In your field of tresses, where every strand tells a story; all lost, tangled, untangled, braided, cut, permed or cooped up in Mama's ever loving protective styles. Your sleek "cornrows" is a tale of time of long wash days, homemade hair remedies, oily roots, pulled strands, back paining sitting positions. But now you hide that beauty with your all expense "raw human hair, 30 inches buss down".
I would blame you but seeing how you've endured the sassy red-head's comment on your "Primitive Koroba" at a place which should have been a comfort net for your shiny nappy curls; The African Hair shop. Even when you get appreciated, it's afrosplaining to a group of sweaty palmed* Karen's* that think your ends look like a swirling worm.
You'll always cower at the sight of curling roots because you need it straight,* "straight not jumbled up in that untidy mess"* words of* Janice ugly mouth* during her 30-minutes character analysis and deconstruction that mostly ends with Abena, the shiny black Barbie being called the better black, if only you could poke that ugly caviar eating mouth and make her understand that you weren't blessed with the half caste privilege like *Abena *and others scattered around the DC Peninsula. Shallow, I know!
You have experienced a thousand of* Janice’s*, every one of them reiterating the same words of hate and faux admiration, every conversation with advice on taming your hair to look more presentable and professional. You envy your neighbor’s pride in her hair, a confident Yoruba woman,* Jola* always confidently rocking her Afro and the plethora of protective styles she adorns, you feel anger when you meet her by the stairway on days you come home early, only then do you get to see the look of pity she casts you, surprisingly she never says anything to you not after you had the fight the first year you moved in when she offered to take you to her hairdresser after seeing you struggling with your morning hair after a rushed washed day.
Trying to seek comfort in your "sistas" is a lost cause, all you get is a list of enablers who cursed the little girls who used to run excitedly with their big cloud-like afros to become bundle blinded women, now it's Vietnamese, Chinese, Bohemian weaves for every biweekly hair appointment not like you are any different.
You tried dreadlocks once but after the little white girl on the bus called you Medusa, you went back to Auntie, your hairdresser to "get rid of them", your exact words despite her cries of hair loss and the obvious perfection it was, but you already made up your mind, you would rather go through the scalp burning heat or become slave to your other white master, *" the Lye relaxer " *than have another minute with your *"Medusa hair".
Obinna called again but you can’t go through the badgering to love yourself,* "your true and natural self"* and the constant calls to his natural hair advocate sister who you found annoyingly loud and obnoxious. Uyi, your best friend calls you an imposter because you couldn’t accept* Obinna’s* preachings but you put up with Michael’s comment on "African hair" as he calls it.
You are described as a goal-getter, a confident woman, a proud member of your community, a voice of the people at your small speech engagement at your majorly white alma mater, a place you never quite fit in but somewhere you learned to hate both your tresses and your self.
That's the life of a lost, inconclusive woman struggling to find her worth in these strands of strength.