Corn Rows

Today I'm playing the middle child. That's the privilege of social acceptance in this realm--when you're considered family in the otherwise strenuous pecking order. On my left, Jessica, who's a year younger than me and maybe double my size runs her fingers through my feathery brown hair. Despite her age, she's the alpha with her intimidating command of ebonics and rogue fists. Ebony, her older sister occupies my right and dominates a sharp fine tooth comb in a game of see-saw with her sister. They're generally perplexed by the consistency of my hair but still determined to tame it into the same mahogany rows that sprawl across their own heads in the 45 minute bus trip we have to the inner city.

Every few weeks, for the better part of 6 years, this is my life. I'm 10 maybe, and even at this age I can appreciate that tactile artistry required for Jessica and Ebony to do what they intend to do with my head. But my lay appreciation does little to lessen the pain. They're convinced that I need braids in my hair and I offer little resistance against Jessica's general 'assertiveness' despite my knowledge of how this usually goes down. They regard me like a doll because I'm smaller and the obvious minority on the bus and they find me to be a fascinating oddity in 'the hood'. Even Justin, one of the only other anglo-saxons and the default alpha male yields to Jessica when she shakes her fists at him and demands his orthodontic rubber bands. They're perfect for little braids.

Jessica and Ebony pull my hair in a way that elicits the worst pain I've ever felt in my preadolescent life. This is their version of love. When one jerks to the left, the other retaliates to the right and I try with all my might to hold back my tears. If a drop happens to slip, Jessica gives me a hard pat on the back and tells me that if her 6 year old sister Jasmine can take the pain of braiding, I can. When they're not tugging and pulling and braiding, they're running the comb through tangles and across my scalp to let me know that no part of this is going to be pleasant. To make matters worse, no session is complete without a little bickering between them, seemingly taken out on me. There is no relief as the shortage of time expedites their efforts and the bouncing of the bus often creates an unintentional, but no less painful yank.

6 braids, and 45 minutes later, my head looks like I've been run over by a car. The braids resemble tire tracks running dead center down my head, adhered to my scalp by their tight french methodology. The rest of my hair flies loose and free around my shoulders as if thankful to not be confined into the arrow straight, aching rows that run straight to my neck. Mercifully, Jessica and Ebony wrestle the excess of my locks into a ponytail to make their unfinished work less conspicuous. Jessica, in Jessica fashion, shakes her fists at me and tells me not to take the braids out during the school day so they can finish on the ride home. She's already scolded me today because she doesn't understand "why white people wash their hair so damn much" and why I always take my "damn braids out after all her hardass work." Truth is, it's Sister Loraine who makes me take them out mostly because she can't look at me without laughing. She is our keeper despite the Lord-of-the-Flies-ish social order established on the bus rides to and from.

Kids like us are poor. There's not much more to it than that. Today, I probably make more than my parents did in those early years, but I'm not bitter. It's created quite the world view considering I grew up in the most dangerous city in New York. Back then, all I knew were the gated up nail and weave salons, the loiterers, the do rags, the boarded up houses, and the haze that seemed to settle on the city streets of my world. At that point, the suburbs were a myth and a legend and society for me was the urbana I saw out of those bus windows. This was my world view as we went from our inner city homes to our inner city school. It was our sanctuary, where I was the minority but 'minority' was never explicitly spelled out for any of us and races and religions mattered very little. But what mattered most was that Jessica and Ebony, every few weeks or so, would attempt to braid my whole head into neat little corn rows. This was their version of tough love and it was the first time I'd ever felt like I mattered.