Hello Diva

By Dana Ellington Myles

Charise never thought she was “beautiful”, having grown-up with a father who believed good looks meant having “good hair”. An attribute he constantly reminded Charise she didn’t have.
So of course, when her hair starts to fall out, she resigns herself to a life spent as a permanent “ugly duckling”. That is, until her best friend / hair stylist comes to the rescue with The Weave.

Finding herself with the long, straight hair she thought she’d always wanted changes Charise and not necessarily for the better.
Read along as Charise finds out what happens when
self-confidence and the idea of beauty is built
around something so easily lost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dana Ellington Myles
• Release date: Feb 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301950621

Dana Ellington Myles

Since the age of seven, I cannot remember when the written word was not a part of my life. I didn’t consider myself a writer though, despite having excelled in writing at school, or having kept a journal since I was fifteen. It wouldn’t be until my late twenties when I made the connection that I’d been writing for almost as long as I’d been reading, thus I felt it was okay to admit, I was a writer. From there it wasn’t long before I knew I was destined to wow the world with my short stories, novellas and novels At the time of this writing, I have four books in print. I didn’t go through a vanity press, or spend the days sending query after query to publishers and literary agents. Instead, I did everything except the printing and binding; from book cover design, to buying my own ISBN and building my own website. I found a book manufacturer close to home who took my manuscripts and turned them into printed and bound masterpieces

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Hello Diva

Dana Ellington Myles

Published by Nowata Press at Smashwords

Copyright ©2012 Dana Ellington Myles.

Other Nowata Press Titles Available on Smashwords:

Let There Be Life

Satin Sheet Memoirs, Volume 1

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DEDICATION

To all the beautiful women who have forgotten…this is your reminder. Beauty is an inside job.

And to Artavia Jones, B4~N~After Hair Salon owner and master stylist, thank you for introducing me to my own inner DIVA.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to take a moment to thank my editor,

Lia Nelson-James, whose ability to set the tone and ask the tough questions, led to a book I am most proud of.

Her insight, straight talk, ability to see where things were running astray, have all contributed to my continuing growth, success, and drive as a writer

Table of Contents

Prelude

Chapter 1 - The Beginning of the End

Chapter 2 - Ah, Childhood

Chapter 3 - As Fate Would Weave It

Chapter 4 - Hello DIVA

Chapter 5 – Living in the Land of Make Be-Weave

Chapter 6 – Reality Weaves It’s Ugly Head

Chapter 7 – What Lies Beneath

Interlude

Chapter 8 – New Growth

Chapter 9 – Weave-able Healing

Chapter 10 – Scalp Treatment

Chapter 11 - Weave-able Healing, The Second Track

Epilogue

Prelude

I love this house. Today marks my anniversary in what is known as The Dragon’s Lair. A little dramatic, but hey, what else would you call a medieval styled McMansion on the outskirts of urban sprawl? Besides, the name Camelot was already taken and I wanted the name of my home to be as unique as possible. Just like me.

You see, I’m a writer. A very well-known writer, but that’s not what makes me so unique. No, what makes me stand out in a crowd is that I’m bald. Yeah, as in no hair on my head. And if that’s not unique, for a woman anyway, then I don’t know what is.

No, it wasn’t chemo-therapy or some hard to pronounce disease that robbed me of my crowning glory. It was good old fashioned human genetics. I’m a victim of male pattern baldness. Who knew it could be passed on from fathers to daughters? I certainly didn’t until a dermatologist explained it all.

But genetics didn’t take all of the hair from my scalp, it’s just what caused enough of it to call it a day that I thought it easier to just stop the madness and get rid of the remaining sprigs.

Of course, I’m exaggerating a little bit. The hair loss wasn’t nearly as big a deal as I’m making it sound. After losing a significant amount of follicles, I decided to shave the rest off as part publicity stunt and part reminder that my outsides don’t define my self-worth. Deep huh?

It wasn’t an easy decision and goodness knows I wasn’t always this comfortable with it. It took me a while to come to grips with the stares and people whispering, but once I did, the world sort of shifted and a newly found peace of mind settled in permanently.

Such a shift wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for the weave. Yeah, it was fake hair that really started it all. All this Zen, inner peace stuff began one fateful day when I let Yvette talk me into attaching a bunch of fake hair to my head. Looking back on it, I’m sure this story would have gone in quite a different direction, had I just gone hermit from the get go.

