“At least you finally accept that it’s bad.”
Curt laughed. “You know what I mean. Come here.”
He hugged her, kissed her, and then slid down and began to massage her feet; she liked the warm pressure, the feel of his fingers. Yet she could not relax. In the bathroom mirror, her hair had startled her, dull and shrunken from sleep, like a mop of wool sitting on her head. She reached for her phone and sent Wambui a text: I hate my hair. I couldn’t go to work today.
Wambui’s reply came minutes later: Go online. HappilyKinkyNappy.com. It’s this natural hair community. You’ll find inspiration.
She showed the text to Curt. “What a silly name for the website.”
“I know, but it sounds like a good idea. You should check it out sometime.”
“Like now,” Ifemelu said, getting up. Curt’s laptop was open on the desk. As she went to it, she noticed a change in Curt. A sudden tense quickness. His ashen, panicked move towards the laptop.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“They mean nothing. The e-mails mean nothing.”
She stared at him, forcing her mind to work. He had not expected her to use his computer, because she hardly ever did. He was cheating on her. How odd, that she had never considered that. She picked up the laptop, held it tightly, but he didn’t try to reach for it. He just stood and watched. The Yahoo mail page was minimized, next to a page about college basketball. She read some of the e-mails. She looked at attached photographs. The woman’s e-mails—her address was SparklingPaola123—were strongly suggestive, while Curt’s were just suggestive enough to make sure she continued. I’m going to cook you dinner in a tight red dress and sky-high heels, she wrote, and you just bring yourself and a bottle of wine. Curt replied: Red would look great on you. The woman was about his age, but there was, in the photos she sent, an air of hard desperation, hair dyed a brassy blond, eyes burdened by too much blue makeup, top too low-cut. It surprised Ifemelu, that Curt found her attractive. His white ex-girlfriend had been fresh-faced and preppy.
“I met her in Delaware,” Curt said. “Remember the conference thing I wanted you to come to? She started hitting on me right away. She’s been after me since. She won’t leave me alone. She knows I have a girlfriend.”
Ifemelu stared at one of the photos, a profile shot in black-and-white, the woman’s head thrown back, her long hair flowing behind her. A woman who liked her hair and thought Curt would too.
“Nothing happened,” Curt said. “At all. Just the e-mails. She’s really after me. I told her about you, but she just won’t stop.”
She looked at him, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, so certain in his self-justifications. He was entitled in the way a child was: blindly.
“You wrote her too,” she said.
“But that’s because she wouldn’t stop.”
“No, it’s because you wanted to.”
“Nothing happened.”
“That is not the point.”
“I’m sorry. I know you’re already upset and I hate to make it worse.”
“All your girlfriends had long flowing hair,” she said, her tone thick with accusation.
“What?”
She was being absurd, but knowing that did not make her any less so. Pictures she had seen of his ex-girlfriends goaded her, the slender Japanese with straight hair dyed red, the olive-skinned Venezuelan with corkscrew hair that fell to her shoulders, the white girl with waves and waves of russet hair. And now this woman, whose looks she did not care for, but who had long straight hair. She shut the laptop. She felt small and ugly. Curt was talking. “I’ll ask her never to contact me. This will never happen again, babe, I promise,” he said, and she thought he sounded as though it was somehow the woman’s responsibility, rather than his.
She turned away, pulled Curt’s baseball hat over her head, threw things in a bag, and left.
CURT CAME BY LATER, holding so many flowers she hardly saw his face when she opened the door. She would forgive him, she knew, because she believed him. Sparkling Paola was one more small adventure of his. He would not have gone further with her, but he would have kept encouraging her attention, until he was bored. Sparkling Paola was like the silver stars that his teachers pasted on the pages of his elementary school homework, sources of a shallow, fleeting pleasure.
She did not want to go out, but she did not want to be with him in the intimacy of her apartment; she still felt too raw. So she covered her hair in a headwrap and they took a walk, Curt solicitous and full of promises, walking side by side but not touching, all the way to the corner of Charles and University Parkway, and then back to her apartment.
