Ma shaves her head every month, before any of the hairs have a chance to grow even a quarter inch. The bristles underneath her kerchief are metal grey, but maybe if they grew in, her hair would return to that light golden brown it was before she got married. In photographs, her hair is braided around her head like a crown. She says it was so long she could sit on it. I once saw her bald head on a pillow; her kerchief had slipped off. It was a ball, round and white, something you kick around on the playground.

Pearl Abraham, The romance reader (Londen, 1995) 239.