Tuesday 26 May 2015

For the love of Black hair

Sitting at an all Black hair salon for the first time in several years, and the entire experience is like communing with my ancestors.  
Why did I wait so long? My stylist grabs the tiny stands of hair at the front of my head and breath in deeply and out reminding myself to pace my breath as she weaves her fingers though my hair revealing my tortured past.
I close my eyes and take another deep breath as I sink lower into my seat hoping to merge into the silhouette my chair and into my soundings.
On the radio 700 club is selling Christian prayers to the tune of someone describing how white Jesus saved him. The latest soap opera is play on the TV as someone yells "she's faking that pregnancy" over the sound of the industrial fan blasting recycled air sweetened with the smell of oil sheen spray. Ladies with manicured nails sit under the hair drier reading the latest fashion and tabloid magazines. The stylist beside me kisses her teeth and while others laugh to the point of tears as I show them the pictures and articles claiming that Marc Jacob invented Banu Knots, another customer exclaimed from the waiting area "did you hear, the Chinese invented steel pan music" every one laughs. I have tears in my eyes but it's not the over whelming sense of community in this shop on a Tuesday morning it's the searing pain from the process of having my hair tightly styled to perfection. In a distance I can hear my grandmother saying "dry those tears, beauty feels no pain" 

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