FOR THREE DAYS, she called in sick. Finally, she went to work, her hair a very short, overly combed and overly oiled Afro. “You look different,” her co-workers said, all of them a little tentative.
“Does it mean anything? Like, something political?” Amy asked, Amy who had a poster of Che Guevara on her cubicle wall.
“No,” Ifemelu said.
At the cafeteria, Miss Margaret, the bosomy African-American woman who presided over the counter—and, apart from two security guards, the only other black person in the company—asked, “Why did you cut your hair, hon? Are you a lesbian?”
“No, Miss Margaret, at least not yet.”
Some years later, on the day Ifemelu resigned, she went into the cafeteria for a last lunch. “You leaving?” Miss Margaret asked, downcast. “Sorry, hon. They need to treat folk better around here. You think your hair was part of the problem?”
HAPPILYKINKYNAPPY.COM HAD a bright yellow background, message boards full of posts, thumbnail photos of black women blinking at the top. They had long trailing dreadlocks, small Afros, big Afros, twists, braids, massive raucous curls and coils. They called relaxers “creamy crack.” They were done with pretending that their hair was what it was not, done with running from the rain and flinching from sweat. They complimented each other’s photos and ended comments with “hugs.” They complained about black magazines never having natural-haired women in their pages, about drugstore products so poisoned by mineral oil that they could not moisturize natural hair. They traded recipes. They sculpted for themselves a virtual world where their coily, kinky, nappy, woolly hair was normal. And Ifemelu fell into this world with a tumbling gratitude. Women with hair as short as hers had a name for it: TWA, Teeny Weeny Afro. She learned, from women who posted long instructions, to avoid shampoos with silicones, to use a leave-in conditioner on wet hair, to sleep in a satin scarf. She ordered products from women who made them in their kitchens and shipped them with clear instructions: BEST TO REFRIGERATE IMMEDIATELY, DOES NOT CONTAIN PRESERVATIVES. Curt would open the fridge, hold up a container labeled “hair butter,” and ask, “Okay to spread this on my toast?” Curt thrummed with fascination about it all. He read posts on HappilyKinkyNappy.com. “I think it’s great!” he said. “It’s like this movement of black women.”
One day, at the farmers market, as she stood hand in hand with Curt in front of a tray of apples, a black man walked past and muttered, “You ever wonder why he likes you looking all jungle like that?” She stopped, unsure for a moment whether she had imagined those words, and then she looked back at the man. He walked with too much rhythm in his step, which suggested to her a certain fickleness of character. A man not worth paying any attention to. Yet his words bothered her, pried open the door for new doubts.
“Did you hear what that guy said?” she asked Curt.
“No, what did he say?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
She felt dispirited and, while Curt watched a game that evening, she drove to the beauty supply store and ran her fingers through small bundles of silky straight weaves. Then she remembered a post by Jamilah1977—I love the sistas who love their straight weaves, but I’m never putting horse hair on my head again—and she left the store, eager to get back and log on and post on the boards about it. She wrote: Jamilah’s words made me remember that there is noth
ing more beautiful than what God gave me. Others wrote responses, posting thumbs-up signs, telling her how much they liked the photo she had put up. She had never talked about God so much. Posting on the website was like giving testimony in church; the echoing roar of approval revived her.
On an unremarkable day in early spring—the day was not bronzed with special light, nothing of any significance happened, and it was perhaps merely that time, as it often does, had transfigured her doubts—she looked in the mirror, sank her fingers into her hair, dense and spongy and glorious, and could not imagine it any other way. That simply, she fell in love with her hair.
Why Dark-Skinned Black Women—Both American and Non-American—Love Barack Obama
Many American blacks proudly say they have some “Indian.” Which means Thank God We Are Not Full-Blooded Negroes. Which means they are not too dark. (To clarify, when white people say dark they mean Greek or Italian but when black people say dark they mean Grace Jones.) American black men like their black women to have some exotic quota, like half-Chinese or splash of Cherokee. They like their women light. But beware what American blacks consider “light.” Some of these “light” people, in countries of Non-American Blacks, would simply be called white. (Oh, and dark American black men resent light men, for having it too easy with the ladies.)
