Hair Piece

“I wish I had your hair,” says my classmate with beautiful twelve inch braids overshadowing the frizzy, unbrushed black monster snoozing atop my head.

She is not the first classmate to tell me this, nor is she the only brown girl crowded around my desk, carding fingers through oil and stuck sweets. I think about the matted miniature poodle that lives across the street from my house. I don’t feel so different.

“You got that good hair,” they tell me, not realizing to me their hair is magic--undeterred by wind--barrettes and rubber bands as whimsical as the ballpit in a McDonald’s playhouse.

I tell them that I’m the jealous one, and each girl takes a turn laughing. Weave, when they explain it to me, is as foreign a concept as my own racial identity. I can only think of Rapunzel, not blonde, but with coarse black hair--otherworldly--cascading from the window of a prison tower.

“That good weave from China,” they say.

I laugh and we take turns petting each others’ hair. Though preened like a dogs,there is no offense, no degradation, only an abstract sense of wonder.

I am not Chinese, but for the first time in my life I think that I am probably not white, either.