The Politics of Poor Taste

It wasn’t all our clothes that we got this way, sha. Some of them really were made in the United States. On Saturdays, she would tell the housegirl to prepare one of those rare gems so that when Sundays arrived, I would be prepped to become the prime joy of my mother’s eyes. Everything had to be perfect in the eyes of the Lord and every other church-goer pretending to dress for the eyes of the Lord. My shoes, my socks, my nails and most of all, my hair—all perfect. If, by any chance, the house-girl had not managed to capture all the strands of my thick brown hair into two very long white silk ribbons, my mother would take matters into her own hands, performing her disgust at imperfection by viciously pulling my hair into a perfect teacup and saucer.

Of course, there were many other holiday hairstyles that reigned supreme back then: There was Telephone Wire; a shiny garden of coily kanekalon that you could stretch from Jerusalem to Jericho. Then there were those short, asymmetrical braids cut into a bob with ends burnt into a solid crust that had you smelling like somebody’s burnt refuse. That one was lyrically named Bob Marley…because it was a Bob. But you see that Teacup and Saucer? That was my mother’s favourite. Something about the way the ball of hair at the back couldn’t breathe beneath the strangulation of silk ribbons took her own breath away. I’d say it was the discipline inflicted on each wild strand of chemically relaxed hair that impressed her. There was something military yet docile about both the maker of the hairstyle and the carrier that kept her steadfast in the illusion that the Buckingham palace could also be a small house in Surulere, off Babs Animashaun. And so what that she didn’t have Elizabethan blue-blood? She had the red one. After a lifetime of having very little yet making enough, battling through forests of low-income grass to make it into middle-income grace, she knew how far and how fast that red one could run under the pressure of ambition, the practice of restraint and a cocktail of catholic prayers. Her life was made up of effort and therefore, the careless loose strands of hair on my head were unwelcome guests in her vision.

My mother is at most 5 foot 3 inches, with no family wealth to propel her into an understanding of Self as valid by Nigerian standards. Luckily, her small strong hands always won the war between my over-oiled hair and the slippery silk ribbons. ‘Small but mighty’ was my unspoken nickname for her. ‘Afufumalarum’ was hers for herself. It means suffering knows my body. She would pat the orderly ball of hair supposed to be the teacup and say to our faces in the mirror, ‘Now, do you see that you are like a human being?’