Now, my fellow Non-American Blacks, don’t get smug. Because this bullshit also exists in our Caribbean and African countries. Not as bad as with American blacks, you say? Maybe. But there nonetheless. By the way, what is it with Ethiopians thinking they are not that black? And Small Islanders eager to say their ancestry is “mixed”? But we must not digress. So light skin is valued in the community of American blacks. But everyone pretends this is no longer so. They say the days of the paper-bag test (look this up) are gone and let’s move forward. But today most of the American blacks who are successful as entertainers and as public figures, are light. Especially women. Many successful American black men have white wives. Those who deign to have black wives have light (otherwise known as high yellow) wives. And this is the reason dark women love Barack Obama. He broke the mold! He married one of their own. He knows what the world doesn’t seem to know: that dark black women totally rock. They want Obama to win because maybe finally somebody will cast a beautiful chocolate babe in a big-budget rom-com that opens in theaters all over the country, not just three artsy theaters in New York City. You see, in American pop culture, beautiful dark women are invisible. (The other group just as invisible is Asian men. But at least they get to be super smart.) In movies, dark black women get to be the fat nice mammy or the strong, sassy, sometimes scary sidekick standing by supportively. They get to dish out wisdom and attitude while the white woman finds love. But they never get to be the hot woman, beautiful and desired and all. So dark black women hope Obama will change that. Oh, and dark black women are also for cleaning up Washington and getting out of Iraq and whatnot.
CHAPTER 21
It was a Sunday morning, and Aunty Uju called, agitated and strained. “Look at this boy! Come and see the nonsense he wants to wear to church. He has refused to wear what I brought out for him. You know that if he does not dress properly, they will find something to say about us. If they are shabby, it’s not a problem, but if we are, it is another thing. This is the same way I have been telling him to tone it down at school. The other day, they said he was talking in class and he said he was talking because he had finished his work. He has to tone it down, because his own will always be seen as different, but the boy doesn’t understand. Please talk to your cousin!”
Ifemelu asked Dike to take the phone to his room.
“Mom wants me to wear this really ugly shirt.” His tone was flat, dispassionate.
“I know how uncool that shirt is, Dike, but wear it for her, okay? Just to church. Just for today.”
She did know the shirt, a striped, humorless shirt that Bartholomew had bought for Dike. It was the sort of shirt Bartholomew would buy; it reminded her of his friends she had met one weekend, a Nigerian couple visiting from Maryland, their two boys sitting next to them on the sofa, both buttoned-up and stiff, caged in the airlessness of their parents’ immigrant aspirations. She did not want Dike to be like them, but she understood Aunty Uju’s anxieties, making her way in unfamiliar terrain as she was.
“You’ll probably not see anybody you know in church,” Ifemelu said. “And I’ll talk to your mom about not making you wear it again.” She cajoled until finally Dike agreed, as long as he could wear sneakers, not the lace-ups his mother wanted.
“I’m coming up this weekend,” she told him. “I’m bringing my boyfriend, Curt. You’ll finally get to meet him.”
WITH AUNTY UJU, Curt was solicitous and charming in that well-oiled way that slightly embarrassed Ifemelu. At dinner the other night with Wambui and some friends, Curt had reached out and refilled a wineglass here, a water glass there. Charming, was what one of the girls said later: Your boyfriend is so charming. And the thought occurred to Ifemelu that she did not like charm. Not Curt’s kind, with its need to dazzle, to perform. She wished Curt were quieter and more inward. When he started conversations with people in elevators, or lavishly complimented strangers, she held her breath, certain that they could see what an attention-loving person he was. But they always smiled back and responded and allowed themselves to be wooed. As Aunty Uju did. “Curt, won’t you try the soup? Ifemelu has never cooked this soup for you? Have you tried fried plantain?”
