Juneteenth. Strange city. Nineteenth birthday. Surrounded by strangers. The acrid smell of burning kinks, intertwined with the laboratory simulated fruit odor of no-lye relaxer, wafted out of Fades N’ Waves Unisex Hair as the girl opened the door; small bells jingled.

D’Angelo was on the box. Ricki was on the tube. The glossy pages of Essence, YSB, and Hype Hair were in the hands of those waiting for trims and tucks. Beyond the waiting area and reception booth was the focal point of the establishment – the seven swivel chairs, where seven operators were transforming seven heads into the seven newest wonders of the world.

The girl watched the braider on the near left. Small woman. Senegalese twists. She was lost in a tangled web of Kanekalon and rubber bands, producing black ropes at lightening speed. Quiet and thorough, she concentrated on her craft almost as if she were meditating. Rhythmically plaiting oracles into synthetic nappy hair.

"Yes, may I help you?"

The voice mingled with the faint tinkle of the bells on the door. The `loced receptionist blew in with a bag from Lee’s Beauty Supply. The girl who had entered a moment before straightened up and smoothed a stray hair back into place.

"I have an appointment for one-thirty with Dante."

The receptionist, amazingly agile for her size, moved around the girl to consult the book on her desk.

"Your name Na… na…"

"Nakai," she corrected patiently.

"Dante!" the receptionist called, increasing the intensity of her voice without raising its pitch. "Nakai? For you?"

One of the stylists near the back broke off his animated conversation with the lady barber closest to his station. "She my one-thirty?" At the receptionist’s nod, he beckoned for Nakai. "Come on back here, girl, so I can look at your head."

Self-conscious, she was next to Dante’s chair in a few strides. Without any prompting, Nakai unraveled her French roll. Semitangled tresses cascaded a little past her shoulders.

Dante stopped in the middle of the precision cut he was doing. He laid down his scissors and she assessed him. Strong angles, planes, and lines. Skin polished smooth as a second octave G-sharp. Eyes a cupful of oolong tea.

His hands were too small for his body, but soft, expressive. The minute she felt the firm pressure of his fingertips on her scalp, Nakai’s nonchalance dissolved. She stood there for what seemed like an endless five seconds.

Fantasizing… what couldn’t this man do with a bottle of shampoo?

He brushed her hair back into place with a palm. "What you want done?"

"I… I don’t know," she stammered. The relentless waves of shoptalk parted for a moment, and her statement was suspended in the air. Some of her cool returned.

The lady barber, a razor sharp observer, was as predatory as she was perceptive. "Don’t you worry about a thing, dearie," she cooed. "Dante specializes in… indecision." Nakai did not detect the barely veiled hiss in her comment.

Dante did. "I always take care of my customers, Stacia. Pam!"

The first Nakai saw of the shampoo girl was her ponytail. The gravity defying, blue and yellow, spritzed stiff sculpture was the most remarkable feature she possessed. That is, if you disregarded her five inch long acrylic nails – airbrushed to match.

Pam threw her arms around Dante’s steel shoulders. "You want me to give her a shampoo?" she squeaked.

Nakai held her breath, imagining Pam’s talons slicing her tender head into bloody ribbons.

"Naw, I’m-a do her. I need some more Optimum, baby. Look in the back closet."

Pam dissolved with a huff. Nakai was relieved, touching her scalp with renewed appreciation. Dante sprayed his candy red masterpiece a final time and collected a tip from the satisfied customer, who was reveling in a shower of compliments from the other stylists.

"Ooh, schnap! Dante done did it again! That boy can do him some hair."

"Yeah, you know he went to the international show last year over there in London and showed out."

"And he did hair in New York and L.A., chile. Broadway and the soaps!"

"Didn’t he used to do Bali Hari’s hair?"

"Girl, just shut up lying. Dante ain’t never did no Bali Hari’s hair. Not the Bali Hari."

"Yes, he did! Dante…"

"When she was just Balima Harrison going right up the street to Cass Tech, I did her jheri curl up at Wilma’s Beauty College on Seven Mile," he supplied, waving at the departing coif. "Nakai, sit down here so I can get to that head."

She did, glowing because he remembered her name. Weren’t male hairdressers supposed to be flaming queen bees, keeping fragile salon ecosystems in check with their stinging comments? And here she was, itching to touch the crown of his clean shaven head.

Pam appeared with a jar of Bone Strait and clean gloves the second Nakai’s butt hit the warmed vinyl seat.

