Read Online Unbeweaveable by Katrina Spencer - Free Book Online

this? To be almost thirty and unemployed? To be without love, even the hope of love? Beverly’s word’s chimed in my head —“Not every woman is made to be a wife. Career first.”
    I built my life around those words, trusting them—no, needing them to be true. But I was alone. So utterly alone.

No Options
    July 15, 2009
    Three months later, I was jobless and penniless. The money seemed like it would last longer, but it slid out my hands quicker than sand through an hourglass.
    I’d already said my goodbyes—I talked to my weave a full hour this morning in the bathroom mirror—but the reality of what I was doing was starting to hit full force.
    So here I was doing the one thing I swore I would never do.
    â€œI really wish you would have let me apply a relaxer to your hair. It’s really thick,” Tameka said, running the shampoo hose over my head like a vacuum on carpet.
    â€œMaybe next time,” I said. Of course there wouldn’t be a next time. This would be the last time she would see me.
    â€œYou okay?” she asked, seeing a tear run down the side of my face. “Did I get shampoo in your eyes?”
    â€œJust a little bit,” I said. She didn’t know that my eyes were stinging from the loss of my best friend, not from the burn of shampoo.
    The warm water felt good against my scalp. My head felt lighter, but my heart felt heavier, as if the weight of the weave had moved to my heart. Tameka refused to let me leave the salon without getting a shampoo and blow-dry, even though she said I needed a relaxer. I couldn’t afford the $225 she charged me for the take down and shampoo, let alone another $150 for a relaxer. I told her to do her best with her ceramic flat-iron. She gave me a long look and said she would try. After struggling fifteen minutes to wrap it, she finally sat me under the dryer and told me to look through some pictures to find hairstyles I liked.
    I showed her a picture of Michelle Obama and left looking like the Dalai Lama. After an hour with the flat-iron my ear-length hair was straight, but didn’t have an ounce of the body or softness that my weave had. I was instantly transported to my childhood when all my classmates had long pigtails while my hair jetted out of my rubber bands like cocktail wieners. Tears pricked my eyes as Tameka removed the cape and I paid the receptionist. When I stepped outside, the wind blew and nothing moved. It was as if my hair had been glued to my head. Not a strand moved out of place. My friend was gone.
    * * *
    The first time I got a weave in my head was my high school graduation. My hair was about ear-length and I couldn’t imagine going across the stage with my cap on and nothing coming out underneath. I’d already missed my prom. I couldn’t keep on going missing events because of my hair.
    â€œWhy don’t you get your hair professionally done?” Norma asked. We were sitting in my room flipping through fashion magazines.
    â€œI told you what happened last time I got my hair professionally done. No thanks.”
    â€œHer hair is pretty,” Norma said, handing me a copy of Vogue . It was Naomi Campbell, standing facing the camera, her long hair in a sleek middle part down to her waist, her lips carrying her trademark pout.
    â€œIt’s fake, though,” I said, handing the picture back to Norma.
    â€œSo? It’s still pretty.”
    â€œThere is no way that Beverly will let me get a weave in my hair.”
    â€œTell her it’s for your graduation present.”
    I shook my head. “But I don’t have any money. Unless…” I opened one of my dresser drawers and pulled out a credit card.
    â€œI could use this!”
    â€œBut that’s for emergencies only.”
    I pointed to my head. “Don’t this count as an emergency?”
    â€œI don’t know…”
    â€œStop being a party pooper. All I need to do is find a hair