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“Whaaaat?” I whined. It had to have still been night time and Grandad was trying to wake me. He shook my shoulders violently as though he thought I wouldn’t need to use them later or something. “What Grandad?”
“Don’t what me, bwoy!”
I sighed. It wasn’t Saturday so I knew we weren’t going to the mountains or to the market. But, man, it was early. I still hadn’t heard the rooster crowing, my sign that I needed to get up. If the rooster slept, I should too. My phone was dead by now. With no charger and no wifi, I couldn’t even use my regular alarms. Since Grandad didn’t have a charger, I just packed it back into the duffle bag so I could bring it back to life when my suspension was over.
“What’s up, Grandad?” I wiped the crust from my eyes.
“De sky, a hope, cause if dat ting fall we all in trouble!”
I wore my boxers. I’d stop sleeping in my joggers cause it was just too damn hot. If I could sleep naked, I would, but I didn’t wanna scare Grandad. On the other hand, maybe I should. Maybe it would get me home sooner.
“What’s going on, Grandad?” I asked wearily. “Why’d you wake me up this early?”
“Bwoy you never hear de ur-ly bud get de wum?”
“Grandad, do you mean the early bird gets the worm?” I chuckled.
“Same ting, I say.”
It was actually a whole different thing he said but I did not have the energy to argue this morning or whatever time it was. Energy or not, he was going to find some way to assert his old-man-island-type logic anyway, so why even try?
“I don’t even know why we’re up this early. School doesn’t even start til 8 here,” I grumbled. “I thought I would at least get a chance to sleep in til Ma comes back.”
“You tink-ing wrong again, boy.”
I followed Grandad out my room, through the kitchen and out the back door. Where were the clothes on the line? I wondered briefly what he’d done with them, but then realized that I didn’t care much. A lone chair from the kitchen sat on the grass with a light shining over it. I hadn’t even realized that Grandad had lights in his backyard until now. This one seemed to shine brightly and directly over the chair like a spotlight on a stage. As I stepped onto the grass, my bare feet sank. It must’ve rained last night. I walked towards the chair, following Grandad, cause this was the only way that I was gonna be able to go back to sleep: do what he wanted so I could get some shut-eye.
“Come sid-dung, right here.” He directed me towards the chair.
“For what?” I noticed a bucket right next to the chair, upside down like a makeshift table. On the bucket-table lay long thick-looking silver scissors and electric clippers plugged into a long orange cord that looked like an orange skinned snake squirming from the tiny house.
“Is so you does talk to you mudda?” he asked. I wanted to say I didn’t talk to Ma like this cause she didn’t wake me up early in the morning for asinine reasons. Probably only the second time I’d ever used the word, asinine, I’d been trying to fit in somewhere since the first time I heard it. Once, my English teacher said a kid in class was doing “asinine” things. I couldn’t stop laughing cause all I heard was the teacher calling the kid an ass. After googling it, I vowed to use it and Grandad provided that opportunity.
“Grandad,” I warned after noticing what was on the bucket. “I’m not cutting my hair.”
“Sid-dung!” he demanded but he still didn’t shout.
“Grandad,” I warned again, “It’s not happening.” I remembered the conversation that Grandad had with the headmaster, how he said it’d be gone by the next day. The it must’ve been my hair but I wasn’t having it. No way!
“Sid-dung!” he grabbed the back of the chair as if steadying it for me.
“Grandad,” I was pleading now. “Ma’ll be back soon and she won’t like this. This is my hair, my style. This is how I go to school.”
“You cyan’t go a de people dem school wid a burd nest pon you head.”
“It’s not a bird nest, Grandad!” I protested. “It’s what makes me unique. It’s what makes me, me.”
“Bwoy tap talk tru-pid-ness!”
“It’s not stupidness, Grandad.”
“So wat you telling me is dat you hair mek you unique?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “You hair mek you who you is?”
“Yes!” I said as soon as he paused.
“So den, if I is to go by you logic, you hair is wat mek you get suspended from de ‘Merican school.” And just like that, I’d been gotten again by his island logic.
I surrendered and sat in the chair. All I could think about was Ma really taking this too far. This was ridiculous. I was never, ever going to forgive her for this - not even if she took me on a shopping spree to the biggest Nike store in the world. Grandad picked up the scissors from the bucket. I still hoped that this was a joke or a dream but just like when we went to the mountains in the dead of the night it felt like, this, too, was really happening. Everything began in slow motion. It had taken me so long to grow my plaits to their length. I had planned to color the tips auburn when I got back. Now, I couldn’t. I still hoped that he would just make the cutting sound, maybe scare me, like in one of the scared straight documentaries. You know, scare them enough so that they never want to see jail again. But no scared-strait tactic, this was happening. Grandad sawed off my long plaits so I could fit into a school that I wasn’t going to stay at long.
The sound of the scissors roared thunderously. Each time the shears clacked together, it was like Grandad was using ridiculously large gardening scissors. I could hear each plait screaming on their way from my head to the ground, each one pushed off a cliff, splattered on the ground. I swallowed hard. I wasn’t going to cry. No. Not today. But soon, burned at the edges of my eye lids like water out of an unsuspecting small hole in the bottom of a paper cup, each tear slid down the corner of my face, joining the others to make a chain. I stayed silent though. Not a whimper. If this was how Ma saw fit to punish me, so be it. Just when I thought that he was done with this game, he put down the scissors and picked up the clippers. The buzzing sound was loud, like a lawnmower on an early morning. The rest of my hair fell in cascades to the ground joining their comrades in solidarity around the feet of the chair. Ma had done it. She’d really taught me a lesson this time, for sure.
