There! Now she was just as disappointed as I was. Children are assholes and they ruin everything.
By the time I was in high school, my mom had stopped caring about my hair altogether. She was fed up with dealing with me and my brother all the time, so she basically threw up the peace sign and yelled, “I’m OUT!” This applied to hair and pretty much everything else. She’d still pay for whatever Ahmed or I needed, but we were allowed to make most of our own decisions and mistakes. We could stay out as late as we wanted, ditch class, and change our hair! My brother dropped out of high school. I made an equally bad decision: I bleached my hair blonde. A bad perm had made my hair short and even more unmanageable than before, so when a friend suggested I bleach it, I was just young and dumb enough to say, “Why not?” My friend, a guy named Calrisian, decided to bleach his hair as well. He was having problems with his parents so he’d left home to live with his older brother. Like me, he had barely any rules to abide by, and it was only a few weeks to summer vacation. Our lives had become a Mad Max movie. We thought, Fuck it! Let’s be blonde!
He went first. I think we bought (stole) some sort of bleaching paste from the beauty-supply store and put it in his hair. Then Calrisian put it in my hair and combed it down around my face, smoothing it in around my ears. About twenty minutes later, we both held our heads under the showerhead in the bathroom and washed out the bleach. His hair was now bimbo blonde, exactly what he wanted. My hair was now . . . orange, like the fruit. My gray hair had turned a sickly yellow orange and had become even more wiry and untamable. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Did you know that there’s hair on your face so short and thin that you can’t normally see it? I didn’t—until that hair turned bright orange because the bleach my friend combed around my ears had dripped down my face. When it was all rinsed out and blow-dried, my entire head looked like I’d dipped it into a bag of Cheetos. I don’t remember how my friends at school reacted to my new hairstyle. It’s possible that I blocked it out, in which case, thank you, brain!
I eventually had to shave my face because the orange glow kept attracting moths. As for the orange hair on my head . . . did you know that bleach and chlorine don’t mix well? I didn’t. I went swimming with my cousins in a pool, and good-bye orange hair, hello green hair! Yes, I now had green hair. I don’t remember what I did to get rid of the green hair. (Thank you again, brain!) I assume I just burned it down, collected the insurance money, and then moved to Canada.
Apart from the short-orange-hair episode, I generally wore my hair in braids in high school, but I waited so long in between hairstyles that my real hair would grow under the braid and start to dread up. I started wrapping a bandanna around my head to hide it. The problem: I went to a New York City high school. We had to walk through metal detectors in the lobby, and there were a few gangs so we weren’t allowed to wear bandannas. They were called “colors,” and there was a “no colors or gang paraphernalia allowed” policy. Do I look like a fucking gang member? It didn’t matter. Rules were rules. So every day I’d wear the bandanna in the halls until I got to class. Then I’d wait until my teacher told me to take it off. When the bell rang, I’d tie it back around my head. Some of my teachers would let me keep the bandanna on because they realized I wasn’t a gang member—just a sad girl who had yet to figure out her hair. Bless those teachers.
There were girls in my high school who already had weaves. Twenty-five inches of hair flowing down to their asses. These girls didn’t wear backpacks to hold their schoolbooks; they used shopping bags from department stores like Macy’s. They had Gucci and Louis Vuitton purses filled with rolled-up spiral notebooks and makeup. They swung their beautiful long hair and expensive but probably fake purses down the hall. I struggled behind with my tough short hair hidden under a scarf, toting a misshapen backpack filled with all my textbooks and at least three notebooks, looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame on his way to ring that bell. We walked the same halls and were probably the same age, but we were light-years apart.
I was twenty-four when I finally got my first weave. It was a gift from the hairstylist on the set of Precious. I loved it! It made doing my hair so easy. I’d flat-iron my weave, comb it down, and leave the house, swinging my hair just like those girls in high school. I’d toss my head and twirl my weave around my finger, and that’s when I started to figure out how to draw confidence from my hair. All I had to do was give up the ability to scratch my scalp. (It’s impossible to even touch my scalp with two layers of hair—mine and someone else’s—and a net to keep everything down.)
Weaves have been a godsend. Shooting for film and television requires hair continuity. I spend weeks filming a ton of scenes in the same outfit, and my hair has to be exactly the same as well. On average, I probably get my hair done six times a day. If my own hair was flat-ironed or curled that many times, it would fall out. But if the weave falls out, they just sew in a new one. I always wear them when I’m working, and they make me feel normal. (I just wish that word normal didn’t hold so much weight for me.)
My gray hair has been gone for years. I can’t explain what happened. In my twenties I suddenly started to notice less and less of it until there wasn’t any at all. Perhaps I’ve run out of luck or wisdom. Maybe I’m the real-life Benjamin Button and I’m growing backward so the older I get, the younger and more beautiful I appear to be. That’s explanation enough for me.
My hair and I have been through a lot (it’s been on fire twice). There are many more hair battles to come, but I know my strength and beauty start at the roots. I’ve realized that black women have the most beautiful hair: long hair, weaves or natural; bobs, cut straight or asymmetrical; braids; dreads; Afros; shaved bald; faded with a flat top. Our hair can be anything! Choose a color, choose a texture, and our hair can do it. There’s an entire Black Woman Hair Universe of Possibilities. I’ve always felt like I was on the outside of that universe looking in and longing to be bold enough to be a part of it. My hair has been through so much trauma that I’m afraid to venture out into the vast terrain of the beauty my hair could be. I’m working on it! I’m just starting to figure out the wonder of each curly tress.
6
Make a Wish
Do you sing like your mom?
—fans of my mother’s