"You don’t have any more Optimum, Dante," she informed him in an eardrum piercing whine. "Tia said you can have some of this if you pay her back by Friday."

His liquid gaze darted over to the operator in question, who was strategically sewing in a headful of Nu-Yak at the station opposite him. "I owe you one, Tee."

Tia’s lushly reddened lips halted in the midst of an exchange with Donnie, the other stylist. They set firmly. "Mm-hmm. Friday."

Dante was unscrewing the lid from the relaxer. The smell hit Nakai’s nostrils. She cringed.

"No."

Those hymn inspiring hands returned to Nakai’s scalp. "Baby, it’s time. You got more than a half inch new growth in this head."

"I don’t want a relaxer."

Dante’s ever shifting eyes froze. It was almost as if he had no readily programmed response for her. His confusion was evident. Pam took advantage of the resulting tension.

"I can shampoo her while she thinks about what she wants done," she piped up eagerly, brandishing her claws. "In beauty school this week I…"

He ignored her. "You got a head full of pretty hair, girl. It’s hard to keep a head with two different textures looking good. Now, if you want to get out from under the relaxer, I can braid you up and sew in whatever you want."

"No weave." Her features, which had been set with feigned calm and underlying indecision ever since she’d crossed the threshold of the shop, smoothed over. "Never mind. I just want a shampoo and cut."

"It won’t lay right if it ain’t straight."

"Cut the perm off. Give me a short natural."

The Red Sea parted again. Nakai’s last statement emerged from the bottom. Truth, standing free and unafraid.

Then the waters were unleased from all four directions.

"I think you should go on and cut it," Tia remarked. "I always say short hair brings out your features."

"That’s why she baldheaded now." Donnie, the other barber, offered his unsolicited opinion while tightening up a teenager’s Caesar. "Don’t listen to her, honey. Nobody leaves Miss Tia’s chair with a full head of hair."

Stacia’s coo was the silken texture of sheet ice. "I agree with Tia," she said, dusting hair from an older man’s shoulders. "Au naturel is tres chic."

"Au who?" This from Donnie. Eyes orbs, lips an "o".

Kesha, the usually taciturn manicurist, stopped pushing back cuticles long enough to editorialize. "Girl, do not cut your hair. I cut all mine off back in `92 when everybody was getting it short and feathered. In `93, I had braids like Janet Jackson in Poetic Justice. My ends split off. Now everybody’s wearing a swing bob, okay, and I’m baldheaded."

"Best to listen," Donnie advised. "Sister-love’s hair used to be so long she could sit on it."

Harriet was the proprietor, and everyone was aware of this. So she only had to click her ancient curling iron once to get the operators’ attention. She turned to Nakai.

"Why you want to chop off your hair?"

Nakai didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch. She was about two seconds away from slamming out of the shop, despite Dante’s fantasy inspiring hands and her nineteenth birthday present to herself.

"It’s just hair," she said flatly. "It’ll grow back."

The older woman smiled. Nakai saw that, once, she had been very beautiful. "You all leave her alone. If she wants to cut her hair…" Dante opened his mouth to protest, but snapped it shut when she snipped the iron at him, "…we’re here to oblige. Cut it."

The matter was officially closed. The operators went about their business: hair, nails. Pruning and fertilizing a grapevine of reputation that was the antithesis of its original purpose: rarely enhancing, often choking. Dante silently, sullenly wiped off his scissors.

Fifteen minutes later, he was blowing the last miniscule snippets of Nakai’s stringy hair from the bridge of her nose. His eyes seemed to flow straight into the wounds of her homesick heart. Calming, soothing.

"Done."

She raised her head, and looked in the mirror. Searching. Not for approval, but acceptance. Not for validation, but respect. Just as she was, without a single tear or plea. Without a hot comb sizzling oil or a needle pulling thread. Without even a banner crying revolution, although she could and did read. Without a sighed lyric, a blue note, an arrogant stroke! She was a day lily, newly emerged from the nourishing earth. Lifting up her head to behold the bright and morning star. Bathing in the loving, life-giving sun.

A lily. Waiting.

Dante folded her hands as she stood up.

"Pam! Sending you another one."

Wordlessly, Nakai walked out of Fades N’ Waves Unisex Hair. Bells.

The receptionist rushed after her. Bells.

The braider took note. Juneteenth. Nineteen. Sixth chapter, Song of Solomon, verse ten. A lily, plucked from the valley of decision. Weaving black skeins of barely captured dreams.

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