30 Days, 30 Stories

Day Six: Good Hair

All of my life I've thought my hair was nothing special. It's wild. It does what it wants. I don't bother to think about it too much other than to make sure it's clean and looks relatively decent.
When I was younger, my hair was very thick and wavy. I hated it. My older sister inherited the super straight hair of our great-grandmother, who was Native American. My younger brother had curly locks that reminded everyone of a cherub. Me? I had hair that frizzed and tangled and never did what my mother (or I) wanted. I hated it. I thought I had the worst hair in the world.

At school, the some of the other black girls always made a big to-do over my hair. They wanted me to take it out of the tight, braided ponytail I always wore it in. I hated how they were making such a big deal of it. When they were mad at me, they yanked my hair so hard that I screamed. One girl always picked on me and, if I defended myself, she used it as an excuse to threaten to cut off my hair. I tried to ignore her. But every week it was the same thing.

One day she cornered me in the schoolyard and said, "You think you're special because you have good hair." I didn't think I was special. I didn't think I had good hair. I knew my hair was different from hers but I never thought my hair was better than hers. I told her that. She punched me. I punched her back, but then one of the recess aides saw us and separated us.

When we were back in our classroom, I forgot all about the fight. It was time for our art class and it was my favourite subject. I remember running to the long table where I usually sat with my friends. We were supposed to work on a group project and we were so focused on it that none of us noticed that my nemesis was behind me. She took hold of my ponytail and yanked it. Just as I screamed, "Hey!" I heard a cold, metallic "snip". Then she laughed and in her hand was part of my ponytail.

I screamed--more out of shock than out of being upset. My art teacher snatched the scissors and what was left of my ponytail from my nemesis and marched her down to the principal's office. When she came back up, she took me aside and made sure I was okay. Then she had to call my mother and explain what happened.

Everyone thought I would be upset about not having long hair. In reality, I was absolutely overjoyed. Finally people would leave me alone about my hair. My mother wouldn't have to fuss over it whenever it was time to wash it. My friends at school wouldn't keep acting like my hair was the Golden Fleece or the Holy Grail. It was just hair. And I enjoyed that feeling until my hair finally grew back.

But it never changed for me--it was still just hair.