Small Good Things
by Kirin Khan
Sara Rahbar, Stung and Swollen, 27 x 23 ½ x 6 ½ inches, confessions, white bronze, 2015. Courtesy of the artist.
SMALL GOOD THINGS
KIRIN KHAN / JAN 2021 / ISSUE 4
I know how it looked. We had buried my younger brother the day before, but after five Saturday evening in late February, I zipped my fringed leather against the cold wind and rain and made the gloomy walk from my car to Mustang Salon.
Crystal had agreed to fit me in at the last minute. It was in poor taste, I know. The fact that I was in Oakland instead of Albuquerque getting put together for a conference on Monday instead of staying with my family, talking on a panel about writing instead of sitting bravely in the full depth of that grief—all of it was a sort of abomination in the eyes of God (if I believed), and in the eyes of every society I could think of, considering all the mourning rituals each culture seems to have, none of which included looking decent and going to work.
Long fringe that sways when you move. Drizzle, sparkling as it catches light from the salon’s window front.
I pulled the heavy glass door and was greeted by the assistant, who did the usual, hi welcome, want some coffee or tea, do you have an appointment, oh great, Crystal will be right with you.
I took a seat by the window and the assistant brought me a cup of herbal tea, setting it down carefully, as though the china might break. I held the cup in the fingers of both hands, like I was presenting an egg, and stared at the blue moons on the fake black tips of my new manicure.
Cinnamon and anise herbal tea. Warm porcelain cups. Cognac-colored leather chairs. Being warm inside, watching rain outside.
Further evidence of my unnatural and obscene coldness. I’d gotten my nails done while waiting for my sister to arrive for the janaza—she’d gotten held up traveling, and we’d waited a full, crazy-making, two weeks before going forward with it, without her. Our Muslim community was uncomfortable with the waiting, and everyone was uncomfortable with the manicure, but my brain was a siren drowning out thoughts and I was afraid (I’m still afraid) even though the thing I have been afraid would happen for years had happened.
“Hi.”
Crystal stood in front of me, looking her usual radiant self. She had the best outfits, sometimes a little hippie, sometimes a little rocker. Today, her hair was in a 70’s blonde shag. She wore gray cowboy boots that made me recall how, on a trip to Santa Fe, my brother Qayyum had worn a whole outfit that included jeans tucked into cowboy boots, snake skin, I think. The boots were overshadowed by his other sartorial choice—to wear a sweater-vest over another sweater. We laughed and he laughed too, a little insecure, but happy to be part of the group. I can’t say how much I loved him right then. How it flooded over me.
Road trips. Warm sweaters. Vintage clothes. Thrift stores. Booths with turquoise jewelry and Mexican blankets.
“Thanks for...”
I trailed off. There was so much to thank her, thank everyone, for.
“Of course.”
As we walked to her booth, stylists swept, gathered tools, piled up used smocks, and I realized Crystal was staying late, on a Saturday no less, for me. I felt both an aching self-loathing at my own needs, and a sort of desperate gratitude for her—for saying yes.
“So what’re you thinking?”
“Oh, I’m still growing it out.”
“It’s gotten so long!”
“Yeah, I kept it in that short bob for so long.”
The scent of bergamot, and something green, maybe sage. Scented candles. Flames dancing.
“So we’re growing it out now?”
“Yeah, kinda messy rocker shag. Not a mullet though.”
“Not a mullet, for sure. And you like your bangs short, right?”
“Right, as short as they can get without looking weird.”
I hated coming in for trims, so the longer I could go without, the better. Crystal shook my hair out of a messy bun and tousled it. Her eyes narrowed as she got a sense of the shape, the grown-out layers.
“This’ll be cute.”
Whitewashed brick walls, like the sun was shining indoors. Sunshine. Plants hanging and unfolding out of pots, the friendliness of broad-leaf plants. Fleetwood Mac on the speakers. Record players. Songs you know the words to, music that makes you wanna move.
“I haven’t washed it.”
I spoke to her in the mirror, both of us facing forward, scanning her face for any trace of disgust.
“That’s okay.”
“I know it’s weird, so soon, and like, not what you’re supposed to do.”
I paused. Since his death, I felt like a strange animal to myself. I could hardly understand my own thoughts and actions.
“I need to feel like a person.”
“I get it.”
My chest hurt. It hurt all the time, like my sternum was being scooped out, a hollowing hurt. This is not a metaphor.
“Let’s get you washed.”
Head leaned back into the black bowl, I slumped into a chair meant for shorter people. My legs stretched out in front of me. I shut my eyes. Crystal stood above me and turned on the faucet. Usually the water wasn’t hot enough for me, but I was all nerves and to my hypersensitive, raw skin, the warmth was soothing. She used the detachable spray handle to focus the water on my roots.
“Are you back in town for a little while?”
“Just the weekend.”
Crystal combed her fingers through my hair and waved the strands into the spray. She moved in slow motion.
“Oh that’s right. What’s the conference about? Is that for work? You traveled for work a ton last year.”
She squirted shampoo into her hands. She used her fingertips to massage it in, small, slow circles, soft but firm enough for me to feel it, through the white noise in my head. To feel as though I was being held.
“Yeah, I did, a ton. This is a writer thing though, not day job.”
She turned the water on and started to rinse out the shampoo, starting at my ends, moving the spray up and down in a rhythmic motion, continuous and lulling. I exhaled slowly in the way I’d learned since he died, when my body hurt too much, when there were people around, when I didn’t want attention, to keep myself from breaking so hard I couldn’t put myself back together.
