“The Willow Tree” Excerpt

I am tossed, a grenade harpooned into the streets of Barbie faces. I have a detonation of hair and mutilated features: wide nose, thick lips, and boogie man eyes, deep when they hit the soul. I am enough to be a monster by society’s standards.

It hits the fan when I realize I can’t afford a wig to cover up the frizz and tangles that combine to make a fro, enough to separate me from the slender white features of my friends and colleagues. No one will understand, save for my future teenage stepsister. She always wears a slouch in her shoulders and locks herself in the TV room when the family goes to the pool.

Mom has the whiter features of the family. I wasn’t that lucky and Adam would always take notice. He would routinely point out, “Too bad you didn’t get your mother’s hazel eyes. She really does have pretty eyes, you know. I bet you wish your hair were a little longer don’t you?”

Besides my nightcap showers, where I have the luxury of a shower cap, it is a debilitating sentiment to have this mane of hair. After visiting the pool, the futile attempts to resuscitate the smooth locks I had just moments before stepping into the water, hours spent long with a hot comb to revive the movable hair that I had for a couple of weeks. Long hours spent pressing the flat irons against the base of my scalp to soften the new growth of hair that had not yet been touched by the creamy fingers of a perm. Long hours spent convincing myself that no one will notice, but unconsciously they do.

People will see me as insecure. It’s more. It’s being humiliated. It’s the immobilizing thought that if I looked different, I could be someone else.

“No one can see you through the window. They probably think it’s tinted.” A woman whispered to me as she callously called attention to my dark skin.