By Tiana Cole
Stark my reflection stood, gazing back at me boldly. My hair did not look like the other little girls. Fragile to the touch, too much handling could harm it, sucking the moisture right out. I tried to contain this puff that poked out of my head in all directions. It was as if my hair announced my presence before I spoke a word. In fact, it shouted words that I had no control over. The perception of my hair was out of my control.
I bundled it up, restricting it of the vibrant character it exuded. With gel, I slicked it back as best as I could. I didn’t want to stand out. Why did it have to be so frizzy and loud? Like yarn, it would not be tamed. It felt like the wool of a sheep. I felt like a black sheep in a world that told my hair that it was wrong to not resemble the rest of the flock.
My mother’s hair carried the elegant beauty that I believed to be the only beauty that was sought by others. Her hair was smooth like silk to the touch, never frizzy. It didn’t impose its presence on others. It behaved without much work at all. Tears flowed down my cheeks as she brushed mine. It always hurt so terribly, the way it would knot when I awoke before school. She tried her best to be gentle with it, but it was foreign to her. She always wanted me to love my hair, but I refused. I held the nature of it to be the product of a curse like that cast on Medusa. She tried her best to style it, learning the styles of my culture. She cornrowed and braided it in intricate patterns, decorated it with colorful little bows and clips.
On picture days, I refused to let my curls be seen. Those curls spoke the tales of my Blackness. The kids at school would invite themselves to touch my divine curls. I continued to be the black sheep that I felt. They never asked, but assumed I would welcome their invasive petting hands. A spectacle I was on most days, but on picture day, no one ever dared let their hands touch my hair.
It could not be smooth, but unruly. I begged my mother to straighten it. She refrained, but allowed me to do so just for picture day. When the photos came back, I felt pretty. I had taken control of my appearance. I fit in on the pages of the yearbook, but still each day I awoke to this tangle of a fro. Why did the curls coil so tight? They could not be straightened to the point of submission. But on picture day, I felt pretty.
I found my mother’s straightener and I singed the ends to a crisp, stripping it of its buoyancy with the touch of an iron. “Mom, look!” I was so proud of myself for the work I had done. She gasped at the crime I had committed, “Ah, when did you do this?!” “It’s burnt to a crisp!” I just wanted to be pretty. She had me condition my hair that night.
The pleasant scent of coconut and shea wafted through the air. Gentle, my hair asked to be treated. It did nothing, but shine unapologetically if allowed. It begged to be, but I would not let it. I would hide it and despise it for years to come.
I had assaulted my helpless head. With each sizzle of the iron, it was if my Blackness wailed for forgiveness. My dad told me the stories of his two sisters hollering to be rinsed when the lye relaxer began to burn. Left for a minute too long, it would leave burns on their scalp. My mother would never let me use a relaxer on my sensitive, fine hair. “You have good hair,” my dad would tell me. For the definition of good seemed to be drummed up out of mere opinion. Why was my hair more beautiful than that of my Black aunts? I could not allow the cries of my hair be heard. I was blinded by an illusion of proposed beauty.
I felt pretty. Stiff and lifeless, it hung past my shoulders. It didn’t dance in the way it did when I bathed it in oils that smelt of the tropics, quenching it’s thirst. It was still a bit frizzy, although the frizz may never go away. After all, it was not meant to be treated in such a harsh manner.
These curls protected the scalps of my ancestors as they toiled away in the hot sun that beat down on their backs. At the hands of ruthless slave owners, their hair was their armor. In the motherland, my ancestors danced in the heat to the songs of Africa. Their hair, they treated as precious as the most sacred pearls. Their hair was a crown signaling their regality. Adorned in gold clasps and beads that sang of their praises. With enough effort, surely I could force it to wilt under the heat of the iron that assassinates it’s livelihood.
I feel pretty, as a part of the flock that I would unsuccessfully attempt to mesh with. The aisles of the store carried hundreds of products for normal hair. I would pick up the bottles and stare in wonder at the shampoo described for ‘normal’ hair types. ‘Straight and smooth’, it would say. The section of my aisle was so meek. As an afterthought it seemed it was thrown together. Maybe a handful of products could tame the coils that were always so demanding. The products in my section of the aisle spanned just a couple of shelves.
The products did not say ‘normal,’ but some offered the promise of achieving it. On one set were the relaxers meant to open the pathway to whiteness. In just 10 minutes, one could destroy the natural beauty of their precious curls, destroying the curl pattern for years to come. As a gift, my dad bought me a relaxer for my hair. One that I could do at home.
While I contemplated the idea, I tossed it under the bathroom sink never to be touched. For that did not mean, I did not subject my hair to the hate I bestowed upon it after that moment. I still straightened it with different treatments at the salon, spending hundreds of dollars to buy my happiness with a desired look. As I sat in the chair, awaiting for the stylist to wash out a conditioning treatment to rid the frizz, she shared that “maybe one day, you will have a revelation and begin to love your gorgeous hair as it is.”
I assured her, I could never, for who would ask to dawn the hassle my hair gave me each morning. I once allowed bundles of weave to be sown into my head. For hours, I sat in the chair as the braids nearly tore my roots out, attaching the fake hair to my head, tugging on the helpless strands, and giving me a headache for nearly a week.
So long, I thought I would never come to terms with my hair as the extension of my soul. Angelic was Solange Knowles voice as she shared her song ‘Don’t Touch My Hair,’ I recalled during my senior year of high school. Days, I would venture into school allowing the curls to regain their shape, refraining from attacking them any longer.
Rather I would nourish them with love. My freshman year of college, I cut the battered remains of the despise my hair carried all these trying years. Several inches fell to the ground. The flat iron went into the garbage. With the lost strands, I freed myself from this false reality. The curls sprung from my head, renewed in their return. They danced as they once did before. I felt pretty.