all that grows, grows back

by Allison C. Macy-Steines

When I was six years old—a year that stands out in my life like an overly ripe scab—hair pulling took over without warning. My younger sister Kaitlyn had contracted what the doctors thought was a viral encephalitis. She suddenly started having hundreds, sometimes thousands, of seizures a day, screaming around the clock. A week after Kaitlyn’s first major hospitalization, my grandma, whom I adored, died from breast cancer. I missed the first day of first grade to attend her funeral, and I started having nightmares. Anxiety bubbled and puckered inside of my body, looking for a way out.

So I pulled. I pulled as if my life depended on it. Back then, the pulling wasn’t a conscious decision, but now I recognize that pulling allowed me to hyperfocus on the hairs on my body rather than the problems in my life. At the time, I couldn’t piece together the story of my family’s life. I only remember thinking, Where was fairness? Why was this all happening? How hard would I have to pray to make it all stop? My life was melting around me like an ice cream cone on a hot day, and nothing my kid-hands could do would ever be able to put it back together or make it right again.

One morning, I sat on the playground swing alone in the backyard and circled my bare feet into the dusty earth. With every movement, the chains and wooden structure above me squawked. The sun was already hot as it crawled across my hunched-over shoulders. I stared at the prairie grass and dirt trails in the distance, trying to ignore the tension building in my fingertips. An electric current pulsed between my thumb, pointer, and middle fingers as if magnets were hidden just below the surface of my skin. I couldn’t control, calm, or quiet it. The urge, the obsession, had to manifest into some form, some gesture, and so my fingertips found their way to my eyelashes, and I pulled.

My small frame teetered between dirt and sky. The swing carried me forward toward my new, horrible hobby. One by one, I narrowed in on individual eyelashes that felt out of place. My fingers quickly developed a tweezer-like precision for plucking. The action stung and my eyes welled with tears, but I continued.

Eyelash after eyelash collected between my fingertips. I stared at each one until a voice surfaced from somewhere. It wasn’t anyone’s voice in particular, just a saying I remembered hearing before: “If you lose an eyelash you get to make a wish.” I made little O’s with my mouth and lips and blew the eyelashes into the wind, into oblivion. I wished that my sister would get better, then I wished that she had never gotten sick, then I wished that I could rewind time, then I wished that my grandma would come back to life, then I wished that she wouldn’t because that would be scary, then I wished not to know sadness so well, then I wished that sadness never existed at all for anyone, anywhere, ever.

I wished.

I pulled.

And when I’d had enough of both, I peeled my sweaty thighs off the swing and sprinted to the sliding glass door at the back of the house.

“Mom! Mom!” I yelled.

When I didn’t hear a response, I assumed she was downstairs resting with Kaitlyn, who had just come back from another marathon of special appointments. But I didn’t care. I needed her now. I picked up pace and made my way through the main room and down the stairs, and my mom exited the laundry room holding a pile of clothes in a green plastic basket. When she saw me, she froze. Her eyebrows pulled into little knotted bows. She dropped the basket and rushed to me. She set her hands gently on my shoulders and wrapped her long fingers around my arms. She kneeled to look directly at me and her hazel eyes locked on my own.

“What’s the matter? Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

I couldn’t answer at first. My knees started to shake, and I broke my mother’s gaze.

“What happened?” she asked.

The words came spilling out. “I don’t know where it came from. All of the sudden I wanted to pull out my eyelashes.”

She dropped her hands from my shoulders to my elbows and pulled me a bit closer.

“You pulled out your eyelashes with your fingers?” she asked.

I nodded.

My mom examined my eyelashes, and there was something about the way she looked at me that made me shrink back from her. I felt like a science experiment. I felt like I’d undergone a metamorphosis and become a giant insect-girl—a praying mantis or a cockroach or a cicada. Strange. Bizarre. Built wrong. All the hairs on my body seemed to crawl and wriggle around and buzz with the energy of insect-wings.

After that day, I pulled hundreds and likely thousands of hairs each week. While the chorus of Kaitlyn’s seizures and screams sounded in the background of our home, I tugged away eyelashes, eyebrows, arm hairs, the hairs on my head. I had found something I could control amidst the chaos—something to fixate on, something that was all and only mine.

A pulling spree could last for two minutes, twenty, sometimes well over an hour. Day after day after day, I hoisted myself up onto the countertop in the bathroom so that I could see myself up close in the mirror. I curled my knees to my chest in an uncomfortable crouch, rested my feet in the sink like an anchor, and set about my routine of torture and humiliation.

My fingers pinched into claws. I plucked out my eyelashes one after another. The tickle. The tug. The satisfying pop. Freedom. Release. The word stop. And again.

