I let my 15-year-old daughter spend the weekend with her grandmother because I thought the visit would do her good. But she came home with her hood pulled low, locked herself in her room, and cried for three days. When I finally got inside, what I saw left me speechless.
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“I want to spend more time with Grandma this weekend, Mom,” Scarlett said casually, already halfway down the hall with Orry, our cat, weaving around her ankles.
We call her Letty at home.
“I want to spend more time with Grandma this weekend, Mom.”
After my divorce from Harry seven years ago, I’d worked hard to keep what mattered from turning bitter. Gloria, my former mother-in-law, and I had managed something decent. She loved Letty, at least in the ways she knew how, and I’d never wanted my daughter to lose family because adults couldn’t keep a marriage together.
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So when Letty wanted to spend time with her grandma, I nodded and asked, “All weekend?”
“Friday to Sunday,” she replied, all smiles. “Grandma said we could bake and go through her old photo boxes.”
I reached out and tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Text me.”
She did. A couple of short messages Friday night and one blurry photo of cookie dough on Saturday.
Nothing warned me about how my daughter would look walking back through my door Sunday evening.
She loved Letty, at least in the ways she knew how.
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Letty didn’t come in the way she usually did. Normally she dropped her bag, called for me from the doorway, and started talking before her shoes were even off. She just slipped inside quietly, hood pulled low over her face. Even Orry seemed confused when Letty barely bent to touch him.
“Hey, sweetheart. How was Grandma’s?” I asked.
“Fine.”
Something in the way Letty said it made me put the dish towel down.
“That’s all I get? No burnt cookies? No sorting photos by decade?”
She kept her face turned away. “I’m tired, Mom.”
She just slipped inside quietly, hood pulled low over her face.
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“Letty, look at me.”
She didn’t, and muttered, “Please don’t start, Mom,” and rushed past me.
By the time I got to the hallway, her bedroom door had already slammed, and the lock clicked into place.
I told myself it was just teenage weather. Moods, friends, and tears over things they swear are nothing. But when dinner was ready, and Letty asked me to leave her plate on the floor, that was when my worry stopped being general and turned into something sharp.
***
Monday morning, she still wouldn’t open the door. “I don’t feel good, Mom,” she called through it.
“Then let me in, sweetie,” I urged.
“No. Please… leave me alone.”
Letty asked me to leave her plate on the floor.
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I stood with my forehead nearly touching the door, and then I heard quiet crying from the other side.
By Tuesday, I’d stopped pretending I wasn’t scared. Letty wouldn’t go to school. She wouldn’t answer texts from her friends. She ate only when I left food outside the door.
Once, around noon, thinking I’d walked away, she whispered through the door, “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t want you to see me like this.”
My heart lurched so hard that I had to brace myself against the wall.
“Like what?” I asked.
Letty was startled, and she didn’t answer.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t want you to see me like this.”
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So I called Gloria. She picked up, sounding distracted and almost annoyed.
“She’s probably just going through a phase, Eva. Girls that age become dramatic over nothing. We all went through it!”
I tightened my grip on the phone. “She’s been locked in her room crying for two days.”
Gloria gave a tired little sigh. “Eva, honestly! Everything becomes a crisis with you.”
“Did something happen this weekend?”
“No,” Gloria’s reply came too fast.
“Gloria… listen…”
“I’m not doing this,” she snapped and hung up.
“She’s been locked in her room crying for two days.”
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I stood in my kitchen, staring at the silent phone while a sick feeling spread through me slowly. If nothing had happened, why did Gloria sound like that? Why did my daughter sound terrified?
By the third morning, I’d had enough. I banged on the door hard enough to rattle the frame. “Letty, open this door. Now.”
“NO, MOM! PLEASE!”
I went to the hall drawer, took out the spare key, and finally unlocked it. By then, all I could think was that I should’ve done it sooner.
The moment the door opened, Letty had turned off the lamp.
“Go away!” she cried from near the bed.
By then, all I could think was that I should’ve done it sooner.
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I reached for the switch and flooded the room with light. Then I saw her… and froze.
My daughter was sitting on the floor wrapped in a blanket so tightly it looked like she’d pulled it around herself just to keep from coming apart. And when she looked up at me, I forgot everything, because her beautiful dark hair was… GONE.
Not shaved. Not cut. Gone in color. From root to tip, a brittle, pale silver-gray that made her look like someone had drained the life straight out of her.
“Mom,” Letty whispered, tears spilling harder, “please don’t be mad.”
I dropped to my knees in front of her. “Oh my God… baby, what happened to you?”
Then I saw her… and froze.
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“Grandma said I couldn’t tell you.” Letty’s mouth trembled. “She said if I told you, you’d ruin everything. That you’d never let me see her and Dad again, and it would be my fault.”
“Letty, honey, tell me exactly what she did.”
My daughter pulled the blanket tighter. “She kept saying my hair looked careless. That girls my age should try harder. That I’d look prettier if I were different. I told her I didn’t want to, but Grandma said I was being ungrateful.”
“Did she do this to your hair?” I asked.
Letty gave the smallest nod.
“How?”
“Dye. Bleach. Something.” She started crying harder. “It burned, Mom.”
“Did she do this to your hair?”
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That nearly undid me. I wrapped my arms around her, held on until she quieted, then grabbed my keys. “Come on. We’re going.”
She looked up, startled. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
I crouched back down and touched her face. “Fine, I’m not taking you there. I’m taking care of this.”
***
The whole drive to Gloria’s, my hands shook on the wheel. I parked crooked in the driveway and pounded on the front door. No answer. I grabbed the handle, and it turned.
The moment I stepped inside, my body went rigid.
