![]() She donated clothes at the Baltimore office of the Black Panthers. Ma hung a poster of Huey Newton in her dorm room. Ma went off to college, leaving the house of my grandmother, a onetime domestic from Maryland’s Eastern Shore who had studied nursing in night school and owned her own home. But on the long walk home, black boys would turn, gawk, and smile at my mother’s hair made good. Sometimes, the beautician would grow careless with the jelly, and Ma’s scalp would simmer for days. Ma endured this ritual every three to four weeks for the rest of her childhood. That day, the hairdresser donned rubber gloves, applied petroleum jelly to protect Ma’s scalp, stroked in a clump of lye, and told my mother to hold on for as long as she could bear. ![]() Relying on chemistry instead of torque and heat, the relaxer seemed more worldly, more civilized and refined. It held longer than hot combs, and with more aggression-virtually every strand could be subdued, and would remain so for weeks. In the ongoing quest for the locks of Lena Horne, a chemical relaxer was an agent of perfection. They feature a hot metal comb, the kitchen stove, my grandmother, much sizzling, the occasional nervous flinch, and screaming and scabbing. Her tales of home cosmetology are surreal. ![]() ![]() Black, bespectacled, skinny, and buck-toothed, Ma was also considered to have the worst head of hair in her family. W hen my mother was 12, she walked from the projects of West Baltimore to the beauty shop at North Avenue and Druid Hill, and for the first time in her life, was relaxed. ![]()
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