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Chapter 1 - The Beginning of the End

I

What the fuck did you do to your hair?

His raspy voice jolted me out of my nap. I had been sitting by his bedside for a good two hours; dozing on and off as best I could in a pseudo-comfortable recliner. I’m sure those chairs are made specifically for hospices. They’re designed to look like a big, cozy chair you’d find in a well lived in home. You know the kind that invokes memories of warm evenings by the fire in your favorite pajamas and slippers. They fall short by a long shot, not because they’re poorly made, but because there’s no real way to be comfortable when you’re sitting for hours by the bedside of someone who’s taking their sweet time dying.

I think the subtle stench of dry, tangy, ammonia that permeates most places like this is what causes me to drift off. It has a tranquilizing effect because otherwise, there’d be no way in hell I could have slept in that chair. However, it never failed, every time I came to see him, I’d find myself thinking of how much I hated that smell, then the next thing you know, I’d be waking up as one of the nurses shuffled by me to reach the various tubes and machinery.

Speaking of nurses, there was one standing frozen at the head of the bed where the technology keeping my dad alive was stationed. She had probably believed him to be sound asleep. I could have told her better. He wasn’t asleep but laying in wait for the perfect time to humiliate me. Okay, maybe not, but I’d be willing to bet a large sum of money he had been looking at me while I dozed, but didn’t want to say anything until he had an audience. I’m positive his brazen appraisal of my hair do earned him an extra dose of morphine as the nurse’s hand jittered the tiniest bit as she finished adjusting the drip.

Dad didn’t pay her any direct attention, choosing instead to focus his dying gaze on what I had originally thought of as my fashionably coiffed, short hair cut.

Dad, I didn’t do anything to it. It’s just cut really short.

Well, its butt-ass ugly.

That was dad, a hard man for me to love under the best of circumstances. Kind words didn’t exist where I was concerned, and it had been that way as far back as I could remember. He treated my mom as if she were a precious gem, while I was the lump of coal he wasn’t quite sure what to do with. I have no doubt that it was his constant downgrading of me that drove her out the door. Yep, she walked out one morning after I had left for school. I don’t remember dad ever acting like he missed her. But that too, was true to his nature; showing any emotion other than disgust toward me just wasn’t allowed.

So, there we were, cancer eating him up a million cells a minute and his attitude hadn’t softened a bit. Hence, the cutting remarks about my hair. He seemed to have this personal vendetta against it. Yes, I’m serious. My father hated my hair. I’d be the first to admit, it had never been what you would call manageable. It was resistant to chemical straightening and in its natural state, it more resembled a Brillo pad than hair. For him to hold such a grudge you’d think he was the one who had to take care of it; not true, it was mom who had worked diligently to bring my hair under control. Well, right up until she left that is.

I was twelve; mom had done my hair the night before, getting me ready for school the next day. I should have known that something was up because hair day was usually on the weekend, never during the week unless there was something special going on the next day. She and I were seated in the kitchen, mom was twisting my hair into orderly braids that would hug my scalp for days. Tight corn rows were the only way to tame the beast for any length of time.

Another clue that something was amiss, she only braided in the summer time when weekly hair care wasn’t that necessary. I was oblivious, instead talking a mile a minute about a story I was working on in English class. My father wasn’t home, giving the whole house a more relaxed atmosphere. I was happy to have mom to myself minus dad’s every present disapproval. She was gone when I got home from school the next day.

As you may guess, those braids stayed on my head, first because I had no idea what to do with my hair and secondly, I wanted my mom to come back and take ‘em out. She didn’t though. When the braids got too bad to look at (according to my dad), I took to hiding them under a scarf. I was that close to having dread locks when Yvette and her family moved in across the street.

II

Yvette’s been doing my hair ever since. It was Yvette’s vision of a really funky, short hairstyle that I was wearing that day at the hospice. It worked well with the natural curl in my strands, and right up until the moment dad issued his um, critique, I had actually thought it looked rather attractive. Yvette had done a wonderful job of building up my confidence about the style.

Chari, she’d said as I was worrying about being able to carry off such a short hair cut, Your hair is just an accessory to your overall look. It doesn’t make you who you are, it accentuates the real you, and right now, the real you is feeling this fabulous new style.

