for my journal. I paged through the advertisements until I found the section with her interview. I liked the American magazines best. They were easy to read and never had big words—like automobile .
    I’d finished the Cynthia interview and an article on Elvis when Titi Lola tapped the tinfoil on my head with a comb. It sounded like dried banana leaves in the breeze.
    “You ready to see your new hair?”
    I’d been ready a long time. I leaned back in the sink. Titi Lola stripped off the tinfoil and poured warm water over. The smell was strong, like she was washing my hair in coquito . She hummed a little to the radio. It had been on the whole time, but I hadn’t heard the songs. The music blended into the hum of blow dryers, the crackle of foil, the splashes of water, the talk of women.
    “La-la da-da! You wanted blond hair—you got it,” she said. “What they call them in the States? Blond-ay bombshell? You a blond-ay bombshell.” She smacked her thigh with a wet hand before squirting shampoo into it and sudsing my head in gardenia-scented shampoo.
    She scrubbed hard; it felt good after all the itchy creams from earlier. The muscles in her arms moved upand down under her skin. When she leaned in close to rinse my hair, her crucifix necklace spindled on my nose. Down her shirt, two large breasts hugged together in a black lace brassiere. Mamá had nice breasts too. Once, when she was dressing, I saw them, round and full, with two brown tips like passionfruit stems. While Titi Lola hummed and rinsed, I slid my hand up to my own chest beneath the smock, beneath the