Tangled in the 90s

A response to the prompt "Hair is everything" and a #truestory

The tangle comb was no match for my hair. Its teeth intimidated but lacked the vigor needed to smoothen out the thick vines I had growing out of my head. Everyday I would sit in front of the dresser as my poor mother, who had not a care in the world for hairdressing, picked patiently at the knots in my hair. To her, it took about seven minutes; to the five-year-old in the chair, a year. It was a pointless labor of love I will forever remember.

But even mothers have tipping points—and it was my adamant hair that brought my mother to hers.

"Okay, that's it. Tomorrow we are going to the mall after school for conditioner," she said, as she yanked the tangle comb from my entrapment. We were both in pain.

"Conditioner?" I asked.

"Yes, for your hair. To get rid of the tangles," she said.

I lay in bed that night feigning sleep. But behind my lids flashed the image of The Conditioner—this huge dome-shaped robot with spokes reaching out from its body like tentacles. It let out a whirring sound that implied electric currents were flowing through its limbs, ready to shock catastrophic manes like mine into ease. I could picture it: me tightly strapped onto a reclining chair with the strands of my raging hair in The Conditioner's grip. A listless, automated voice then says: *Begin conditioning*. And my screams would be the only sound loud enough to drown out the zaps and deep hums of the hefty machine. 

It was impossible to focus in school the next day because I was preoccupied with my fate. All I could do was bank on the belief that my own mother surely wanted me to live.

After school, my mother and I went straight to the mall as planned. I noted my mother's calmness on the way there and tried my best to mimic it. At the department store, under the menacing fluorescent lights, I weaved through the shelves of toiletries trying to both locate and hide from The Conditioner. I was impossibly short and had to tiptoe and grab on to edges of the shelves to get glimpses of what lay in the far distance—all while my mother peacefully surveyed the different products on the shelves.

In my amateur attempt to hold a 360-degree view of my surroundings, I'd lost sight of my mother. Panicking, I snaked through the shelves in a frantic search for her, trying to appear to the customers and salesclerks as if I was merely playing. It was bad enough to have to be conditioned by The Conditioner, but not having my mother there with me guaranteed my demise.

My mother told me to scream if I ever found myself lost and scared in an unfamiliar place. It felt like a bit much to scream here, I thought, but I also didn't know what else to do. I was running out of time, so I decided to give myself over to my panic. I held my belly and counted down before I let it out: three, two, one—

"Kim!" my mother yelled. 

I knew where she was in an instant. I made a bolt for the aisle where her voice was coming from.

"Kim—oh there you are! Let's go, anak. I got the conditioner," she said with a smile, folding the shopping bag to reveal a plastic bottle with a silky-haired woman plastered on it the size of my little hand.

My little hand that would, for the years that followed, grow bigger to be able to accommodate more product, build muscle through lathering chemicals to soothe my frizz, and become adept at fixing it up to conceal the sleekness that it desperately lacked no matter how diligently it had waited for the promise of the silky-haired woman.

Flushed, sweaty and out of breath from lapping the aisles, I squinted at the bottle my mother was holding to make out what was written.

The bottle read: Hair Conditioner.