Rose's Rush Hour.

Chapter Twenty.

I wanted to wear the beads as soon as possible so in the afternoon, my mother helped me unplait my braids. They were getting old anyway, and I needed to replace them.

I always loved it when I had to do or undo my hair because it was the time I bonded with my mother. Sitting between her legs while she worked on my hair, exchanging stories about our lives and speaking out our feelings all the while. It was during these times that she would tell me about father and her relatives and I would tell her what Ed and I had been up to.

That particular afternoon, I found myself opening up to her about Callum. I’d never told her about Cyrus because I saw no need to, but it was different with Callum. I didn’t tell her everything in detail, because I knew she understood when I simply uttered the phrase, “I like him.”

That was the thing about my mother and me. We didn’t have to speak a lot in order to communicate our feelings. I’d never spoken about any boy with her, and I told her I liked Callum.

Of course she figured it out and she had no more to say but “I hope it goes well.” And she wrapped her arms around my neck from behind, her face in my hair in an awkward hug.

To me, that was enough reassurance.

Once all the braids were out, I was left with my kinky hair standing up and wide like a bush –or the end of a witch’s broom. I did like how it looked and I was tempted to keep it like my mother’s – in a decorative puff at the back of her head. But I really wanted to wear the beads, and they’d stay better in a style that lasted longer, hence braids again.

I could’ve washed my hair myself, but I let mother do it for me instead. We laughed about little things as she did, and once my hair was all clean and damp, she applied the hair softening creams and plaited my hair again in well-spaced and organised knots. It hurt a bit, but not as much as it used to when I was little.

“Your father always ran away whenever I plaited your hair because he couldn’t see you in pain,” mother said to me, her tone nostalgic.

“I didn’t use to cry that much,” I argued.

“Rosie, you’d wail.”

I snickered at that. “Maybe just a little.”

“It drove me crazy,” she groaned. “You’d wail that you want your hair plaited, and once I started, you’d wail throughout it.”

I laughed. “It’s the price we pay for beauty.”

“Took you long enough to finally understand that.”

When I first got to Richard Town, I envied the white people with soft silky hair – the one that naturally fell down as it grew, unlike mine that grew the same way trees did – standing up.

But then I learned to love my own, and I realised that all kinds of hair came with pros and cons. My hair wasn’t ugly simply because I thought their hair was beautiful. My hair was beautiful just the same as it came with its negatives. Their hair was beautiful just the same as it came with negatives.

But as much as each hair type, eye colour and skin colour all had beauty in itself, it didn’t matter when it came to the heart. It shouldn’t completely define what the person is on the inside and what the person is capable of. Barriers based on these attributes were illogical.

*****

Midday on Wednesday found me seated in Madam Monica’s hair salon, grinning at my reflection in the wall mirror. I looked beautiful.

My previous braids had been of three strands, but these were thick two-strand twists, black in colour and ending at my shoulders in the brown beads Callum had given me.