Dike watched, saying little, speaking politely and properly, even though Curt joked with him and talked sports and tried so hard to win his affection that Ifemelu feared he might do somersaults. Finally, Curt asked, “Want to shoot some hoops?”
Dike shrugged. “Okay.”
Aunty Uju watched them leave.
“Look at the way he behaves as if anything you touch starts smelling like perfume. He really likes you,” Aunty Uju said, and then, face wrinkling, she added, “And even with your hair like that.”
“Aunty, biko, leave my hair alone,” Ifemelu said.
“It is like jute.” Aunty Uju plunged a hand into Ifemelu’s Afro.
Ifemelu drew her head away. “What if every magazine you opened and every film you watched had beautiful women with hair like jute? You would be admiring my hair now.”
Aunty Uju scoffed. “Okay, you can speak English about it but I am just saying what is true. There is something scruffy and untidy about natural hair.” Aunty Uju paused. “Have you read the essay your cousin wrote?”
“Yes.”
“How can he say he does not know what he is? Since when is he conflicted? And even that his name is difficult?”
“You should talk to him, Aunty. If that is how he feels, then that is how he feels.”
“I think he wrote that because that is the kind of thing they teach them here. Everybody is conflicted, identity this, identity that. Somebody will commit murder and say it is because his mother did not hug him when he was three years old. Or they will do something wicked and say it is a disease that they are struggling with.” Aunty Uju looked out of the window. Curt and Dike were dribbling a basketball in the backyard, and farther away was the beginning of thick woods. On Ifemelu’s last visit, she had woken up to see, through the kitchen window, a pair of gracefully galloping deer.
“I am tired,” Aunty Uju said in a low voice.
“What do you mean?” Ifemelu knew, though, that it would only be more complaints about Bartholomew.
“Both of us work. Both of us come home at the same time and do you know what Bartholomew does? He just sits in the living room and turns on the TV and asks me what we are eating for dinner.” Aunty Uju scowled and Ifemelu noticed how much weight she had put on, the beginning of a double chin, the new flare of her nose. “He wants me to give him my salary. Imagine! He said that it is how marriages are since he is the head of the family, that I should not send money home to Brother without his permission, that we should make his car payments from my salary.
I want to look at private schools for Dike, with all this nonsense happening in that public school, but Bartholomew said it is too expensive. Too expensive! Meanwhile, his children went to private schools in California. He is not even bothered with all the rubbish going on in Dike’s school. The other day I went there, and a teacher’s assistant shouted at me across the hall. Imagine. She was so rude. I noticed she did not shout across the hall to the other parents. So I went over and told her off. These people, they make you become aggressive just to hold your dignity.” Aunty Uju shook her head. “Bartholomew is not even bothered that Dike still calls him Uncle. I told him to encourage Dike to call him Dad but it doesn’t bother him. All he wants is for me to hand over my salary to him and cook peppered gizzard for him on Saturdays while he watches European League on satellite. Why should I give him my salary? Did he pay my fees in medical school? He wants to start a business but they won’t give him a loan and he says he will sue them for discrimination because his credit is not bad and he found out a man who goes to our church got a loan with much worse credit. Is it my fault that he cannot get the loan? Did anybody force him to come here? Did he not know we would be the only black people here? Did he not come here because he felt it would benefit him? Everything is money, money, money. He keeps wanting to make my work decisions for me. What does an accountant know about medicine? I just want to be comfortable. I just want to be able to pay for my child’s college. I don’t need to work longer hours just to accumulate money. It’s not as if I am planning to buy a boat like Americans.” Aunty Uju moved away from the window and sat down at the kitchen table. “I don’t even know why I came to this place. The other day the pharmacist said my accent was incomprehensible. Imagine, I called in a medicine and she actually told me that my accent was incomprehensible. And that same day, as if somebody sent them, one patient, a useless layabout with tattoos all over his body, told me to go back to where I came from. All because I knew he was lying about being in pain and I refused to give him more pain medicine. Why do I have to take this rubbish? I blame Buhari and Babangida and Abacha because they destroyed Nigeria.”