I narrowed in on hairs with a pinch so exacting that it left my fingertips calloused and dented, cratered and achy like someone learning to play the guitar and pressing the strings for too long. I brought my face so close to the mirror that my breath began to fog it. I wiped away the fog and moved onto my eyebrows, which were coarser, wilier, and created an extra-gratifying pop. I plucked and plucked, making scattered piles of pain, sadness, frustration, chaos.

Aside from that initial conversation, my mom and I didn’t talk much about my pulling at first. My parents didn’t understand what was happening with me. My siblings didn’t understand what was happening with me. I sure as hell didn’t understand what was happening with me. And there wasn’t time. Kaitlyn’s condition progressed rapidly, and her decline was like a vacuum, sucking everything else inside of it.

She stopped walking, talking, eating on her own. All the progress my two-year-old sister made in her first few years of life, she lost and then regressed from there. This was like watching the hands of a clock tick backward. None of it made sense. Shame told me, begged me, to keep my fixation to myself. I reasoned: How could I vocalize that with every hair I yanked and pulled and plucked and tweezed, the internal conflict of pleasure and pain only increased inside of me? How could I explain that I wanted to pull and quit pulling with equal desire? And how could I present my family with another unsolvable problem?

Eventually, the evidence was so bare upon my body that it became impossible to hide. I stared at the gaps between my eyelashes, the bare spots in my eyebrows, the puffiness, the skin raised and red with irritation. I stared and stared and stared until time was nothing actually and I forgot all about it, until I wasn’t sure I recognized this new person staring back at me, until Allison was just a name and not somebody I knew how to be or love. The girl in the mirror was me, and yet I couldn’t recognize her. But still I had to look. And the looking hurt. Hurt so much. The damage. How could I demolish my own face like it meant nothing to me?

My eyelids glared back at me, puffy and bare. Tears tugged at the corners. Pores bled near my eyebrows. I pulled open the hinged, mirrored cabinets in the bathroom so far that they faced each other, and infinite reflections appeared in the mirror, each humming to the tune of mise en abyme. Staring back at me were endless selves—all with their heads shaking in disapproval and disgust.

Way to go, I thought. You look like even more of a freak than you did yesterday.

By the second grade, I was missing most of my eyelashes, and my eyebrows looked like they had been badly erased with a #2 pencil. My classmates teased me. My teacher asked questions. Mom and my brother tried to be supportive, and Dad still called me beautiful even though I called bullshit. I called bullshit about everything, and I kept right on pulling.

At first, my parents gave me rewards if I did good, like a new CD or a sleepover with friends. But the downside was that I also received repercussions if I did bad. As if the whole hairpulling ordeal weren’t enough of a bother, I got grounded constantly from phone-time, from friends, from after-school activities.

They tried to help, too, by constantly informing me that I was pulling out my hair. “Hey, Allison, you’re doing it again,” Mom would say when we sat around the dinner table. “Allison, stop pulling,” Dad would say when we drove in the car, and he would reach his hand out to pat my arm. Their voices were soft, sympathetic, but I couldn’t hear them over the self-hate track in my head on repeat. A whimpering, raging supplication: “Stop. Please, please, please stop. What is wrong with you? Allison! Stop. Stop. STOP. Why? C’mon. Stop!”

And through the fog, my mother’s voice again: “Allison, really, stop.”

My parents’ reminders only made my internal loathing rise up with even harder force. Sometimes I’d promise to stop, knowing I wouldn’t be able to. Sometimes I’d ignore them. Sometimes I’d lie and lash out if anyone questioned me.

One night, we were watching a movie together as a family in the living room. I don’t remember the movie, but my dad popped it into the VCR and plopped down on the loveseat next to my mom. Brennen and I sat in separate chairs on both sides of the couch, like bookends on opposite sides of my parents. Kaitlyn was in the bedroom watching Barney, which we could hear faintly playing in the background.

Watching movies provided the ideal time for plucking. It was dark and all eyes were pointed elsewhere. I started fiddling with the tassels on a nearby pillow to try and avoid the urge, but it didn’t take long before my fingers found hair after hair after hair. When the movie was over, my brother turned on the lights. Empty popcorn bowls and crushed cans decorated the table. The credits of the movie rolled in the background. We turned to look at each other, ready to dive into discussion about what we’d just watched, as if we hadn’t already talked through the whole movie.

“Have you been pulling?” Mom asked, her eyes locked on my new, puffy bald spots, which felt as if they were brightly illuminated.

“No, no,” I lied. “I haven’t.”

My mom looked at me, disappointed, and further examined my face. She grabbed my chin to look at me more closely. I shifted in my seat and made eye contact with my brother who had slumped back in the chair, transforming himself into a pile of pajamas. He sighed, readying himself for the fight that was about to ensue.

“I didn’t, Mom. Not this time, I swear. Not since last week.”

