Year TWELVE:

Relaxation Ends in a Call to Arms

Part 1 of Relaxed: Not Quite a Memoir

Year TWELVE

Relaxation Ends in a Call to Arms

“Can I touch your hair?”

Probably the most words Nick Carlsen had spoken to me all school year. I was flattered. Giddy. Excited, even. He wanted to touch me. Well, something attached to me anyway.

Of course, I said “yes”. Why wouldn’t I say yes? I had been crushing on him since the third grade. He was paying me attention.

But it wasn’t even my hair. I mean, I grew it and everything. It wasn’t store-bought. But it was also not in its natural state—its soft but fluffy form. Frizzy, slightly kinky, really. It would tickle his nose if he got too close. Explode in his face like a volcano of wild tendrils if I were to snap the rubber band off. Probably envelop him like the blob. And me.

Not today, however. That Saturday I had gone to the hair salon for the first time ever—if you don’t count my auntie’s salon. They slathered sixteen ounces of professional grade relaxer onto my scalp—my roots. Let it sit there for about forty-five minutes. Told me to let them know if my head started to tingle—or worse, burn. It began to burn a little after twenty minutes, but I didn’t say anything. I wanted my hair to be as straight as straight can be—for a girl of Black and Filipino descent.

Once the timer went off, (thank the Lord), they washed out the chemicals underneath a warm spray of water. I survived. Then, under the dome I went, and the heat flushed out around me. Maybe my least favorite part? Cold trickles of water escaping the doused towel on my head and running down all sides of my face and neck. You couldn’t look straight ahead, otherwise, you’d be staring at a gray, transparent dome of perforated plastic and feel half-claustrophobic. So, you’re forced to look down and study a two-year-old special edition of Ebony magazine with Patti LaBelle on the cover. Didn’t she write a cookbook once? No, I’m not too young to know who Patti LaBelle is. But she did write a cookbook. I was placed back in the salon chair thirty minutes later. The timer had gone off ten minutes ago, but the lady doing my hair was tending to another client, leaving me to carry the weight of my cold, heavy towel-encased head of hair that much longer.

She finally unwrapped the towel from my head, my long heavy locks dropping like stalks of kelp around my shoulders. All I could think about was how long it was going to take to blow dry this Mount Everest of hair and then tame it with a hot comb. Too long. My head was coaxed forwards, then backwards, then side to side, and back once more. I cringed as she combed through my tangles with the blow dryer attachment, stopping every now and then to examine the patches of hair stuck to my scalp because I failed to let her know the relaxer had been burning me. Whoops. They turned into scabs later on. Finally, the blow dryer was put to rest. Now, came the magic. She sectioned my hair off into little parts, holding them up with metal clasps. I heard the clank of iron as she removed the hot comb from the oven, pressing it against a towel to dispel some of the heat, and then running it through the first strand of hair.

The air smelled toasty. Like, someone forgot to turn off their electric stove and pieces of bread had fallen into the burner, charring them to black bits. A little whisp of smoke traveled up into the air. Is this normal? Five seconds later, I didn’t care about the answer to that question. I looked at my reflection in the mirror, amazed at how straight that one strand of hair had become and anxiously awaited the final product, my face erupting into an ear-to-ear grin.

I emerged from the salon two hours later, the back of my collar damp, but more than pleased with the results. I ran my hands over my now shiny, smooth, bone straight head of hair, thinking how sucky it would be if the ominous clouds overhead decided to release their water at that very moment. Quickly, I ran to the minivan, urging my mom to hurry.

“It’s going to rain!” I said, sheltering my beautiful hair with my arms. She unlocked the doors and I jumped in. A drop of water splashed against the windshield. And then, another. And then four more. And then, it stopped. I wasn’t quite at that age where I smirked yet, but I elicited a sound similar to it. That was California weather for you.

