Crave (25 page)

Romero clutched a handful of my hair and turned my head toward his face, “What style you looking for today? “I looked to Momma, so she could answer for me, but this time she just nodded.

“I want a Jheri Curl,” I said afraid that he'd exclaim again in surprise.

“You sure you want that, 'cause I'm probably gonna have to cut your hair. It's been over-processed and a curl won't hold on over-processed hair.”

I thought about it for a second, unsure of the terminology he was using. Holding curls and over-processed hair meant nothing to me. I just wanted my Jheri Curl.

“Well, how much are you gonna have to cut?” I asked.

“I won't know until I put in the curl, so once you decide you want it, there's no going back.” Romero's warnings did not deter me. I had hair and he had curls so I figured it would all work out in the end.

“I want a Jheri Curl, if that's okay.”

“Sure is,” he said as he turned the salon chair away from the mirrors and began working on my head. My tangled web of hair was a two-man job. Jody mixed concoction after concoction as Romero parted my hair and dropped globs of cream onto my follicles. My scalp tingled as if bugs were scampering across it. I felt the weight of my hair lessening with each minute that passed.

“You burning yet, girly?”

“Not yet, Mr. Romero,” I replied. Momma sat in the waiting area, thumbing through magazines. From time to time, she looked at me, smiled, and then returned to the magazine. Romero washed out the cream and led me back to the chair. Droplets of water ran from my stringy hair to my shoulders. I caught a reflection in the mirror—my face, but surrounded by hair I'd never seen before. I smiled so wide my buckteeth showed. I didn't have curls yet, but my hair was straighter than it had ever been and it was shiny, like Momma's and Mary's after they washed their hair. Romero sat me back in the chair and began combing through what I could now consider locks. I felt my hair on my cheeks, my forehead, and my neck. Romero then began spraying and parting my hair. Part after part, Jody handed him a plastic curling rod and a sliver of tissue paper. He smiled in between each transfer.

“Your hair is going to look really pretty, girl,” Jody said. Romero agreed.

“I bet your boyfriend is going to like it.” I blushed and looked directly at Momma, who was still engrossed in the magazine.

“I don't have a boyfriend, yet,” and just in case Momma was listening, I added, “I can't have one until I'm sixteen.” But I hoped, inside of myself, I'd be able to get a boyfriend with my new hairstyle.

After Romero finished rodding my hair, he began squirting a clear liquid that smelled like rotting eggs into the rows of rods. The liquid ran down my forehead, my neck, and around my ears. Jody handed me a towel, which he instructed me to hold over my face. Romero then covered my head with two plastic caps and let me sit.

In the thirty minutes it would take for the curls to set, I imagined my new tresses, frolicking on my shoulders, waving hello in the wind, finally rising from dead plaits to living rings of curls. I'd wear them in Shirley Temple curls at the beginning of the week and then I'd wear purple and pink barrettes during the weekend. I'd even planned to switch it up because nothing was cuter than Jheri Curl ponytails that hung in intertwined curls on the side of someone's head. I envisioned myself as Jody Watley or Michael Jackson, walking to my own beat, my curly hair bouncing behind me. I couldn't wait until Romero took out the rods and revealed my true beauty, which had been confined in the strands of my natural hair. As Romero pulled out rod after rod, I felt my new curls recoil against my scalp. Momma smiled as each rod was taken out. A collage of pink, yellow, and red rods swam in the container.

Finally, my new hair was free. For good measure, I shook my head from side to side, allowing my locks to beat against my face. I was ready to reveal my new self to the world and claim whatever boyfriend I desired until Romero reached back onto his station and revealed scissors with bright red handles. Within seconds, my smile, my bouncing curls, my new identity were resting under the salon chair. Romero had moved so quickly, I didn't have a chance to object. What had been my personal forest was being chopped
down, strand by strand. I gripped the sides of the chair, closed my eyes and tried to drown out the sounds of hair against metal, hairs falling against the floor.

As he cut, Romero spoke, “We have to cut all of this, girly. It's just too damaged.” I wanted to ask how short, how much more before he was cutting my scalp, but I couldn't say a word. I couldn't rip myself from the girl I had just been minutes before. Finally, Romero put down his scissors, placed his hand on my chin, and lifted my face to his.

“You really are so pretty, girly. Not everybody can wear this hairstyle. You have to have a special face and you have it.”

I still could not speak, unable to interrupt the conversation I was having inside of my head.
You've always had this face, this you that held nothing very special. It was the hair that would do it. It was the hair that would equal beauty
. I shook my head from side to side, hoping to feel the hairs beating against my cheeks. Nothing but still air surrounded my face. I wanted to cry, but I didn't want to hurt Romero's feelings and I didn't want Momma to think I didn't appreciate all the money and time she'd invested in my hair.

