Becomes Becoming: Day 2, 02 Nov 2012

“What you talking about girl?” she finally asked. The puzzle on her face softened with concern. She could tell something truly was eating me and I was struggling to get it out. I took a deep breath and began.

“You said that I want perfection and that I would get nothing,” I started. I paused again.

“If this about the hair, no problem. I already forget,” she told me kindly. I glanced quickly at her. She knew I wasn’t talking about the hair. She was trying to give me an avenue back to keeping my privacy. Her concern was shouting from the bold crease crossing her forehead and her small eyes angled in an anxious slant. She was trying to send me comfort with her eyes. But all my eyes could return was an inner anguish. I took the concern and remembered her wisdom, and decided to carry on.

“There was this guy, this man,” I began again, “and I just broke up with him. At the same time, I can’t stop thinking about him. My heart hurts. And I don’t know if breaking up was the right thing to do.”

“Is that it? A boy?!” Mama Keita smiled. “Ahh, this pain every woman know. Don’t you see it on the movies all the time. It always work out in the end. You will be fine. You pretty girl. You will find man no trouble,” she tried to assure me. She motioned at the TV across the room. A woman was wailing after a shouting match with her man had ended with him leaving. This was a Nollywood movie, so when I say wailing, I really mean wailing, like paid professional mourners. “See, they get back together in four more scenes, watch. It always works out.”

“Yeah, but that’s a movie, this is my life.” Logic and practicality never leaves me, even in times of despair. “I need help with my life.”

She sighed. “Dalia, what do you want to know?” Her daughters continued to braid the other women’s hair but I noticed every head was angled in our direction. Well, I guess I will be the entertainment this time, I surmised.

Airing my dirty laundry with a group of strangers was just not done in my book. I liked to appear put together and on my game. That was why people entrusted me at work, my friends believed my opinions, and my lovers admired me from the start. I come across pretty polished and do a decent job of hiding any cracks of self-doubt or stupidity. And not to sound arrogant, but I pretty much did have it together. But when it came to love, things always just fell apart. And going through the same cycle of thoughts in my head, pity parties with the same people, and invective rants via ill-advised phone calls or cowardly emails to the ex was keeping me in the same loop of like-love-mehhh-doubt-dump and repeat. Maybe doing a little airing out would clear some of the dust in my love life.

She pulled her shoulders back to receive what I had to give. I started again.

“I had been dating this guy for a long time. And I just decided to end it with him. But it wasn’t like he was a terrible guy but at the same time it wasn’t right for me anymore either.” She had guided my head back toward the front of the store and had begun plaiting again. “I still think I made the right decision but I still wake up with him on my mind and he is still there when I sleep too.”

“If you say you made the right decision, then where is the problem? You will forget him in time. Time solves everything,” she offered.

I gave an ironic half-smile. “My ex used to say the same thing. ‘Time solves all things’,” I said. “I figured three years was time enough to have a solution. So I ended it. I was tired of the same old delays and the same old stories.”

“So tell me about him, your ex.”

“I’ve known him for seven years, across four continents,” smiling at the memories of us spread across the globe. “We dated the last three and I guess I always had him in my mind as the one I should be with. He was the one impractical thing in my life. But I always figured love was the one area where logic and practicality didn’t apply… I always thought finding love was like watching magic; the details didn’t matter, the experience did. But the last year was as if someone explained the trick to me and none of it seemed so special anymore.”

I waited but Mama Keita was quiet and plaiting. I pulled forward against her plaiting to look back at her.

She jumped a little when I looked back. “Oh, I didn’t know you finished. I figure you would just keep talking. Go on, I’m listening. Keep going,” she prodded. She pushed my head back around so she could keep working.

“So he was—,” she tapped me on the shoulder.

I looked at her and she cocked her head at me with a raised eyebrows. “What is the boy’s name?”

Right, begin at the beginning.

I wasn’t in a hair braid shop anymore. I was on a dark street in China, Beijing to be exact. I had been exploring China all summer and was meeting a friend to my favorite club spot. It was an expat club, which meant you could find a few people who could keep the rhythm and, best of all, buy you drinks. Being one of the few Black women in the city had its perks. It had inspired a boldness and freedom in me that I’ve rarely experienced since. My friend, Robin, was an ex-patriot like me and the only other Black woman I’d met all summer. I eyed the street vendor turning the skewered meat on his make-shift rotisserie. It was 11 at night, still a little too early to be setting up shop. The real crowd would gather around 3 in the morning, with hungry and drunk expats vying for the little scraps of meat on the wooden skewers. I vaguely wondered if he was making his own dinner when I noticed Robin crossing the street. She was bringing the friend she had promised and he looked tall from afar. My excitement matched their quick steps. I did a quick check of my outfit and felt my booty for confidence.

I met them with a giggle. Giggling is the one girly-girl trait I allow. I missed his name at first. I was too busy checking out that body. Tall, muscular, chocolate with a bright smile; a name really didn’t matter at the moment. Later I learned it was Oludayo. It literally meant “joy arrives” and it arrived in a delectable package.