The Other Black Girl(104)
“You been there?” Hazel asked Nella, surprised.
Nella shook her head. “No, I just—is that where Camille is from, too?”
“Believe it or not, yes. She’s part of that small point-five percent of Black people who grew up there.”
“Now that’s something,” Malaika said.
Nella regarded her friend, who appeared at ease now that she’d seen Hazel’s friends really did have mouths instead of the multiple rows of leech teeth she’d presumed before arriving. But when Malaika caught her eye, that ease quickly transformed into concern. She wrinkled her eyebrow, as though to ask, You good?
Nella wasn’t good. Far from it.
She swallowed and glanced over at Hazel, who had grabbed a satchel from behind the couch and was now starting to take out long, vibrant pieces of fabric. “I picked up a bunch of these last weekend—you know, from that African fabric store I got India’s scarf at,” Hazel said, holding up a black scarf with rows and rows of tiny white and red diamonds. “They were having a sale, two for twenty-five. Take a look and see which one you want?”
“Those are gorgeous,” said Malaika, taking the satchel from Hazel so she could pass it to Nella. “Nell, that black-and-red one would look great on you.”
Nella accepted the bag awkwardly, still hung up on Missoula, and still getting weird eyes from Malaika. She considered pulling her friend aside to tell her that maybe coming here wasn’t such a good idea after all, but she knew how it would look for the two of them to go off and have a private conversation at an intimate party such as this one: rude at best; suspicious at worst.
Nella plucked the scarf Malaika had pointed out and held it up to the light. “I think this one’s the winner,” she said, setting the satchel on the ground between her feet.
“Nice choice. Wanna slide on over here? I can try a few different scarf styles on you and then you can pick which ones you want to learn how to do.”
“Sounds great.” Nella removed the large black elastic from her hair and slid her cushion over so that her shoulders rested against Hazel’s knees. The act alone sent a jolt of memory up her back muscles. As Hazel stuck her hands in Nella’s hair, giving it a superficial feel and then roaming her way around, Nella couldn’t help but recall how many times she’d done this exact same thing with her mother back when she was a kid, and her grandmother, too, whenever her father took her out there to visit and she wanted her grandbaby girl to have freshly done braids. In almost every instance, she’d hated it: when she was getting cornrows; when she was getting DIY relaxers (the year that Nella’s mother said they needed to start “cutting back”); when she had to sit through her mother’s tedious soap operas; when her grandmother insisted on pressing the curler so close to her forehead that she could feel her skin sizzling, even if “it’s not touching!” like Grandma always promised. Nella was tender-headed; always had been. Restless, too.
But there’d also been something profound in those moments. Something intangible. This something was in the look that her friends gave her when she told them how many hours she’d spent sitting between her mother’s legs watching the 227 marathon that had been on TV One that weekend (then, explaining what 227 was); it was in the nature of this elongated physical contact that most non-Black teenagers didn’t have with their mothers, but she did. And it was in the little things such contact—however many hours of time she’d spent with hands in her hair—taught her about the women in her family. Hair-care regimens, passed down from both sides. Patience, until the fine line of impatience settled over the whole scene like a bad odor. Perfectionism.
Nella had adapted and incorporated a few of these elements into her own hair-care routines as she’d gotten older. But the one that she didn’t consciously remember holding on to was the one that drew her to getting her hair done in the first place. Wasn’t that part of what had attracted her to the idea of going natural, anyway? Being able to do it herself?
Even still, she relaxed her shoulders as she felt the poking of a comb, and when she felt a few bobby pins here and there, she let every hint of apprehension go. She forgot about being mistaken for the other Black girl in the office. She forgot about that girl who’d gotten shoved into the backseat of a car. And she forgot about that awful pickaninny cover. She relaxed so much, really, that she didn’t flinch when she felt the shocking coolness of something creamy touch her scalp. In fact, she leaned into it, welcomed it, as though the substance had been a part of her body all along.
“What’s that?”
Nella jumped at the sound of Malaika’s voice so close to her ear. Opening her eyes—had she closed them? She didn’t recall doing so—she watched wordlessly as her friend dipped her nose close to her scalp so she could smell it.
“Just some hair grease that I’ve been using for a while. It’s called Smooth’d Out. I think I gave Nella a jar of this back when you guys came to Curl Central.”
“Oh yeah,” Nella murmured, as her eyes locked on the open blue jar Hazel was holding. “That’s the stuff that kind of smells like Brown Buttah.”
“Yep. I always like to prepare my scalp before I put scarves on,” Hazel explained. “More moisture to lock in. You’ve been using the stuff I gave you, right, Nell?”
“Of course I have.”