“You ready to see it?” Romero asked. I would have shaken my head “no” if I weren't dreading the still air beating against my cheeks again. I wanted my hair back. I'd have taken the nest I'd worn earlier over the light breeze that covered my scalp. Romero then turned the chair around and I sat face to face with my nakedness. Romero and Jody stood behind me, smiles spread across their brown faces. “You just need a little makeup around your eyes and on your cheeks and you'll be too cool for school, girly.”

My face broke right in front of me, the image of who I once was slid in pieces to the floor. There I sat, a boy, hair shorter than the first digit of my pinky, each semi-curl bordered by my yellow scalp. My nose had doubled in size. My eyes protruded from their sockets. My lips looked like the red, wax lips sold at the corner store. I feared if I breathed in too hard, they'd leak a sweet juice. I am a boy, I said to myself over and over again, and I wasn't even
a cute boy because cute boys didn't wear Jheri Curls. I just wanted to get home, under my bed, away from this new hair that didn't seem so new anymore.

That night was a tortured existence, of which I considered dropping out of school until my hair grew back. Momma said she liked it, while Champ, Dathan, Tom-Tom, and Mary just laughed and ran out of the room. I knew this was a prelude to what I was going to get the next day at school. And still, I dressed in my new clothes Momma had bought especially for me. I took my book bag and walked to my bus stop.

It was a frigid September morning, much colder because my scalp had little cover. I stood at the bus stop, off to myself, while Champ joked around with his friends. I tried to believe they weren't joking on me. As soon as the bus pulled up, I rushed to board it, hoping I'd be able to blend in with the others, thankful I, up to that point, had gone undetected. If I was just able to get onto the bus, out of the cold, out of the open world, maybe I'd be able to survive this haircut. I kept telling myself this until Lenny-Pooh, a Lincoln Park native, three years older than me, caught my eye from across the crowd of kids.

First he looked, then looked away, then looked again. I put my head down, attempting to shrink so he would forget what he was seeing, but it was too late. He pointed, smiled so wide I could see his wisdom teeth, and yelled, “What in the hell? Look at her head.” All eyes turned toward me. Even those already on the bus looked out of the window in order to see Lenny-Pooh's grilling session begin. “Are those curls frozen? Let me see if they break like icicles.” The whole bus shook in laughter as he continued, “Your hair is so short I can tell what you thinking. Man, somebody fucked your hair up.”

Lenny-Pooh came up with jokes the entire bus ride and when he saw me in school, he made sure he had a new set to spring on me. “You look like a boy. You bald-headed,” he pointed those things out to me each time he saw me. By the time we were on the bus ride home, I'd been called Prince, Arsenio Hall, and Morris Day.
I decided I hated Lenny-Pooh for leaning on my feelings. I didn't think he was cute, so I joked on him in my mind, saying he looked like a black Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. I tried not to look at him anymore and swore I'd never talk to him again even though I'd never really talked to him before. None of that mattered anyway. Two weeks later, my proclamation became problematic after Lenny-Pooh became my first Lincoln Park boyfriend.

Lenny-Pooh broke up with me the weekend of his sixteenth birthday because Momma wouldn't let me go to his party. I wanted to tell him I'd sneak out, that I didn't care what Momma said, and I'd be there for him, but my fear of Momma had grown with each slap, each meeting with the leather fly. When I heard the next day he'd danced all night with Sidonia, a pretty girl with large brown eyes, and I saw him walking toward my house, then detouring to the backyard where Sidonia and her cousin sat, I wasn't even mad. I should have done what my man wanted, even if he wasn't a man and I was just a girl. I peeked out of the window at Sidonia and Lenny-Pooh, sitting together on her porch. I imagined they kissed when no one was around and my heart hurt a little when I thought of them doing things I should have been willing to do as Lenny-Pooh's girlfriend. I made a promise to myself. The next time I would do better. When I found the right guy I would be the right girl, even if that meant erasing myself, so he could draw the woman he wanted.

Dirt Can Never Clean
Dirt Can Never Clean

I lost my virginity for the second time when I was thirteen. I'd plotted the day perfectly, from the lie I told Momma to the plan I had for slipping out of my cousin Lisa's house. Barry, a high school senior to my freshman, was the perfect recipient. He'd passed me in the hallway as I rushed to history class. “Yo,” he yelled, which meant I had been chosen.

Some of the female seniors shouted, “Barry, why you hollering at that little girl?” but I didn't feel like a little girl leaning against the wall as he towered over me. He asked for my number, but since I didn't have one, I took his. As he left, he whispered, “I need to see you later.”

Barry was gangly compared to my 5' 3" frame. He had the back of a linebacker and sported a low-top fade, thick eyebrows, and a tidy mustache that framed billowy lips. He said he was eighteen, going on nineteen, but he looked older than most boys in Wilson High. In fact, with the right clothes he could have passed for a teacher.

