Words That Cut Deep

A look at the documentary "A Girl Like Me" and Don Imus

"Light bright and damn near white" or "damn you are so dark you look like an African." These are just a few of the phrases that I'd hear regularly on the school playground when I was growing up. Living in a majority African-American country in Maryland, the richest Black county in the US, there where always verbal cuts and bruises directed at me and my skin color because I went to a predominantly white Catholic school. Slurs about my skin color, connections to Africa, and the occasional cut about my nappy hair where common place. But when your a kid you don't know the deep seeded pain that comes from these verbal daggers.

when I turned 14 I wanted to be cute. I hated my dark skin and I want be light. I didn't go as far as using skin bleaching products but I hated my hair. Looking at it, shaving it, cutting it all off...never truly helped me to reach the results that I wanted. I wanted pretty curly thick and rich hair that someone could run their fingers through. I wanted to be light-skinned and have curly hair so I set out on a mission to achieve this goal. So I brought a box of hair relaxer and locked myself in the bathroom. I put the relaxer in my hear and combed it through. The smell of lye and hot water was unbareable but it was the aroma that was going to lead to my goal of pretty hair.

So I washed the lye out of my hair and shampooed and that I saw it. Rich, curly, wavy, smooth hair...not the evil course hair that I was born with and hated. I was happy! I was posing and looking at myself in the mirror and really just loving the moment. Then my aunt came home and was looking at my hair. She said "somethings wrong...run quickly to the bathroom!" She pushed my head under hot water and start scrubbing my head hard. I forget the deactivate my hair and now my whole scalp was chemically burned. I had to cut all of my hair off and wear a hat for 6 weeks. My scalp became a huge center of pain as it healed from the burn. It was then that I woke up.