LaTroya A. Hester

The Kitchen

 

Why do we call it that? You know what I mean. The kitchen. The curliest hairs at the nape of the neck. The ones that bead up and are most stubborn to the all-powerful heat of the iron. The deciding factor in whether the straightening efforts were a job well-done. The kitchen. The part that must carefully be hidden lest the truth about our hair texture be told: that beneath the shiny, carefully crafted Shirley Temple spirals resting on your shoulders, lurk knotted naps growing wickedly in the dark.

 

Is this why we call it the kitchen? I think of a visit to fine restaurant where the linens are white, the service is impeccable and the food is gourmet. Everything is pristine. No one should ever see the real story unfolding backstage. The dirty dishes, the peals of onion, the dirty mop water on the floor. The spilled sauces, the yelling cooks, the pots that are burning or boiling over. This is the kitchen. The place behind the perfect facade that no one is ever meant to see.

 

I want to ask who told us to hide the kitchen, but that would be as silly as me asking a little first grader I know who it was that told her that her hair was nappy. She had been pulling out strands of hair at the nape of her neck for months. Her hair was faithfully maintained straight or tightly braided to perfect neatness each day. But every stray strand that dared to misbehave found itself subject to the tweezing of her little fingers. Finally she had plucked herself an inch and a half bald from ear to ear. We assumed it was a nervous habit of some sort. Then I asked her directly why she kept pulling out her hair, she said in frustration, "It's nappy! The front part is straight, but this part is nappy."

 

I'm sure you're shaking your head, thinking, "How sad...She's so young to be so ashamed." And, "Who is telling her that her hair is nappy?" I remind you that it is needless to ask this. The people who straighten her hair tell her. Her Barbie dolls tell her. The Disney Channel tells her. The commercials tell her. Society tells her. Every time we straighten our hair and attempt to hide the kitchen for the sake of beauty, we agree with her.

 

When I was transitioning, my kitchen was bangin'. One day, a friend brushed a coily hair from my shoulder and said with a wink under her breath, "It was just one from the kitchen." She thought she was sparing me from complete mortification. However, my transition marked a critical turning point for me. She did not spare me from embarrassment, because I wasn't. For the first time I didn't feel the need to hide my kitchen, my texture or myself. Dirty dishes cannot be found at the nape of my neck. God's perfect design for my hair does. Of this I am not ashamed.

 

Back