Unbeweaveable (6 page)

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July 15, 2009

Three months later, I was jobless and penniless. The money seemed like it would last longer, but it slid out my hands quicker than sand through an hourglass.

I'd already said my goodbyes—I talked to my weave a full hour this morning in the bathroom mirror—but the reality of what I was doing was starting to hit full force.

So here I was doing the one thing I swore I would never do.

“I really wish you would have let me apply a relaxer to your hair. It's really thick,” Tameka said, running the shampoo hose over my head like a vacuum on carpet.

“Maybe next time,” I said. Of course there wouldn't be a next time. This would be the last time she would see me.

“You okay?” she asked, seeing a tear run down the side of my face. “Did I get shampoo in your eyes?”

“Just a little bit,” I said. She didn't know that my eyes were stinging from the loss of my best friend, not from the burn of shampoo.

The warm water felt good against my scalp. My head felt lighter, but my heart felt heavier, as if the weight of the weave had moved to my heart. Tameka refused to let me leave the salon without getting a shampoo and blow-dry, even though she said I needed a relaxer. I couldn't afford the $225 she charged me for the take down and shampoo, let alone another $150 for a relaxer. I told her to do her best with her ceramic flat-iron. She gave me a long look and said she would try. After struggling fifteen minutes to wrap it, she finally sat me under the dryer and told me to look through some pictures to find hairstyles I liked.

I showed her a picture of Michelle Obama and left looking like the Dalai Lama. After an hour with the flat-iron my ear-length hair was straight, but didn't have an ounce of the body or softness that my weave had. I was instantly transported to my childhood when all my classmates had long pigtails while my hair jetted out of my rubber bands like cocktail wieners. Tears pricked my eyes as Tameka removed the cape and I paid the receptionist. When I stepped outside, the wind blew and nothing moved. It was as if my hair had been glued to my head. Not a strand moved out of place. My friend was gone.

* * *

The first time I got a weave in my head was my high school graduation. My hair was about ear-length and I couldn't imagine going across the stage with my cap on and nothing coming out underneath. I'd already missed my prom. I couldn't keep on going missing events because of my hair.

“Why don't you get your hair professionally done?” Norma asked. We were sitting in my room flipping through fashion magazines.

“I told you what happened last time I got my hair professionally done. No thanks.”

“Her hair is pretty,” Norma said, handing me a copy of
Vogue
. It was Naomi Campbell, standing facing the camera, her long hair in a sleek middle part down to her waist, her lips carrying her trademark pout.

“It's fake, though,” I said, handing the picture back to Norma.

“So? It's still pretty.”

“There is no way that Beverly will let me get a weave in my hair.”

“Tell her it's for your graduation present.”

I shook my head. “But I don't have any money. Unless…” I opened one of my dresser drawers and pulled out a credit card.

“I could use this!”

“But that's for emergencies only.”

I pointed to my head. “Don't this count as an emergency?”

“I don't know…”

“Stop being a party pooper. All I need to do is find a hair salon that does extensions.”

We rifled through the phone book and found a one-page ad for Extensions Hair Salon.
‘If You Can't Grow It, I Can Sew It. Money Back Guarantee.'

“Let's try this one!”

The salon had a cancellation for Friday, and with graduation on Saturday morning, it was perfect.

I was greeted at the salon by a woman named Stephanie and told to have a seat. A lady named Josie introduced herself and led me to her station. Her hands went through my hair, inspecting my scalp as she asked what kind of weave I wanted.

“Your texture is dry so I would recommend a full sew-in.”

“A sew in?”

“We braid your hair down in small cornrows. Then we sew in tracks to the braids. It'll give your hair a break and allow it to grow underneath the weave while you still get to rock a cute ‘do.”

“That sounds great. I want that.”

“You have a picture?”

I pulled out the magazine with Naomi Campbell.

She laughed.

“You sure you want your hair that long?”

I nodded. “I'm graduating from high school and I want it long.”