During the one phone call Barry and I shared, I learned he had a real house, away from the projects, near Wilson. Living miles from Lincoln Park meant I could escape to a home with a front yard, flowers and shrubs, and no roaches scurrying when the lights went out. Barry invited me to his house near the end of the school year. I didn't even consider declining his invitation. The Lenny-Pooh loss taught me “no” was no longer an option. Ready to give what I believed he already owned, I made my way to Lisa's and waited for Barry to pick me up.

With Barry, there was no contemplation of maintaining the purity Momma often spoke of. Being with him meant releasing the idea of virginity others assumed of me. I imagined it would be a relief, liberation from the lie I had lived. I knew what others did not; I was unclean. Pee Wee's sin had always been my sin, but
I believed earning my own would absolve me of the sin that had been forced upon me.

Barry couldn't have known I would fold so easily, despite the label of virginity I wore. But, I knew when I first saw him he could free me. He could fit where I needed. None of the boys my age would do. They still had a naiveté in their eyes that made me feel like I was using them, but Barry had old eyes that lacked the youthful sparkle my own had never worn.

I smiled as he led me to a couch that sat the two of us comfortably and a mountain of air between. I leaned far to the right, careful not to let my leg touch his. I didn't fear him, but I knew enough about young girls, about how we were supposed to act, not to touch him. I leaned against the chair and crossed my arms over my crossed legs. I offered a grin that made him smile. He rested his hand on the empty space between us, and asked, “Why are you sitting all the way over there?”

“I'm just sitting,” I giggled, forcing air through my teeth. Unlike girls my age who had fathers and mothers always home, and who'd never spent a day hungry, giggling was work for me. If a boy smiled at them, they giggled. If the teacher called on them, they giggled. They usually giggled around school, dripping seeds of happiness along the way. I envied those girls, the ones who wore normalcy like a lace dress, parading around school as if everyone could choose to wear the same happiness they wore. I loathed them most because I had to be like them, to look like them, if I wanted to continue hiding in plain sight.

Barry reached his hand across the valley of the couch as his fingers crept up the side of my leg. He took my hand into his and began tracing the lines of my palm. Our eyes connected, intertwined with one another, just as our hands did. He leaned against me, rubbed his nose gently on my cheek. His steady breathing beat against the side of my face as my hand gripped the arm of the chair. I inhaled his smell, the smell of wanting, and became drunk with the power I imagined I possessed.

“Are you okay?” the words pressed out of him.

“Yes,” I responded, nodding my head.

“You're skin is like butter, so soft.” I nodded in agreement.

He ran his lips across my cheeks, across my forehead, and then found his place on the corner of my mouth. The heat from his nostrils made my eyes water. I turned my head closer to his, attempting to melt into his space. Placing my hand on his heart, I wanted to believe it was beating for me. I moved my legs closer to his, wondering what it would feel like, what he would feel like. I knew he'd be different. Even though he was similar in stature to the first, I was different, so we'd be different together. I could barely wait for him to push his smell, his feel, his taste into me, while purging the other.

I grabbed his shirt, pulled him to me, moved him where he thought I wasn't ready to go.

His head snapped back, disconnecting lips. His dark eyes searched my eyes, questioning my movements, trying to find their origin. I'd revealed too much, too soon. I couldn't let him know how much I already knew, how much I'd already been taught. I closed my eyes, running from the shame attached to them. I turned down the corners of my mouth, hoping to lower the volume of doubts running through his head. I dropped my hands to my sides, surrendering to him, returning to my defenseless state. His tense body lay over me like a slab of drywall.

“Have you done this before?” he asked.

“Of course not,” I replied. “Have you?” I giggled again, fighting the urge to stop myself, but he did not return my chuckle. I quickly straightened my back and cuddled closer to him. “I'm kidding, Barry,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster. “I told you I'm a virgin. Plus, I'm only thirteen. What kind of girl do you think I am?” I then twisted my face into a grimace, feigning offense and insult. This time I looked directly into his eyes, hoping my gaze would convince.

“Are you sure?” he asked, “because . . .” I stopped him midsentence.

“If you don't want to do this, Barry, that's okay. I understand. I just wanted to be with you. I wanted to give to you what no one else has been given.”

He raised himself, stood in front of me, took my hand and asked, “Do you want to go upstairs?”

He led me up the stairs, holding only my pinky with his own. We journeyed through a narrow hallway, lined with pictures of him growing from a child to the man that stood in front of me. There was one picture with him in a suit where he couldn't have been more than seven years old. He had a large smile, missing his two front teeth. The innocence in his eyes shot though me like a dagger, breaking me into pieces. I too had worn that innocence, had smiled that widely, but it had been washed away by promises childhood had made but never followed through on. I looked at the man in front of me, with a back large enough for me to sit on, one that looked even larger on the football field as he hurled himself at his opponents, and I couldn't imagine it ever being as small as the back of that boy in the picture. But, he was in fact him, just as I was my younger self, with that same mole, same light eyes, same red hair, same dark secrets. I was still that girl and for that reason, I followed Barry into his room, with hopes he could turn me into someone else.

