Donna and Claudia
By Carol Gallivan

     Donna is my sister, and I always thought of her as beautiful.  Our father called her his princess.  When Donna entered high school, with her long blond hair and incredible blue eyes, she caught the attention of the boys.  There were the usual crushes and school dances, phone calls and giggles, and hours of combing and brushing her hair to make it glow.  She had eye shadow to match the perfect blue of her eyes.  Our parents were protective of us, and my father in particular kept close watch over the boys she dated.
     One Saturday in April, three weeks before Donna's sixteenth birthday, a boy called and asked her to go to an amusement park.  It was in the next state, about twenty miles away.  They would be going with four other friends.  Our parents' first answer was a firm no, but Donna eventually wore them down.  On her way out the door, they told her to be home by eleven, no later.
     It was a great night!  The roller coasters were fast, the games were fun and the food was good.  Time flew by.  Finally one of them realized it was already 10:45 p.m.  Being young and slightly afraid of our father, the boy who was driving decided he could make it home in fifteen minutes.  It never occurred to any of them to call and ask if they could be late.
     Speeding down the highway, the driver noticed the exit too late.  He tried to make it anyway.  The car ripped out nine metal guardrails and flipped over three times before it came to a stop on its roof.  Someone pulled Donna from the car, and she crawled over to check on her friends.  There was blood everywhere.  As she pulled her hair back from her eyes so she could see better, her hand slipped underneath her scalp.
     The blood was coming from her.  Practically the entire top of Donna's head had been cut off, held on by just a few inches of scalp.
     When the police cruiser arrived to rush Donna to a nearby hospital, an officer sat with her, holding her scalp in place.  Donna asked him if she was going to die.  He told her he didn't know.
     At home, I was watching television when a creepy feeling went through me, and I thought about Donna.  A few minutes went by, and the telephone rang.  Mom answered it.  She made a groaning noise and fell to the floor, calling for my father.  They rushed out the door, telling my sister Teri and me that Donna had been in a car accident, and that they had to go to the hospital to get her.  Teri and I stayed up for hours waiting for them.  We changed the sheets on Donna's bed and waited.  Somewhere around four o'clock in the morning, we pulled the sofa bed out and fell asleep together.
     Mom and Dad were not prepared for what they saw at the hospital.  The doctors had to wait until our parents arrived to stitch up Donna's head.  They didn't expect her to survive the night.
     At 7:00 a.m., my parents returned home.  Teri was still sleeping.  Mom went straight to her bedroom and Dad went into the kitchen and sat at the table.  He had a white plastic garbage bag between his legs and was opening it up when I sat down at the table with him.  I asked him how Donna was and he told me that the doctors didn't think she was going to make it.  As I struggled to think about that, he started pulling her clothes out of the bag.  They were soaked with blood and blond hair.
     Some of the hair had Donna's scalp attached to it.  Every piece of clothing she had worn that night was soaked with blood.  I can't remember thinking anything.  All I did was stare at the clothes.  When Teri woke up, I showed them to her.  I'm sure it was an awful thing to do, but I was in such shock that it was all I could think of.
     At the hospital later that morning, Teri and I had to wait outside for a long time before we could see Donna.  It was an old hospital and it smelled old, and Teri and I were afraid of it.  Finally we were allowed in to see our sister.  Her head was wrapped in white gauze that was stained with blood.  Her face was swollen, which I couldn't understand because she had lost so much blood.  I thought she would look smaller.  She reached up and touched my long brown hair and started to cry.
     The next day, I called a neighbor who was a hairdresser and asked her to cut my hair.  It's a funny thing - I loved my long brown hair and it curled just right, but I never, ever missed it or wanted it back.  All I wanted was for Donna to come home and sleep in the clean sheets that Teri and I had put on her bed.
     Donna was in the hospital for two weeks.  Many of her friends went to see her, especially Claudia, who was there a lot.  Mom and Dad never liked Claudia - maybe because she seemed "fast," maybe because she spoke her mind; I don't really know.  They just didn't like her being around.
     Donna came home with the entire top half of her head shaved.  She had hundreds of stitches, some of which came across her forehead and between her left eye and eyebrow.  For a while she wore a gauze cap.  Eventually she had our hairdresser neighbor cut the rest of her hair.  It had been so soaked and matted with blood that she couldn't get it out.  The hairdresser was such a kind person.  She found Donna a human hair wig that perfectly matched her hair.
     Donna celebrated her sixteenth birthday and went back to school.  I don't know where rotten people come from, and I don't know why they exist, but they do.  There was a very loud-mouthed, self-centered girl in some of Donna's classes who took great pleasure in tormenting my sister.  She would sit behind her and pull slightly on Donna's wig.  She'd say very quietly, "Hey, Wiggy, let's see your scars."  Then she'd laugh.
     Donna never said anything to anybody about her tormentor until the day she finally told Claudia.  Claudia was in most of Donna's classes, and from then on kept a close eye on my sister.  Whenever that girl got close to Donna, Claudia would try and be there.  There was something about Claudia that was intimidating, even to the worst kids in school.  No one messed with her.  Unfortunately, though, Claudia wasn't always around, and the teasing and name-calling continued.
     One Friday night, Claudia called and asked Donna to come spend the night at her house.  My parents didn't want Donna to go - not just because they didn't like Claudia, but because they had become so protective of Donna.  In the end, they knew they had to let her go, even though they probably spent the whole night worrying.
     Claudia had something special waiting for my sister.  She knew how awful Donna felt about her hair, so Claudia had shaved off her own beautiful long brown hair.  The next day, she took Donna wig shopping for identical blond and brown wigs.  When they went to school that Monday, Claudia was ready for the teasers.  In a vocabulary not allowed inside school walls, she set them straight so that anyone ready to tease my sister knew they would have to mess with Claudia.  It didn't take long for the message to get through.
     Donna and Claudia wore their wigs for over a year, until they felt their hair had grown out enough to take them off.  Only when Donna was ready did they go to school without them.  By then, she had developed a stronger self-confidence and acceptance.
     My sister graduated from high school.  She is married and has two great kids.  Twenty-eight years later, she is still friends with Claudia.