We tried conditioner and mayonnaise and gently taking hair off the burrs strand by strand, even cutting them out, but it only got worse, and the tangles were moving closer to my scalp. When we used to cut the grass at one of the houses on a cul-de-sac in Penn Valley, Dad would always say to “mind the burdock,” a crowd of purple flowers that grew down the side of the embankment leading to the Schuylkill Expressway. We’d see their burrs, green in the summer, turned brown by the fall cleanups. Sometimes they got caught in my socks or my sweater, but until yesterday I had never run headfirst through a whole hill of them. Marie put a towel around my shoulders and let me hold a mirror in my lap while she cut chunks of hair.

We were all exhausted, but Marie warned that if I went to sleep on my hair, she’d have to cut it as close as Annie Lennox’s. I said, “Please make it more Belinda Carlisle.” With Marie there, home felt safe again, like there was an answer for everything. I sat very still as she cut, and watched the nests of hair drop to our bedroom floor. In the end it was like a short bob that fell just above my chin and had a few layers. Marie said this framed my face more, and that she liked it on me. I was so tired, it didn’t seem to matter. We left the fallen hair on the floor without sweeping it up and went to bed in the bright morning.

I woke to the smell of pancakes. The afternoon sun was streaming through the leaves and throwing patterns across the wall next to my bed. For just a moment I didn’t remember, still between sleep and waking. I lifted my hand to my neck, and its nakedness was like a jolt, summoning the night before.

Thomas and Marie were in the kitchen. Marie put two pancakes in front of me, and a bottle of Aunt Jemima maple syrup.

“Where did you get the ingredients?” We lived on a diet of peanut butter and jelly, Campbell’s soup and canned SpaghettiOs with meatballs; we didn’t actually ever cook.

“Well, we had milk and butter. I went over to the Walkers’ and knocked on the door and said, ‘Hi, Mr. Walker. I didn’t get a chance to do the grocery shopping. Could I trouble you for three cups of flour, two eggs, and would you have any syrup?’ And he said, ‘Oh yes, no problem, of course,’ and then he asked me, ‘How’s your sister?’ And I asked which one, and he said ‘Ellen.’ I said, ‘She’s fine.’ And he waited, as if I might say more. Then I said, ‘She’s headed off to a prestigious art camp today.’”