The Stillwater Girls

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness and child abuse.

At the hair salon, Wren asks for her long hair to be cut much shorter. Mama always insisted that Wren and her sisters wear their hair long, and Wren sees this as an opportunity to shrug off Mama’s control. Nic does not try to control when they eat, sleep, or how they dress—and this has opened Wren’s eyes to the way Mama dictated every aspect of their lives at the cabin. She feels much lighter and more relaxed as the long strands of hair fall to the floor. She thinks about all of the peaceful, happy scenes of life in the outside world she has observed in the past two days and decides that she will read every single one of the many books she has seen in Nic’s home. She also thinks about the mirrors on Nic’s walls and her own newfound interest in looking at herself in these mirrors. Seeing herself so often has only increased her questions about why she looks so different from Mama and her sisters. She wonders about the memories of her past that Mama always told her were “false memories”—of the other home and bedroom, and of a woman with golden hair like her own (150).