Love Is a Revolution Read online

  I open my closet, stand in front of it, and try to find an outfit that’s perfect for both roller skating and turning a guy-friend into a boyfriend. I decide to keep it simple and change into my cute, fitted jeans (taking off the I’m-just-going-to-see-Grandma jeans) and I look for a top. Everything I have is cute—I’d even say fly. But Tye seems like the kind of guy who likes a more casual look. I mean, just about everyone in Inspire Harlem wears graphic tees with some kind of message and I don’t have any. I go into Imani’s closet. I slide her hanging shirts, looking for one that’s close enough to my style but still says I’m socially conscious. The first three graphic tees are of faces of women I don’t even know, so I pass on those. And then there are two that are just a little too intense for me. But then I see one that’s a perfect fit. A black shirt with white lettering that has a list of four names.

  Marcus.

  Medgar.

  Malcolm.

  Martin.

  I text Imani and ask her if I can wear it. I know she’ll say yes, but I always ask first when I borrow something from her. While I wait for her to answer, I do my makeup, put on my oversized gold hoop earrings and bangle bracelets. Now, all I have to do is figure out what to do with my hair. Is there such a thing as the perfect hairstyle to get a guy to like you? I doubt it. I go with the Inspire Harlem style and decide to wear a head wrap. Like Toya’s. I’ve never worn one actually, but it’ll be good to have one on tonight in case I sweat out my hair while showing off my skating moves.

  Imani is always tying her hair up in a scarf or wearing a wrap, but it just isn’t my style. I rummage through the wicker basket that sits on her dresser. It’s stuffed with fabric. Every color combination and patterned design you can imagine, she has it. I pull out one that is a mix of blues, yellows, and reds. I go back to my room and begin wrapping my hair. I check my phone to see if she’s responded to my text, then add and one of your head wraps too?

  I take the shirt and fabric to my room. I go ahead and put the shirt on and then pull my hair up into a bun so I can do the wrap.

  It’s not working.

  The fabric is too loose, and the knot at the front keeps coming undone.

  I try again.

  It’s not working.

  I’m going for the Black-girl-natural-chic look, and this is not it. I pick up my phone, google how to tie a head wrap. This makes me wish I had paid more attention when Mom tried to teach me. There are too many videos to choose from. I click on the second one since it has the most views. The woman in the video does three different looks, and all of them look so stylish and cute on her, all of them seem so easy to do. But every time I try, I fail.

  I’m going to be late.

  “Uh, you need some help?” Imani’s home. I didn’t even hear her come up the stairs. She walks over to me, takes the fabric out of my hands, and folds half of it into a triangle. How did she know to do that? The tutorial didn’t say to do that.

  “This is too big to use without folding it. You gotta fold it if you want this look.” She points to herself, because of course she has her hair wrapped and she looks like she could model her whole outfit. “Sit here.” She points to the chair at my desk and starts twisting and wrapping the fabric, pulling it real tight, then twisting it into a knot.

  “Your hair is too slippery. You’re going to need some bobby pins.” Imani walks over to her room and comes right back with a few bobby pins hanging out of her mouth like fangs. “This is why I keep telling you that you need to stop straightening your hair. It can’t even keep fabric on . . . ​no kink to hold on to.” And then she realizes I am wearing her shirt and she says, “Wait, what is all this for anyway? You don’t even wear head wraps.”

  “I’m going roller skating tonight. Don’t want to sweat my hair out.”

  “It’s definitely going to sweat out under this,” she says. She tucks the extra fabric and steps back so I can look in the mirror.

  “It’s okay if I sweat it out and it’s covered. I just want to look the same way at the end of the night as I’ll look when I show up.”

  Imani goes back to her room. Then, a whole ten minutes later she yells across the hall, “Oh, sorry. I’m just now seeing your text messages.” And then, “Who are you going with?”

  I don’t know why I am hesitant to answer her. I stutter out Tye’s name. And all of a sudden she is back in my room. “You’re going out with Tye? Tye Brown?”

  “We’re not eloping. We’re just going to Riverbank.” I laugh, trying to make light of it.