“This is over twenty inches. The longest hair we have here is eighteen inches. Is that okay?”

“That's fine.”

She told me she would be right back and left for a few minutes. When she returned she held a board with pieces of hair stapled to it.

“This texture is called Kinky Straight. This is the closest texture to your real hair.” I felt it. It felt hard, just like my hair.

“What about this one?” I asked my hands caressing the straightest hair I'd ever seen.

She laughed. “This is Silky Straight. It won't be a good match for your hair. Trust me, get the Kinky.”

“But the whole point of this thing is to get something that
doesn't
look like my hair.”

“But you still want to look natural. Tell you what, why don't you try this one?” she said, pointing to a relaxed section of hair. “This is called Yaky Straight. It's close to your hair, but straighter. You'll have to flat-iron your real hair more often to blend—”

“That's fine. I don't want anything called Kinky sewn in my hair.”

She laughed. “Do you want to match your color, too? Or did you want a different color?”

“I hadn't thought about color. What do you think?”

“Your hair is a 1B, a dark brown. I think you should keep it.”

“Okay.”

“All right, you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Let's get started.”

After a shampoo and quick blow-dry, Josie sectioned my hair and started braiding it down in tiny braids around my head. I was surprised by the tightness of her grip and kept feeling my hairline to make sure it wasn't bleeding.

“This your first weave, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Don't worry, it'll loosen up in a few days. You want it tight to last a couple of weeks.”

“So I can shampoo this?”

“Of course. Think of it as your own hair. You can do whatever you want with it.”

As she finished my weave, she told me how to wrap it at night to keep it from getting tangled, to never go to bed with my hair wet, and to always make sure my real hair was down so none of my tracks showed.

“And here you are,” Josie said handing me a mirror.

Tears sprung to my eyes as I saw the girl looking back at me. I was beautiful. No, better than that, I was gorgeous, a supermodel.

“Wow.”

“Nice, huh?”

I got up and gave her a hug, and she walked up front to the receptionist and gave me my bill.

“A full head of weave is $500?”

“Yes.”

“Okay…” I handed over the credit card and was sweating bullets until it was approved.

“How do people pay this every month?” I asked as I signed the receipt.

“Honey, you'd be surprised what people do to look good.”

Steel Wool

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Why can't you keep looking for other jobs—”

“I have $227 in the bank. I can't afford to keep doing this. I've already called and she agreed. Believe me, I wouldn't if I had a choice.”

“Don't you have some jewelry you can pawn—”

“I've already done that. I didn't get half of what I paid for 'em.”

“I can't believe that you're moving back. What will I do without you?”

I was sitting on her couch the next day. She was a little more forgiving when she saw my new look, although she did say now she understood why my hair was such a big deal. With no job, no money, no hair, no man, and, looking at Norma's growing stomach, no friend, I did the only thing I could think of—I called Beverly and begged her to come back home. After several pauses on her part and explanations on mine, she offered to send some money for a plane ticket. I would leave in two days.

“You're going to have a beautiful baby girl. You won't need me,” I said, hoping she replied that she would always need me.

She did, of course; she was my best friend, after all. I nodded as she said the words I desperately needed to hear at the time.

“What are you going to do with all your things?”

“My sister offered to ship them to Houston.”

“That was nice of her,” Norma said.

“I guess,” I said, my eyes welling up with tears. She pulled me in for a hug and I cried long and hard. Ugly, animal-like groans and hiccups escaped my throat.

“It's okay, it's okay,” she said, rubbing my back. “It's just hair.”

“Look at my hair!” I wailed, sitting up, wiping my eyes. “It's hideous! It's so short—“

“It's not all that bad.”

“Not that bad! I look like Florida Evans!”

Norma burst out laughing. “From
Good
Times
? I thought you weren't allowed to watch that show?”

Beverly refused to let Renee and I watch
ethnic television
, as she called it.

“What's wrong with
Good
Times
?” I asked her once, after she caught me trying to watch an episode.

