Daniela Kukrechtová, "Hair and Water"

In the summer months, my father would pick me up from kindergarten early, a large towel draped around his shoulders.  His eyes were small and would close and open frequently, like the eyes of my favorite doll, Alenka. Only hers were brown and my father’s were blue. Unlike my somewhat disheveled father on these late mornings, Alenka looked very dignified, with her long hair elegantly falling to her shoulders and midway down her back. My father’s hair was shortish, thick, and wavy-curly. He always combed it but to me it looked the same before and after the elaborate combing. Like the rest of my family’ hair, his was an unmanageable mop, or a “sparrow’s nest,” sitting on top of his head. Unlike the rest of my family, my father was extremely proud of his hair and called his hairstyle the “Beatles hairstyle.” Apparently, the Beatles combed their hair in the direction from the back to the front and then tried to plaster it to one side, where my father pretended to sport “bangs” but really these were just curls that would stand up disobediently within five minutes of the furious wetting and combing.

“Daddy! Did you bring Alenka?” I asked. I only got the doll from baby Jesus this past Christmas and I took her everywhere I went. I brushed her lovely hair until it sizzled with static electricity. But toys were not allowed in kindergarten so I had to wait till after school to reunite with Alenka.

“Who’s Alenka?” he asked in a sleepy voice. I could not believe that he never remembered anything. 

“My new doll, of course,” I said in a measured tone of voice.

“Of course, yes. Well, we are going to the pool. Maybe you can play with Alenka later?” When he saw the expression on my face, he added hurriedly, “Ah, well, she would get wet, anyways, right?”

I began to fume. “Of course, she would get wet, it’s a swimming pool. She needs to take a swim on hot day such as this. Besides, her hair gets even longer when wet, just like mine.” I emphasized the last three words and I tossed my head to feel my hair bounce. It did grow a little in the past year or so, I could swear. When I swam or took a bath, my hair would even reach my shoulders and it would float gracefully like a mermaid’s hair. When I emerged from water it would be plastered on my head and in a few minutes the dreaded curls would spring from my head. 

My father did not argue. He did not believe inanimate things could have feelings or that one could imbue them with feelings for the sake of play. He looked as if he was about to fall asleep. I studied his face for a few moments, then I silently took his hand and off we went. We crossed the still non-existent highway behind our panelák (see notes section) and I peeked into the huge hole that was gaping on our right as we made our way across a path formed by blocks of concrete stuck into a muddy field to a neighborhood that had actual older buildings in it (not paneláks) and in the middle, a coveted public swimming pool. 

As the path stretched before my eyes I saw snakes made of iron slithering across the path but when I wanted to stop to examine them further, my father’s hand pulled me up into the air. I looked up and there in the sun, way above, his round face smiled down on me. It was attached to his long and strong arm somehow and the contrast of the blackness of his hair and his goatee and his white teeth shocked me, as always. I let myself pulled as if I was a paper kite or a butterfly on a string lightly tethered to my strong father. I was floating behind him, drawing his gait and his gestures in the air with invisible ink. 

“When they will have built the highway, there will be no crossing it,” he was saying.

“Does that mean we will not go to our swimming pool any more?” I asked anxiously.

“Well, maybe we could fly” he said. I looked at him sharply. Did he know I was just flying?

On these days, my father would come directly from a nightshift in the factory. He would not go to sleep. Instead he would bring me to the pool with him. There he would have a paper cup of beer and while I played in the wading pool he would fall asleep in the shade of a big oak tree. He snored as I ate the rest of the cold chicken or a sandwich that mom prepared for him the night before. He always made sure there was some left for me before he fell asleep. I was supposed to wake him up when I was going to the big pool. 

“Daddy, wake up, it’s time to go to the big pool!” I said about ten minutes after we arrived.

“Oh, no, please, Doni, not yet. We just got here!” my father mumbled and turned on his side. I watched his wide, muscular shoulders tanned deep golden go up and then down in a calm, regular rhythm.

I so wanted to take a swim. I was bored in the wading pool and without Alenka. I started speaking again, even attempting a pleading voice, which I knew my father despised.

“Daaahdyy?!” But when I looked at my father, he was helplessly asleep. I bit my nails for a few seconds, fumbled with the towel and then stood up and tiptoed away, in the direction of the big pool.

A pool guard spotted me and I realized I was stark naked and that while that was allowed in the wading pool, in the big pool everyone had to wear trunks. I hastily returned and fished my swimming bikini bottoms from my father’s bag, that now contained just some small change and bones from the chicken in a plastic bag, which we were supposed to save for chicken broth, as my mother instructed me. I put the bottoms on and with a self-confident smile approached the pool again.