Once we reached the end of the hall, Barry turned to the left and pushed lightly on the door. A lava lamp sat in the corner, pumping large circles of wax reflected on the walls of his room. It was dark, but I could make out the shadows of trophies lining shelves. He had a full-sized bed, which seemed too small for his body. I imagined his long legs dangling over the bottom of the bed whenever he had sex with girls like me. I almost giggled again, but this time I resisted the urge. He turned on a small lamp that dully shined like a porch lit by moonlight.

Barry placed his hand on the small of my back and led me to the bed. I looked up at him, making sure he knew I was the girl he originally thought I was. He responded with a grin. I knew then it
was time because we were no longer speaking with words. We sat on the edge of the bed. My heartbeat was steady, playing a calming rhythm that lulled me into his arms. Barry reached over to the nightstand and hit the radio. Smokey Robinson's “Quiet Storm” began wafting through the room.

I followed the flutes of the song as Barry planted his lips on mine. He opened his mouth and I tasted the tip of his tongue. It was sweet like Pepsi. Our lips danced gracefully to the beat of song. It was as if Smokey Robinson sat in the room with us, singing over our union, approving of it with his voice. In that moment, I believed I could have loved Barry. If I weren't the person I was, if he didn't fit in the way he did, I could have taken care of him and allowed him to take care of me. For a second, I forgot what I was there for, what I needed him for. And, as he lowered me to the bed and pulled me close, I wanted nothing more than for it to be my first time. I wanted him to be the one who took my virginity, the one who owned that part of me forever.

Barry then took off my shirt, giving each button attention. Once he finished, he brushed the shirt off of my shoulders and kissed them. He then ran his finger down the middle of my stomach, and stopped at the top of my jeans. He looked me in my eyes, searching for rejection, but I offered none. So, he pulled at the button of my hand-me-down Jordache and slid them off my legs. I felt a cold chill cover my skin. As if he had read my mind, he pulled back the covers and beckoned me to get under with him. I complied, ready to feel his warmth next to me. He rubbed my hair, ran his hands from my temple to the nape of my neck. I rested my hand on his arm, feeling the muscles tense and release as he touched me. He then placed his lips on mine, hard. I lay still, waiting for what had to be done. With one movement, he slid his leg over me and we were face to face. He lowered his hand and touched where I had not willingly been touched before. He then entered me, slowly pulsing his body into mine. I held my breath and clenched his back, as I felt a stabbing pain that quickly subsided, like the smell of rain on
a hot summer day. A small moan escaped his lips, as I prayed the sweat trickling from his brow would not fall on my cheek.

At thirteen, I wasn't learned enough about sexual pleasure to know what an orgasm was or what sex was supposed to feel like, but I tingled all over my body as Barry held me. I felt simple again, emotionally naked, a blank slate waiting for life to write its story on me. I surrendered myself to him, letting his movements become my movements, watching as his face relaxed and contorted because of my body. I felt like a real woman, despite my few years, and I silently thanked him for wanting me.

Suddenly, his feet and legs tensed and his breathing became labored. Barry quickly pushed away from me and landed on his back. He then reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the roll of tissue next to his bed.

I lay still next to him, not sure of what was supposed to happen next. Afraid to touch him, I listened to his pant slow to breaths. Barry moved his hand over to me and rubbed the inside of my thigh. His hand was warm and even after he moved it he left an imprint of his touch on my body. He leaned over to kiss me. His lips were moist and still soft. He then pulled me into his arms and softly kissed my forehead. “Are you okay?” he asked. I looked into his eyes, hoping words were still unnecessary, but he asked again and I had to reply with my mouth.

“I'm good,” I answered. “It was good.” We then lay next to each other, listening to the music wafting from the radio.

Despite what I had imagined, I didn't feel different. I was no longer a virgin, according to my definition of a virgin, but I still felt that overwhelming weight of what I was before. I had hoped that Barry would erase the earlier, shameful years of my life, by adding the new shame of willfully losing my virginity at thirteen. But all I felt was heavier, dirtier, used twice over.

I couldn't understand then, that there is no erasing, no way to take back dirt that has stained a life. There is only an acceptance of that stain by moving to another block of fabric, another block
of being with the hopes of not making the same mistake, causing the same stain again. But I had erred. I had taken a brand new piece of myself, one untainted, untouched, and scrubbed it with the dirtiest part of me, trying to clean what was already clean with something that was forever dirty. This would be a repeated offense for me until later in my life. And by the time I had learned this lesson, there were more stained parts of myself than clean.