Dear Jimmy Connoll, who snatched an ill-fitting but culturally snug
Afro wig from my head while I stood in the chow line on a Tuesday
at roughly 12:30 p.m. at Carl Schurz High School on the northwest
side of Chi: O.K., maybe you suspected that it was just a weirdness
plopped atop me, you couldn’t have known that the damn thing
wasn’t anchored down by bobby pins or that my real hair was flat
plaited dusty and matted beneath because that Tuesday all I cared
about was the sheen that showed, not the shameful itch beneath.
The stated color of the wig, Jet Black IA, was actually two shades
too black for me, just some cheap tangle meant to imitate real hair
’cause real hair cost up in the dollars and I was just stalking the kink
anyway, the natural ignored root. Didn’t want to rattle anyone.
Dear Jimmy, I was your public personal curiosity, mantel-ready
and scrub-skinned in your presence, aching through the ritual
of Tri-Hi-Y and Latin Club, every word I spoke tilted obediently
up at the end. I was a thing with no color. But it was 1970, a year
with its stupid fist in the air, and since my hair was the only thing
I couldn’t change (yes, I still believed that pesky skin thing could
be negotiated), I surrendered to letting those naps say Negro out
loud. There it was, undeniable, shifting as I stumbled, the front
inching down my forehead, the back lifting for a flash of private
knotting, oh no, I was way too big a slice of colored, something
had to be done. Jimmy, how noble of you to take it upon yourself,
to slap me back to center, to staunch my wacky revolution. What
courage it took for you to confront that most formidable wrong.
Remember when you held me in your arms? You were chaperone
at a freshman dance, and by then I was so in love with you my ribs
ached from struggling to hold that huge sin in. A downbeat,
you with arms outstretched, and I signed myself over, told myself
maybe he, maybe I, dared a maybe we, prayed me pale and pliant,
prayed you’d wash me woman with that stabbing blue Jesus gaze.
When the music stopped, your mouth touched my cheek, and I
dizzied myself writing, dreaming, building whole futures on that
blazing square of skin. Now I know you were aping the room over
my shoulder, googoo jungle mug, look at me rocking the world
of the colored girl! Later I bet you laughed, mocked how my hips
sought yours, bubbled your perfect lips obscenely, hooted monkey.
Dear Jimmy Connoll, did you talk about it with your friends, did you
snicker and plan, did you think about the second after, whether you
would drop the wig at my feet or run away holding it high over your
head? You held it out and I took it. And all my air became pointing
fingers, open mouths, shouts from the windows, laughing from
the floorboards, guffaws from the wiry crown uncurling in my hand.
You stood your ground, smiled sweet simply, urged me to understand.
I looked numbly at the thing that I held. Suddenly I was blacker than
I ever was, colored all over everything, Negro was unleashed, jigaboo
came tumbling down, jungle bunny came out of hiding. My real hair
unflattened in new air, popped its day of dust and sprang corkscrews,
lending the drama its only motion. I opened my mouth to drown you
in raging, rip deep gash through the god of you. But all that came out,
stunned for all this time, were the first three words of this poem.