Sometimes she would just shake her head when I lied. That night, she challenged me. “Stop lying. If you did it, you did it. Don’t lie about it.”

Sometimes I’d fess up. That night, I defended myself.

“I didn’t and leave me alone, anyway,” I screamed at her and at the blank faces of my brother and my dad. My lungs bellowed with hysteria, boomed with desperation. My dad stood from the couch and raised his voice to an octave that matched my own. His blue eyes were like lasers as he hollered about how I should act and how I should talk to my mother and how I was constantly disobeying them by talking back. Like a wounded animal, I shrieked and then slinked away down the hallway toward Brennen’s room, which was now partially my room too.

Sisters sharing a room had crumbled between Kaitlyn’s seizures and her equipment and the around-the-clock care, and so one Saturday when I was in the third grade, my parents set up wooden bunk beds in Brennen’s room. From that day forward, I slept there, but I still kept all my clothes in Kaitlyn’s room, which created a dilemma for me. I was never sure where I or my stuff belonged, never sure where to storm off to in my fits of rage, never sure which door to slam shut.

That night, I chose Brennen’s door. And I slammed it hard. So hard the house seemed to shake. I seethed in the quiet of the room, letting my rage erupt. I flopped onto his bed, the bottom bunk, instead of climbing the wooden ladder to my top bunk, where our cat, Mows, was curled up into a sleeping ball of fur. My chest simmered like a pot about to boil over.

From this distance, I want to give myself a hug, whisper something kind, but back then, all I could access was self-hatred. Loathing became a windless plateau, and I was a kite falling and floundering, dragging myself against my own shame. As I tumbled, I heard Brennen’s footsteps coming down the hall, and the sound tethered me back. I stopped falling. Hung suspended. Turned to sit up on the bottom bunk and face the doorway. I still rolled my eyes at him as he entered, then turned away and sank into myself, trying to become smaller. A different shape. Someone else.

“You don’t have to talk to Mom and Dad like that. They’re just trying to help,” he said. “And how come you are mad at me, anyway. What did I do? Seriously, cut it out.”

“Oh, what do you know?” I snarled. I meant it as a statement rather than a question.

He answered anyway, “I know this is all really hard and it sucks.”

Brennen sat down next to me on his bunk and let his head clunk back against the wall near the tacked-up photo of his celebrity crush, Jessica Alba, and Linkin Park posters. His brown hair rested against the green walls. His eyebrows were thick like caterpillars, like mine used to be, and I fidgeted around. I apologized. In actuality, I probably spewed out some words that sounded nothing like I’m sorry, but my brother understood. I let my head rest against the wall, too, right next to his.

Brennen and I both needed something unbreakable, and we found it in each other. I watched my friends and cousins, the bickering and purposeful antagonism, and I couldn’t understand the antics of it. We had the occasional moments of annoyance. His loud chewing. My eye rolling. But mostly those were brief. Mostly we relied on each other. We looked out for each other. Built-in best friends.

When the older boys down the road stole my Barbie dolls, lit them on fire, and put them in a tree, Brennen tried to beat them up. He always included me in everything, from football to fort building—never making me feel like the annoying little sister for tagging along. He was patient with me when I lost my temper and he always checked in on my feelings because I had lots of them. I helped Brennen choose outfits for picture day. I listened to his animated ideas about paleontology and prehistoric creatures, and I promised not to tell on him when he accidentally ran over my leg with the four-wheeler. I cheered him on in everything from football to baseball to art projects, and I thought he was the coolest, most incredible person I knew.

We sat there for our moment, heads against the wall, my hands fiddling, searching for something to yank, grab, twist, pull, pluck, and then Brennen’s hand found the wall, and our familiar game began. Two slow taps, three quick tap-tap-taps, and another slow tap. I couldn’t help myself, and he knew it. Now it was my turn. He always knew the antidote to lighten the mood and cheer us both up. I smiled and sat up straight with excitement. Moved my hands. Two slow taps, three quick tap-tap-taps, and another slow tap. Identical. A call and response. The first one was with fingertips, gentle. The next round he curled his fingers in and used his knuckles. Tap, Tap, Tap-tap-tap, and one slow tap at the end. I curled my fingers in, those delicate digits that could do so much damage to my body, and echoed. Tap, Tap, Tap-tap-tap, and one slow tap at the end.

Brennen nodded to signal it was my turn to set the pattern and pace, to tap out our next few rounds. I started slow and he followed, and I built and built, and still he kept up. Finally, I went for an overly ambitious crescendo of tapping, and Brennen gave me a look as if to say “Yeah, right.” He lifted his hands in the air to admit defeat and we both busted out laughing. When the laughter subsided, we rested our heads back against the wall, and I swear I could hear the faint echo of our tapping, as if it had become some shared heartbeat, pulsating between us, as if the only thing that mattered anymore was that tapping and rhythm and time.

