In Short – Issue 4 (Winter 2026)

January 31, 2026

Image credit: Katherine Matsubara

1991

By Dana Pedersen

I should be in bed, but instead, I am climbing the stairs in an unfamiliar building with green walls, ascending toward a friendly face in a foreign place. I recognize this family friend from my dad’s co-ed volleyball games. Her messy blond ringlets sprawl all over her head, off duty. Her chippy, choppy voice is unduly excited for 10 p.m.

My father’s energy is nervous and uneven, only slightly detectable beneath his Caribbean cool that camouflages his feelings always (not unlike his military uniform, steady and consistent every day). But tonight, he is a little frayed at the edge, and we are out of routine. He is leaving me here to go look for my mom. It’s not like her to not come home. She took a job on a movie set with debonair francophone men. She had a favorite black leather jacket she wore to the set and practiced French with them.

At age 6, you don’t know exactly what you should worry about or when. You can’t tell the difference between anxiety and excitement in grownups who have narrowed their range, illegible to children. He was going to look for her because it was late and she hadn’t come home. And I should be in bed, but instead, I am in a bathtub I’ve never been in before. Sudsy and confused, trying to stay tethered to the bubbly voice of this volleyball friend.

She decides to wash my hair. I know she won’t do it like my mom does (if she even knows what to do at all). And her white hands in my thick, cottony hair is as strange as everything else tonight.

My dad left me here overnight with so little explanation, so few things in my bag. I know he’ll come back but I don’t know what to tell my mom about what happened to my hair.

Dana Pedersen is a facilitator and consultant based in Minnesota, who works to build the capacity of social justice organizations around the country. She is also a poet and writer working primarily in short forms and an avid salsa dancer.