Getting my hair braided was torture. Sitting Indian-style for hours made my fat little legs fall asleep. I’d twist and turn and fall off the cushions just so my mom would be forced to stop combing, pulling, and braiding long enough to let me stand up and sit down again in a different position. In my impatience, I’d reach my little hand up to feel how much hair was left to be braided, which would knock my hair out of place, which would encourage my mom to smack my hand with the comb and tell me to stop it and accept my fate.
There were reprieves. My mom would pause for ten minutes every hour to smoke a cigarette, and I’d get to hop up and down to wake up my legs. When she’d finish her smoke break, we’d both go to pee, and then she’d tell me to stop crying and get back down on the cushions so she could finish.
“How many more,” I’d scream through tears and puffy eyes.
“A hundred! Sit down!” my mom would say.
I’d sit back down and make sour faces and wish I’d been born a boy. Sometimes it would take my mom two days to braid my hair, which proves she was taking it easy on me. These days it takes a professional hairstylist about five hours to do the job, and I have a grown-up-size head. I bet if I hadn’t complained as much as I did and hadn’t driven my mom to need a smoke every hour, she could’ve finished my kid-size head in about four hours. Maybe even three!
Daycare Gabby Yes, there are colored palm trees all over my outfit! You don’t know anything about fashion! Though you can’t see them in this photo, my socks also have palm trees on them. I’d like credit for that, please and thank you. Also, check out that nose again! I STILL can’t even! So cute!
Courtesy of Gabourey Sidibe
I have to admit something: I was definitely overreacting back then. Did it hurt? Totally. It sucked. (It doesn’t hurt anymore because my scalp is now dead with no more life or feeling.) I was a dramatic child, and I was mostly pissed that my brother got to do whatever he wanted while I had to sit with my mom for hours. Just the two of us. I didn’t use that time to ask her for advice about crushes or how to make friends, and she didn’t teach me anything. I complained, and she watched her soap operas.
I secretly liked watching my mom watch her shows. When I was quiet, it felt like she would forget I was in the room, and braiding became just something she was doing with her hands. It could’ve been knitting or playing with a yo-yo. She was alone, and she was watching her shows after a long week of work and raising two kids. I was watching her be an adult. A person. Not just a mommy. I’d listen to her talk to the TV screen when Erica Kane’s long-lost daughter Kendall showed up on All My Children. Or when Viki Lord split from Clint Buchanan and then remarried a year later on One Life to Live. I felt like I was getting to spy on who my mom was when her children weren’t around. Maybe I was getting to spy into my own future. Maybe I was seeing the woman I’d become . . . a woman with long and silky hair . . .
My mom and I have very different hair. My mom’s hair is black, shiny, and easily maintained. Although it’s been said a million times by every black person ever, this is supposedly due to some Native American ancestry. Whatever the reason, my mom hit a hereditary hair jackpot. When I was in the first grade, she dyed her hair a dark purplish red, and she wore red clothes to match. This was one of the most exciting times of my life. I thought she was so cool, and she really was. I remember one near-summer day she wore a red trench dress with a matching red-brimmed hat with her perfect purple-red hair curled softly into a bob. With red lipstick. She was so fucking fierce! (She was way too good for my dad!) I couldn’t wait to grow up and be her. I wanted purple-red hair, and I wanted all of my clothes to be purple-red, too. And I wanted to live in a purple-red house and drive a purple-red car and live a big purple-red life. That was the dream. I know it sounds childish. But don’t you judge me; that’s still the dream.
My hair, on the other hand, has been rough from birth. I was born with a head full of curly hair: curly, black, and gray. Yes. I was born with gray hair. Tough, wiry, gray hair that couldn’t be tamed. My parents figured the gray strands would go away after a while, but no. The older I got, the more gray hair I got. Strangers would stop my mother on the train, and say, “Oh! Ya baby’s hair is gray! She must be lucky! That’s a blessing.” But in school the other kids would say, “Why is ya hair gray? You old! Maybe you cursed!” I hated it—the teasing, not my hair. My hair I loved. When my mom told me that I’d have salt and pepper all over my head by the time I was in my twenties, I couldn’t wait. I wanted to look like Lena Horne in her older, graceful stage. Or like Alexandra from Josie and the Pussycats. I thought my gray hair made me look distinguished, like a gentlemanly sea captain. Or the wise grandmother tree in Pocahontas. I kept hoping that my gray hair would eventually take the form of a lightning bolt in the middle of my head. I felt special—as long as I wasn’t in school. In school the feeling of being “special” became the feeling of being “different.” Children are assholes and they ruin everything.
In junior high, I compiled a list of all the things people made fun of me for. The point of the list was to see what I could change in order to stop being made fun of. Gray hair seemed like the easiest thing to deal with, so I asked my mom if I could dye my hair. I was sure she’d say no. The year before, when I asked if I could start perming my hair instead of getting it braided, we fought for months before she finally gave in. She’d been wearing her own hair permed in tight Shirley Temple curls with way too much mousse (for staying power). When she relented, she styled my hair in exactly the same way so we looked like twins. Where was the Bureau of Child Welfare then?
My mom seemed to like my gray hair as much as I did, but eventually I convinced her to let me dye it jet-black. The morning after my dye job, I was so excited to go to school. My mom was excited, too! I’d decided that I wouldn’t mention what I was planning to my friends and classmates; I’d let them be shocked and amazed by my new hair all on their own. This didn’t happen. They didn’t notice. I started to drop hints, but still no one noticed. After lunch, I finally blurted out: “Hello! My hair is all black now! No more gray! I dyed it!”
“Oh,” my friends responded. “Oh, yeah. It looks nice.”
I was pissed.
When I got home, my mom was waiting to hear how my grand hair reveal had gone.
“Did ya friends notice your hair?” she asked, smiling.
“Mom! It’s just hair. It doesn’t even matter.”
“Oh. Okay,” she said.