Don’t Touch My Hair
Lirit Gilmore
Word Count 1874
Don't touch my hair
When it's the feelings I wear Don't touch my soul
When it's the rhythm I know
- Solange, Don’t Touch My Hair
There’s this story told all the time about braids in our hair. This story is told in a few different ways. It goes that when Black people were captured for enslavement in the States, they braided seeds into their hair so they could plant food wherever they ended up. People also say maps were braided into the top of the scalp, so enslaved people could escape. Some people say it was during the underground railroad, some people say West Africans did this before enslavement, but the idea is that Black people’s hair has a history of resilience. This story, however, isn’t really the whole truth. Black hair’s “resilience” is truly just a myth to make us appear strong. Like we are made for our endurance. These stories are manipulated to avoid speaking about how generational trauma builds and clouds our connection to reality. Nobody has ever viewed my hair with neutrality. There are white women who touch my hair against my will in the store. White men who stare and lust at it when I’m out to dinner. Peers I grew up with, wondering why my hair isn’t the same. They don’t do this because once upon a time, my hair used to carry seeds or maps. It’s exotic to them. An excuse to look away from oppression. I will never need to tell a story of putting seeds in our hair or crossing the ocean with brilliant maps braided on my head. No story will ever be as important as our own stories, the real ones, and how we want to tell them.
***
The radio, the scratching comb, the smell of petroleum jelly, the grip of her knees, and my stinging scalp all fall into - the rhythms of a litany, the rituals of Black women combing their daughters’ hair
- Audre Lorde, Zami A New Spelling of My Name
My mother does my hair every Sunday. She’s going to put my hair into two braids tonight, and they will sit in a crown on my head.
“Do you want the braids to go to the back and tie together or just leave them loose?”
“I want them loose!”
She ties them together. Most of the time, these nights are just an opportunity for her to comb through my hair. The pieces of woodchip, sand, lint, or anything that my hair swallows up. I sit on the hardwood floors with my legs crossed and back to her armchair. A cloudy concoction of water and conditioner sloshes in my mother’s old spray bottle. The conditioner smells sweet, like coconut and candy floss. My hair flops down on my neck, and nestles itself behind my ears. The water drips all the way down my back, and my forehead. As I wipe the drops of water out of my face, I think about how my hair will look. Magazines are sprawled all over the living room with pictures of models who look just like me. My mother has stopped spraying water, and now my whole shirt is wet. Her hands are like ice from filling up the bottle. Now comes the combing. She parts my hair forcefully and begins the style of her choosing. She begins to pull at my hair and work the comb up from the ends, and I hear the bite of the comb going through my hair piece by piece. When it falls back onto my neck, it’s softer now. Tamed. This time when it nestles behind my ear, it’s almost like I can hear it talk to me. My hair speaks with every section that my mother combs. I swear that it sounds like a familiar voice. By the end, there is hair grease all over my face. My hair has been pulled tightly into a crowned braid that sits on the top of my head. I wince from raising my eyebrows because my scalp is sore from the pulling and combing. Not one strand of hair sits out of place. My mother wraps cheap nylons and a pair of underwear around my head to protect it from what I will do to it while I’m asleep.
“Do you like it?” She asks. I nod.
By the end of the week, I will have ruined it.
***
hair a utter of fall leaves
circling my perfect line of a nose,
no lips,
no behind, hey white me
and i’m wearing white history
- Lucille Clifton, My Dream of Being White
Today I sit in the chair of a woman named Josie. My dad drove me about 40 minutes, 30 if he speeds, to get to the next town over to see her. Josie is very special. She’s the only Black woman for miles that knows how to do my hair. She charges $35 plus tip, and it only takes an hour. I come into the salon with my hair balled into a tight ponytail to hide the fact that I haven’t combed it in weeks. I fear the rain, the wind, and the white girls who look at it. I feel sick at the thought of letting it out of this bun. I won’t let my mother comb my hair, which is also related to why my father drove me to this appointment. I make all my own hair appointments now. I want my hair straightened, and I only want it straightened. Josie is warm, and kind, nothing like my mother has been. She wears a big wig that is styled into a curly loose afro. She’s always happy to see me and tells me so every other month when I come to see her for my appointment. When she starts to wash my hair, I feel her long sharp acrylic nails scratch against my scalp.
