My father isn’t perceptive. He would never be able to guess. But my mother was in another room, had not yet seen my face, and had yet to hear me say a word. I could hear her put the top of the pressure cooker on, sealing it so it would start screaming in twenty minutes. Still, she knew: “Are they separating?” she asked. Papa looked back at me, puzzled, and all I could do was crumple into my hands. “Oh, no,” he said, softly, and I had visions of hundreds of my strands of hair, cut from my virgin head, rotting away in my parents’ freezer. I never turned them into extensions. My mother saved
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