“I’m only going cuz I’ll see some of my close friends who live out East. I thought that might be good to see them.”
I was pleading. I could feel the pressure of the fluorescent lights, bright red behind my eyelids. My eyes watered.
“Yeah, that will be good. Let them take care of you.”
Friends who take care of you. Thai food. Hotel rooms and staying up late, making fun of tv shows, and talking books, and feeling like a part of something.
Her voice was gentle. She squirted conditioner into her hands. I kept my eyes shut. The water was off now. Crystal ran oil-slick lotion through my hair, massaging my scalp with the tips of her fingers. She held the base of my head in the palm of her hand and rolled it from one side to the other as she worked it in. I tried to relax and let her take control, but I have a hard time relaxing.
“We did it yesterday. I flew out this morning. We waited for my sister to come, we waited as long as we could.”
Again that desperation in my voice. If I could make her understand, then maybe—
“That must have been so hard. Where was she?”
“Cambodia. It was a mess, visa stuff.”
“Oh that’s right, Cambodia. I can’t imagine being away from home during all this.”
It’s true, my sister missed Qayyum’s burial. I worried she would never forgive herself, even though it was obviously not her fault. She was no monster. Missing the funeral was not as bad as everything I missed—not as bad as me.
Relaxing was dangerous, it always was. She twisted locks of my hair around her fingers and my face started to crack. A trickle slid down my cheek and caught in the curve of my ear.
When I was little, and Qayyum even littler, couldn’t have been older than four, we used to sometimes sleep in the same bed. We would talk quietly so we wouldn’t get in trouble. He would play with my hair. I would trace the outline of his ear until he fell asleep. There was a time when we were that close.
My fingers, tracing the edge of his ear until our breath matched and slowed in sync, in the dark.
A small animal noise escaped me and I was weeping, my eyes still closed, the ridges of my throat felt caught against my skin. Crystal didn’t say anything. She rinsed longer than usual, her fingers so gentle, as though I was something very fragile, something that needed a lot of care. She let the silence sit, let me choose what would be said out loud.
The thing is, I hadn’t been home in a year. I hadn’t seen him for an entire year. I kept thinking, I’ll go home soon, but I’m so tired. I missed so many birthdays, even his small, sudden wedding. Like an idiot, a monster. Like a person who didn’t care.
I wanted to explain so much. To tell Crystal about how I’m always so tired and it’s so sad in winter, so sad and it’s so hard to go home, and how that January, I had not told anyone, but that January, I was trying not to kill myself too. If I’d known he was in that dark free fall too, we could have held on to each other.
If I’d called. If he’d answered. If I’d told him.
I didn’t say any of this. I cried, soundlessly, the kind of crying that is more inhaling, a fathomless struggle for air. She twisted my hair into a rope, squeezed. My breathing slowed. She put a hand on my shoulder, and then wrapped my hair in a warm towel. We walked to the booth together.
Warm towels. Someone playing with your hair. Gentle, firm touch when you’re falling apart.
Pieces of hair stuck to tear trails on my face. The quiet scrunch of scissors. The short sawing of a razor to layers. My scalp tingled as she cut my ends. My glasses in my hand under the smock.
Maybe I needed something very small to remind me every morning I was there, of why I have chosen to stay alive, in the face of the fact that he chose not to. I had to find things to cling to. I didn’t know to tell my brother that the things that kept me alive were raindrops, pine needles, soap bubbles. Little reminders that floated me from one day to the next, kept me from drowning late at night. About how everything that has kept me alive has been so small, about how you have to collect those things, keep adding them up til they outweigh all that heavy deep despair. An accumulation of small, good, things.
“There.”
She removed the drape dramatically and I stood up, shaking hair from my jeans. She dusted off my face with a feathery brush. We faced each other so she could make any adjustments as my hair fell into place.
“I can venmo you?”
“Oh no, let this one be on me.”
Normally, I’d have refused the offer. The pandemic was starting and things were gonna be tight and even if that wasn’t so, as a Pashtun, I was raised to sort of reverse gifts, offer something instead or at least in return, to escalate kindnesses until you won and were the giver instead of recipient.
“Thank you.”
Small words. I looked at her directly and tried to smile a bit. I so needed kindness. A grace I could not give myself. Her eyes were wide and shining and her eyelashes were wet.
A manicure with sky blue moons. A good haircut.
“You look so pretty.”
Pretty. Sometimes pretty was enough to hold on to. The accumulation takes time. It takes a lifetime.
Kirin Khan is a Pukhtun writer from Albuquerque, NM who lives in Oakland, CA. Her work centers on trauma, the body, sports, violence, grief, immigration, and queerness. An alumna of VONA/Voices, Las Dos Brujas, Kearny Street Workshop, and the Tin House Writers Workshop, she was a PEN Emerging Voices Fellow, SF Writers Grotto Fellow, a Steinbeck Fellow, and a recipient of residencies from the Vermont Studio Center and Tin House. Her essay “Tight” was nominated by Nat. Brut for a Pushcart Prize.
Sara Rahbar is a contemporary artist born in Tehran, Iran. She left her birthplace during the period of immense upheaval that followed the revolution in Iran and the start of the Iran-Iraq war. While her works had initially explored deeper concepts of nationalism and belonging, her overall artistic practice stems from her personal experience and is largely autobiographical—driven by central ideas of pain, violence, and the complexity of the human condition. Sara has exhibited widely in art institutions including Queensland Museum, Sharjah Art foundation, Venice Biennial, The Centre Pompidou, and Mannheimer Kunstverein. She lives and works in New York.