Free Mixed: My Life in Black and White by Angela Nissel Page A

going to go home now,” I said, then remembered my manners, “And thank you all for untangling me.”
    They said nothing.
    I walked toward my mother and left the Star Girls confused, holding a very hairy jump rope.
    “You made some new friends?” my mother asked as I approached, taking my Walkman headphones off her ears.
    “I don’t think so,” I replied.
    “What happened to your hair?” my mother asked suspiciously. She turned my head to the side and fingered my fresh forehead welt. “What happened to your face? Where’s your barrette? Which one stole it? Oh, God, I have to get you out of this neighbor—”
    “Nobody hit me,” I said, trying to calm her down. “My hair got caught in the rope. I need tinfoil-star hair like those girls to jump double Dutch.”
    My mother wrinkled her brow and asked me to repeat myself. I pointed to the girls I’d just been playing with. She cocked her head, trying to analyze if I was lying. She accepted my answer, then looked over at the girls.
    My mother exploded into laughter. “Those are called cornrows, darling,” she explained.
    “Can you do my hair like that tomorrow?”
    “I don’t know how.”
    “But didn’t you grow up on this block?”
    “No one in our family knows how to cornrow, honey,” my mother said, and this time, I wrinkled my brow at her. How could she have grown up on this block and not know how to cornrow? Shouldn’t everyone on this block know how to do that? Did she not know how to jump double Dutch either? Is that why she had to marry a white man?
    My mother handed me the Walkman. I came up with a new strategy: If I couldn’t get cornrows, I would use my radio technology to gain access to friends. The Walkman had just hit the marketplace, and no one else I knew had one. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with a girl with a Walkman?
    I excused myself from the steps and ran back over to the three girls, Walkman on, bobbing my head slowly to “Up Where We Belong.”
    My plan started working. “Can I listen?” Kim asked, dropping her spinning clothesline, more interested in what was on my head. I put the headphones over her ears.
    Kim listened for a few seconds and then snatched the headphones off and held them away from her body like they were transmitting a satanic broadcast. “Who is this?” she asked, my earphones dangling from her fingertips.
    “Joe Cocker,” I replied. I remembered the singer’s name because the boys in my class would always say his last name, point to their crotches, and break out into laughter.
    “Keisha, listen to this,” she said, putting my headphones on Keisha’s ears. Keisha recoiled as Kim did. She howled, clutched her stomach, and gasped for air. Kim then repeated the scene with Nikki, who topped Keisha’s laugh by jolting her body like thousands of tiny invisible hands were tickling her.
    “Why are you listening to this white station? You should be listening to Power Ninety-nine,” Kim said, putting the headphones back on and adjusting the radio dial a few notches. She listened to some music for a few seconds and then handed the Walkman back to me.
    “This music is better,” she said, putting the headphones back on my ears.
    All three girls looked at me to see if I approved. I did.
    “I like this,” I said, not really having enough time to decide if that was true. As the Star Girls looked on, I smiled and tapped my foot, hoping I could catch the beat.

Doo-Doo Head
    African-American women each spend two to three times more on hair care and beauty than women of other races, totaling $1.16 billion annually.
    —Data from the Hunter-Miller Group,
a market research firm
    Living in an all-black neighborhood, I soon learned the importance of hair and found that most black people categorized mine as
good.
My mother had many descriptive names for my hair, but
good
was not even close to being one of them.
    From the time my hair started sprouting, my mother would style my hair the same way every day. She’d