When it snows

When it snows the sky is as white as the ground and only her red brick building seems to have any color.

She just didn't know how to talk to people, otherwise she was a great hair dresser. She didn't understand why people had to talk while they were getting their hair cut. It wasn't like they tried to talk either. They just expected her to have interesting things to say. Personally, when she was having her hair cut, she liked it to be silent. That's how she could be sure that the person was concentrating.

But that's why they fired her. That's what she had to say to her mom at dinner that night. Dinner was ready when she came inside, the farmland ham all warm and pink, the potatoes chalky and falling apart. It was food that normally would make her feel warm inside, leaving trails of health-bringing energy in her esophagus, but today it was like spooning food into an empty drum.

She had to tell her mother because her mother could see that something had changed. Maybe it was because she had shoveled the sidewalk without being asked. She had to go through the closets for nearly twenty minutes before she found her snow boots. She hoped that doing some honest physical work would make cutting hair seem like a frivolous profession. That she could atone for going to beauty school as a loophole to the "college degree" clause in grandma's will. But the cold air just made her flushed and pink like the ham.