“Being Black and well-to-do in Wisconsin is like living in a
frozen tundra. There’s no one around like you and it’s always too cold.” A
slight tug to my head brings me back from my idle musing. I try to sink lower
into the stuffed plastic chair, but it reclines no further. Man it’s cold.
Thank goodness I had the foresight to wear boots. I tap them restlessly on the
iron bar. I only wish I had been as wise in my food selection before I left my
house this morning. I stare at the steadily dwindling size of my Snickers bar
and take another long drink of water. I refuse to buy the overpriced snacks
wrapped in cellophane on the thin blue carpet floor.
I’m four hours in, half-time; the normal time when I start
getting antsy. I stare again at the movements flickering on the small TV screen.
The movies offer some comfort although they are so predictable I can even
follow the ones in non-English. Despite the juvenile plots, I still get into
them. It could be the result of sitting motionless for four hours has finally
numbed my brain as well. But I wait in anticipation for the redemption I know
will come to the faithful women who waits for her man to finally act “right”.
My goodness, it’s the same story everywhere I guess. Simple or complex,
everyone wants the good girl to eventually win.
Normally these movies get me through but this time is
different. The woman is slow and the room is cold. I glance around at the shiny
posters taped to the bare, white walls. Some have rips in them but the room is
overall neat. Along the wall of windows is a weathered couch, sunken in the
middle from all the big bottoms waiting their turn. I sigh and stare at the sun
shining on a cloudless, winter day. The sun doesn’t reach my chair. I touch my
hair to see how much further there is to go. What a way to spend a Saturday.
My body lulls to the rhythm of hands pleating in my hair. A
jerk brings me back to my senses. I glance at the woman who has a round face,
kind and firm. Her eyes break their concentration to give me a brief smile. We
are beyond the point of chit-chat so we go back to work: her braiding, me
staying in position. The woman’s name is Mama Keita. I would never dream of
saying it without the “Mama”. She was old enough to be my grandma and saying
Mama felt right.
A knock at the door broke our reverie; it’s always locked.
Mama Keita’s braid shop is on the cusp between the hood and suburbia. For a
shop full of women, they take no precautions. Her granddaughter checks her
grandma’s eyes for approval before opening the door. It’s a delivery man
bringing the main currency of this shop: lots and lots of hair. In exchange,
they give him a wad of cash. No wonder they lock the door. Everything here is
cash currency. Don’t even think of handing Mama K your visa.
I took the break to walk on my stiff legs. There was nowhere
to go but make a tiny semi-circle and stretch. After five minutes or so, Mama
Keita summoned me back to the chair with just a look. She says so much with her
eyes. I wondered if that’s an age thing or a wisdom thing… I eyed that chair
like the enemy it was. The piece of yellow stuffing sprouted from the rip in
the dull red plastic. It was the only bright spot in the shop and I was about
to sit on it. To delay the inevitable, I walked past the chair to the mirror to
assess her work. It was a pretty good job but not precisely what I had in mind.
It was too stiff, didn’t flow when I shook my head, and the length was too
long. All of these points I was storing up in my head as I tossed and scrunched
my hair in every imaginable way that I would wear it. The crimp between my eyes
was prominent as I squinted my eyes to examine some more. Yes, I found it: some
of these twists were smaller than the other. “Unacceptable!” rang through my
head as I counted back all of the flaws and swiveled triumphantly on one boot
to accost Mama Keita. Before I could open my mouth, she clucked her tongue and
said, “Dalia, sit.”
I grabbed a mirror on the way and plopped myself in the
chair. I started rattling off all the complaints.
“The twists are smaller on the bottom than it is on the top.
It’s gonna look weird,” I whined.
“It’s too long at the back. I wanted it to stop at my
shoulders… this bottom one goes to the middle of my shoulders,” I explained,
while she looked passively at me waiting for me to finish.
“It doesn’t swing. It’s too stiff, when I twist my head -,”
I started.
She sucked her teeth and looked at me. “That’s enough. I
know what I doing,” her Cameroonian accent adding depth to every word.
“But I know what it’s supposed to look like and this isn’t
it,” I retorted, looking defiantly in her eyes.
“I know what you want so stop this now oh,” she responded.
Although she said it so calm, I could see she was resolved. But I hadn’t
reached the same conclusion.
“I have eyes and I can see and this isn’t going to look
right!” was my response.
“Ach!” she cried. “Why you be so nasty girl! I have eyes too…”
I looked up to see the hurt in her eyes. I thought back on
what I said and realized I’d messed up. Damn, my mouth ran away with me again.
I tried to play dumb. “I wasn’t being mean…” I started
half-heartedly. The instinct to deflect blame has been strong in me since
childhood; it’s hard to shake.
“Dalia, you know what I mean.” She wasn’t buying it. “You
don’t say things like ‘I have eyes and I can see’. You show no respect,” she
spit at me.
I felt horrible. This was a grandma, Mama Keita. And I disrespected
her. The room started to feel warm with my embarrassment. With head down and
eyes pleading, I looked at her and said sorry.
She locked eyes and I watched the hurt dissolve. She finally
said, “If you always keep wanting things perfect, you will end up with nothing,”
and resumed her work. My question from earlier was answered: it’s a wisdom
thing.
Her words “perfect” and “nothing” bounce back and forth in
mind. I sit in silence at her ability to express the main doubt I have about
the big decision I just made in my life. “Do I want too much?”, “Do I want
perfect?” swirled in my head. Although my head was down as she worked, my mind’s
eye was on her and her words. “Did I expect too much from him?” “Was I setting
myself up for failure?” “He didn’t cheat so he couldn’t have been that bad. Did
I make the right decision?” All the thoughts I tried to drown out with
television at home came rebounding in the aftermath of Mama Keita’s words. “Who
was this woman? And how did she know?” I counted up the costs and realized she
was right: I had nothing. Nothing of what really mattered. An inner battle of
being right and being humble and honest raged in my heart and my mind. But I
couldn’t be wrong. I’d already told him what was what and what was right. What
mattered was I was right, he was wrong. Logically speaking, I won, right? My
heart was not exactly on the same page. My mind’s eye wandered back to this
woman. I thought, “If she knew this about me from 4 hours, what else could she
know?” My southern-bred decorum stifled my mouth from speaking about my life to
this stranger. But the question I wanted to ask her repeated in my head like a
mantra. She was chatting away in French with her daughters; while I toiled away
with that question. The question started to pulse with the rhythm of the
pleating of my head.
“Did I want too much from him?” I blurted out. The French
and her hands stopped. I could feel her looking strangely at me and I could
feel the eyes of her daughters too.
“What you say?” Mama Keita asked. I repeated the question
and looked in her eyes. The embarrassment had left me in my desire to know.
When she responded with a quizzical look, I started to remember where I was: a
cash-only shop with no heat and all-Cameroon all-day vibe. The only steady
conversation in the place was Cameroonian French. She couldn’t get what I was
saying and why was I asking her for advice. I panicked at my brazenness and tried
to divert my eyes from the what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you question in her
eyes.
But then, “Why not?”, floated in my head. What if she was
some old-time sage from Mother Africa who could shore me up with some ancestral
knowledge? Lion King soundtrack played softly in the background of my mind.
Yes, I thought, she might know.
I looked at her again, hesitated, and asked “Do you think I
want too much?”
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