After two hours in her chair, with her stroking my ego, I had left the beauty shop feeling fierce and confident. Leave it to my dad to strip me of that bit of hard won self-esteem.

God, how I hated that man.

It looks like shit, he continued unaffected by the morphine now cruising through his system.

Why can’t you look like a woman? Are you gay? You look like shit, always did. I don’t know how I stand to look at you.

Thank goodness the nurse had already left sparing me the embarrassment of her hearing that last bit.

I wanted to tell him that if he had a hard time looking at me, then looking in a mirror must be impossible, but what was the use? He had to know that I looked just like him. When I say I looked like my dad, I mean, I could have used his ID if I were wearing the right hat and stood a foot taller.

Some men don’t look good as women, but my dad’s features, softened by the amount of estrogen in my cells, made for a pretty face on me. Especially when I took the time to apply a little color here and there – or at least that’s what Yvette said on the many times she had made me up for her cosmetology classes.

I didn’t think that much of my looks one way or the other, but there hadn’t been a time I could remember growing up, when folks weren’t telling me I looked like my dad had just spit me out. One of dad’s friends, one of the few who ever came by the house, took to calling me Little Sayles – my dad’s nickname of course was, you guessed it, Big Sayles. Hell, we could have been two rivers in the backwoods of Arkansas.

But instead, we were, unmistakably father and daughter. He, lying in a hospital bed dying of an aggressive, terminal form of bone cancer and me, hunched over in that damn recliner, my self-esteem crushed as usual, waiting for the cancer to kill him dead.

I firmly believe that’s the day my hair started to fall out. Not in big swatches mind you, but a few key strands decided it just wasn’t worth going on if he was going to treat them that way. They leapt to their death, taking their roots with them, leaving the follicles bare and bereft of hope.

Dad’s doctor called me a week after that visit to tell me that the cancer running rampant in my dad’s body had finally reached parts of his brain. He had slipped into a coma, with limited ticks around the clock left to his life. Upon hearing the news, a few more important strands of my hair most assuredly called it a day. The call from the nurse three weeks after that, telling me that dad could go any day sent the rest of my hair into mourning and soon more strands followed their brethren to their deaths.

III

There was no time to think about hair though. The immediate situation of my father’s dying took precedence. I couldn’t make up my mind if I was sad that he was finally going to die or relieved. I figured I should have been broken up over our not having been able to reconcile our differences – wait, that’s not entirely the truth. I felt I should be broken up over the fact that he never showed me the love and care I wanted, but I struggled to find any kind of feeling.

I’m not ashamed to admit, I didn’t rush right over to his bedside either. Two full days passed after the nurse’s call. When I didn’t get a second one telling me I was too late, that he had passed peacefully in the night, I gathered my resolve to see this through to the end and went to his room. I spent the majority of seven days by his side, in that damned uncomfortable, standard hospice issue, recliner not really doing much other than watching him labor at breathing, thinking of all the things I wish I could say to him, and working on my latest writing assignment.

Freelancing had its perks. Since I’d graduated from college, I’d been eking out something resembling a living writing freelance magazine articles and what not for whoever would pay me. I was able to translate some of my angst sitting by dad’s side, into a couple of well received articles about death, dying, and the endless waiting involved. At times, the clickity-clack of my fingers on my laptop keyboard was the only sound in the room, outside of the gasp and wheeze of dad’s final breaths.

No amount of prose was going to make this situation any less difficult though. I could write all day long and I would still end up with a father who hadn’t wanted me, a mother who had been missing in action for the better part of my life, and the need to feel loved. I was adult enough to know that dad wasn’t going to fulfill that need, but child enough to hold that small glimmer of hope that right before he took his last breath, he would open his eyes, stare lovingly into mine, maybe shed a tear or two. Then, as his body shut down, he would utter, I’ve always loved you, and you really are beautiful.

There would be angels singing in the background; the bright, beautiful light of Heaven would shine and I’d watch his spirit ascend upward, a smile on his face, and the warmth of his love radiating down on me. But alas, this wasn’t Hollywood. He stayed in that coma while I sat there waiting for him to either wake-up or pass on. He took a couple of shuddering breaths on that last day, then passed quietly into the great beyond taking what little self love I might have recovered with him.

