When a Black woman gets her hair done, it is both ritual and risk. It will require you to sit in a salon chair for hours, or under a dryer. It requires you to be temporarily forgotten with a wet head in a sink, in a chair, in the kitchen. The stylist I trust the most should be dangerous. Her hands, like my mother’s. Hands that have held heads at the nape of necks into sinks, tugged at the roots to braids, and placed fiery combs of steel close to scalps to get new growth to lay down. In retrospect, those hands should be the same ones that have cradled guns and knives to lovers’ throats, beaten children, and, so tenderly, put babies to sleep. The garden on my head had grown out of its textured holiness, and into a coiled mess of my mistakes. So, when my sister recommended I go to some girl’s house for my next style, I did not flinch at the address. I did not turn my nose. I...