I knew my pool and I loved swimming. Since I was two years old, I had been jumping fearlessly into the pool laughing and swimming expertly in the direction of my father’s arms, who treaded water in the middle of the pool, and later just to the side of the pool, where my dry father stood and watched me with a wide, approving smile. Other adults just stared, sometimes they said bravo or clapped. I loved the attention and my skill. 

I jumped headfirst into the pool and swam free-style across it. I passed an older man and tried to catch up to a younger one who swam as if he had owned the pool. His style was what my father and I secretly called “splashing chicken.” I zoomed by him smoothly, kicking with straight legs, my lungs almost bursting, my hair flowing around me like the shimmering rays of the sun. 

“You are in my lane, you little bitch!” he yelled and tried to grab my leg and spray me in the face simultaneously. Little did he know that I liked to be sprayed in the face. I kicked furiously and managed to get out of his grasp. But he was still going after me. I was a little afraid by this point because no one seemed to be paying attention. My stomach turned to a knot but it was my lungs that needed to remain calm and take a deep breath. The guard was picking his nose on the other side of the pool. The man disappeared for a little moment, several other people were approaching or swimming away and I lost control of who was where. Then I felt a weird pat of sorts on the nether part of my stomach. As if someone tried to get hold of my thigh and missed and grabbed after the place where I peed from. I was grossed out by this strange mistake and looked around for the person who made it. People kept swimming about but nobody was looking in my direction. The man who had yelled at me was now swimming across the pool splashing about some more. 

I felt strange and suddenly very weak in my knees. What a weird mistake. I climbed out of the pool and shakily walked towards my father. He was still sleeping. I swaddled myself into the towel as tightly as I could. But kept shivering despite that. My father woke up and started blinking in my direction.

“What’s going on? Are you wet? Are you ok? Do you want to go to the big pool?” 

I said in a hollow voice that cracked in the middle and then shattered, just like my mother’s beloved cake mold when it slid off the wall unexpectedly: “no pool, today, okay?” He looked at me carefully, for the first time today and said, almost gently, “your hair looks a bit messy. You know, I have a comb, do you want to fix it?”

“Nno. I cannot use a comb. My hair can only be brushed with a brush with iron spikes, you know that.” It was true. While my father’s hair was thick and wavy, mine was a huge pile of tangled pouf. I started crying.

An older woman next to us perching on a colorful blanket with a basket of delicious little cakes, neat sandwiches sliced in triangles, and light blue napkins sitting in front of her, gave us a sharp look. When I calmed somewhat and my father went to the bathroom, she offered me one of her cakes and muttered, “well, your mother could take a better care of your hair. She could cut it short and then it will grow out more regular and neat. Longer, too”

“Is that true?” I was amazed. Here seemed to be a solution to my crazy hair after all. It would take care of my swimming and diving too. My parents had signed me up for synchronized swimming lessons but my hair got in the way and I really could not put it under the swimming cap, it always stuck out. My coach commented on it and my peers laughed at me. But thinking about swimming just made me feel sad now.

Despite the difficulties managing it and the unwanted merriment it caused among my friends, I also wanted to have long hair, eventually. My mother said my hair was my heritage, my gold, my dowry. A woman’s beauty is in her long hair and yours is lovely, she would say. Funny that hers was not long. When I asked she would say she was old and did not need to be beautiful any more. I hated that answer. I also did not know how I felt about a “dowry.” There were some table cloths and dishes stacked in a closet that were referred to as my dowry. My mother said it was not much and that there will be no money, either, when it was time for me to be married. When I said I did not want to be married, only maybe to my brother, my mother just shook her head and smiled mysteriously. 

I turned to the old woman again, whose hair consisted of frizzy curls of perm dyed red. “So, you are saying I can cut my hair and then it will grow again, more beautiful and more manageable then before, after some time?”

“Yes, sweetie. Just like mine, just like mine.”

I must have looked horrified because she snatched the basket back before I could take another cake. “Your father is back,” she said and turned her back to me.

When I got back home that day, I took Alenka in my arms and using my blunt school scissors, which still had some glue stuck to them, I cut her hair short. If Alenka’s hair grew even more beautiful than before, then I will cut my hair, too, I decided. 

I was very satisfied with my smart decision, even though looking at the strands of long chestnut brown hair scattered around Alenka, I felt a pang of guilt. I was glad Alenka was laying on her back so I did not have to look into her eyes. 

In Tower and Slab: Histories of Global Mass Housing Florian Urban explains the term panelák:

“In the formerly socialist countries of Eastern Europe, the building technique [of mass housing] is taken as the most prominent aspect, and the term “concrete slab” is applied to the whole building – panel’niy dom (panel house—Russian), panelák (panel building—Czech), wielka plyta (big slab—Polish), or Platte (slab—German) are the respective terms used by both scholars and the general public.”