Finding Cherokee Brown. Siobhan Curham

come you’re called that?’

      I felt a surge of panic. I didn’t have a clue.

      ‘Cos her great-grandmother was a Cherokee Indian,’ Steve called over. ‘From the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina.’

      ‘Wow!’ Raven replied and I thought in unison. ‘That’s so cool!’ Raven looked back at my hair. ‘So what kind of style are you after, Cherokee?’

      I looked back at her in the mirror and it felt as if my heart was singing. I could practically see little crotchets and quavers floating up my throat and out of my mouth. I had a great-grandmother who was a Cherokee Indian. From an awesome-sounding place called the Great Smoky Mountains. In North Carolina.

      Suddenly anything seemed possible.

      ‘Could you cut it so that one side is long and kind of hangs down over my face and the other side is really short?’

      Raven went and got a magazine from a rack over by Steve. Then she flicked through it until she got to a picture of a model with exactly the same hairstyle as the vanilla-ice-cream-hair girl from the market.

      ‘Like that?’ she asked.

      I nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, please.’

      While Raven washed my hair, Wayne started talking to Steve about music and by the time she’d finished Steve had got his guitar out and was strumming it absently.

      ‘Do you know any Rolling Stones?’ Wayne asked.

      Steve let out a snort of laughter. ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’

      I felt another tug inside of me. Could making puns about the Pope be another thing we had in common, like our dimples? Maybe my Cherokee great-grandmother had made them too, while sitting around the totem pole beneath the Great Smoky Mountains. I pictured an Indian chief in full headdress sitting cross-legged next to a beautiful squaw and asking her, ‘Would you like a tote on this peace pipe, Cherokee’s great-grandma?’ And the beautiful woman smiling back at him before grabbing the pipe and saying, ‘Is the Pope a Catholic, Big Chief White Bear?’

      The glint of Raven’s scissors snapped me from my daydream and I felt a sudden wave of panic.

      ‘Would it be OK if –’ I broke off.

      ‘If what?’ Raven asked.

      ‘If I turned round, so I’m not facing the mirror.’ I could barely look at her I felt so embarrassed.

      Raven stared at me blankly for a moment, then her face broke into a smile. ‘Oh, I get it,’ she exclaimed. ‘So it’ll be like one of those makeover shows on the telly and you’ll only see the before and after. Cool!’

      I nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. As long as she didn’t realise I was too much of a chicken to watch what she was doing, it didn’t matter what she thought.

      Over on the sofa Steve started singing softly.

      ‘Oh, I love this one!’ Wayne exclaimed.

      ‘Me too,’ Raven said, swivelling my chair round so I was facing into the shop.

      As she started snipping away at my hair I decided to try and lose myself in the song to stop myself from panicking, which wasn’t difficult as it was really beautiful. I didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking what it was called, but I figured out from the chorus that it must have been ‘Wild Horses’. As I watched Steve playing, the voice in my head went all serious and newsreader-ish. He is your dad. That man is your dad. Your name is Cherokee. Your great-grandmother was a Cherokee Indian. That is why you look nothing like the rest of your family. But you do look like your dad. And you probably look like your great-grandmother too. And that is your dad. That man playing the guitar and singing so amazingly. Oh my fricking God!

      The song came to an end and Wayne burst into applause. I couldn’t help clapping too and even Raven stopped snipping for a few seconds to join in. Then I looked down at the floor by my chair. It was covered in dark hair. My dark hair – and judging from the amount, pretty much all of it. Holy crap! Mum’s face popped into my head, the two lines between her eyebrows that always remind me of a claw-print, deep with rage. What was she going to say when I got back home? But then I remembered all the lies she’d been telling me all these years. She’d have no right to be angry at me. Not after what she had done.

      ‘You got any requests, Cherokee?’ Steve asked, tightening the strings on his guitar.

      ‘Oh – er –’ I wondered if he knew any Screaming Death. Everything he’d played so far had been pretty old-school.

      ‘No, wait up, I know.’ Steve strummed a few chords and then began to sing. ‘Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you –’

      ‘Oh my God! Is it your birthday?’ Raven exclaimed.

      I nodded, trying really hard to stop a stupid grin splitting my face in two.

      ‘Wow! That’s so cool!’ She and Wayne joined in the singing and I felt like my heart might burst with embarrassed joy.

      Afterwards Steve and Wayne started talking about Stevie Wonder and Raven bent forwards so close I could smell her minty breath. ‘Your dad is so cool!’ she whispered.

      ‘But how –’ I was going to ask how she knew Steve was my dad, but I stopped myself just in time. She had automatically assumed it, which meant that I must look as if I belonged with him. But before I had time for that fact to sink in Raven had turned on a set of clippers. I sat, frozen rigid as she worked away, the clippers buzzing at the side of my head like a swarm of angry wasps. After what seemed like ten years she turned them off and picked up a hairdryer. I felt a surge of relief – at least there was still some hair left to dry! And then it was done.

      Raven put the hairdryer in its holder and stood back, looking at me as if I were an exhibit in an art gallery. ‘Wow!’ she said. ‘Cool!’

      Steve put his guitar down and he and Wayne walked over to join her.

      ‘Awesome!’ Wayne said.

      ‘Rock and roll!’ Steve murmured. ‘Rock. And. Roll.’

      ‘Are you ready?’ Raven asked.

      ‘Yes,’ I lied, my stomach attempting some kind of backflip.

      She swivelled my chair round and I stared into the jagged-edged mirror. Only it wasn’t like looking into a mirror, it was like staring through a window at another girl. A girl with big brown eyes and hair that looked as if it had been carved into her neck on one side while it hung down in a silky dark curtain on the other. Even my face looked totally different – more heart-shaped, less long.

      ‘Oh my God!’ was all I could say.

      ‘Oh my God!’ the girl said back.

      ‘Good job, man,’ Steve said to Raven with a wink. Then he looked at me in the mirror and smiled. ‘Happy birthday, Cherokee.’

      ‘Thank you,’ Cherokee replied.