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Tacarra didn’t stay far, so about ten minutes later, I was walking up to her house. Tacarra stayed with both her mother and father and she had a little brother, named Malik, who was in the fourth grade. They stayed in a single family, three bedroom, two bath home, the complete opposite of my living arrangements.
I knocked on the door and Tacarra’s
mother, Mrs. Scott came to the door with a smile on her face. Tacarra was the spitting image of her mother. They both had this rich chocolate skin, and boy were they thick.
“Hey, Antonia, how are you doing this morning?” Mrs. Scott asked me as she pulled me into the house for a hug.
I flinched and pulled back when her hand touched the sore spot on my back where my aunt had struck me with the belt the other morning.
“I’m doing okay. Is Tacarra here?” I asked her.
“Yes, she’s back there in her room. How’s your college application going? Did you put in your application yet for UM?” she asked me.
I smiled proudly, knowing that I had just done it this morning. She wasn’t even related to me, and this lady cared about me way more than my own flesh and blood did.
“Yes, I sure did. I went down to the library this morning and completed it,” I beamed.
“That’s great and I know that you’ll get in. Go ahead on to the back, Tacarra is back there,” she said.
I knocked on Tacarra’s door and she yelled for me to come inside. She was lying on her back, with her Mac laptop on her stomach as she listened to music. Every time I came into Tacarra’s room, I would always fall in love with it. She was so lucky to have not only her own room but also her own bathroom in it as well. Her room was painted pink and white and she had pictures of August Alsina all around and pictures of her and her other friends. I always wondered why there weren’t any pictures of me hanging up on her wall, but I never got around to asking.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” Tacarra asked me as I took a seat on the chair that was pulled in at her desk.
“I just figured that I would stop by since everybody in the house went out of town to Orlando,” I said and she sat up in the bed.
“And they didn’t take you?” she asked me.
“No, but it’s fine,” I said, waving it off like it didn’t mean anything to me, when it really did.
“Antonia, why do you always do that?” she asked, setting the laptop on the side of her and giving me her undivided attention.
“Do what?” I asked, confused.
“You always try to put on this tough exterior like nothing in life bothers you. You run away from the way you really feel, and it’s not good to keep those things bottled in all the time,” she said, and I nodded my head.
This wasn’t the first time that Tacarra and I have had this talk, and just like the first time, I didn’t really want to have this conversation. She knew that, so she decided to change the subject.
“Hey, let me flat iron your hair for you. I’m so tired of seeing you rock this raggedy ponytail,” she said in a joking way as she got out of her bed. I looked at her and shook my head no.
“Come on, it’s not like I’m going to do that foul shit to you that Porsha did,” she said.
In a way, I felt like she was trying to be hurtful. Like she took the experience that I had when I was ten years old as a joke or something. Only reason I had even told Tacarra about that situation was because one time she saw the scar on my back and had asked me how I got it and I told her. I regretted it now because I felt like she was taking it for a joke.
Seven years ago, it was Easter Sunday and I was ten years old. For some strange reason, my aunt wanted to go to church that particular day. She had woken everybody extra early so that we could all get ready for church. Ever since I was a little girl, I had this long, pretty, thick hair, and it was always curly. Since it was Easter Sunday, my aunt decided to have Porsha straighten my hair out for me.
“Hurry up and sit your ass down because I don’t even feel like doing this shit!” Porsha had barked at me. At this time, she was seventeen years old.
I sat down at the chair and allowed her to use the hot comb on my hair. Each time she would run the comb through my hair, my curly hair would get straight, leaving it to fall in the middle of my back. Until this day, I don’t know if she was jealous of my long hair or what, but all I remembered was her holding me down in the chair, putting the comb on my skin, and leaving it there. I screamed to the top of my lungs as the heat burned my skin. I was ten years old, so I didn’t have on a shirt, just a pair of underwear. Of course, when my aunt came to see what all the commotion was about, she lied and said that it was an accident because I kept moving around.
“Hush up with all of that damn crying in here,” my aunt said, and then she sat down on the couch and watched as Porsha straightened my hair for me.
My aunt never would admit it, but I knew for a fact that she knew that Porsha had burned me on purpose, which is why she stayed there on the couch for the remainder of the time that it took for me to get my hair straightened.
“That wasn’t funny, Tacarra,” I said after I snapped out of my daydream. I remembered that day verbatim and that reason alone was why I didn’t like for people to play in my hair because I couldn’t trust the situation.
“You’re right, and I’m sorry. Here, I’ll even let you face the mirror so that you can see what I’m doing,” she said.
I thought about it for a while and then I nodded my head, deciding that she could go ahead and do my hair for me. I stood up and turned the chair around so that I could be facing the mirror. As she did my hair, we talked about a little bit of everything and I kind of felt like I was getting my friend back. My hair hadn’t been straight since seven years ago, and boy had it grown since then. The shit was way past the middle of my back. After she finished with my hair, I looked in the mirror at myself, and it was the first time in a long time that I was able to say something positive about myself. I actually looked beautiful.
