E-Mail This Article to a Friend Making the cut (continued) BY CAMILLE DODERO

IF MISS NANCY were a hairstyle, she’d be a bouffant. As the resident disciplinarian of second-level Basic II, the self-described "strictest teacher in the school" is both flamboyant and matronly, with a fondness for patterned ensembles, turquoise pants, and red jackets. She flinches when anyone calls her "Ma’am," and she says things like "I don’t want to see any slip-sloppies" and "Are you being bad?" A sign in her classroom reads, THE USE OF PROFANITY WILL NOT BE TOLERATED ON SCHOOL PREMISES. To prove that she means it, Miss Nancy made her own "foul-mouth container," a plastic bottle with a layer of coins at the bottom, each deposit keyed to the severity of an offender’s curse: 25 cents for "B" ("bitch"); 50 cents for "A" ("asshole"); $1 for "b" ("bullshit"); and $5 for "FC" (enough said). She jokes that she vacations in Jamaica on its revenue.

On a recent Monday morning, half of Miss Nancy’s class is administering two sets of finger waves (flapper-style undulations), two sets of pin curls (tiny coils fastened to the head in miniature circles), and roller sets. The other half of the class is practicing facials by smearing lotion in circular motions on their mannequins’ cheeks. At first, students are quietly occupied, pumping paper towels out of a dispenser, wetting their mannequins’ hair with spray bottles. A forbidden cell phone rings; there’s an immediate, "I’m sorry, Miss Nancy."

Slowly, the atmosphere regresses into party prattle. In the far corner, two girls loudly dissect Freddy vs. Jason — also a subject of conversation 10 minutes earlier in an advanced classroom downstairs.

"Bad acting," says one girl.

"I almost had a heart attack," says another.

"The movie was awful," yells another.

The three get so excited, they start talking over each other.

"Scary movies are not the same!"

"When you see Carrie —"

"They don’t make scary movies like they used to —"

"That movie was scare-eee."

"I wanted Freddy to —"

"They don’t leave anything to the mind —"

"OKAY!" shouts Miss Nancy. "I want the conversations to cease!" The chatter stops, but she continues to bark. "I want you to work on the finger wave, pin curls, and rollers! You’re not getting any work done by talking. Remember, between nine and 12 we try to concentrate."

Within minutes, a student whimpers about nettlesome pin curls. Miss Nancy comforts the woman by telling her that when Miss Nancy first came to the Malden Blaine, the staff asked her to do a pin curl and she was clueless. Then they showed her the "Blaine Technique," a finger-to-thumb pin-curl method that’s incomprehensible to anyone unfamiliar with hairdressing. And that little lesson "made life easy."

"Miss Nancy, do you have to say that?" the pin-curl apprentice asks suspiciously.

"I don’t have to say anything," Miss Nancy says firmly. "Nobody tells me what to say. Nobody. The more you get to know me, the more you’ll realize that I say whatever I want."

Miss Nancy herself studied grooming at a place called Robert and Richard’s in Waltham. The Medford resident went to beauty school after having raised four children and enduring a divorce. She was a star pupil. She was so good that she slid into a gig as a hair-and-makeup designer at WGBH, where she earned an Emmy nomination for Concealed Enemies, a 1984 television movie about Alger Hiss that starred Edward Herrmann. Then the East Bridgewater native leapfrogged between the Huntington Theatre and the Boston Ballet, but such project-oriented freelance work was unpredictable. "You have to sell yourself all the time in that industry," she explains. "I needed to have something more steady." She found a job in hair replacement, fitting bald men and female cancer patients with human hair. After taking a year off, Baker trained as a practitioner in Reiki energy healing — by the way, she mentions casually, she’s also an ordained minister and a doctor of metaphysics — and in 1997, she found her way to Blaine.

Miss Nancy manifests the dichotomy necessary to successful teaching at Blaine: she’s part nursemaid, part schoolmarm. She’ll rebuke her students in a nasal tone, then later quietly counsel them on their personal problems. "Our teachers are hairdressers-slash-psychologists-slash-instructors," affirms Galgay.

Now, another student with maroon-streaked hair is griping about her finger waves. ("Students are like, ‘How come the windows don’t open?'" says Galgay. "I say, ‘Because we’d have people out on the ledge after a day of finger waving, you know?’ ") The way Miss Nancy teaches finger waves, the shape of each finger wave ridge is an imaginary letter "C." "I can’t see the C!" cries the girl with the maroon stripes. "I can’t see the C!" Her voice grows more frustrated. "I can’t see the C!"

Sensing desperation, two classmates rush over. "Walk away from your mannequin!" one coaches. "Take a walk away!" says the other.

It’s common wisdom among the Blaine staff that styling a mannequin head is harder than styling a live human head, due to the lengthy sterilization process undergone by each mannequin’s hair. Gary Herbert at Marianna Inc. explains that the chemical processes cause mannequin hair to feel "harder," so more heat is required to curl it and more chemistry to color it. The mannequins are supposed to be test subjects whose unmoving mouths won’t moan when an inexperienced novice tugs too hard at its roots, or accidentally turns its spiral perm into a poodle cut. But sometimes students turn the mannequin heads into recreational equipment. "I’ve seen mannequin heads kicked, punched, all the hair ripped off," says Galgay. "When I used to teach Basic upstairs, I did mannequin bowling. I brought in a ball and would set up the heads on the floor and you’d just knock those suckers all over." He clucks his tongue, as if to mimic the sound of a falling head. Then he adds sheepishly, "[The students] can really can get frustrated."