Kids in elementary school weren’t nearly as understanding as my brother. They were curious. And the older we got, the more their curiosity sharpened. “Where did all your eyelashes go?” “Why do your eyebrows look like that?” They were mean. “You look like you have cancer.” “What’s wrong with you?” “Baldy! Weirdo! Freak!” Their responses and questions always cut just as deep—every time, adding on another layer of shame and guilt and disgust.

Their words tumbled and echoed inside my mind. They etched themselves on my fingertips, behind my eyelids, where they sought release, with a pop. I shouted the same words at myself, too, more times than I could count. I still tried my best to hide.

I didn’t own any makeup at that age and I was only allowed to use my mom’s supply with her permission. But sometimes I’d sneak into my parents’ bedroom before school when nobody was around, when Dad went to work early and Mom was preoccupied with taking care of Kaitlyn or making breakfast. I’d dab yellow eyeshadow over my puffy, pink lids. A few eyelashes poked out here and there at odd angles, but most of them had been ripped away. I’d smear on eyeliner and attempt to draw on eyebrows, too. I had one goal: to create a face resembling normalcy. And, of course, with my kid-hands, I failed hard. Some mornings I showed up to school with pink eyebrows or fake eyelashes glued up at my eyelid creases.

One Friday afternoon before the fourth-grade dance, Mom asked if she could help me get ready. I swallowed my embarrassment and shrugged. I let her pick out my outfit: a brown spaghetti strap tank with a sheer gold long sleeve over the top, and gold jewelry. I let her curl my hair in soft, swooping waves that fell warmly around my face. I let her add blush and curl what was left of my obliterated eyelashes and lightly pencil in brown eyebrows. When I looked in the mirror afterward, I saw someone who was both me and not me, someone who, like after so many pulling sprees, I barely recognized. Only this time, I liked what I saw. I don’t know how she did it, but my mom made me look like someone worth looking at, and I wanted to look like that for the rest of my life.

Before I left for the dance, I agreed to let my mom take a few photos of me out on the front lawn by the Norway maple tree. I sat in different poses on a tan woven blanket against the grass and smiled. Kaitlyn was nearby in her wheelchair on the front stoop.

My sister was nearly six years old and her condition had deteriorated rapidly. She could no longer sit up on her own and my parents were constantly on the search for the newest apparatus to help support her development. Her wheelchair was the latest, on loan from Easter Seales, and looked like a high-tech space shuttle with all its levers and knobs and cushions to prop her this way and that.

I looked at my sister between photos, her head tilted slightly to the side, a slight smile gathered on her chapped, pouty lips, her wrists curled in gentle “j” shapes, draped across her chest. My heart ached in that moment, not only because of her condition, but because of how often I could overlook her, as if she’d become a piece of furniture in the room. My little sister couldn’t paint her nails with me. She couldn’t steal my clothes. She couldn’t squirm around while I taught her to French braid hair.

Our sisterhood looked different than all the other sisterhoods I’d seen, and most of the time that filled me with longing—a longing so intense that some days I ignored her instead without meaning to. But there she was on the front stoop, happy and whole, her eyes twinkling like they were filled with tinsel. I fidgeted on the blanket and stared back at my mom and the small silver camera she still held between her hands.

“Let’s get one of me and Kaitlyn,” I said.

My mom smiled, unstrapped Kaitlyn from her wheelchair, lifted her into the air, placed her on my lap, and stepped back before snapping a few more photos. Kaitlyn melted her weight into me, relaxed, and started humming like a bird. By that time, all Kaitlyn had left to communicate was her humming, which replaced her every learned word, syllable, phrase, utterance. I kissed her on the cheek, wrapped my arms around her torso, and pulled her close.

For the briefest moment, while the shutter snapped, nothing else mattered. Not words. Not hair. Not the lack of both. Not seizures or helplessness or dwindling hope. Certainly not what we looked like. Only our smiles. Slicing through everything else. I was learning in real time the way everything renews itself, again and again: how all that grows, grows back.

“My beautiful girls,” Mom said.

And in that captured moment, frozen forever in time, we were just that—unlikely girls, beautiful against all odds.

About the author:

Allison C. Macy-Steines writes both prose and poetry. She earned her M.F.A. in Writing from Pacific University and holds a B.A. in Journalism and Media Studies from UW-Milwaukee. Her writing is published or forthcoming in The Missouri Review, River Teeth, Southern Humanities Review, Mom Egg Review, Under the Gum Tree, and elsewhere. She recently began teaching creative writing classes and workshops and for the last decade has worked in nonprofit communications, community engagement, and content creation. She grew up in Illinois, and now lives in Oregon, with her husband, daughters, and pup.