Page 7 of The Ruin of Eros

“My hair,” I say slowly. My sister stares.

“Dimitra—will you shave it for me?”

She blinks. For a moment her shell cracks; I swear I see her eyes moisten.

“Your hair? Psyche…”

I know what she’s thinking. In our culture, a woman’s hair is her great pride. To lose it is a tragedy. Of all the things people praise me for, even above my face or figure, it’s my hair.Like a cornfield, Father says.Like spun gold, Kiria Demou used to say, when we paid courtesy visits to their mansion by the Agora.

Women’s heads are shaved only as a great punishment. A man may shave his wife’s head, for example, if she is caught bedding another. The time it’ll take to grow my hair back from bald as a chick to past my shoulders, will cement in everybody’s minds that I am an outsider, unmarriageable, unlucky.

But I can’t worry about that now.

“Come, Dimitra, get the shears.”

*

I admit it: the shearing hurts more than I thought it would. Not physically, of course. But as Dimitra hacks through it, haphazardly as a sheep-shearer, and it falls in rough hanks around my feet, it’s as though I’m saying goodbye to my childhood. The summer Dimitra took me to the river for the first time, when my hair floated around me in the water, my face upturned to the sun. It’s the hair that Father braided when I was a child, and which Dimitra taught me to pin up once I was a child no longer. The hair that I am told looks so much like mymother’s.

When Dimitra hands me the large bronze mirror to see her handiwork, I’m speechless. Who is this waif? My eyes look too large for my face, all hollowed out. The tufts of hair that remain here and there make me look ill, the victim of some disease. I barely recognize my own face.

And yet, there is a strange, bitter euphoria to it all. I’ve lost years in a matter of moments and for the first time I have an inkling of how oddly freeing it can be, to get rid of something you have loved. It’s a hot, bright sort of grief that makes me feel almost powerful.

“Now the razor,” I say, because bald meansbald, not just shorn.

“Psyche…” Dimitra hesitates again, and I love her for it. But she does what I ask.

When she’s done I run my hand back and forth along my scalp, watching the little flecks of hair come free like dust, falling softly, tiny gold snippets cascading to the floor. Dimitra stands with the shears still in her hand, as though afraid of her own handiwork.

“It’s all right,” I say. “It’s what I asked for. Here, give me a scarf.”

She takes the one from around her shoulders and hands it over, and I knot it under my chin. We both start at the sound of footsteps on stone, and when the door opens, we stand there like fearful children., watching Father’s expression turn from heaviness to shock. His eyes roam over the floor and the hanks of hair that lie there. Kirios Demou is behind him—I had thought he would have taken his leave by now, but instead he steps closer, his eyes narrowing, curious.

“Gods’ teeth,” Father says quietly. “What is this?”

I feel Dimitra’s hot breath beside me.

“Kori mou,” he turns to me. “My child…show me your head.”

When I unknot the scarf and let it fall, my father clamps his hand across his mouth. Behind his hand I hear the slow exhale of breath. Even Kirios Demou makes a startled noise. I must look truly wretched.

“Daughter…what have you done?” Father turns to Dimitra. “What have you done to your sister?”

“I asked her to do it,” I say quickly. Father has always been quicker to blame Dimitra than to blame me, though I hate to admit it.

“The town says the goddess is displeased with me; they think me vain. But now they will see I am not vain. Aphrodite herself will see it. I will go to the temple and show her.”

Even though it was not my transgression, I don’t add. I hope Aphrodite can’t see deep into my soul. She might notice that I blame the townspeople for all this far more than I blame myself.

Father closes his eyes. I can’t tell whether he’s upset, angry, or relieved. Then he opens them.

“Come here, child,” he says, and I cross the room, feeling the hanks of fresh-cut hair under my feet. They are soft, softer than corn silk. Father draws me to him and runs a hand over my scalp. I feel the bones in my head as I have never felt them before, so close to the skin under the touch of his hand, the inside of me feels almost visible. It is as though everything I once was is burning away. The mask is gone. Maybe soon I will begin to know who I really am, without this thing the world calls beauty.

“Your eyes,” he says. “They are so large, now.” He pauses, identifying a spot on the top of my skull where Dimitra must have nicked me with the blade. “Here, you’re bleeding.”

“It will heal,” I say, and take up the scarf once more. “I’m going to the temple, before it’s dusk.”

Father stares at me a little longer, and then slowly, turns toKirios Demou.

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