The Beauty Shop



What I'm about to say is something of a secret. Every Friday I go to a beauty shop to get my hair done, just like my mom did. I'm starting to believe the old adage that women turn into their mothers. I'm more like mine every day. Too bad she's not here to see.

When I was a teenager in the nineteen-sixties, I tried everything I could to be unlike my mother. I refused to exhibit any interest in her two passions, Mah Jong and shopping. I preferred writing poetry and smoking cigarettes.

Since most teenage girls didn't play Mah Jong or get their hair done, I was safe. I set my kinky locks on giant orange juice cans to achieve the straight look of Mary - from Peter, Paul and Mary. I craved this look because it was the opposite of my mother's bouffant hairdo that was dyed Marilyn Monroe blond.

Now I'm 52 years old and tired of my stubborn hair. Although I live in Chicago, I discovered my past in a beauty shop in Lincolnwood. One day, I stopped in to buy shampoo and noticed a fine haircut on a woman with thick hair like mine. Looking around, I was stunned to see ten sets of my mother's eyes, levitating under hair dryers. These women were the age my mother would be now, early eighties. I went home, called the shop and scheduled an appointment.

On my first visit, the usual gang of Friday ladies was there. Blanche, Shirley, Rochelle. It was so easy to strike up a conversation; I felt I had known them forever. I studied each face eagerly . . . the way the skin surrounding Rochelle's mouth folded back like the flaps on a tent, to release her laugh . . . Blanche's voluptuous lips sashayed around her face as though Max Factor had invented lipstick just for her.

I ask if they play Mah Jong. "Of course we do. But you don't, do you?" they ask. They know my generation never embraced this bewildering game. Mah Jong is similar to cards, using tiles on racks instead. Virtually the only people who play it are Chinese men and Jewish women, a footnote that tickles me.

Nostalgia bubbles inside me like champagne. So many nights in my youth I drifted into slumber to the sound of ladies playing Mah Jong . . . the scratching of racks pushed back and forth on the card table. "One bam, two crack, flower," the Chinese names of tiles were chanted with a reverence usually reserved for synagogue.

I ask Rochelle where she buys her clothes. "I only buy discount," she brags. Blanche prefers Saks, adding, "You get what you pay for." Shirley brings up a name I hadn't heard in years, LeVines Dress Shop. "On Oakton, right," I ask, thrilled to be hearing the name of my mom's favorite shop for "good" dresses. Julie LeVine was a friend of my deceased parents." "Julie retired," Shirley offers. "His kids run the shop now."

When the women rummage their purses for pictures of grandchildren, old guilt clings me like hairspray. You see I never gave my mother the thing she wanted most. In those days, every girl was supposed to have kids. It wasn't fair that other girls had a sister or a brother's wife to come through with the "goods." I was my mom's lone shot.

Consequently, my mother had more expectations of me than the hairs on my head. They included that I should marry a Jewish doctor and live in a fancy, new house. My home should be no more than five-minutes away from hers, so she could easily visit all the children I would have. Her own dreams of a big family ended when she had a hysterectomy right after my birth. In 1951, there were no such options as surrogate mothers.

As much as I wanted to please my mom, her fantasy was severing my own dreams of being an actress. I thought she was trying to live my life and resented her for it. Now I realize this isn't true. She was simply steering me toward what she believed to be the express lane to happiness. Because she loved me.

Mom grew up on New York's lower East side until the age of twelve, when her family moved to Chicago. A striking beauty, she dropped out of school at sixteen to model make-up at a cosmetic firm. She loved dating and was very popular. But she didn't marry a rich doctor, as she instructed me to. She married a Jewish army captain . . . for love. My father became quite successful, but there were many years of struggle.

After my parents graduated to upper middle class, my mother refused to live anywhere that wasn't brand new, "I don't want to inherit somebody's dirt," she said. To me, this reeked of nouveau riche. When I moved into a charming, old coach house in my thirties, my mother christened it the "fadreckta" coach house - meaning crappy in Yiddish. She never called it anything else.

I toured New York's tenement district recently and saw many buildings from my mother's day. I found the tenements to be dark, teeming, claustrophobic and yes "fadreckta."

When I began going to this beauty shop, I thought it was about my hair. It's not about my hair. It's about my mother. She looks out at me from every mirror. Last week while I was getting a haircut and color, the final strand of misunderstanding fell, blond now . . . like hers.