The Haircut

I had beautiful hair. Aunt Pearl said it was my crowning glory. She would hold me in her lap, put a dollop of Suave hair lotion in her palm and run her fingers through my hair. “This will make my baby girl’s hair curly and beautiful.” It made it curly okay. I had the blessing – or the curse – of naturally curly hair. One Christmas, Aunt Pearl sent me my own bottle of Suave wrapped in aluminum foil, The foil hugged the wavy sides of the bottle making it obvious what was inside. I was proud of my hair – too proud according to Mama. It was long and blond and streamed down my back tied back with ribbons –provided by Aunt Sarah. When Mama trimmed my bangs I held in my breath so I wouldn’t breathe in the smoke from her cigarette that she held clinched between her teeth as she clipped my hair. When I was nine years old, Mama decided it was time to cut my hair. Aunt Sarah and I were dead set against the haircut. It was two to one …but when Mama was involved…majority did not rule. She sat me in the middle of the kitchen on a yellow vinyl chair. I was too low for her to work on so she had be get up while she put a couple of catalogues under me – one from Alden’s and one from Sears and Roebuck. Then she started cutting. My beautiful blonde hair soon covered the kitchen floor. Aunt Sarah had tears in her eyes. Mama poured herself another drink and kept on cutting. I could feel my hair spronging up with each snip.

“Rose, when you cut the weight off that girl’s head it is just going to coil up in tight curls. She’s going to look like a little pickininny.”

“What’s a pickininny?”

“Be quiet and stop squirming around or I’ll put your eye out.”

Aunt Sarah was right. The haircut was a big mistake. At school the other kids made fun of me. Lorraine Voliva said that my hair looked like nigger’s wool. I tried everything I could think of to make it straight but nothing worked. Aunt Sarah assure me that it would go back to normal as soon as it grew out again. “Just be patient, honey. It’s just hair. Nothing to be so upset about. It isn’t like you’re going to lose your strength like Samson did. Maybe your Mama was right. You were a little bit too vain about that hair of yours. Now stop moping about and go out there and catch me some crabs.”

I was a good crabber. I had a knack for catching them on a line with a chicken neck or a piece of fat back tied to it. When I had a “mess” of crabs Aunt Sarah dumped them alive still scratching and biting in the old black caldron out by the side of the house and filled the pot with water drawn from the hand pump and the corner of the front porch. Then she lit a fire under the caldron and stood guard while the crabs boiled. When they were ready she scooped them out and carried them in galvanized pails up to the back porch where she had laid out the brown paper. Then we all sat and picked crabs and drank sweet ice tea. When we were all done picking and eating and talking it was my job to take the shells and claws and feelers down to the creek and dump them in. I always wondered if the live crabs recognized the pieces of their dead friends and relations as they went floating out on the tide.