Kitchen hair, hot combs and the stories Black girls told
A mother creates a safe space, but struggles when her daughter uses it
The hot comb was heating on the stove. The Blue Magic was sitting nearby, and somebody was telling me to hold my ear before that comb got anywhere near it. I can still remember the smell of hot hair mixed with grease while I waited for my mom to finish my hair.
That little kitchen didn't stand a chance with my mom, my aunties, their friends, and me and my two sisters all gathered in there. Everybody wasn't getting their hair done. Some were just there to laugh, talk and put their 2 cents into whatever conversation was going on. And believe me, everybody had something to say.
What stays with me isn't that I got everything right. Clearly, I didn't. It's that she trusted me enough to come back and tell me when I had gotten something wrong. And she did it right there in our own version of kitchen hair, sitting between my legs, just as she had when she first told me who she was.
Somewhere between the parting, greasing, and somebody telling me to hold my head still, my sisters and I joined in too. We talked about school, friendships, crushes and hurt feelings. The women listened, laughed with us, and sometimes told their own stories. If something warranted a correction, we got one. Otherwise, we were part of the conversation.
Looking back, Black women were creating safe spaces for Black girls long before anybody called them that. We were just doing hair, but in those kitchens, we could tell the truth without every conversation turning into an interrogation or a lesson. I was usually the child who wrote my mom letters and left them under her pillow when something felt too difficult to say. In that kitchen, though, I could simply join a conversation already happening.
When I became a mom, I wanted my daughters to have that too. Our version of kitchen hair happened in the living room, one of my girls sitting on the floor between my legs while I parted, greased and braided her hair. Sometimes we talked about ordinary girl stuff. Other times, I learned things I might never have known otherwise. I also learned making room for their honesty meant being careful about what I did with it.
One afternoon, I was sitting in my little Toyota Yaris outside a daycare, waiting for one of my older daughters to get off work, when my youngest told me some girls at school were spreading rumors she was gay. She was crying to the point of sobbing. I asked if there was any truth to it, wanting her to know she could tell me. She said no.
Now I'm not going to pretend I wasn't ready to handle some things. I wanted names. I wanted to call that school the next morning. Watching my child hurt made me want to find whoever was responsible and make sure it never happened again.
But that's not what she needed from me.
I had questions, plenty of them, but I couldn't ask my daughters to trust me with difficult things and then make every conversation about what I wanted to do next. So I sat with my own discomfort and gave her room for hers. She needed somewhere to put what she was feeling, and for those few minutes in that parking lot, I needed to be that somewhere.
A few months later, while I was doing her hair, she brought it up again.
"Ma, you remember when you asked me if I was gay?"
Of course I remembered.
"Well, I think I am."
I wish I could tell you I immediately knew exactly what to say. I didn't. I told her nothing about being my daughter or how much I loved her had changed. We talked, and she walked away feeling good about finally saying what she had been holding in.
But what she couldn't see was everything going on inside of me.
I grew up in a traditional Baptist church, so I was carrying the fear my daughter would die and go to hell. That thought consumed me. And while I was wrestling with what I had been taught and what I believed, I began pulling away from her without realizing how much I was doing it.
She noticed.
One day, sitting between my legs getting her hair done again, she told me I was treating her differently.
That my love felt unfamiliar.
There was a part of me that wanted to defend myself. I wanted to explain I loved her, but I was scared for her. Hearing I had hurt my child was painful.
But she was telling me the truth.
So we talked. I listened to how my distance felt to her, and I told her about the fears I was carrying. I couldn't undo the hurt, but I could acknowledge it, apologize, and make sure she knew those fears were mine to work through, not hers to carry.
What stays with me isn't that I got everything right. Clearly, I didn't. It's that she trusted me enough to come back and tell me when I had gotten something wrong. And she did it right there in our own version of kitchen hair, sitting between my legs, just as she had when she first told me who she was.
That's what those women in my childhood kitchen gave us, even if nobody thought to call it emotional safety — not a promise that every conversation would be easy, but room to have it anyway.
And I think about how many opportunities we have to create our own versions of kitchen hair, even if we never experienced it growing up. Maybe it's cooking dinner with our children, riding in the car with somebody we love, or sitting on the porch with a friend. Those ordinary moments when we're spending time together, talking about everything and nothing, can become the very places where somebody finally feels comfortable saying what's been on their mind.
But creating that kind of space also means paying attention to what happens when somebody does open up. Because sometimes we're going to hear things we weren't expecting, things we don't understand, or even things about ourselves we would rather not hear. And how we respond in those moments can determine whether that person feels comfortable coming back.
I still remember the Blue Magic, the smell of hot hair, my mom and aunties laughing, and three little girls who knew they could join the conversation. And all these years later, I'm still learning how much those women gave us while they were just doing our hair.
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