After getting dressed, I moved downstairs to sit close enough to the door to listen for what would undoubtedly be a
verysoftknock.Ugandanwomen, as was culturally prescribed, usually tapped to announce their presence in the same hushed tones in which they spoke. Their voices often so quiet, they encouraged a natural intimacy, as I was often forced to lean into their breath to have any conversation at all.
As I waited, I sat watching little colored birds dancing though the bush outside our window like confetti, basking in what would undoubtedly be one of their last dry mornings for a while. Having lived through last year's rainy season, I knew today would probably see the sun alternate with the clouds until the clouds, swollen and dark, finally relieved themselves of very heavy rain that would last for weeks.
I then heard it, the soft “brush-tap” on the door followed by muffled female voices.
I opened the door and Penninah stood under the now darkened but still dry sky, with one other woman. The woman, while striking, bore the telltale orange-tinged face and dark walnut neck that betrayed her use of Fair and Light bleaching cream. Upon my beckoning, they waved into the foyer with a quick gust that simultaneously rustled their skirts and the black plastic cavera undoubtedly holding my new hair.
“Good morning, Madame,” they both said with smiles.
“Good morning, please come in.”
They entered and their sandals shuffled on the tile floor. As they moved past me I felt a tingling, surprisingly erotic warmth that transformed my entryway and enveloped the energy Daudi and I had created in this house together.
“Madame,” Penninah hush-whispered. “Where shall we work?”
“Penninah, please call me Nicole, and we can do the braiding in the living room,” I said. While Ugandans held tightly to the formal systems of social order that designated me as “Madame,” at merely age thirty, I was having a problem with conforming.
Penninah smiled, acknowledging my request, and turned to introduce her partner. “Nicole, this is Biira.”
Biira, quickly looking at me and then away, shook my hand in hers. While she gripped my extended hand very lightly I felt a warmth travel the length of my forearm. As we stood I felt them both quietly assessing my short Afro, undoubtedly calculating how it would braid, and how long we would be there together.
We moved to the next room where I had already pulled our most comfortable, cushioned wicker chair to the middle of the floor. The room was now sun-filled and the curtains, billowing with the breeze, seemed to welcome the women into its confines.
“You'll sit there?” Penninah half asked, half stated.
“Yes, will that be OK?” I asked, not sure if they would find the height appropriate.
“It is fine.” She turned to say something in Luganda to Biira and it was then that I realized that Biira was not shy as much as just not comfortable with English, and somewhat still in shock as she discovered through my accent that I was something she had never seen: an American who was also black. Penninah and I had met before; I guess she had not passed along what I had long ago discovered to be very big news here in Uganda.
Penninah gestured to the chair and I sat. They both stood over me, gently pulling at my short hair and briefly feeling my roots with their thumbs and forefingers. As they moved closer to either side of me, I could feel the convection of their heat and smell a hint of breakfast on their breath as they spoke.
“Nicole, is this natural or is there something in your hair?” Penninah asked as she stroked the curls behind my ear. In spite of the fact that any arousal caused by her touch was obviously unintentionalâshe, of course, couldn't know what Daudi's touch behind my ear usually made me doâI felt a warm rush between my legs.
“I have a texturizer,” I confessed, hesitantly.
“OK,” she said. And with that they swept into fluid action, moving to the dining table to pull from the plastic bag the reddish brown hair they would soon attach to my head.
“We must first divide the hair, and we need Vaseline,” Penninah said softly, over her shoulder.
As Penninah spoke, I was lost in the contrast of Biira's skin, orange and then fading to black as her chest disappeared under her clothes. Her white blouse was missing a button, for which she compensated with a safety pin between her breasts. I watched her hips shift underneath her floral skirt as she balanced on one leg then the other, matching the rhythm of of her arms separating small pieces of hair from the large, stringy wad that lay on the table.
“I'm sorry, do either of you want some tea, or juice?” Clearly I had forgotten my manners as I bounced back from my stare.
Penninah repeated this in Luganda, to which Biira quietly responded, “Just water, please.”
As I poured water into a glass I looked out of the window above the sink at the swaying banana leaves to the left of our driveway. The sky had suddenly turned a foreboding and dark slate blue, playing a deep contrast to the green leaves. I heard an engine stutter on somewhere in the distance and wondered why the presence of these women was causing me chills and why I found my eyes lingering a little too long on Biira. While I could blame sexual neglect from the past week, I still felt somewhat guilty. I felt so close and private here in my home with Daudi. It had become just us, physically and emotionally. We had not had many guests since my return and, instead, spent much of our weekends naked, rediscovering beauty marks and hot-spots. Today, with the arrival of the braiders, however, I felt a hot swelling very familiar and yet very different; our love nest had been temporarily recolored. The
thought of sitting between these two women fondling my head as twelve hours passed created an arousing warmth I thought was now reserved only for Daudi, or at the very least for men. As I finished in the kitchen, listening to the low hum of Penninah and Biira's voices, I felt my nipples harden under my T-shirt like two kernels of corn.
With the hair finally separated and me seated in the wicker chair, Penninah and Biira gathered around and above me as if I were a baby in a bassinet. While I had had my hair braided before, I had never sensed this energy. Never had I noticed the harmony of movements that were sensually orchestrated to make me beautiful.
