Natural Beauty Read Online Free PDF Page B

me.
"Sorry."
    I
took a deep breath to hold in the tears. "Deep down I know that's why he
doesn't want to marry me. He's ashamed of my race."
    Marin
took my hands in hers and sat next to me. "Which is exactly why I'm so
happy about your hair," she said. "It's about time you embraced your
blackness and started to love yourself for your innate beauty. Love yourself
for exactly who you are."
    Yeah,
I still didn't know what she meant. What did my hair have to do with her
happiness?
    "In
fact," she added as she dropped my hands and started looking around.
"I'm going to take this step with you." She picked up a pair of
scissors and before I could stop her started chopping off her beautiful sisterlocks .
    "What
are you doing? Are you crazy?"
    "What?
It's just hair. It will grow back. That's its only job. To
grow."
    "But
what will John say?"
    She
looked at me strangely. "Why in the world would he care what I do with my
hair? It's my hair not his." She
went back to cutting. "This is perfect. Trust me. These dreads are getting
long. Summer is coming. I don't want to be hot, fat and pregnant and have to
deal with all this hair."
    "Wait. Pregnant?"
    She
turned and smiled at me. "You're going to be an aunt."
    I
screamed and hugged her. At least one of us would be phenomenally happy.

Chapter 7: Set back

 
    Set
Back: During the natural hair journey you suffer a setback due to heat damage,
color damage, or just plain frustration which causes you to do another big
chop. It happens to almost everyone.
    ~~~
    Hair
tip #6: If you have a setback, don't get discouraged. Just start the journey
again. Growing natural hair isn't a race; it's a life style change.
    ~~~
    My
setback came on a Tuesday in May. My hair was in that in between stage where it
was too long for a wash n go, but too short to pull back into a poof. It had
also started behaving badly. It felt dry, knotty and downright unattractive. I
felt like there was nothing I could do with it. For work that day I picked it
out and put a flower in it. It was enough to get me through the day. But by the
time I got home, I literally wanted to shave my head. Instead, I took out the
scissors and a bottle of wine. I turned on some Otis Redding and started
drinking my feelings.
    Merlot
and Otis Redding were two things I had inherited from my father. I could always
tell when he had had a bad day because he would easily go through a bottle of
red and four or five Otis Redding CD's. He told me it was something he had learned
from his father. Though
in those days it was albums. Personally, I preferred my Otis playlist on
my iPod. I didn't have to worry about switching CDs or dusting off records. It
was three straight hours of soul-drenching rhythm and blues.
    I
danced around my apartment with my glass of wine in one hand and a pair of
scissors in the other wondering when I was going to make the first snip. It had
to be done. My hair at this length was too hard to handle and at the rate it
was growing, it would be months before it got to a length that I wanted.
    Halfway through a bottle of wine
and while belting out the lyrics to Try a
Little Tenderness I heard the doorbell ring.
    "What
are you doing here?" I asked Vinny who was
standing in my doorway holding a cardboard box. It had been well over two
months since I had seen him.
    "I
was clearing out my apartment and I found some of your stuff," he said
referring to the box. "Are you okay? Why are you playing Otis? What
happened?"
    I
smiled a little. He remembered. He remembered how I played Otis Redding
whenever I was depressed. But of course, after seven years he should remember something like that.
    I
wasn't thinking clearly though. It could have been the wine, or it could have
been the fact that I hadn't gotten laid since two weeks before we had broken
up, but I suddenly wanted him. I wanted him so bad. Maybe it wasn't him exactly
that I wanted. Maybe I just wanted to feel loved and desired. In any case, I
invited him in.
    "You
want a drink?" I asked