“How’s school going?” She asks
I desperately want to impress Josie. She has one of the most valuable skills in the world, straightening my hair. That’s the most important thing to me. My mother won’t do it, and so now I desperately want Josie to know how much this means to me. How can I prove it to her? I try to think of something impressive I’m doing at school, but the truth is that I haven’t been going.
“Fine,” I tell her.
We step away from the shampoo bowl, and she begins to blow dry my hair. As she pulls through my coils, I see my hair transform from dark brown to light brunette. It doubles in size. I feel it tickle my neck. The hair begins to speak to me again, wanting to know what I’m doing to it. I tell it to wait a few minutes because this will be really great. The heat from the dryer blows the smell of gel and heat protectant into my nose. I breathe in because this concoction of chemicals has become my new favorite drug. The smell fills my chest like a familiar kind of air. Now here comes what I’ve been waiting for. Heat. Dry, hot smoke. I can feel it before Josie even manages to grab the flat iron and hot comb. She starts in the back of my hair and slowly presses the two blistering iron pieces into my hair. My hair is screaming for me to stop. I ignore it. Soon I start to feel the light strands fall onto my back. I gaze at the glossy pieces with an almost obsessive lust. They shine and reflect against the salon lights. When she does my entire head, I will be perfect. How lucky are we? I explain to my hair. I can no longer hear a response. I feel better than before, prettier than before. Quieter than before. Joslyn blows the smoke off of my hair and my hair toasting. The smell is thermic and warm. It will smell like this for weeks, and I will grin upon every inhale.
***
my lover’s hair is blonde
& when it rubs across my face it feels soft
feels like a thousand fingers touch my skin & hold me and i feel good
- Pat Parker, My Lover Is A Woman
My mother is putting locs in my hair. Locs, dreads, dreadlocks, whatever you want to call them. It’s New Year’s Day. I sit like a child again, between her knees with the cloudy bottle of conditioner water. This time she lets me tell her exactly how I want them. I count as she goes, trying to keep track of how many I want to have. 75 locs. Each one hand rolled by my mother. They sit on my head, growing each year, teaching me lessons in my Grandmother’s voice. She parts my hair into sections and then takes two pieces and rolls them together in her hand. She twists each piece together to make a thick strand. She pulls at my hair much rougher than getting it done at the salon, but I’m used to it by now. My wet hair drips all over the towel hanging around my neck, and I wonder what my locs will look like years from now. I show her models online with locs and try to guess how many they have. I want 80. My mom used to have locs and cut them off after a few years. She only has a few photos of her with them, but I wonder if my hair will look the same. I’ve been working up the courage to loc my hair for months. When I tell her that this is going to be a new journey for me and she scoffs. She thinks I call everything a journey. Then she uses a pomade to quickly twist the pieces of hair into place. It smells like honey, and leaves a shine on the curls at the end of my hair. My mother is intensely focused on making sure the parts are even, because once they’re in, I can’t change them. I can hear her counting under her breath, trying to make sure they are all evenly placed. These are different. They are permanent. I can feel the permanence with each twist she puts in my hair. It’s one of the last times she’ll do my hair like this for me, but the first time she’s done it for a while.
The locs sit on my head and bounce with every move. You can see my hair growing into place. Soon people will begin to view me differently. They ask me intrusive questions about how I wash my hair, or if I wash it at all. I don’t even care. I am no longer afraid of the rain, or of the humidity. I tell myself it’s just a little water. I do not flinch at the idea of the winds blowing through my hair, or sleeping in another girl’s bed. When it’s time to talk about my hair, I feel the tension of them waiting to say the wrong thing or use the wrong words. My locs soak up water and sun like a plant. They laugh at me, speak to me, and grow with me. Maybe they were right about the seeds.
Lirit is a Creative Writing student from the DMV and the Midwest. Her work has been published in the Fourth River and Pittsburgh Magazine. She currently lives in Pittsburgh.