“Dis look better dan when I do me own hair,” Grandad boasted. He brushed strands of hair from my shoulders. I rose slowly, like I needed someone to help me up. I didn’t put my hand in my hair like I normally did at the barber. I didn’t want to look in a mirror. I couldn’t imagine what I looked like, who I looked liked. I just didn’t feel like I was me any more. I went back into the kitchen. The brown collared shirt and khaki pants lay already ironed, folded neatly over a kitchen chair. I grabbed them on the way to my room. The rooster still hadn’t crowed. Grandad’s daily obituary radio show wasn’t on so it was still early, before a normal time people would get up. Numbly, I took a shower since sleep was out of the question. I had made every decision regarding my hair ever since I could remember. I knew when I wanted it cut and when I didn’t. When I asked Ma to braid my hair, she didn’t even ask why. She just did. And now, now they were gone. I put on the uniform and went back out into the kitchen. Still, I didn’t look at my hair. Still, I didn’t feel my hair. Grandad was at the kitchen table by the time I got there, drinking from a big metal cup. A plate sat next to Grandad with waffles and bacon plus a bottle of Aunt Jamina’s syrup - a real American breakfast. Was he trying to make me feel better or something? Where was this food before? I swear he be holding out on me, but I wasn’t gonna fall for it.
“Bwoy, eat dis food before you go drop dung in de people dem school,” Grandad commanded.
“I’m good,” I grumbled. I wasn’t.
“Wat dat mean?” he asked. “Dat mean, you don eat?”
“Naw Grandad,” I shifted the weight to my other leg. “I ain’t hungry.” This was a complete lie. I was starving. I was always starving for waffles and bacon, no matter what time of day. Plus, this looked real good since I hadn’t had it in a while. Plus, I knew that Grandad must’ve made a special trip to town just to get them.This wasn’t what he normally kept in the house for sure, with his plantains, avocados, porridge, and fish. I knew I should appreciate his gesture but I just wasn’t in an appreciative mood.
“So-ot you-self den!” Grandad drained the rest of whatever was in his large tin cup then got up from the table and headed out. I followed him holding the backpack he’d given me, wearing the uniform, and now, the haircut he’d given me.
We rode to school in deafening silence. Somehow the ride seemed longer. We passed other students walking towards the school. Didn’t they have a school bus here? I stifled my question; I didn’t want Grandad thinking that I was interested in anything that they had here. As we got closer and closer to school and the sea of uniforms, I thought about Tess and how she sifted her fingers through my plaits. What would she sift through now? I eyed Grandad from the side and sighed, all the air leaving my body in an exasperated whimper.
“You lucky you got breath in you cuz plenty people don’t dis mawning,” Grandad said as we pulled up to the gate. Wordlessly, I tumbled from the van so that he wouldn’t walk me in as the he did the other day. I tried to walk through the sea of uniforms but had no idea where I was going. “Kadeeeem!” Grandad said my name like Ma did, stretching out the E’s. I kept walking.
“Ey!” Tess said. She stood at the edge of the stairs leading to the second floor.
“Hey,” I said, hoping that she wouldn’t notice my hair. But that’d be like not noticing the Wifi went out while watching Netflix - impossible. I wished I’d looked in the mirror to at least check out what I looked like, see what she saw.
She reached on tiptoe, her hand on my head. My body slouched down so that she could reach more easily. “Dis is different!” She casually ran her fingers over my head. I shrugged. “Kadeeeeeem!” Grandad called again. This must’ve been normal behavior because no one really looked around or said anything. By now, someone would’ve said, “Yo, Pops must think you’re deaf or something.” But, everyone carried on like he wasn’t the only adult male with no shirt and tie, shouting out a kid’s name. Where was security?
“You no hear you grand-farder a call you?” Tess’ eyes widened.
“No,” I lied.
“Well, he coming dis way.”
I sighed. In Orlando, I didn’t think parents were allowed to come on campus without going to the office first. Plus, I knew I ain’t seen no other adults picking up or dropping off nobody.
“Kadeem!” Grandad heavily dropped his hand on my shoulder.
“Hey, Grandad,” I turned around with the fakest smile I could muster.
“So, you no eat no breakfast, and now you naw eat no lunch?”
“Huh?” I asked. Kids walked around us like we weren’t blocking the way, I guessed. The stairs were broad and lots of people climbed at the same time. But, standing was messing up the natural order of things, the natural flow of traffic. “I gotta go, Grandad.” With Ma, I would’ve just acted like I didn’t hear her and she would’ve left whatever in the office. They would’ve called me down and that would’ve been the end of it. Grandad didn’t operate like Ma. It was like he made his own rules or something.
“Tek dis.” He shoved money into my hand like he did the last time with the coins, but this time I held some crumpled paper money along with a few coins. I pushed it in my pocket, then walked away.
“You not gon’ say tanks?” Tess asked. I forgot that she stood next to me. No, I hadn’t. Who could forget her? She smelled like fresh mint and her lips were shiny and plump with lipgloss. Could she see herself? Her hair pulled back from her face and into a ponytail on the top of her head. I don’t ever remember seeing a girl this naturally pretty who didn’t have some fake everything. Maybe back in middle school? Her neatly pressed uniform made me feel like maybe I needed to find a dry cleaner or something, just in case Grandad didn’t feel like pressing mine.
“For what?” I joked. “Just kidding. Thanks for waiting for me.” I was actually relieved that she did wait. I’d already forgotten which classroom to sit in since they all looked alike.
“Me?” She seemed confused. “Bwoy, say tanks to you grandfarder! He just gee you money to buy food wid! You should be grateful.”