A How-to Story: Detangling Black Hair

Picture this. You’re coming from a movie. It was amazing. The popcorn was on-point, your friends were hilarious, and you can’t wait to rush home to tell whoever is there all about it. Suckishly, you have to wait on the bus, and a sickly old man comes up besides you, pulls out a cigarette and begins crowding your personal space with a cloud of smoke. As he puff, puff, puffs at the chimney pipe of tobacco, his smoke gets submerged into your 5-day old twist-out that’s been dying for a wash. Now, before you rush home and stick your head under the shower faucet, there are a few things you need to know about detangling your natural tresses.

If you have naturally kinky hair, detangling is an essential step in hair management. You may think, “Oh, I have natural hair. I’m a free spirit, and I don’t need a comb.” Wrong! I know. Once I went a whole month without combing my hair, and when I went back to part it, there were patches of knots that intertwined in a way that took hours to pick out.

So, first you’ll need to find the perfect wide toothcomb. This comb should have teeth that are ½ inch apart. Put away your small comb. It will only result in breakage (Note that you may need to come back to the small comb for other purposes, but put it down for now). While you’re out buying your comb, gather up a spray bottle, ponytail holders (without the hair-snagging metal attachment), shampoo, conditioner, and hair oil.

Some women who give advice on natural hair online recommend using a Denman brush (a rubber based brush with hard, plastic brittles), but personally they never went well with me. The closely placed brittles tend to snag at places that combs would not, and it just looks scary.

Now the products to use in your hair are a whole different topic of itself. It all Depends on your hair texture and preferences. After experimenting and some very dedicated research (including: reading natural hair forums, blogs, home remedy recipes, watching youtube videos, and smearing various oils, butters, and fruit into my hair), I found that keeping it simple is best. Burt’s Bees shampoo and conditioner, Shea butter, and Olive oil. That is it. They’re natural, pretty cheap, and I’m sure they’re good for you. Once you found your supplies, get to work.

Before washing your hair, you need to section your hair into manageable parts (4 for shorter hair and 2 for long). Fill your spray bottle with water, and if you’ve really been negligent, you may want to add in some olive oil to combat the kinks and loosen the curls.

Now, mist your whole head, making sure you dampen each section. Don’t forget the back! In fact, you might want to try a windmill technique with the bottle, where you sprits your sections in a circular pattern. Or maybe a Zigzag, starting at one end of the head and working yourself back. Whatever you feel is comfortable. Once it’s moist, add a medium size amount of conditioner to each section (about the size of a donut-hole).

Before taking a comb to the sections, it’s good to rake through them using your fingers first. This allows any entrapped hairs that’s been bonded by any twist, fro, or braid to finally be released. You must be gentle. Place your hand into a claw position and work through the section, separating any hairs that are entwined together.

Next is the actual detangling process. Now your purpose is not to rip through the hair. We do not have straight hair, and whatever you’ve seen on TV will not work. You need to grab one section, and very gently with the other hand, use the comb to detangle the ends first.

If your comb gets trapped in a nap, find a safety pin or that small comb I told you not to use before (This is the time to use it). Stand in front of the mirror in your room or bathroom, and search for the center of the knot. Try to pick it out while taking out as little hair as possible. Once it’s out, resume with your combing, working yourself down to the roots. After the section is tangle-free, separate the section into two, and twist the hair (depending on your length, you may want to make more). Rap the ponytail holder back around the section of twists, and continue with these steps with the remaining sections.

Once finished, you can wash the conditioner out using your shampoo (with the twist! You don’t want to have to detangle again). Rub some oil on your ends and style it how you want.

So, if you find yourself surrounded in a situation where your hair is getting suffocated (or not), remember these steps and keep your natural hair lovely, clean, and free of knots.

Mother Pokes Daughter part 1

This story started off with this exercise where you take a set composed of a girl, woman, boy, or man, then place an action between them. I chose a girl and woman, and my action was "poke." After coming up with a relationship between the two, I came up with this. Enjoy...

As soon as the daughter placed the head of cabbage wrapped in plastic back on the self, her mother snapped her cell phone shut. Her stare pierced needles through the back of her daughter’s neck.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Mama! I don’t want to eat cabbage. It stank! It smells like funky armpits.”

“Are you paying for this food? You and your sista thank money grow on trees, but…”

The mother took a look into the grocery cart and realized that all the food she put in it was replaced by: chips, fruit snacks, and a box of chicken-flavored ramen noodles.

The daughter stared down at the floor, pacing side to side while holding on to the edge of the cart. Furious with her daughter’s actions, the mother stormed passed the chart and started poking the edge of her manicured thumb into her daughter’s side. Nudging deeper into the daughter’s skin with each poke.

“You better put that food back,” mumbled the mother into her daughter’s ear.

Salted, drips of disappointment stung the daughter’s eyes as she walked toward the pile of cabbage heads. With one hand, she picked up the armpit cabbage. As she was getting ready to drop it into the chart, the daughter flung the cabbage across the store, nearly missing a wrinkled woman using a cane to knock down a can of tuna.

In her rage, the mother shoved the junk-filled cart out her way, causing it to hit the edge of the pyramid-formed cabbage heads that cascaded down to the floor. The thump from the cabbage sounded like pins crashing together from the blow of a bowling ball.

The mother paid no attention to the spilled food, and chased after her daughter. When the daughter saw her mother coming after her, she instantly turned around and sped off, heading toward the bread aisle.

“You must’ve lost your mind girl. Wait until I tell your father!”

However, the little girl was not in any fashion waiting for that moment to happen.

