Mi Pelo

Throughout our childhood and adolescence Mami owned our hair. My sister and I spent countless weekends in Mami’s salon which was our kitchen. I think the earliest picture of us in rollers is at age four, when my long hair reached the top of my butt.

Before I started school, Mami found out she was pregnant with my little brother who would be child number four and she was not happy. She had planned to go back to work, and this pregnancy was in the way of her financial independence.

So, she focused her energy on my hair. How long and tangled it was, how much time it took her to fix it in the morning. She sat me on top of the washing machine and instructed my aunt, who was in beauty school, to cut my hair. When she was done, I had the same hairstyle as Twiggy, a British model of that era who sported what my aunts called a “boy cut.” When Papi got home and saw my haircut he almost cried and did not speak to my mother for two months.

However, hair grows and mine grew fast so throughout the next decade weekends were for experimenting with how to tame our hair. Someone at work mentioned mayonnaise so she massaged Hellman’s Mayo into our hair and made us sit still for hours, lest we get mayonnaise on the sofas that were covered in plastic anyway. There were treatments that involved coconut oil, avocado, olive oil. Our hairs were like salad, but still very curly, very frizzy.  

In my junior year in high school my hair was long again, and we had discovered and learned to handle blow dryers. Hours using a round brush to achieve straightness. I had bangs then. On a cloudy spring day, with my hair freshly blown out I was dispatched to my Titi Delia’s new apartment in Parkchester where she had moved after her divorce. She needed help setting up and then she needed to do laundry. I entered the laundromat with her and as soon as I felt the humidity I panicked. “My hair is going to frizz!” I said to my aunt as I felt my hair curling at the nape of my neck. After a little while she took pity on me and said I could wait outside.

I was sitting outside on one of those fire hydrant units that stick out of the buildings, and I could catch glimpses of my hair in the laundromat window. The bangs had curled up. I was sitting there being a miserable teenager lamenting the genes that had given me curls and contemplating entering my senior year with a buzz cut.

An older white woman who was dragging her laundry in a grocery cart stopped right in front of me before entering. I looked up at her face and saw her blonde and gray hair falling limply on her shoulder. I thought she might be lost.

“Your hair is beautiful young lady. What I wouldn’t give to have your curls.” As if she had heard all my thoughts over the last hour. I was stunned. I wanted to revel in her admiration and compliments, but I had so many years of Mami’s hair trauma drilled into me that it took me a minute. “Thank you,” I managed and forced a smile. She seemed actually envious of my curls and I realized it was possibly the first time in my life some had found my hair beautiful.

 “Just like Barbra Streisand in A Star is Born,” she continued and smiled at me. I must have not looked convinced because my Titi was coming out and held the door open for the woman who said to her, “the young never appreciate the beauty they have.”

On the way back to the apartment Titi said, “esas judías pay hundreds of dollars for perms to get their hair to look like yours.” I decided that day that I loved the judías. And that I would learn to love my hair. I would let it do its thing. I would embrace the curls and live with the frizz. By my senior year, Donna Summer had made the girls fashionable I was trending with my tresses!