I think I am not a good Black girl. A good Black woman. But I’ve had carpal tunnel for as long as I can remember, way back since high school. I’ve never been good at braiding my own hair, and even twist outs take a long time, sometimes bordering on too painful to finish in under an hour.
It was supposed to be empowering, doing your own hair. Supposed to be freeing and sexy and cool. I don’t feel any of those things. In fact, some days, I want to shave it all off. (But I hate having short hair.)
Don’t get me wrong. I love my hair. I think I love my hair. It took me so, so long to fall in love with its shape, its smell, its feel…but I still sometimes wake with unending anxiety. Will I ever be able to make it pretty like other girls? Other women? Other men? My bonnet is too large, my scarf too tight. Is my pillow too oily? Too silky? Not silky enough?
My fingers tangle in its kitchen absentmindedly. Someone once told me about “hair picking” and all I can think of is rattail combs that yank and the afro-fisted hair picks some people use to cut onions. At least I’ll never be that Black girl. At least I’ll never be that Black person.
It’s dry all the time. Even when I put things in it, my hair dries up, drinking like the starving in a desert and leaving my scalp and tresses a thing to be snatched at. My skin is oily too, so afterwards I can’t even keep a steady wash cycle. Too much build up. Not enough moisture. Too much moisture. Not enough build up. The genes I thank my parents for giving me shank me at the kneecaps. I wish again, after so many years, that I was white. That my hair was thinner, lighter, easier. Did you know they charge less at salons for them? It makes me angry, so I grab the comb again, wide toothed, then remember to be careful of the knots. Careful of the scalp. Careful of the self.
You know, you have to be taught to take care of yourself. To understand that while acting for others is imperative, training yourself to understand your own value is essential. Each and every one of those things are Herculean feats that one must tear down to their barest essentials, lest they attempt a mountain so big and so wide it cannot be moved. I didn’t think doing all of those little things for myself meant anything because it was just her. Just me. She doesn’t need anything, not really. She just wants. Like a beast. Like an animal.
She wants to be treated gently. But that’s just a want. She doesn’t need it, truly; she has made due with harshness, cruel words and flavors peppered on her skin, stretching thinner and thinner and thinner but not breaking. Not really. She desires to not have her hair ripped from her head, while not being called ‘tender headed’, desires to be allowed her own pace, desires grace for long days and nights where she can’t stand or hold properly. But they are simply that. Desires. She wants too much, and she wants all the time. Sometimes she cries. But it passes.
Why should it matter?
The world does not care for her wants or needs. She is a fixed point in time and she must do whatever the world needs of her as it turns. It will never love in response or ever give back, but it demands it of her. A toughness. A strong Black girl. An independent woman who doesn’t need a man. Is independence a separation of community? I brush without gel for fear of it getting stuck to my knots and tie it back so far I look like an alien, forehead bared to the mirror and eyes wide as saucers. Must I do everything myself from now until the end of time, with no one to help me?
That is the trick of it. That every little knot contributes to a painful throbbing against my scalp, every inch of oily skin a pimple to be popped in the near future.
“Why do you hate her?”
God talks to me sometimes. He says things I don’t want to hear, things that make me cringe and feel so upset and angry with myself that I know only He could have said them. I want to disagree—I have to disagree—but there’s no arguing with God. Not really. When He catches me in those moments I know better than to rail against Him; a question is just that, and when He asks, you must answer before He asks again.
“She’s weak.” I answer and answer and answer again. I see the geek girl whose Blackness was challenged. I see the high-yellow woman deemed mixed three times in middle school. She’s watered down and poor, and her mama’s hot comb is a treat until she’s bullied for her flyaways and high-curling braids that don’t lay down, and she stays quiet now when people ask about her hobbies. “She can’t even braid.”
‘Can’t’ is imperative. Naysaying would be easier, but acceptance of a limitation is too much to bear. Its inevitability becomes hard to swallow sometimes. Whether by tears or a simple malfunction in the esophagus, there are times when the body won’t accept what I give it. What it needs. But who will feed me if I don’t? How will I eat?
“She’s just different.”
Newfound eczema in the bend of my arm. The tag on the back of my shirt itches, brushing skin I didn’t know was dry, though it never did before. “…I don’t want to be different.” Too delicate, too sensitive. I find that even shea butter cannot save me, raw and unfiltered against crackling, drying skin. I am not a good Black girl. What kind of Black girl is allergic to shea butter? “Why did you make me different? Are you angry with me?”
Like fingers threading through freshly washed hair, tangle free, for the first time in two or more decades. When He speaks, I close my eyes in hopes that the words will calm me as they wash over me. “I made you this way on purpose. Is there a design flaw?”
Now this is a test. It isn’t mocking or cruel, His voice, but it is a reminder of something, though He smiles in his words, smiles in His lesson. Old Bible verses cringe at my psyche, chastising me before I speak. “Does the clay know better than the potter who made it?”
“No,” I sigh, and the warmth within me spreads, like a laugh. Fools have done worse than this. “I just don’t know how. I don’t know how to take care of her.”
“Do it slowly,” He instructs me. “Don’t rush.”
Slowly. Like chewing thoroughly, a step by step formula on a whiteboard. Agonizingly, as my fingers ache near their palms, near their wrists, and they shake with uncertainty.
“You can rest, but don’t quit. Walk, don’t run. I’ll tell you when to run.”
Leave-in, oil, water. I take a deep breath, and make another part.
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