'Steel Wool', by Chere Taylor

Every morning begins the same way. A quick, sugary breakfast cereal, followed by lotion smoothed into me and my older sister’s brown limbs. Then comes the ritual I dread most. The daily hair combing.
Carmen goes first. She’s eleven and her hair happens to resemble that of our bi-racial mother’s. Both of them share the same, smooth, beautiful black flood, that can be styled in so many, painless ways. Carmen sits patiently on the floor as my mother unravels then twists her strands into long, thin braids. When she’s done, Carmen looks both stylish and impressive. My mother works as a hairstylist at the Beauty Mark Salon.
Then it’s my turn.
“Cora June,” she shouts and already there is a weariness in her voice. “Come get your hair combed.”
“No!” I yell back from today’s hiding place, under the bunk bed.
“Either you get your hair combed, or you’re gonna get a whuppin’. You understand me, Cora June?”
This is a new offer, a proposal she’s never made before. I take time to consider.
“Okay mama,” I reply in all sincerity. “Gimmie the whuppin’.”
My mother grumbles but there’s a smile on her face too as she approaches my hiding spot. She is a young woman who gave birth to both of us while in her teens.
She drags me from underneath the bed talkin’ about how my nine-year old butt is going to learn. She plants me squarely on the floor beneath her as she sits on the couch, trapping my shoulders with her thick legs. The comb descends on me.
“Owww!”
“Hush up, June-bug.”
I continue to whimper as she pulls and tugs my hair. While my Afro is as black and beautiful as hers and my sister’s, the texture is more coarse, something likened to sheep’s wool.
“Your hair is ninety percent of who you are,” my mother intones as she drags the wide tooth comb through my unyielding hair. “The correct hairstyle can make a plain woman beautiful and a beautiful woman outstanding. Therefore, a black woman always has her hair styled before she leaves the house.”
It’s not clear if she is speaking to me or my hair as she mercilessly forces the comb through my tight tangles and then pulls at the roots.
“Shoot me dead before I leave the house without my hair combed. I mean it. I surely do.”
My mother is full of aphorisms like these. A black woman’s hair…and I mean it. I surely do, confident the whole world stands behind her. I’m now old enough to understand that her love for mottos was the result of her own mother deserting her at age three. Her entire childhood was spent passed around from grandmother, to aunt, and to grandmother again, like a sack of dirty laundry. Adages were one of her ways of anchoring herself in her unstable world. How she retained her sense of morals and decency.
Tears form in my eyes and dot my cheeks, but I’m trying so hard to be still, to be good. Why is my hair, I wonder with increasing bitterness, so different from the rest of my family? The surface reason was because Carmen and I have different fathers. But as my mother works on my head, my tight, kinky curls begin to feel like a personal weakness. Or to be more precise, what she believes to be a weakness. Something that needs to be rooted out. Failing that, then molded, shaped to her liking, no matter what damage it may cause me.
At last, I can’t take anymore and I scream, an ear piercing shriek.
“Argh!” My mother screams back and throws the comb on the couch. Mercifully, she grabs the brush.
Brushing my hair is a much easier process. It’s almost painless and she sweeps my hair into the exact same up-do hair style I’d worn every day since age four. Finally, she allows me to run to my sister for comfort and we stand together holding hands. Carmen with her long, exotic black braids and me with a large puff ball sitting on the top of my head. I’m still whimpering.
“Cry-baby.” My mother is still young herself and childish insults come easy for her.
“When you gonna act normal? No one’s killing you. I’m just styling your hair. You wanna wear the same damn hairstyle for the rest of your life?”
Later in the day will come the little gifts and privileges. A trip to the ice-cream store, perhaps. Or maybe she will allow me to play on her private cell phone for an hour. Unspoken apologies for losing her temper and soothe her conscience, only for the same pattern to be repeated the very next day, and the next.
As Carmen and I grow into adulthood, our mother reluctantly relinquishes control over our hair. Carmen becomes a professional model and her wealth and position gives her the ability to keep our mother at a safe distance. In every photo shoot, Carmen sports a different hairstyle, much to my mother’s long distance approval.
My own life more or less resembles our mother’s. I too had a child at age sixteen, a healthy boy I named Aaron. I currently work as the sales manager at our local Dollar Tree.
Money is always tight.
My mother visits us often, bearing Lego kits for Aaron and advice for me.
“We can do something with that.” She says as she points to my natural hair-do of spring curls.
“I like my hair just the way it is.” I reply, catching her nervous tone.
She sighs.
“Don’t you feel limited living in your own little world?”
We stare at each other, from opposite poles of the earth, my mother with gentle puzzlement over my un-need for the sense of belonging she so desperately craves, and me with my inability to explain to her that she is truly free. If only she could see.

Chere Taylor enjoys wasting many hours of her life buried in a good book or binge watching bad cinema on Netflix. She has a passion for reading, writing and almost everything involving the works of Stephen King. You can find her stories in Another Realm, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Chamber, Granfalloon, Potato Soup Journal and Books ‘n Pieces Magazine. She’s also been known to lurk around her Inkitt account at https://www.inkitt.com/chereevans.