  “Who else is going?”

  “It’s Teen Skate Night. I don’t know who will be there, but I’ll be there and Tye will be there.”

  She looks at me with suspicion and then says, “Well, am I invited or is this a date?”

  “It’s not a date,” I answer. Not tonight, but soon. I have a plan. “Tye and I are just getting to know each other,” I tell Imani. “Just two friends hanging out. You can come.”

  “Okay,” Imani says. “I’ll let Toya and Lynn know, and I’ll see if Asher, Sadie, and Jackson can come too.”

  Wait. What? I should have said this is a date. I definitely should have said this is a date.

  “I’m going to text everyone, and we’ll meet you and Tye up there,” Imani says. And just like that, I am going on a group field trip with teens from Inspire Harlem.

  Tye is waiting outside for me, looking out at the water. He doesn’t know I am behind him, and I think maybe I should scare him, but then decide to gently touch his back. “Hey,” I say.

  “Oh, hi. You look nice. I like this.” He touches my wrap, and I cringe a little because I am afraid the bobby pins will slip out. They don’t, though. Imani gave me extra, extra reinforcement. “This place is amazing,” Tye says.

  “You’ve never been here?”

  “Never.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I feel judged right now,” Tye says.

  We laugh and go inside.

  It isn’t too long before everyone else shows up. I see Imani and Asher first, then Sadie and Jackson. It feels like we’re on a triple date, and I can’t believe it’s this easy to make my plan happen. We stand in line to get our skates, and that’s when I hear them. Lynn and Toya. Their voices dragging out, “Heeeeey.”

  So much for my triple date.

  Toya looks different from the last time I saw her because her hair is all out, a big gorgeous mess all over her head. “Hey, Tye, you lookin’ good with the fresh fade,” Toya says. They hug, and when Tye lets go he says, “Yeah, a haircut was well overdue. Your hair looks nice too. It’s beautiful.”

  He is right, her hair is beautiful, but I don’t want him to be the one to tell her. That’s ridiculous, I know. How can I be jealous over someone I just met? He’s not my boyfriend. Yet.

  Standing next to Toya with her beautiful hair, I am second-guessing everything about myself—what I’m wearing, saying, and if I’m dancing too hard to a problematic song. But then, I think what do I have to prove to any of them? and I take Tye by the hand and pull him out onto the rink. “Whoa, whoa . . . ​slow down. I haven’t skated since I was ten years old. Give me a minute.” He holds onto the wall and says, “All right, before we start, let’s take a selfie. Gotta capture the Before just in case this ends badly.” Tye laughs.

  “Are you scared?”

  “Me, scared? Never,” he says, while nodding his head up and down saying yes. “Scared is a strong word. It’s just, like I said, I haven’t skated in a long, long time.”

  “You just have to get out there. It’s like swimming and riding a bike, right? Once you learn you always know how.” I don’t know if this is really true, but he buys it. “Smile,” I say, and hold my phone up in the air at an angle to capture both of us. We take a few and skate around the rink.

  Tye is holding on to me so tight, so very tight. I keep telling him, you got this, you got this. By the time we go around once, he is steady and sure and now we are dancing and gliding next to each other an
d he doesn’t need to hold on to me anymore but I want him to.

  I don’t know how long we’ve been here, but I have seen people come and go, go and come. Tye asks, “You want anything to eat?”

  And oh my goodness, how did I forget that the best part of Riverbank is the food? The hot dogs, the fat, salty pretzels, the popcorn fresh and hot and buttery. “Yes,” I say. We go over to the side of the rink. “I’ll get us something,” Tye says. He walks to the food counter, and I join Asher and Imani, who are sitting on a bench. I sit next to Imani. The rink is covered but not indoor, so even though I can’t see the sky, I can see that Harlem is dark now; the sun is gone and there is relief from today’s heat.

  Toya and Sadie come and sit next to me. Toya hasn’t said much to me, just a soft hello and an excuse me, sorry when she bumped into me while we were skating. She takes her skates off. “This is a workout,” she says. “I’m tired.”

