“I don’t want it.” I’d never had my hair cut before. It came to the middle of my back and you had to spray it with soapy-smelling detangler after baths and tug a comb through it while I squeezed my eyes and complained about how much it hurt.

“A disguise.” W held her hands out, like she was presenting a painting. “She can pass for a boy. You’ll be able to leave this house and not worry. Send her to kindergarten in the fall. No one will recognize her.”

Your cheeks moved side to side, swishing unspoken words around your mouth.

“Why do we have to worry, Mama?”

“You didn’t finish your rice.”

“I don’t want to look like a boy.”

“OK, sweetie,” you said, the endearment three syllables, in that funny way you had of pronouncing it.

You and W must have repeated the conversation, because the next day I followed you obediently into the basement, where W had stacked towels on the bar and spread newspaper on the floor in front of the barber’s chair. The light in the basement was dim, so she carried lamps down from the living room and set them up on the bar. Too much brightness. I held my hands above my eyebrows, like a visor.

“It’s not that bad,” you said, prying my fingers from my face and pressing my hands to my sides.

W cut your hair first. With the flourish and seriousness of a bullfighter, she draped a pink towel over your shoulders and ran her fingers through your hair.

You looked like a queen to me, in the barber’s chair.

“How do you want it?” W eyed your head expertly, like a real hairdresser would.

You straightened yourself in the chair and looked directly ahead. “It doesn’t matter how you do it. Go on.”

The metallic sound of the scissors slicing through your hair made my skin go cold and goose pimply. I covered my eyes.

“Go watch TV, sweetie,” W said. “If it bothers you.”

“No.” I opened my eyes. If I let you out of my sight for too long, you might disappear. It had become a recurrent nightmare: me, alone in the Cedar Point parking lot, walking in circles in the snow.

I split my fingers on my face like I was watching a scary movie as W snipped, at first hesitantly, gaining momentum and confidence, whirring around you, comparing lengths on the sides of your ears, pinching your chin between her thumb and fingers and staring at your bangs. After a while, I focused on the newspaper beneath you, where the hair fell in a pile, transformed into something different—uglier—than it was on your head.

“Done,” W said. “We should dye it, too. Blond. I’ll buy hair dye tomorrow.”