For one minute it was silent in the living room as I watched Biira stroke the first clump of hair with Vaseline until it stiffly matted. After she separated the first small strand and handed it to Penninah, I felt a tiny pinch as Penninah grabbed my first tuft of hair, and their rhythm began.
“The first part of the braiding takes long,” Penninah reminded me as she introduced the pattern of their work. “We start with the edges and make sure they are dense.”
Of course this I knew, but Penninah wanted to prevent any prematurely impatient squirming of my ass.
With each passing of a greased strand from Biira, Penninah twisted the attachment to the base of my hair in a one-two-three rhythm. I felt Penninah's hands work quickly as she attached and began the twist, leaving the open ends for Biira to finish.
Biira, smelling of blue soap laundry tablets mixed with sweat, was quiet as she moved in time with Penninah, almost as if she were dancing around the perimeter of the chair in the same one-two-three rhythm. Quietly she fought to keep up with Penninah's speed. Each twist was a stroke to my scalp that, though it felt tugged slightly, never hurt.
One-two-three.
On three, the light seemed to dim even further and within minutes a tapping-thud-patter of the first sprinkle of heavy raindrops hitting the patio sounded through the open window. The rainy season often started this way here, with a quick introduction of rain that only forebode the onset of later, much heavier storms.
“Eh-eh, it is the first rain,” Biira barely breathed in uncomfortable English. Her words, hitting the back of my neck, raised a shudder.
“Are you cold, Nicole?” Penninah felt my reaction.
“Oh, I'm fine. I guess it's just because the sun went down.”
As Penninah's one-two-three came to a complete stop just above my ear, the rain finished. The watchman passed by the window with his late-morning snack of chapatti and tea, and Biira started to finish the second round of twists. She wrapped with a quick motion that made the tips of her fingers sound short tapping noises, which, besides our breathing, was the only sound in the room. I felt the slight rocking vibration of her twists on my scalp as she worked down each shaft of hair.
Biira was short but not small and as she twisted, starting closer to my scalp and working outward, she brushed my shoulder with her soft, low breasts. I felt her even breath and self-consciously thought that perhaps she and Penninah broke the monotone by conversing among themselves with only their eyes, about the condition of my hair or my scalp.
One-two-three.
The women's rhythm dissolved the morning and welcomed the afternoon. The light of the room repeatedly changed as the sun and the clouds continued to trade places. Their work was silent except for their breath, the shuffle of their shoes as they circled to each new position, and the slight tapping noise their fingertips made with each twist of hair. Left with nothing to do, I closed my eyes to the tempo of the one-two-three rhythm
Penninah started and Biira finished, as she twisted each braid to its end.
We sat in my living room alone. I watched in silence, naked Biira dipping her hands in the Vaseline jar and smearing herself, instead of the strands of hair, with the greasy clumps. She made circular patterns on her skin, one-two-three, as she sat shyly stealing glances at me from my couch. I briefly wondered how I would explain the oily stain she was undoubtedly leaving. I watched the movements of her hands rise up to her neck, and she worked her knobby fingers along her fading cream line. She rubbed in the same one-two-three rhythm, rubbing until the line smeared into the oily massage, as if it were only an ink pen mark, and then disappeared. She sat there finally, completely and smoothly deep, dark brown, holding her breasts just under her slightly contrasting nipples. Her nipples, now standing erect above her fingers, were wide and shiny with oil. I moved to sit next to her full body on the couch as she looked at me through her sleepy eyelids, and again I felt her hush-whisper to me in uncomfortable English, mixed with her native Luganda, “Nyabo lean this wayâ¦Nyaboâ¦?”
“Nicole?”
Realizing I had dozed, the pull of the one-two-three twisting brought me back to my living room, but this time with my eyes really open.
“Nicole, lean to Biira just a little bit.” Penninah's voice broke through. Biira was now behind me, fully dressed, still half-bleached and steadily working on my crown.
“Were you sleeping?” Penninah asked.
I thought that not that much time had passed, but the position of the sun and the cramp of my stomach insisted it was just past lunchtime.
A mild discomfort dampened my hunger. Now fully awake, the one-two-three rhythm on my scalp vibrated my memory. I tried to twist my head up at Biira to see her face. Was she really
there with me? I caught a glimpse of her just as her heavy-lidded eyes grazed mine, and without stopping the rhythm of her twisting she coaxed a soft, silent smile from her lips.
I guess that was a fantasy I just slipped into about this woman. A fantasy with thoughts that seemingly violated every code of “man loves woman and woman loves man” in Uganda. I quickly tried to dismiss the little episode, blaming boredom, the warmth of the air, and the lulling intimacy of the braiding for coaxing me to this place. To a place where I thought I wanted, for one minute, to forget about both Daudi and “codes” and feel a different sort of passion.
I shifted my hips to feel whether I was really as wet as I thought.
“Nicole, it is now three. Are you restless? Do you need to get up?” Penninah, an expert braider, was very keen on the temperaments of her clients, and tried to assess the cause of my anxious movement. I rationalized that there was just no way she and Biira were complicit in my delicious mental wanderings. She just couldn't imagine the real reason for the shift of my hips.
“You know, Iâ¦I would like to get up for some water and a banana. Can I get you anything?” I asked, as I discovered with a private little rub of my thighs that I really was as wet as I thought.
One-two-three, