Rhea Spencer (4:36)
Saturdays are always kind of like exciting days with a lot of stuff that was going on back when I was a little kid at my nana's house, aunts, uncles, cousins would be coming in and out and there was cooking to be done, there was shopping to be done. In the afternoons, typically when all the chores were finished, the girl cousins would go over to Ms. Atkinson's Beauty Shop to get our hair hot combed into submission, and the boy cousins would walk up the hill to Nathan Dendy's barbershop where they would get their head shaved and polished to the point where it practically like gleamed in the sun. So this particular Saturday, there's like so many something else that's in the air. And even though I'm a little kid, I can feel that something's kind of off because my mother and my grandmother are talking to me in that sugar plum voice that adults use for little children when they're trying to make like there's nothing wrong. And you know when you're good, there is something very, very wrong. They are talking about a doctor's appointment that I had had a couple of weeks before. I'm six years old and we went to the pediatrician to talk about my owies because I have these red scabs and yellow pussy spots and stuff like that all over my entire scalp. And I know that you're not supposed to scratch them, but they're itchy. And so we had gone to the pediatrician. My mother had decided and tried what she know how to do. So we'd been at the doctor's office and the doctor's telling my mom and that I have something apparently called infantile seborrheic dermatitis, which in English is what the old people call cradle cap. Newborns get cradle caps. You know, babies get cradle cap. Kindergarteners don't get cradle cap. 5, 6 year olds don't get cradle cap. Guess who has cradle cap? And I got it bad. I am like, call me itchy and scratchy. The stuff is just actually happening everywhere. And there was this conversation that was taking place and I see my mom getting more and more anxious and she's asking questions like, are you sure there's nothing else? Is there nothing else we can do? And saying, well, you know, don't forget that it's really important to have good contact when you're going through and you're doing this treatment. So it would really be best. And we need to be able to get underneath the hair. Because I'm a little black girl. I got a little black girl frill. And as they were having this conversation, I see my mom become convinced. And that's when it is decided that the best way for me to receive the treatment I need is for them to shave my head. Now I'm a little girl, this is Arkansas. And so we are southern. But not only am I Southern, I'm black people southern, so I'm real Southern. And your hair is a thing. Your hair is your crown, your hair is, this is your calling card. This is the thing that people talk about. People talk about like the good haired girl, this, that and the next thing. My sister was known as a child with good hair because she had the thick hair that was down to her shoulders. The longer the hair is, the better in her pigtails that would like flow behind her if she was running or riding a bike. And my cousin Lynette, she had like what they call water wave hair, which is you could just sprinkle some water on it and you could twirl it like around your finger and it fell in these little locks in and around her face and framed it perfectly. And I had good enough to not shame the family hair and now they were going to have to cut it all off. So my mom and my nana in their sugar plum voice is letting me know that I'm on my way up to Nathan Dendy's barbershop and I am floored. 56 year old girls do not go to the barbershop. The barbershop is the definition of man land. There is a very, very clear divide and this is not a place that little girls would ever tread. My cousins had told me that inside of the barbershop it's like the men get in there and they yell and they talk politics and they talk sports and they talk trash. And they even use some of the words that I'm not supposed to know what those words actually are, but I've heard them on the Richard Pryor records late at night. But don't tell anybody. They use those words there too. So I cannot believe that I'm actually going to the barbershop. As we get there, it's kind of like they can't believe, frankly, that I'm in there either. If you walk into a room and it was like, pause, like people, like mid page turn, mid checker drop. They were like, what in the world is happening here? Because I come in with my mother, who is a self proclaimed and rightly so southern belle from her head to her toe. I am in my very best geranimals with my color coordinated little patent leather purse. And I come bumping into the barbershop. And have you ever been in a room with where you can watch everybody looking, but they're trying so hard not to look that they're actually, like, just staring? And I don't have a real sense as to why Nathan Dindy's barbershop is an institution. Nathan Dindy is one of my grandfather's best friends. In a time of crisis, you rally to your people. So Nathan Dindy is the only person that my mom will trust with this assignment. So there's three chairs lined up. I'm in the center chair. So if you can imagine this going along, it's like I am in the center of the barbershop. I am the show. As I walk up to him, Nathan's like, well, you know your granddaddy already called you ready to hop up? Like, yes, sir, I am. So I shimmy, shimmy, shimmy into the grown up barber chair. I am too young. I'm too small for said chair. So I have to like jump back down. And then he puts me on those two yellow pages and we had the extra thick yellow pages. So I shimmy, shimmy, shimmy back up and I sit on the yellow pages. And he puts the cape all the way around me and I'm swimming in it, but I can just see the tip of my Buster Brown shoes. And I sit and my mom is leaning forward. And the men, out of the corner of their eyes are trying not to stare. And it starts to happen. Cut, fall, cut, fall. Puffs of hair hitting the ground. In little girl land, watching yourself being stripped of all the things that would make you the pretty little thing, like they would always tell you. And it's all falling off my head, my hair. And I'm sitting there and all I can think is, like, I'm looking at my mother and she's smiling back at me. And big girls don't cry. I absolutely, positively will not cry. But then the sound of the clippers begins. And it's buzzing and it's loud and I'm trying not to squirm and make it all the way through. And the conversation in and around the room, it's almost like it's dimmed a little bit because as I'm sitting there, Nathan Dindy takes a towel and he's gently wiping in and around the scabs. The rest of my hair going through, hitting the floor. And I'm sitting and I don't really know what happens next. He spins me around in the chair and he gives me a giant hand mirror. And I can see myself and you know, all the things that I'd heard about, like the, you know, the water wave hair, the really, really pretty hair. It's like I don't have any of that hair anymore. And I look a little scrawny, but I think I look okay. Do I look okay? Like, I think. I think maybe this is okay. And I smile. And you could feel the barbershop exhale around me. You could feel. And it was like, woof. And I'm looking and I'm like, I don't want to look like a boy, but my hair isn't shiny like the boys. And I know it isn't as long as the girls, but hair's not the only thing that makes you a girl. And I think, this is all right. And then my mom from somewhere, she has a scarf. And she ties the scarf around my head, but she ties it around my head and neck with the bow, the grown up way where you have a little strap at the end of it that you could throw over your shoulder. And I look like Tabitha from Bewitched. I am now inspired. I reach into the patent leather purse that I brought along with me, remembering that I have in my bag Mickey Mouse sunglasses, my white Mickey Mouse shoes with the little Mickeys on top. You can't tell me, Jack, I am all of the things in my Granimals, like, please and thank you. I know, I know. And the men are now treating me like a granddaughter. And one of them even says, like, I think you look mighty fine. And I'm like, well, thank you very much. And then from somewhere, miraculously like, hold up. Is that like a peppermint? Is this butterscotch? Like, nobody said there would be candy. Y' all could have just led with the candy. We had to go through all this. So as I'm leaving in my shades and my scarf is tied around me, the only thing that I really know for sure is that it's kind of okay. I had to go to Nathan Dindy's barbershop, and I had probably the most special day of all of the girl cousins and all the boy cousins all together. And I cannot wait to finish my butterscotch and tell them, thank you.
