July is a shit month, and I’ve wanted to die for about three weeks. Last night I dip-dyed my hair bright red to distract me from my broken mind. Unfortunately, it also distracted mi padre from his chicken casserole at supper tonight. He’s calling me to the living room now, away from the fifth Supernatural episode I’ve watched today. I slouch down the staircase, gripping the pinewood railing. I remind myself that under no circumstance will I cry in front of my father. He has no right to calmly observe my emotions like he did two months ago before my graduation. I wander into the living room where he lounges in his worn recliner. My mother sits on the love seat across from him and folds towels.

She wasn’t present at the May lecture. I’d undercut the other side of my head and he’d called me to his bedroom to privately express his fears that I would be immoral in college. And while I’d been unable to sustain my image as the composed eighth child, happily obsessed with mashed potatoes and books, I had successfully convinced him of my obedience. I had placated him with silence and nods and agreed to read the article he gave me about the dangers of homosexuality.

My eyes are blurry from the amount of Netflix I’ve watched in the last month and my mind is unfocused. My older sister Anna saunters into the living room behind me, ever ready to practice for her future as a family counselor. I wonder if her semester in Spain has made her forget her own lecturing sessions during her teenage emo-rock music “rebellion.” I envy her escape from this house. Blank-faced, I plop myself on the couch between the recliner and love seat. Crossing my arms, I pretend I don’t notice my dad’s somber expression.

He waits for us to get settled, for a minute of silence to establish that his lecture has begun.

Who told you it was okay to color your hair without asking me or Mama first?” He booms.

A beat. “I did ask Mama.” I sit up straighter and perch on the edge of the couch.

My dad swivels his eyes to my mother, as if this lack of marital communication is rare.

I look to her for support and pray she will take his judgment away from me.

She says, “I didn’t think it would be firetruck red. She told me it would be auburn.”

“I didn’t know it would be so bright,” I lie.

“Well, I can take you to the barber so he can cut it off for you.” Mi padre offers this practical option with no malice.

“What?! I’m not cutting it off.” My eyeballs bulge. “I bought the dye with my own money. Besides, I’m almost eighteen.” Frigid air conditioning strikes my bare legs and I shiver. My docile heart thuds in my ears. I have never argued with my father directly before. My siblings and I usually discuss his irrationality in the safety of our upstairs rooms.

Anna nods her support of my sensible reply as she sits in the rocking chair across from the couch and studies the scene.

My dad cocks his neck at an awkward angle so that he can look at me sideways down his pointed nose. “What does your age have to do with anything?”

“I’m almost an adult.”

“Who told you that it’s suddenly okay to disobey your parents when you’re an adult?” He picks his words to undermine the defendant.

“No one,” I bite. “I just figured since it’s my hair, it shouldn’t matter if I color it. I like it, and it’s pretty.”

Silence stabs the space in our conversation. My little sister Victoria giggles upstairs. She doesn’t know that lectures are in her future too. I glance to my mom then Anna, pleading for them to back me up because my outrage is fighting a losing battle with my tears.

“It’s definitely pretty,” Anna says.

“That’s beside the point.” My dad stares at me like he’s waiting for me to remind him what his point is. The air conditioning hums, but sweat puddles in my armpits. “As long as you live under this roof, it’s not your hair. It’s my hair,” he informs me.

I would be escaping this roof in a month if my broken mind hadn’t led me to withdraw from Winthrop University ten days ago. I told my parents that I didn’t want to go because it cost too much. But really this house is the only foundation I have.

Anna tries to rescue me. “But it is her hair,” she says. I look over to see her pitying eyes peer into my tangled mess of nerves.

Eight days ago, padre told me I’m going to college this year whether I like it or not, then he drove me twenty miles to submit my application to USC Salkehatchie. He doesn’t know that I don’t give a damn about my future. I jab my index fingernail into the side of my thumb. The pain calms me, helps me take a steady breath.

My mother says nothing. She has finished folding towels.

My dad addresses only me. “You believe in the Bible, right?”

I don’t. I lost my father’s religion four months ago, but I nod.

He continues, “According to the Bible, God has given me authority over you until you get married and that authority is passed onto your husband.”

I could point out all the verses that contradict this logic, but apologetics are tiring.

“The head of man is Christ and the head of woman is man,” padre quotes 1 Corinthians. “As your father, I’m commanded by God to protect you. And, as my daughter, you’re commanded by God to obey me.”

I stare at the hearth across from the couch as if listening and pondering. I could find all the signs of religious control in my dad’s words, but patriarchal control has no negative connotations for him. I gaze at the floor and fight the tears that hammer the back of my throat.

“I’m doing what I’m supposed to do as your father. I want to protect you, sweetie.”