“There are no
‘good times'
in the ghetto!” she shouted.

“Girl, give it some time,” Norma said. She reached out and touched my hair, then shrank back.

“It feels like a Brillo pad.”

“Looks like one, too.”

“Maybe your sister can hook you up, you know, help you re-train your hair to its former glory?”

“What former glory? This is how my hair looks. It straightens a little bit with a relaxer, but it mostly looks like steel wool on my head.”

She patted my hand.

“Maybe you can buy a wig.”

 

Hair brings one's self-image into focus;

it is vanity's proving ground.

Hair is terribly personal,

a tangle of mysterious prejudices.

—Shana Alexander

Cotton Ball

I was five years old when I realized that I was ugly. Well, not exactly ugly, but not as pretty as my sister Renee. We were at a party, I can't remember what kind, and my mother introduced us to her friends using our nicknames—Cotton Ball for me, and Princess for my sister. And she did look like a princess with her long wavy brown hair that fell below her waist, her brown eyes with flecks of emerald, her light skin the color of whipped cream.

Being ugly wasn't even the worst part; it was the dim in my mother's eyes when I entered the room, like a lamp that's been cut off; her smile toward me just wouldn't be as bright as it was for my sister.

“Am I ugly?” I asked her one day after school when the teasing was really bad.

She dropped her embroidery hoop and looked at me. “Do you think you're ugly?”

I shrugged.

“Well, do you or don't you?”

“I don't know.”

“You have a brain, Mariah, and you better start using it. Being ugly is one thing, but being average?” She clucked her tongue. “That's something else altogether. You're smart. And that's what makes you beautiful.”

It wasn't until I got much older that I realized that she never answered the question.

Beverly is beautiful. The kind of beauty that even women have to stop and stare at. Her hair grayed prematurely, and when most women would look to Clairol to solve that problem, she didn't see a problem and never colored her hair. For some reason it never aged her, just enhanced her beauty even more. And Beverly knew she was beautiful. Her beauty was as insignificant as her pinky finger—she always had it and, therefore, didn't realize its importance.

“How do I look?” she would ask, twirling into the living room before she went out for a night on the town with Anthony. Her hair would be down, shiny grey strands running through it like a river of silver, her lips painted a dark red that matched her dress.

“Mama, you look—”

“I was asking Renee,” she would say, not even turning to look at me. “So, Renee, what do you think?”

“You look gorgeous, Mama!”

“See how it twirls and spins?” She would spin around the room, her dress fanning around her like a red umbrella.

“Mama, you are so pretty!” Renee would get up and dance around the room while I put my nose further in my Judy Blume book.

She'd kiss both of our cheeks, remark on how fast a reader I was, and leave us for a night of dinner and dancing.

That's what it felt like growing up with Renee—I could be in the center of the room and she could stand in the corner, and somehow I was invisible. Renee came in the room and cast a ray of sun around her, and everyone wanted to be near her so they could bask in her warmth. I was the cloud that passed over the sun, a brief annoyance that was permitted only because soon the sun would shine again.

Our favorite game growing up was beauty pageant. Renee would gather her long hair in a ponytail. I would wrap a bath towel around my head and pretend for once in my life that I had long hair. I would swing it around, pretending that the blue, pima-cotton towel was my magnificent, beautiful long hair. We would dress ourselves in sheets, wrapped up like Grecian women. We had three rounds as all beauty pageants did— talent, swimsuit, and evening. Beverly was the judge and always gave me the swimsuit round as I pranced around the living room in my pink, polka-dot swimsuit. But Renee always won. Always. Yeah, Beverly would make it a close call, saying if my voice hadn't gone flat while singing “I Believe Our Children Have a Future,” then I would have won. Or if my evening gown had been tied more elegantly around my waist then I would have won for sure. The more I lost, the more I wanted to play until we were in junior high and Renee said she didn't want to play anymore.

“It's just a game, Mariah. It's not real life.”

For her, maybe. But to me it was as real as anything could be.