  Imani laughs. “This was fun. Can’t believe we haven’t come here before.”

  But we have. Imani and I came here all the time with my mom and her mom when we were little. But then I realize I am not a part of the we Imani is talking about.

  Toya says, “Too bad we didn’t think to bring the flyers for our community block party.”

  “Oh, you’re right,” Imani says. “There’s at least one hundred teens here. Perfect place to spread the word.”

  Sadie doesn’t give me a look, like she normally would, but she doesn’t say anything either, so at least I know she disagrees with them.

  I stand and lean against the edge of the rink. “Maybe it’s good that you didn’t—I mean, you know, it’s okay to take a night off so you can just have fun,” I say. Why can’t I keep my mouth shut? They are clearly not talking to me. I am not a part of their we.

  Tye walks over to us, drinks, popcorn, and pretzels in hand. Jackson and Asher are with him, carrying their own snacks. “What are you all talking about?” Tye asks.

  Toya says, “Just talking about how this is such a missed opportunity. We could have brought flyers to promote Inspire Harlem.”

  Tye looks around and takes in all the people, all the bodies falling and whizzing by. “Oh, you’re right. I didn’t think of that.”

  Um, yeah—you didn’t think of it because you were focused on spending time with me. They aren’t even supposed to be here.

  “Well, Nala thinks that’s a dumb idea.” Toya points at me. Imani gives her a look like she’s saying, don’t start.

  “I didn’t say it was a dumb idea. I said it’s okay to take a break. That’s all I said.” I look at Imani and Sadie for backup. They know I didn’t call anyone’s idea dumb.

  Sadie says, “Yeah, it’s probably good that we didn’t bring promotional material. If someone handed me a flyer promoting something right now, I’d probably throw it away.”

  There’s back-and-forth about what I did and didn’t say, and then, maybe in an attempt to make things better or to bring the peace, Tye says, “I get Nala’s point. It’s like Ms. Lori always says, self-care is important. When you’re trying to birth a revolution, you still have to take care of yourself.”

  “So spending time with me is your self-care project?” I ask. “And here I thought you wanted to get to know me.” I say this in front of everyone even though I don’t mean to. And since when is their mission to birth a revolution. And what does that even mean, really?

  The DJ announces last call. One more song and the rink will be closing. I get up. “I’m going to go back out there and skate.” I leave Imani, Asher, Sadie, Jackson, Lynn, and Toya, with her beautiful hair, standing next to Tye who is holding the food he bought for us, probably wondering what is wrong with me and why the sudden mood change.

  I don’t know who he gives the food to, but soon enough he is cruising beside me. “You left me,” he says.

  “Last song,” I say.

  Tye skates with me, close. Our arms brushing against each other, and I almost fall, so I grab him, hold on to him until I am stable. “I got you,” Tye says. “I got you.” We circle the rink, and I can’t let it go, I have to ask, “So roller skating is how you practice self-care?” I ask. Attitude in full effect.

  “That came out totally wrong. I was just trying to get Toya to see your side,” Tye says.

  “I don’t have a side,” I tell him. And then, “Everything can’t be about Inspire Harlem. I just wanted us to spend time together. I’m on our side.”

  I want him to be a part of my we.

  6

  All night long I think about the last song Tye and I skated to. I can’t sleep because my mind is replaying moments of our day together: how our hands touched when we both dipped our fingers into the collards, how he wrapped his arm around my waist while we swayed side to side on our roller skates.

  And then I remember Toya’s hair. Her beautiful, natural, not-straightened hair. The kind of hair that has body and volume and bounce. Her hair is big, and it makes a statement when she walks into a room.

  Tye called Toya’s hair beautiful.

  I want him to call my hair beautiful.

  I go back into my bedroom, sit at my desk, and open my laptop to search for tutorials on how to get a twist out with straightened hair. From what I’ve watched so far, the hard part will be getting my ends to curl and crinkle. I’ve flat ironed it so long that my natural kink is kind of non-existent. The third video I watch shows how to put rods at the ends to make my hair curl. I’ve seen those rods in the bathroom on Imani’s shelves. I watch the whole video twice so I memorize the steps, and then I look through Imani’s hair products and get all the supplies I need.