IV

I woke up screaming, dad’s words following me into the darkness of my bedroom. Momentary disorientation sent me scrambling from my bed then out into the hall with the intention of going to the kitchen for a stiff drink. I came fully awake when I realized my tiny one bedroom apartment didn’t have a hallway this wide. I was standing in the hallway at my dad’s house just outside my old bedroom where I had been staying while getting my dad’s last affairs in order. The carpet in the hall was thread bare and in the darkness of predawn, it looked as worn out as I felt.

I had suffered from horrific nightmares since coming back to the house. I hadn’t found any comfort in the worn furniture, the faded paint on the walls or the fact that my old bedroom had been left untouched since the day I left for college. Everywhere I turned, I was reminded of how little my dad had thought of me.

The nightmare just accentuated my despair. It was his funeral, the coffin sat on a dais at the front of a church with the pulpit and choir pews looming just behind it. I was the only one in the church, sitting in the front row. There was music playing but I couldn’t tell what song. Dad was propped up on a white satin pillow so that his face was just visible over the side of the casket.

It took just a second in dream time for me to realize his chest was moving. His face showed no sign of life, but the buttons on the gray shirt peeking through the vee of the suit jacket were slowly rising up and settling down. Fear manifested quickly. I struggled to stand up with the intent of leaving. I got to my feet, turning to leave. The benches behind me were suddenly filled with faces from my childhood; kids who had teased me about my hair, teachers who had on occasion wiped the tears from my eyes but hadn’t been able to rescue me.

My fear was dampened by a rush of loneliness. I wanted to scream; to ask, Why did you all hate me so much, but there was barely breath squeezing through my windpipe, it was impossible for me to force the words past my lips.

I spun around, again making up my mind I was going to leave. Dad sat upright in his coffin, stopping my forward momentum. The mortician had sewn the eyes shut, I could see the threads at each corner of his eyelids where they were joined in a knot. The fear kicked loneliness’s ass so that it was the only feeling left in my body. When he began to speak, fear kicked reasoning out as well.

You’re ugly. You’ll always be ugly. I don’t know how your mom lasted as long as she did having to look at you all those years. No wonder she left me.

I had turned my head toward the others in the room, hoping to find one sympathetic face in the crowd. Instead, the attendees moaned their agreement, beginning to rise and shuffle toward me, the benches we were all sitting on now magically gone, leaving no barriers to impede their progress.

I had no choice but to back-peddle to within touching distance of my dad’s casket. He didn’t move to touch me. I fell to my knees at the base of the dais, looking up at him, tears streaming down my face. I wanted to tell him to shut up, but he just kept repeating, You’re ugly and no one is ever going to love you.

Coming fully awake in the hallway, my cheeks wet with the tears from my dream, I knew there wasn’t any place for me to find any kind of comfort. I stepped back into my room taking note of the time, 4:30 AM, showing on the digital clock on the nightstand. The funeral wasn’t until two o’clock that afternoon. Yvette was going to come over around noon to do my hair. The limo from the funeral home would pick us both up at one-thirty. I had eight hours to fill. With a sigh, I decided not to lie back down, the nightmare still too fresh to make sleep inviting. Instead, I went to shower and finish packing up my keepsakes from my room.

The chirp of my cell phone at ten interrupted a very light lunch – a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a cold Dr. Pepper. I know, not the healthiest combination but under the circumstances, I wanted something that would stick to my ribs – sounds bizarre but my mom used to serve me PB-n-J and I had come to rely on it as the only thing I could eat when I was upset about my father.

Um hmm…

Chari?

Mmm, mmm.

You must be eating peanut butter. Good Lord, four nights in that house and you’ve completely reverted to your childhood.

I took a quick swallow of my Dr. Pepper and promptly burped.

Yep, completely reverted. God you used to burp just like that when we were kids. Let’s hope the acne doesn’t come back either. Took me long enough to wean you off those damn sodas the first time around.

I’ve only had three since I got here.

I don’t see how all that carbonation and sugar help settle you down after the nightmares. I’d be bouncing off the walls.

I dunno either, just does. Are you on your way?

Yep. Wanted to know what you were wearing to the funeral so I’d know what make up to pack.

Ugh. Make-up.

"Look, a touch of color never hurt anybody. And you’re going to need something for those bags under your