Of Baldness And Yellow Hair Ribbons

• Lauren Davidson, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2014

There used to be a boy at my school, with no hair and a space between his front teeth. His eyes were the kind of green you never forgot, green like peppermint and green like a forest. He wore a green beanie as well, with a four-leafed clover stitched into the side. I only ever saw him without it once and his head shone like a gypsies’ crystal ball in the sunlight. It was the first time I’d ever seen a bald person and I asked if I could touch it. He smiled at me then, hands fiddling with the green beanie that he’d just gotten back from the bully who swiped it off his head.
‘Of course you can,’ he said. I rubbed my hand on his scalp and he said it would bring me goodluck.
‘Where did your hair go?’ I’d asked him.
‘It fell out,’ he answered. I was nine. I didn’t know what cancer was. He told me his name was Sam and I told him mine was Molly. His cheeks dimpled when he said my name.
‘Well Molly, we should be friends.’
And we were.
We did everything together. He told me all about his family and how he found out he was sick. I taught him how to braid my hair. The bullies didn’t bother Sam when I was around.
On the last day of grade four he told me I was pretty. He wore a yellow ribbon that day on his shirt collar, in honour of his illness. When I asked him what it was for, he took it and tied it in my hair.
‘So you’ll always remember me,’ he said, ‘even when I’m not here anymore.’
I told him that would never happen. His answering smile was the saddest expression I’d ever seen him make.
Sam stopped coming to school when I was ten. My parents told me he was sick and that I might not get to see him anymore. I cried a lot that night, because I was so afraid of losing him. Every afternoon I went to the hospital to visit and I always brought him things to do. We’d draw together with crayons, practise tying different knots. Sam just loved to play with my hair, maybe because it had been a while since he’d had any of his own.
He was in hospital for months. Every time I went to see him he looked weaker and tireder than before. The green beanie got more frayed. The four-leafed clover fell off. A week ago he told me he was feeling bad, worse than he ever had before. He asked me if I still had the yellow ribbon. I told him I did.
Sam died today. I went to the hospital with my yellow ribbon in my hair. They tell me he is in a better place now. They tell me his is an angel. I hope he tells God not to make other children sick like he was.