[Creative Nonfiction]
I always ask to play with your hair. Sometimes you say no, but most times you say yes. You sit on the floor, between my legs, like the daughter. I fluff your hair out and sigh, like a mom.
“Don’t hurt me!” You command.
I wonder why you say that. I wonder if anyone has ever been rough with your hair. But, instead of asking, I just tell you that I won’t be. Combs glide easily through your soft curls. No stops, no kinks, no naps, no interruptions. I move the comb from your roots to your ends. It’s a long, but simple, trip. Your strands stretch straight, then bounce back into pretty curls after each stroke. Brushes like you, and combs are nice to you. People are, too.
People always tell you how pretty your hair is - how pretty you are - as they admire your hair. Even boys. They always ask you to race outside. I tell you it means they have a crush, but you don’t care about that, you just like racing. So, I yell, “Ready, set, GO!” and watch you take off. Everyone stops playing their own games to watch your long hair soar behind you in the wind. You’re the jet, your hair is the streamer. I watch you, and wonder how it feels.
When I wear my hair in braids, I can play however I want, but braids don’t catch wind. When my hair is straight, I’m not allowed to run and sweat at all, or it’ll get all messed up. Then, I’ll get in trouble. Straightening my hair takes hours. My butt gets sore, my head hurts, the comb snaps, my mother groans, I cry, and she yells for me to stop it, but I can’t, because it hurts - and after all of this, nobody tells me that my hair is pretty. My hair can never stay straight for long. It gets kinky and tangled all over again. This is when everyone notices my hair. Then they go,
“Whew. CHILE! What is wrong with your hair?!”
I try not to mess my hair up when it’s straight. I try not to sweat. I try not to get it wet when we go to the pool. Everyone plays in the deep end of the water. The water comes to their necks. I wade around in the low end of the water. The water comes to my knees. You can’t understand why I won’t splash and swim around. You love to get your hair wet. You flip under the water like a dolphin, and swim around like a mermaid. Your wet hair flows down your back. It sticks to your body and face.
My hair is nothing like yours.
Grease can’t tame it.
Mousse can’t lay it.
Gel can’t smooth it.
I look in the mirror and start to cry. I feel stupid for crying, but I look stupid, and so I cry even more. My arms are tired. My head hurts. Still, my hair isn’t pretty.
Don’t feel sorry for me now. Honestly, there’s no need. I’ve grown quite apathetic towards my hair. I shave it all off. To hell with it, right? To my astonishment, everyone is displeased with my decision.
“Why would you do that to your hair?!” They gasp.
“But, you had such beautiful hair!” They shout.
I begin to dabble in wigs. It turns out to be genuine fun - sporting different wigs to reflect my many personalities. With wigs, I can play around, feel pretty, and be carefree. My favorite wig is Miss Keshia. Miss Keshia is long, curly, and bouncy. Miss Keshia, actually, resembles the hair that grows from your head.
As it turns out, everyone hates your hair on me.
“Just wear your real hair!” They say.
They ask, “Why don’t you love yourself?”
I throw all my wigs out. The questioning robbed the fun.
Slowly but surely, my kinky coils rebloom. I decide to work with what I got, as best as I can. Hairdressers have always resented my hair, and I resent hairdressers right back. So, I perform my own research. I experiment on my own strands. It takes time to find what works. It takes trial and error, but victory washes over me when I find products that my nappy hair likes, and styles that my nappy hair agrees with.
My hair is not like yours. I’ve finally stopped treating it like yours. I don’t expect it to do what yours does. I’m not mad at my hair, anymore, for being different than yours. My hair is mine. Yours is yours. You love your hair. You stroke your strands, and twist them around your finger. You point out to me that, these days, I’m always stretching my coils and fluffing them.
You and I are watching the news together. I’m not a big fan of it, honestly, I prefer to be ignorant. But there is one story I can’t ignore. A little girl in South Africa, no older than ten, who’s been leading protests for weeks. Her school has expelled her for having kinky hair. She marches to be readmitted and permitted to learn.
“Unruly!” they call her hair.
“It’s distracting!” the administration proclaims.
I stretch my coils, as I watch the story unfold, and feel my bottom lip quiver.
You sigh, and shake your head at the television screen, “It’s a shame what they put us through,” you say,
“I don’t think they’ll ever leave us alone about our hair.”