And then just like that, she began working sections of coils free.
I quirked my brows and swore the movements were hypnotic. “What are you doing, Tora?”
“Detangling.”
She picked up a blue brush-comb combination. It didn’t look like anything I’d ever used—it was flexible, jointed, almost alive in her hand.
The handle curved comfortably into her palm. The spine was made up of slotted plastic prongs that could bend and move separately from each other. Each row of teeth had tiny, rounded ends, smooth and forgiving, designed to glide instead of tear.
When she pressed it gently into her wet curls, the brush flexed with the resistance, bowing and releasing like it understood her hair’s language.
No tugging.
No snapping.
Just a quiet, rhythmic slip through coils that defied gravity.
I leaned forward, mesmerized. “What’s that?”
“A detangling brush.”
When she hit a knot, the prongs adjusted, spreading wider to ease the tension instead of fighting it.
Water glistened on her shoulders as she worked through another section, and I realized how graceful the process was.
That brush wasn’t meant to dominate her hair—it was meant to listen to it. To follow its natural pattern instead of forcing it straight.
She caught me staring in the mirror and smiled. “Are you going to get ready too?”
“After I’m done watching you.”
“This is going to take some time.”
“The detangling.”
“It’s not just brushing out the knots,” she chuckled. “You separate the curls, piece by piece. You treat them gentle. You respect them.”
Respect them.
She glanced at me in the mirror. “My hair is 4C. It’s the tightest curl pattern—tiny coils, dense, soft like cotton.”
I shifted my focus back to her hands.
“A lot of people talk bad about 4C hair. Lots of complaints. They say it’s hard to manage, too thick, too much work.” Her voice softened as she twisted a section between her fingers. “But it’s not bad hair. It’s just misunderstood. It just needs care and patience. That’s all.”
I’d never heard of hair types before, never imagined there were entire systems, patterns, and numbers to describe something so personal.
Even more I didn’t realize that there were hair types that would be considered good or bad.
“When I was younger,” she continued, “people used to make jokes about hair like mine. The straighter it was, the prettier they thought you were. I used to do everything I could to straighten my hair and blend in with the crowd. Belong.”
I couldn’t even imagine my Tiger desperately doing things to fit in. She’d entered my world like it already belonged to her. There had been nothing timid about her—no apology in the way she took up space, no hesitation in her voice when she spoke.
Even sitting there in just a towel and doing her hair, Nyomi carried herself like a woman who’d survived everything meant to break her and turned it into armor.
When one section was free of tangles, she twisted and pinned it neatly to the side. “There’s been several natural hair movements that rose among Black women. More and more of us see our different hair types as beautiful.”
She put down the comb, poured a dot of oil in her hands, went back to that section, unpinned, and began to braid it.