Brave Love

So this is a story I wrote in a creative writing program. We were suppose to develop a scene and go on from there. I never got to finish the ending, but here it is...

Through plaster ceilings, moaning seeped into Eric’s apartment. One of the tenants above him was having sex once again, and obnoxiously expressing his passion with loud drawn out yells of staggering aggression. Eric was trying to focus on the text message he was trying to write to his best friend, Christa, but sounds above him blocked his concentration. Eric walked over to his bed and grabbed a pillow. He wrapped it around the back of his head, while using his hands to stuff the edges into his ears.

“I can’t stand this anymore,” yelled Eric. “I’m tired of this shit. Every time I sit down to rest, I hear him and these women.”

For years, Eric has watched this man go through girls like toothpicks, using them and moving on to the next one, but Eric never wrestled up the guts to confront him. He still had to live with him after all.

Today was different though. Everyday this week, Eric ordered from the Chinese restaurant down the street from his apartment. Its name was The Three Fortunes, and each day Eric bought the same thing: an order of beef chowmein, jiaozi, and two egg rolls. Waiting for his order, Eric usually broke open a fortune cookie expecting to read something sentimental and cliché. Today Eric read one that seemed to have directly spoken to him, “Fear will separate you from love.” As he read the crinkled fortune sheet, Eric’s phone began to erupt with his best friend’s favorite song.

Now, still hearing the moans through his palms, Eric flopped the pillow back on his bed in despair. Sitting. Staring. Soaking in his pathetic apartment, with its paper-thin ceiling, chipped paint, noisy downtown traffic coming through the windows, and over-priced rent. Eric gazed up at the ceiling, thinking that he was finally going to do something about this man. The moans were consuming Eric’s thoughts, and in the midst of his plan for confronting him, he could not help but imagine what the girl was doing to cause such a commotion, what dirty, seductive position she must be in to moan this loud. Shaking the sexual thoughts from his mind, Eric raced to his miniature kitchen to grab a broom.

“This will show him.”

Eric dragged the broom back to his room, and with the stick end, he plunged it in the air, causing it to crash into the ceiling. White dust sprinkled on the top of Eric’s head, and he could hear the man above him shuffling in his room.

“What the hell was that?”

“Ex-ex-excuse me sir, Do you mind, I mean, All that moaning up there needs to stop!”

“You need to mind your damn business!”

“You need to stop the moaning!”

There was a mumbling in the background that Eric could barely hear, telling the man to get back to bed.

“If you have a problem with me buddy, you’ll have to take it up with me later,” the man stated with laugher.

Eric’s face fumed with anger, and began bagging the broom in the ceiling harder with each hit. Not stopping to hear the man’s response, Eric threw the broom across the floor, and ran to his door that led out to the apartment hallway.

Rushing out into the hallway, Eric stopped and peered into the mirror hanging on the wall next to the stairwell leading into the other floors. He stared into his face, looking at his pale, white skin and slanted eyes. He then scrunched his face and growled at his reflection, desiring to resemble a sumo wrestler, but he was not fat. Never was.

Eric looked so skinny that his grandmother would pile plates of food on his plate anytime he came to visit her apartment in Chinatown.

“Wài pó! No, really. I’m full.”

“Uh huh, you can’t be. Here! Take more!”

There was no point in arguing with her.

Now staring into the mirror, Eric started to picture the man above him. Although he lived in his apartment for years, Eric never met him. He once thought he saw the man while taking groceries up the stairs for a old woman on Eric’s floor, but he continued on to his floor, not looking much into it.

Glancing back into his eyes, Eric took in a deep breath and stuck his hands into his front pockets of his jeans. He felt the smooth edges of the crinkled fortune cookie sheet that he stuffed in there earlier at the Three Fortune. With the tips of his fingers, Eric carefully pulled the sheet out of his pocket, making sure not to rip it. Eric unfolded the sheet and rubbed it against his pants leg, trying to smooth out the fold marks. Reading the fortune over again, Eric slowly stared at each word, paying close attention to the words “fear” and “love.” Christa came to his mind.

He thought about his last conversation with her at the Three Fortune. He wanted so bad to tell her that he loved her, but instead he let her tell him about a guy she met at the gym and how amazing he was.

“He sounds nice Christa.”

“I know right. He was so tall and charming and sensitive and…wait. Am I talking too much?”

Yes. Eric thought

“No, but I wouldn’t trust this guy. You barely know him.”

“Well that’s why I’m going on a date with him tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Yea, Tonight.”

“Oh, well have fun.”

Right there is where Eric knew he messed up. He didn’t want her to have fun. That was the last thing he wanted her to do. His last words to her crossed his mind as he hung up the phone, grabbed his order of Chinese food, walked back to his apartment, stuck the key into his apartment door, and placed his bag on the kitchen counter.

“What the hell was I thinking?”

Now Eric was again asking the same question, but now wondered, “Why the hell did I grab that broom.”

Eric slowly paced to the right of the staircase and looked at the steps leading to the next floor. Not really knowing where he was going, he walked toward the first step. Just when he lifted his foot toward the second step, Eric heard a voice calling his name from below.

“Eric! Eric!”

It was the old woman, Mrs. Lee, from his floor asking him to carry her groceries, but she couldn’t speak a word of English.

“qǐng nǐ bāng wǒ ma?”

“shi le. Sure, I’ll help you Ms. Lee.”

Eric met Ms. Lee half way down the stairwell and grabbed her bags. Staggering to her apartment Door, Eric thought about his original reason for coming into the Hall, He sat Mrs. Lee’ Bags down, told her no problem, and motioned back to the stairwell leading to the floor above him.