RAPUNZEL

Rhonwen is pissed the hell off by the time it happens which is why she says, “Dude, I don’t even care.” Basically, it’s like this: Rhonwen has really long hair. It breaks into curls and waves, starting at about her neck, and just keeps on going, and she hates it, it’s so fucking long, she isn’t quite tripping over it yet, but someday she will, she just knows it, and she wants to have it cut. She needs to have it cut. It’s a moral imperative. Her mother, of course, does not approve of this course of action, but, like. Who cares what her mother thinks, the fucking bitch. Of course, though, that makes hairdressers difficult. Apparently, none of them want to do anything to her hair in the first place, because it’s so beautiful, love, are you sure, sweetheart, you’ve such gorgeous hair, and, like, yes, okay, but she just wants it gone, actually, so. Then, of course, none of them want to touch her hair because she’s underage and they don’t want her mother coming in and screaming up a storm, which. Okay. That is a thing that might happen, yes. But it’s just hair, you know? Why does it even matter, seriously. It grows back. So when it happens, she sits herself down in front of Sophie’s older sister who goes to beauty school and asks what Rhonwen wants it to look like, drops names of models and actresses and Rhonwen doesn’t know who any of them are and so she says, “Dude, I don’t even care.” Sophie’s sister declares her the new Edie Sedgwick. Her mother declares her a trainwreck. Her mother goes to shout at Sophie at school because she doesn’t know where Sophie’s sister goes to school and Rhonwen refuses to tell her because, like, she doesn’t know or care enough to find out, she’s too busy staring at her reflection and tousling her hair and grinning. Rhonwen doesn’t know what her mother’s problem is, to be honest. She looks fucking fantastic. Her mother, though, has been talking about homeschooling since Rhonwen was five and had to let her mother braid her hair so that she looked like fucking Heidi everyday (seriously, in every picture of her from ages four to eight, there are these absurd fucking plaits, it makes Rhonwen feel exceptionally bad for herself as a baby and she hates that self-pity shit), so she probably shouldn’t be shocked when she gets pulled out of third period French to her mother signing her out of school, but, like. She is. Her mother is just. Such a fucking lunatic. Brendan is her kind of boyfriend. Mostly he is just the guy who brings her weed when her mother is out. It works okay, and usually Rhonwen throws a rope ladder down to him from the attic window and he climbs up and they get stoned in the attic because her mother never goes up there, and she figures that, you know, even if she does, someday, the smell can be explained away as, like, mildew, or. Asbestos. Something, whatever, it just isn’t going to happen, is the thing. Then it happens and Rhonwen is put on house arrest. And, like, really, though. Her mother doesn’t exactly invest in a little tracking bracelet but it’s a very close thing. Rhonwen knows this because she checks her browsing history every night after she goes to sleep. It’s usually just match.com bullshit, and horoscopes, and articles on the statistics of teen pregnancy, and now, suddenly, like, Rhonwen’s got to deal with the possibility of being turned into Neal Caffrey. Minus the fedora. Rhonwen’s mother has a thing about fedoras. She’s been trapped in the attic for two weeks when Brendan skips school to come see her. Okay whatever she hasn’t been trapped exactly but her mother isn’t letting her leave the house. So, in retaliation, Rhonwen isn’t leaving the attic. Her mother keeps yelling at her to come down, probably thinks she’s got more pot stashed somewhere but she actually doesn’t, she’s really just reading Lemony Snicket novels and texting Sophie and being bored. So Brendan comes by and she goes to throw down the ladder and then realizes that her mother has cut it half-way. Which. “Well-played, Mother,” she mutters darkly towards the staircase, even though her mother is at work and there’s absolutely no chance of her hearing it. “Well-played.” Rhonwen’s mother is seriously, like. Her arch-nemesis. “If you still had that long hair, you could just throw it down to me, and I could climb up,” Brendan calls, smiling like he thinks that's actually funny, leaning against the tree across from the attic window. “I only had long hair in the first place because my mother is old-fashioned enough to believe that men don’t like women with short hair which is ridiculous and anyway it doesn’t even matter to me because I am a feminist!” she shouts down to him. He stares at her like she’s lost it. Maybe she has. Look, she lives in an attic, okay, she’s going through a rough period right now. “Okay,” Brendan says slowly. “What’s a feminist?” She spends a half an hour lecturing Brendan and sends him home and when her mother gets back in the evening, Rhonwen goes down to eat dinner with her because she’s fucking starving and so her mother asks her if she’s pregnant. “Mother,” Rhonwen sighs heavily, setting down her spoon. “I am not pregnant, I promise. I am the exact opposite of pregnant.” “Well, maybe you should go to my gynec—” “I’m grounded, Mom, I can’t go anywhere, God, you made the rules, why won’t you follow them, how do you expect men and women to achieve equality if you keep to these ridiculous double standards, honestly, it’s like you don’t even know me at all, you don’t understand anything!” Rhonwen shouts angrily before storming back upstairs. The sudden mood swing is probably just making her mother freak out. Like, the woman probably has seven Google windows open. Seven. Rhonwen can’t bring herself to care. She isn’t pregnant, she’s sixteen. She’s never even had sex, for fuck’s sake. The next day, Sophie texts her saying that her mother was at school in the morning to interrogate Brendan about their sex life. In front of everyone. Rhonwen is so mortified, like. She literally wants to die. She goes into the bathroom and spends a few minutes maneuvering the razor out of the obnoxious pink thing that she used to use to shave her legs before she stopped doing that and then stares at her reflection. She stares at herself for awhile, gets caught up in her hair again, and soon enough, it’s six, and her mother is unlocking the front door, and Rhonwen thinks for about two seconds before hiding the razor and bouncing downstairs to exclaim, “I lied, I’m totally pregnant, I’m having twins!” Her mother fucking faints right in the doorway. Published May 23rd, 2020 on her Neutral Spaces blog.