Growing My Hair Again, by Chika Unigwe

Source: vowinitiative.org

(Chika Unigwe)--"I am crouching beside the bed, my palms flat on the deep red rug that swallows my sobs. The rug is warm. It is a mother's hand. My posture is--I hope--appropriate to the occasion. My mother-in-law is watching me, her eyes hawk-like even through her own tears. She sniffs and says, 'You're not crying loud enough. Anyone would think you never loved him. Bee akwa!'

She never approved of me. I had an excess of everything. Education. Beauty. Relatives. Hair. Sure to bring any man down. At the thought of my hair, my palms go cold. By this time tomorrow, it will all be gone. I shall be taken to the backyard by group of widows, probably all of them strangers. One of them, the oldest, will lather my hair with a new tablet of soap (which will be thrown away once it's been used on me), and then shave all of is off with a razor blade. I shall be bathed in cold water. Strange women splashing water on me. Cleansing me to make my husband's passage easy on him: a ritual to make the break between us final so that he is not stuck halfway between this world and the next shouting himself hoarse calling for his wife to be at his side when he joins his ancestors.

'You should cry louder. You sound like you're mourning a family pet. You are a widow, nwanyi a! Cry as if you lost a husband! Bee akwa. Cry!'