1!) look back in time and see the little black girl at 6 she grew up in a nation that, even among her "owned" people, she learned it was best if her nappy hair was pressed with curls that bounced from her temples like shirley's so every other saturday (except for jews and 7th day adventists) it was off to big mama walker's (no relation to the circle city madame) for a heavy handed press and curl that knocked the nappies out of anything remotely kinky; and let the record show that one dare not dare to complain about the smell of smoking hair rep, bergamount, or the treatments that smelled worse than the snuff ms walker dipped in as her unwilling young patrons sat on a humid saturday mornin' in this icon of a residence that doubled as a front porch bootleg beauty shop, if she had a motto it would be "fried, dyed and lay'd to the side" and anything on the scalp that even resemble nubian dna code stood a chance before the heavy handed rotund woman where a kink stood as good a chance of being missed on your head as the gossip 'bout the preacher at the chu'ch house even tho' sunday school taught a decent child not to talk about folks, in the silent corners of a young girl's mind finds her gossipin' to herself, with entertaining thoughts-- thoughts of your hairpresser, one who was on so nice but oh so so SO so super rotund you find yourself in an unexplainable chuckle wonderin' why big mama walker's crimson red, slick cracked vinyl squeakin' swivelin' sittin' stool that she wrapped her big bowed legs around didn't get lost during a typical a hot July midmorning appointment; and even though the hair on her own head wouldn't amount to the combined length of two thumbs, the lesson that was taught to all little black girls who didn't have enough white in their bloodine was that if they were to be pretty in anyone's eyes, beauty had to be all painful, smoky hot, an' sizzlin' especially at eastertime (which reminds me, what do black patent babydoll shoes with black patent stapled-on bows near the toes, and bunnies and cooked rainbow eggs have to do with Jesus?) but big mama walker was proud to get that hair jus' right-- and i was proud to bounce those curls like a pre-pubescent barbie, looking for her ken. 2!) look back in time and see the little black girl at 12 goes all the way thru grade school, reciting the pledge of allegience, that never promised any pledges to her "owned people" but she still salutes the flag, and even gets the popular vote for Civic Club becomes a crossing guard--and they never mention that, at least not at the black church where her hair had to be as pretty as a white girls who sang "on the good ship lolli --pop--" but like her mama said, "you need to carry yourself like the rock 'fellas, and the kennedeeze--mama especially wanted to be just like jackie not dead like jackie--but rich, and said if she ever could marry a white man, she'd rather have dan but that's not the amerikkkan plan 3!) look back in time and see the little black girl at 18 comin' of age, experienced the racism rage and ready for the college stage where black was suddenly a thing of irrepressible beauty, and perfectly coiffed afro puffs and afro wigs hid the shame of her unnaturally straightened hair since the relaxer damaged it beyond repair-- but it was a real hip time in the early 70s where she was loud, proud and sexxxy sasssy, wondering if it was fashionable as an afro wig to be a virgin (shhhh! God is watching even when engaged in solotouch) but it's all good, like the blackford county drive-in where the action was attraction of the opposites, both on and off screen and everybody was 21, even if they didn't look it-- and we'd all go to the black church and repent on sunday for bein' nasty and fornicating with our eyes and the palms of our hands, and even if your hair was straight, everyone was naturally curly, and nobody took home an unnamed muffin 9 months later (high praise to the Almighty Three) 5!) look back in time and see the little black girl now at 24 (whoops time stopped for a while-- when the black girl said "i-do" and became a wife, a tax deduction, and a mamma herself) now excitement came in the form of anniversaries, baby showers, pitch in dinners where everybody made the best fried chicken in the state of their own mind in black church after black church. . . after black church . . . and it finally dawned on the woman who seemed to go from her 20s to her 30s to her 40s and beyond that there was no black church good enough to-go-to unless you were from the neighborhood; and Jesus and the other Two knew full well that these satisfied simple folk knew the loud black woman screaming for solace on the inside (who had learned from exhaustion of one marital spat after another to be quiet and tell it to bowl of ice cream) had no relatives in a town to make a small town connection-- OUTSIDER is how she found herself. . . 6!) now a grown woman, she wears her black headwraps, black turtlenecks, black coats and black hip hop boots, with not one pressed hair in sight for she feels free enough to abandone what for her was suppression, an induced cosmetic depression; so she decided it was time to stop skippin' rope with people who gloried in pressing their hair, for she alone was happiest when she not only wrote what she thought as her thoughts permeated the pencil in the post midnight darkness and decided to attend a church where she knew she wouldn't be wanted for who she was. . . and the rhyme came to her "miss mary mack, mack, mack, all dressed in black, Black, BLACK," but it wasn't her buttons in silver that got her attention, but the fact that she wore her black pride as a crown, and the good white (are they) christian actin' folk didn't understand that patronizing her was the same as trying to keep her down; that ignoring her was the same as giving a mop and a bucket to the spook who sat by the door; that the mealy handshakes for fear of them picking up what she was trying to rub off on them might save them some money at the tanning booth--but they just kept on being who they were-- conservative bush-loving whites who think liberalism is a crime, and Black History is a month, not and experience to be shared (like the proud Tejano families tried to share with settlers who wrongfully blame them for the horror of the Alamo) yet eventually, one day; a bunch of mixed white folks may end up looking back, and maybe wonder a bit about the 40-something the little black girl who escaped the prison of conservatism, and that they wish they could ask for her autograph for a book they were too afraid to understand-- perhaps --if they are lucky; and no matter where the spirit of the loud black woman goes, she will make it her biz-a-ness to create goosebumps in the silence of whiteness, and keep on sayin' "yes Lord!" like Baldwin, and we ain't talkin' the piano where the keys are forever black and ivory. © 2004 by cynth'ya lewis reed