And now, Nick Carlsen was touching my hair. My hair. I could die. I hadn’t been this close to him since I stood behind him during the fifth grade Spelling Bee and reached up to smell his hair. I nearly swooned at the memory. It had smelled like rain. I was blushing and grinning all at the same time, sitting perfectly erect in my desk chair.

“It feels so weird,” Nick said as he ran his hand over my hair that I had thrown back into a ponytail—a ponytail that only required one rubberband, not two. Weird? How can it feel weird? It looks just like the hair of every other girl in this classroom—with the exception of Tammy whose own hair fell around her shoulders in tight, neat braids. I reached up to feel my own hair. Silky and soft to the touch. Just as the magic of the hot comb promised. How was mine so different?

I suddenly felt extremely self-conscious as Nick ran his milky smooth fingers through my mane, shrinking a bit from his touch. I had gone from elation to pure shame in under a matter of minutes once those words fell out of his mouth. That perfect mouth of his. Formed by perfect lips. Not too big. Not thin at all. Just the right amount of…meat.

“Here. Let me feel your hair,” my best friend Tammy said, reaching out to touch Nick’s smooth, straight light brown locks.

“Tammy,” I scolded her underneath my breath.

She retracted and sat back in her desk. “What?”

“Don’t.”

“Well, what makes your hair so special?” She asked me before turning back to Nick. “It’s human hair. Just like yours. She’s not a horse. Or dog, for that matter.”

I buried my head in my folded arms.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Nick said. “I’ve just never seen her hair that way. It’s cool.”

I looked up and smiled at him. He smiled back.

“Cool? So, what? It wasn’t cool before she got it straightened?”

Back down, my head went. “Tammy,” I groaned.

“No.” Nick sounded flustered. “That’s not what I’m saying. Her hair’s always been cool.”

“Ahuh,” Tammy said, exhaling. “But you’ve never wanted to feel it before, have you?”

I raised my head again, eying Nick sideways.

“I’ve always wanted to feel her hair actually.” A deep flush rose up to his face. His eyes fell to the floor. “But it would’ve been weird to ask randomly.”

“Why?”

“Why would it have been weird?”

“No. Why have you always wanted to feel her hair?”

“Tammy. Just stop already.” I sat upright in my desk again. “He doesn’t need to explain himself.”

Nick didn’t seem to hear me. “I donno,” he said quietly. “I just have.” He got up slowly and trudged over to the pencil sharpener.

I shot Tammy a nasty look.

“What did I do?” she asked.

“You were badgering him about touching my stupid hair.”

“I was doing damage control. First, he wants to touch it. Then, the next kid will want to touch it. And then, the next. And the next after that. Pretty soon, the entire eighth grade will have their grimy hands all up in your grill. Is that what you want?”

I rubbed my eye. “You assume too much.”

“So, it doesn’t bother you that he said your hair felt weird?”

I paused.

“Mmhmm.”

“He was curious!”

“We’re not spectacles, Astra. We are not freaks at a circus. Monkeys in a cage meant to be ogled at.” Oh great. Here we go. “And they don’t own us. Our bodies do not belong to them like those slave masters believed they did back in the 1800s. As if they have the right to just come walking up to us, asking if they can feel our hair—or not even ask at all, please. Child, go feel your own hair. Respect, that’s all I’m asking for.”

I pressed my hands up against my ears and laid my forehead on my desk. My best friend had given me a monumental headache.

“Astra, are you listening to me?”

“No.”

“Astra.” She snapped her fingers above my ear.

“Leave me alone,” I mumbled through my sleeve. Yes, I cared that Nick called my hair weird. But I didn’t exactly know why. Boys called stuff weird all the time. And it certainly didn’t bother me as much as it bothered Tammy, but everything bothered Tammy these days. Maybe it was the puberty, I don’t know. And anyway, Nick didn’t even know why he called it weird. I mean, did it really matter? If he didn’t mean any harm or offense, did it matter? It shouldn’t have. Should it?

Crystal Lancaster