  The first thing I need to do is wash my hair. I pull up my Blue playlist on my phone to listen to while I’m in the shower. Not too loud, because I don’t want to wake Imani up—although she could sleep through a hurricane. I am thinking about how full and luscious my hair is going to be and how the next time I see Tye he is going to look at me and say, Your hair is beautiful, you are beautiful.

  When I am finished, I part my hair into four sections and follow the steps the girl in the video did. I know I don’t have the best record with following YouTube tutorials, but it doesn’t hurt to try. I follow all the instructions, adding styling foam and moisturizer, two-strand twisting sections of my hair into chunky twists, and then drying it a little with a blow-dryer, not letting it completely dry but getting just a little of the wetness out.

  The noise from the dryer drowns out the music, and I hardly hear Imani knocking on the door. I turn the blow-dryer off. “Yes?”

  “I need to use the bathroom. What are you doing?”

  I open the door.

  Imani looks at me with a mix of confusion and irritation. “You’re doing your hair at three in the morning?”

  “What? It’s three o’clock?”

  Imani yawns and stands with her hand on her hip waiting for me to leave.

  I unplug the blow-dryer and go to my room. I’ll clean up the bathroom in the morning. I’ve got to go to bed.

  I don’t even remember falling asleep. I just know that when I get up the next morning, the sky seems wide awake, like the sun has been out for a while. I look at the clock on my nightstand. It’s already noon. I guess staying up so late had its effect on me.

  The first thing I do is slowly take the rods out so I can see how my hair turned out. I expect to have thick black twists even more stunning than Toya’s because my hair is longer and thicker.

  But no.

  As I undo my twists, gently taking out the curling rods, I see that my hair looks much shorter and doesn’t look like a kinky fro at all. My hair shrank like clothes do if they’ve been left in the dryer too long, and I look like I have an old-school jheri curl. I tug on one of the curls, pulling it down. It reaches my shoulder, but as soon as I let go, it boings back up. I look like I am in kindergarten getting ready for Sunday church service with Grandma. Or like I am getting ready to be a bride’s flower girl.

  Toya looks older and sexy
with her hair out.

  This is an epic fail.

  I run downstairs to see if Aunt Ebony has any advice on what to do, and as soon as I get to the middle of the stairway, I hear voices. And it’s not Aunt Ebony or Uncle Randy. I hear Imani and Sadie and Jackson and Toya. And Tye. What are they doing here?

  It is too late to turn around. Tye sees me first. He is sitting next to Toya, whose hair is still big and luscious, and everything opposite of my shriveled curls. I cannot believe that Tye Brown is actually in my house and here I am looking like a Shirley Temple wannabe.

  Sadie is the first to say something. “Are you okay?” she asks. And I can see it in her eyes. What she is really asking is, what did you do to your hair?

  I can’t move or say anything. I just stand there on the steps looking at all of them and they are all looking at me. They are polite enough not to burst out into laughter, but the looks of shock on their faces is enough to make me run back to my room, except I can’t get my legs to move.

  Imani walks over to me. “Hey, Nala. Uh, we’re having an Inspire Harlem meeting today. Planning the community block party.”

  “Oh, um, hi, everyone. Sorry . . . ​sorry to interrupt. Imani, is Aunt Ebony here?”

  “No, she went to lunch with Aunt Liz.”

  “Oh, I—I wanted her to help me . . . with my hair.”

  When I say this, Sadie rushes over to the stairs like a superhero. “I’ll be back,” she says to the group. And she grabs my hands and walks upstairs with me.

  When we get to my room, I close the door and really I just want to break down and cry. Tye Brown is in my house, and I look a mess. And it’s not just my hair. I have on sweatpants and a raggedy tank top. Finally, I find my words. “I want to go natural,” I tell Sadie. “And clearly it’s not a good look on me.”

  Sadie is trying not to laugh, but I know she wants to. “It’s—it’s not that bad.”

  I just look at her.

  “Okay, it’s pretty bad. Um, why don’t you let me braid it.”