THE HEADS at Blaine also belong to clients — men and women who walk in off the street to get their hair combed, cropped, chopped, shaved, shampooed, blow-dried, permed, treated, twirled into roller sets, wrapped in foil. Like Nancy Rosen, a freckled 18-year-old Weymouth resident with a nose ring and long nut-brown locks. She’s seated in Blaine’s first-floor reception area at 10 a.m. on a recent Friday; at her feet is a plastic bag filled with 10 packages of synthetic hair that cost $1.99 each and a container of tiny elastics. Rosen’s friend used to knot extensions into her hair for $30 — it would take the girl six or seven hours, including a couple of cigarette breaks — but since Rosen just broke up with her boyfriend and the hair-braider was her ex’s friend, the girl "was being weird" about doing Rosen’s hair again. Rosen doesn’t have time to wait for her to turn traitor: a Talib Kweli concert is upcoming at the Tweeter Center, braided extensions are "a big conversation piece," and — well, you know. So she came to Blaine. Now, slouching on a bench in the reception area and watching the yapping students scamper by, she observes, "The girls here are real sassy."

Rosen chose Blaine by thumbing through the Yellow Pages, trying to find a salon that would wind fire-retardant extensions into her sleek mane for a reasonable price. Most salons charge upwards of $150 for block-braided hair extensions; Blaine will do it for $100. And that’s most customers’ incentive for going to Blaine: it’s cheap. Supercuts, generally regarded as a good place for a cheap snip, charges $13.95 for a trim; Blaine charges the public $10, $8 for folks who’ve joined the Blaine Beauty Club (BBC), a $10-a-year membership that grants a 20 to 50 percent discount for salon-style work. At an upscale Newbury Street salon like 119 Salon Group, a full head of foil highlights costs $135 to $150; Blaine charges $43.75 and $35 for BBC members. Why’s Blaine so inexpensive? "The clinic is actually a classroom," explains Galgay. "It’s not a salon."

Students are eligible to be pulled out of their classes and "called to clinic" after having completed 250 hours at Blaine — about two full months of training. If they get called, they have to tend to a client in the clinic. Sometimes, though, they get called when they’re not feeling particularly confident. "They’re never ready up here," Galgay says, pointing to his temple. " ‘I’m not ready,’ they say. ‘Oh yes, you are. If we waited until you’re ready, you’d be gone before you’re ready.’ "

Many students despise being whisked away from the comfort of the classroom and thrown into the lion’s den of the clinic, where they actually become responsible for the way a person looks. It’s not unusual to overhear a pupil grumble, "If they call me to clinic, I’m going to faint." Today, an advanced student named Krystal barrels into the clinic. "Why am I getting called up here again?" she whines. Supposedly, students are called to clinic alphabetically, but Krystal insists she’s been called up three times this week, while some of her classmates haven’t been sent at all.

Meanwhile, Nancy Rosen gets assigned to Wideline, a lean Haitian girl with steep cheekbones and a ponytail of braids. Wideline’s a talented braider: in under two minutes, she can weave a foot-long braid with the girth of a Twizzler. Wideline has wanted to be a hairdresser all her life. Her mother wanted her to be a surgeon, but Wideline couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

That’s something a lot of students have to contend with: the stigma of hairdressing. Most say they always wanted to try their hands at cosmetology, but were discouraged by their families. Even Galgay didn’t begin until he was 28. "It was something I always wanted to do, but there were no hairdressers in my family," he explains. "My whole family is union construction workers. I always wanted to do hair, but it was never a valued profession.... Now I go to my cousins and I get, ‘Oh please cut her hair, please cut her hair.’ Yet when I go over for lunch, I don’t ask them to put in a bay window if that’s what they do."

IF JUAN ADORNO were a hairstyle, he’d be a braid. He’s tall and stringy like spaghetti, with a brown mustache and short, orange-y hair. Every day he dresses stylishly, in shiny shirts, silky pants, and slip-on shoes. But today, for Blaine’s biannual open house, at which prospective students come by to peruse the premises, Juan’s wiry frame swims in a shoulder-padded suit — something he says he wears only for graduations and open houses.

It’s not just Juan’s clothing that changes on days like this; the tenor of the entire building shifts during an open house. The fog of foul moods lifts. Hamburgers and cheeseburgers arrive. Helium balloons appear. The advanced-level basement morphs from a leisurely classroom into a nexus of beauty stations: manicures, facials, waxing, braiding, cosmetics, curlers.

But in a third-floor classroom at 9:30 a.m., the open house hasn’t started yet. Right now, it’s "Theory," an academic component of the vocational program comprising multiple-choice tests, textbook reviews, and 45-minute lectures. Here, students learn vocabulary words like "medulla" (the innermost layer of hair) and contemplate timeless cosmetic mysteries like "Why do clients color their hair?" Juan’s class has just completed a quiz; now he’s reviewing for a hands-on evaluation that will be held in two days on scalp treatments, shampooing, and blow-drying.

"My advice to you is that if you don’t know it, ask me questions now," Juan says slowly, standing at the head of the class. "Do not wait until the day of. Once it starts, that’s it. There will be no talking. Anybody who talks will automatically fail the evaluation."

A few students want to review scalp treatments. Juan reels off a procedure of brushing and parting, but there’s still some confusion.

"First thing you do is what?"

"Brush," mumbles the class.

"Brush," confirms Juan.

"Then what do I do?"

"Wait-wait-wait —" interjects another voice. Someone is lost.

So Juan returns to the beginning. "First thing you do is brush," he says. "Then you take the all-purpose comb. Then you’re going to what?"

"You’re going to start parting the hair," a girl in the middle of the class squeals. "And then you’re going to be scratching out the nasty stuff!"

Juan smirks. Someone snickers. Quietly, a male student named Pascal seated at the back of the classroom leans over to whisper, "Welcome to high school."

Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero[a]phx.com