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“I was a unicorn mermaid,” she shrugged.
She’d been fascinated with unicorns for years. More recently, she’d started liking mermaids as well.
“But what happened to the rubber bands?”
“Unicorn mermaids don’t have ponytails, daddy,” she answered like my question was absurd.
I hoped that their mother would reappear before their hair needed to be really taken care of, but looking at my youngest daughter, I knew we were now past that point.
“You can just blow dry it like mommy does, and it will be back straight,” Fee explained.
That was easier said than done. I didn’t own a blow dryer, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to use it on their hair.
“Baby girl, we don’t have a blow dryer. Can you go and get the brush and rubber bands, so daddy can try to do something to your hair?”
She skipped out of the office, like everything was fine. Meanwhile, I was panicking internally trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do to her hair. I’d never started from scratch with their hair. The most I’d done was brush it back up into the style their mother had already created.
Fee skipped back into my office. She sat in my chair while I stood over her examining her hair. I took a deep breath, held her hair in my hand, and started brushing it from her forehead up to create one ponytail.
She had a head full of long, coily hair and hated to get it combed. She squirmed and complained anytime I had to do anything to it. The old folks called it being tender headed.
“Baby girl, please be still so I can try to get this rubber band on your hair.”
“Ouch, Daddy, that brush hurts!” Fee cried.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to get it all in this rubber band. I’m used to working with it when it’s straight. Not that anything is wrong with your beautiful curls, it’s just that Daddy has to learn how to take care of it this way.”
I was very conscious of the fact that I was raising young black women and that I needed to be careful with the language I used regarding their hair. I didn’t want her to think that I thought straight hair was better than natural hair, but honestly, I wished it was straight.
“Daddy, OUCH!” Fee cried again.
I had to tune out her protests and focus on getting her hair done. I brushed and held and held and brushed until I got all her hair up into one haphazard ponytail. I used one of my old durags to tie it down, hoping it would look decent enough to send her to school the next morning.
* * *
“Ummm…Daddy…” Skye said when she came into the kitchen the next morning. “Fee’s durag came off in the middle of the night and umm…”
Before she could finish, Fee walked into the kitchen. Her hair was sticking straight up in the air like Marge Simpson or the Bride of Frankenstein. It would’ve been comical if we were not on a tight schedule to get out of the house and to our destinations for the day.
“Sorry, Daddy,” Fee said while sitting down to her bowl of cereal.
“It’s fine baby girl, I will fix it in a few minutes. Eat your breakfast while I finish getting dressed.”
I rushed back into my room and put on my shirt and tie. I grabbed my suit jacket then rushed around my office, grabbing all of my paperwork, stuffing it into my bag in preparation to leave. After working with her hair last night, I knew I didn’t have any time to figure it out again. I couldn’t send her to school with her hair looking a mess.
“You know what, grab your stuff, I have an idea,” I said after I entered the kitchen again.
The girls grabbed their backpacks. We walked out of the house and across the hall to our neighbor’s house. I rang the doorbell.
The door flew open, almost immediately blowing the smell of peaches and fresh laundry our way.
My neighbor Cam had a perplexed look on her face as she cocked her head to the side and stared at me. I would have stopped to admire how beautiful she was with a face devoid of makeup, but I was in crisis mode and didn’t have time.
“Hey, good morning. We have a bit of a situation, and I was wondering if you could help us with it?”
“What’s the prob…” she paused mid-sentence when she saw Fee’s hair. “Um, Ms. Fee, what happened here?”
“I was a unicorn mermaid in the tub. My hair got wet, then my durag came off last night,” Fee explained.
