My Big Fat Hair

My father told my mother that she would embarrass us girls if she didn't learn how to do black hair. One problem: our hair was not black.

This long, fat, thick, curly hair grew wild with hormones during puberty, during high school. So, no, we didn't just have bad acne. We had bad hair and bad hair can't be hidden with cosmetics, no matter how much conditioner you mat down on it.

A lion's mane, that's what they called my sister's hair.

Nappy afro, that's what they called mine.

The black people wanted to put chemicals in our hair to relax it, but we liked our curls. The white people wanted to pull it down wet and cut it, but curls don't cut even. My parents didn't know any better. 

So we left humiliated and unfulfilled.

In the end, my sisters burnt their hair straight with pink flat irons and sickly smelling bottles of green oil. I watch with my curly, ugly hair and tried to embrace it, waiting for someone that knows what to do with it.