I have no doubt that he does, but I’m annoyed. My mind is a room with filing cabinets of emotions on either side and my dad is picking the locks.

He says he’s afraid I’ll become a drug-addict like my oldest brother since I’m starting to flout authority with my “crazy hair styles.”

“I don’t think Elizabeth is anything like Michael.” Anna glares at padre. My oldest brother Michael is someone my dad could not control.

I mumble, “Drugs are unhealthy. I don’t even eat Doritos because they’re unhealthy.”

All of my siblings control emotions very well. Emotion of any kind other than humor or sarcasm indicates that someone has affected us. That would be embarrassing. My siblings and I are not affected.

A tear slips down my red face. Anger requires hormones than I never have, so I’m left with despair that I cannot match my father’s composure. My mother grabs a gardening magazine from the coffee table.

My dad backpedals. “Well, anyway, you need to cut your hair because people at church will see it and think I don’t know how to control my own daughter.”

I say, “No. I like it.” I am keeping this hair. I’m not strong enough to lose it. But I lose control of my broken mind and tears race down my face. God, I hate it. Barring the time two months ago, no one has seen me cry for five years. I’ve been proud of this.

My mother closes her magazine, looks up. My sister hands me a Kleenex box. My mother opens her magazine again. I blow my nose. Another giggle echoes from upstairs. My dad insists a few more times that I need to cut my hair, and I sniffle my refusals. I loathe my tears.

Padre plants his bony feet on the cold floor, turns his entire torso toward me, and grips the recliner arms with his strong, hairy hands as if this is an ultimatum. “So do you not respect me anymore?”

I am tired and this is getting repetitive. “No, not really,” I say with a shrugging voice.

Anna gasps. Upstairs is quiet. My dad glares at my mom like she is to blame for my insolence. She obviously didn’t spend enough time training me up in the way I should go.

I regain some control over my emotions with this admission. I have the power for the moment, but I need this to be over.

They are shocked into silence for a minute or so, unsure what to do with the eighth child. My dad might be angry now, but I’m not looking at him to tell.

He tells me I need to ask his and Mama’s forgiveness. I remain quiet, though my heart pumps the strength out of my limbs.

“No” isn’t a reply that my dad has ever accepted from his children, so he is willing to wait.

The battle is over in my mind. He is wounded. I have always been wounded. He won’t physically force me to cut my hair. Physical punishment is reserved for children under the age of twelve, for girls at least. My hair isn’t something I can let go of. I don’t know what we’re waiting for. But dismissal is up to him.

He’s stuck leaning forward in his burgundy recliner, searching for an argument that will convince me since theology is pointless. I see him glance at the dictionary and then the ceiling, the picture of his great grandfather over the hearth – lost. Eventually his eyes land on my mom, sitting there staring at the coffee table with her reading glasses perched on her nose and her magazine still open in her lap.

My muscles are strung with stress. My eyes are shot up with red and roll around the room from person to person. Waiting. I wipe my sweaty palms on my brown pajama shorts, feel exposed. I long to return to my room, lock the door, and return my filing cabinets to their proper order.

He breaks the silence. “So are you prepared to go to church with that crazy hair and have everybody think the same things I did? Or is it your goal to get people’s attention?”

Anna and I look at each other at the same time, both annoyed in equal measure. She pipes up, “If people at church are being that judgmental, then they aren’t being very good Christians, and I’m pretty sure Elizabeth was just trying to be creative.”

She smartly digs at his need to be a good Christian. I thank her with a small smile. But I can see his comment as a last-ditch attempt to scare me into cutting my hair. This battle is winding down. I exhale.

My dad harrumphs, leans back to rock in his chair. “Well, I don’t know what people are going to think, but I hope you know I’m trying to save you from having to deal with that,” he accedes.

“I think I’ll be okay. Mrs. Florence colors her hair and has tattoos and nobody says anything about that.”

My dad grunts noncommittally. I doubt he approves of her choices, and I hope he doesn’t grab hold of the tattoo bit and start lecturing me on that.

My mom obviously hopes that as well and grabs hold of the silence to try to end the conversation. “We’ll just have to see, I suppose. I need to get the kids to clean up the kitchen soon, though, and I need to get my bath.”

My dad acknowledges this with a glance at the clock. He says that before I can go, I must promise that I will ask his permission before I do something crazy to my hair again.

I say, “Okay. I’ll tell you.” I regret my words, but I don’t make false promises

That isn’t the answer he’s looking for, so I have a couple more minutes left until he says he loves me and asks if I still love him.

I’m too exhausted to say anything but “of course I do.”

– Elizabeth Ponds

Author’s Note: “Dad, I don’t even eat Doritos” is part of my creative nonfiction story collection that I hope to publish one day. Religion and family are themes that feature often in my works, as they are inextricable from who I have become.