An Excerpt from "Door to Door"

....The Fuller Brush Man will place his battered suitcase on the table. He will wait for a moment, so that all the girls are in place, each holding her breath. The Fuller Brush Man knows what they want to see, but he makes them wait. He will show them everything else in his many-chambered case. He is the last of the traveling salesmen, the last one who is part magician.

Each girl touches her hair, draws her fingers through the brunette strands, waiting. The oldest has her mother iron her hair. They set up the ironing board, and she sits in a chair, lays back with her hair draped over the board, and the mother flattens her hair with the heated iron. Her head will know revolution by way of her hair. She irons her hair. Someday she will roll it in orange juice cans, wrap it all in tissue paper and sleep with her head propped up on a pillow, but not sleep only balance on the edge of sleep. Later still she will perm her hair. Dye it. Tie it up. Cut it. Grow it long. Wash and wrap it in a towel turban while she paints her toenails.

The others have their own hair history. One has hair that is silky and straight. The other has hair that is thick and curly. One braids hers, the other, the youngest lets her hair hang loose in wild tangles. It grows so long she can sit on it. One day, years later, she will shave her head to comfort herself for her broken heart. At one time or another, the mother has subjected them all to Lilt Home Permanents....

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"Door to Door," a short short story by Jo Van Arkel. First published in Big Muddy, A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, Volume 5.1, 2005.