Today we’re gonna go back. Back into time…
It all started with a boxed perm. Optimum Care, mild. My mother slathered the concoction on my naturally curly roots that evening in 1999 while we watched the Cleveland Browns play on Monday Night Football in my grandmother’s kitchen. I was a third generation female sports fan of the loud, cussing at the television variety and it was nothing to hear high pitched, profanity-laced rants aimed at athletes who’d never hear them.
Twenty minutes into the process, my legs were shaking and I was sitting on my hands, which meant that my scalp was two minutes from catching fire from the chemicals. I’d been getting relaxers for five years so I knew that pain was the price black girls paid for hair that bounced from root to tip. But even as a veteran of the kitchen relaxer, I’d had enough and was ready to be rinsed. “Ma,” I said. “I think it’s time to rinse it out.”
