So when he asks me if I’d be willing to help him with his hair, I tell myself to treat this as progress in our relationship, with only the lightest razzing of, “You never would have asked me that when I was white.”
“I said I was sorry,” he huffs before dragging me into the shower with him to shampoo away two weeks of training camp.
And has the absolute audacity to pluck my cap off my head and pull me under the water as well, without even asking me when I washed my hair last, like the raging asshole thathe is.
It was about time to wash my hair, so I don’t bother to protest so much, although it’s hard for me to hide my discomfort. It was different when I took my wig off at the hospital. With it being all matted down, so short and wispy that I didn’t even have it in any protective style, just a bit of product to keep it flat, he wouldn’t have been able to see why I’ve kept it covered since chemo. In the shower, with his fingers digging into it, scrubbing my scalp and soaping up the strands, he has to see how bad it is.
But every time I look up at him, he’s smiling. And when I close my eyes hard and clench my hands to keep from pulling away from him, he stops what he’s doing to pull me into him, wrapping his arms around me firmly, holding me as he rocks back and forth, nothing more dramatic than the rocking he does when Donovan’s asleep in his arms.
“If you truly want to keep your head covered all day and all night, I respect that,” he tells me, “but I don’t want you to. Not here. This is where you’re supposed to beyou.This is family.”
“It’s . . . it’s so bad though. It’s like half of it never came back, and what did come back is all . . . it’s just wrong.”
He tilts my head back, using his free hand to shield my eyes from the soap rinsing away. “Then we’ll figure out something that works. I can’t imagine losing all my hair like that. Hell, I locked my bedroom door for an entire year when I had roommates who pranked each other by shaving off strips of hair while they slept.”
“How is it that I feel like you started it?”
“Because I did, but he deserved it. I didn’t. And even if you just want to bonnet it up when you’re at home, wouldn’t you feel better if we did something simple with yours, too? Listen, I’m not an expert, but maybe if we work on maintaining the hair you do have, the rest will start growing back?”
I don’t think that’s how hair works, but I like how he says ‘we’. And I like how he says ‘family’. So after I got a good coat of moisturizer on his hair, I let him play with mine for a bit, loving how carefully he handles it.
Twisting is a long process. My sister and I always did each other’s hair once we were old enough to realize our mom — our incredibly Caucasian mother — had no idea what to do with the hair we both inherited from our father. We learned from YouTube videos, and I like to think I did a good job of all the fancy braids I did for my sister, even though the process took an entire day or even an entire weekend, and all that time together wasn’t enough to keep us together in the end.
So I have some feelings I wasn’t expecting once Blaise’s hair is ready and I’m sitting on the sofa with him between my legs on the floor so I can make clean parts on his scalp. I know he always has them professionally done by football season. I’ll never be able to recreate what a salon would be able to do. But I want to do it well. Maybe it’s my vanity, but even if I might be willing to cave to letting my hair out at home, I won’t be going without a wig or a wrap for a long time, so getting Blaise’s hair right will at least prove that I do know what I’m doing. And this is bringing back all those familial vibes, so I don’t want this to be the last time I do this for him. If this is something we do together, some way to reconnect when he’s going to be away constantly once the season gets going again, I think I’d like that a lot.
So I ruin it by asking, “Why didn’t you just tell me you were John?” before I’ve even got his hair sectioned.
The silence from him is unsettling. Blaise isn’t one to think for long before saying or doing anything. He’s pretty much the most impulsive person I know, which apparently is great on the football field but obviously creates chaoseverywhere around him. I expect him to give me some bullshit answer.
“You know the answer.”
I scowl as I finish tying up the sections I’ve made and then divide out a tiny square at the base of his neck. I pull the strands to their full length, longer than my hair’s ever been, but his texture is so tight it springs the moment I release it. If I were feeling vindictive, I’m the one with the comb; I could detangle half that hair right out of his head, but I need to stay calm to get an explanation. “Obviously, I don’t, or I wouldn’t ask.”
He draws his legs up just so he can anchor his elbows on his knees and rest his head on his hands. “Gammy always warned me to wrap it up. She’s a nurse, so she loves to get real clinical with shit, but she definitely exaggerated some STDs. Ain’t no one’s dick shriveling up and falling off. I’ve seen some nasty dudes in the locker room, and they all still got their dicks.”
“That’s not—”
“Right, not answering the question. So she gave me all those warnings, but then she tacked on all the pregnancy shit. Not just pregnancy, though. The baby trapping.”
“Baby trapping?”
“When women lie about being on birth control or poke holes in condoms or whatever to trap their men in a relationship.”
“Okay, but Gabe lied about having a vasectomy, so—”
“Yeah, I get now that it’s not gender-specific, but Gammy didn’t really put it out there that I might be able to baby trap a girl. Probably figured, stupid ass that I am, I’d go and do it.”
I don’t know if he’d do it, but I do know one thing. “You’re not stupid, Blaise. You’re a lot of things, but not stupid.”
“No, really, I am. I was never great at school, so when I turned out to be great at football, they got me tutors, but they weren’t actually tutors. They were kids who did the work for me. And eventually, I wasn’t even allowed to go to my classes anymore because other kids were taking them for me. Last grade I actually finished was ninth. I am stupid.”
I don’t like that at all, but he says it with so much confidence and assurance that I don’t have room to push back. I separate the first section of hair in half and begin the meticulous process of twisting the two lengths together.
“That’s why Gammy told me about the baby trap. And it wasn’t so much about the kid, you know? It was about the money. She warned me that women would do things to get themselves pregnant, and then it wouldn’t even be about keeping me necessarily, that a lot of that type of woman wouldn’t be interested in living as a football wife or even being a mother at all so much as they’d be interested in just how much money they’d be able to wring out of me, and who knew how they’d treat that kid. She said I couldn’t trust anyone, especially the groupies. She told me about how many women have a thing for hooking up with as many pro athletes as they can, like we’re notches in headboards, and it’s scary how right she was about that.
“And every one-night stand could be another woman tricking me into rawdogging her and knocking her up so she can steal my money.”
Oh.His words sting, but not because he’s being so crass about it. Because that’s me. I’m the woman his grandmother warned him about. I talked him out of using protection just because I was worried they’d show up on Emerson’s bill — not that it mattered, since I got pregnant and had to tell Emerson what happened anyway — and then I popped back up in hislife right when I could have started pestering him for child support. I haven’t at all, and I try to keep not just my words but my thoughts away from Blaise’s money, but yeah, I do get really frustrated that we’re all crammed in this tiny shit apartment and he literally borrows my car sometimes when I know he’s got some fancy muscle car, I guess up at the Jugs house still, and millions of dollars that he could buy us a house and everything else we need with.
