Nappily Married

Chapter One Make a list, I told myself. Things I swore not ever to do again: 1 Go out drinking with my best friend, Wendy, which somehow always got me into trouble. 2 Return to the relaxer chair, where I now sit. 3 And most important, never ever fall in the path of Clint Fairchild again. Dr. Clint Fairchild to you, the man who broke my heart, stomped all over it, then gave it back, telling me we would always be friends. Nothing good ever comes out of dealing with the past. "All right, Miss Thing, you know there ain't no going back. Once I lay this product on, it's O-V-A, over." Shane stirred the white mixture until it looked like a perfect Betty Crocker icing. I stared at myself in the mirror. I'd stopped counting how many people confused me with Melanie B, the chocolate spice of the Spice Girls. I had the same coral-toned skin, wild spirals coming out of my head in some spots, and a serious Pam GrierFoxy Brown style in others. Countless times I'd been asked who did my weave. No add-ons, no glue or thread, just me, 100 percent, the real deal. The woman in the next chair spoke with her chin pushed down to her chest, with long straight extensions attached to a winding circle of cornrows on her head. "I can't believe she's about to put a chemical on all that natural hair." "You putting a chemical on her, Shane?" Josie, the salon owner, was so engrossed by what she was about to witness, she could barely lead her closed-eyed customer to the washbowl, bumping her into the chair. "Oops, I'm sorry," she told her customer, then turned her attention back to Shane. "You thought about just pressing it out, see if she likes it straight?" "I'm just giving her what she asked for." Shane took notice of all the eyes upon him. "I'm not selling crack, here, ladies. Back up off me." He waved a plump hand to his peers. My mother had made sure I got my monthly dose. It was all coming back to me, from the age of five years old when my mother stood on one side of me and pulled my hair out of the barrettes and bands. "Do something with this. I can't work this hard anymore." "Yeah, it's thick. Pauletta, how have you gone on as long as you did, girl? You were right for bringing her in. We'll start out with a mild." "Mild?" someone questioned. "You ain't gone do nothing but tease that child's hair with mild. Put some super on there." The first perm was thirty years ago, and nothing had changed. It still took a congressional meeting over my head to decide what to do. "Everybody in here would pay for that hair, solid cash, and you about to put the heat to it," Stella chimed in from two stations away. "What a waste," Tikki said in between the smoke rising from the flat iron going through her customer's hair. Women lined the dryer seats, the waiting chairs, and the hot seats where they'd been ordered not to move or they'd be burned, but no one could resist spying on the frantic young woman with the healthy natural mane who'd demanded chemical assistance. Pronto. Few black women even knew what their natural hair looked like and probably hadn't seen it since the baby pictureThomas, Trisha R. is the author of 'Nappily Married ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780312361303 and ISBN 0312361300.