Bloody Sunday

It was a sultry, off-and-on rainy June Sunday in Amarillo, Texas. I was nine years old and had been without my waist length, auburn ponytail for less than a month. Mother had talked me into cutting it off because she was tired of dealing with the battleground of wills it had become. Some school mornings I left the house with my hair pulled back so tight I looked oriental, tears still in my eyes from her impatient roughness with the brush.
I had mixed feelings about losing my hair (well, not exactly lost... kept in a cigar box under my bed). It was definitely less time consuming and I could feel more like a boy with my pixie cut. I was even beginning to eye Barry Norman's burr and consider the possibility. The thing I DID miss about my hair was the attention it had gotten me. People had routinely stopped Mother and me on the street to remark on my beautiful hair color and deep brown eyes. "What a pretty little girl," I heard over and over from strangers. "Pretty is as pretty does," my mother would always wisely reply, her eyes on me.
On this particular June day, I had been dropped off at Presbyterian Sunday School and then delivered back home. I shucked the stupid dress with the stiff petticoat and elastic at the puffy sleeves that left deep marks on my arms. I put on pink quilted petal pushers and a white ruffled top. I kept the white patten sandals on, never dreaming that these shoes would soon lead me to disaster.
I dashed out to join the guys in Dickie Shawgo's side yard and we spent some time pulling marigold blooms from his mom's plants and throwing them out in the street. It was neat to see what they looked like after a car squashed them. We eventually tired of this and crossed the alley into the forbidden territory of Mr. Kelly's back yard.
Dickie climbed the fence and sprang easily into the center of Mr. Kelly's pear tree, swinging off a branch to land lightly on the ground, disappearing around the side of the garage. Barry followed and I, as usual, was last. The fence was no problem, but my landing in the tree was not solid, and as I hit the trunk, my feet slid toward me, because of my wet, slippery sandals, causing me to pitch forward. I hit the trunk of that tree, HARD, with my face, and slide to the ground. I must have passed out for a minute or two, because the next thing I knew I was away from the tree, sitting near the sidewalk, puzzling at the sight of my front tooth on the ground in a pool of blood. Barry and Dickie were standing over me, saying things like, “Cool, man. Look at all that blood.” Dickie ran to get his dad.
Mother has never had a stomach for blood, especially the blood of her own children, and she had been known to faint dead away, being no use at all in emergencies. The neighbors had learned to call her and delicately describe my injuries before bringing me home, hoping to find someone there more capable of handling things than my mother. As Dickie's father carried me in the back door that day, she managed to scream "She's ruined, she's ruined," a few times before hitting the floor. Due to my state of shock in that moment, I took that message to a very deep level of my identity. I have spent a good bit of time and money with therapists over the years around this one incident.
The trip to the emergency room got me six stitches in my upper lip, a broken nose set, never to be dainty again, plans for a new front tooth (it had come out clean, root and all), and they dug a good amount of bark out of my sinuses and gums. For whatever misguided reasoning, I was not allowed to see a mirror for a week (the therapists had great fun with this one). My cousin brought me a huge box of Millionaire candies, but I couldn't eat even one. I never felt pretty again, and to this day I hate pears.
However, I figure I saved myself from a life of superficial emptiness by having that accident. Most truly beautiful women I know seem more damaged than enhanced. They go through life getting what they want because of their looks, not their character or accomplishments. I could have been one of those truly beautiful, and would not have become the deep and glorious woman that I am today. Or at least, this is what I tell myself.
© Jade Beaty 1996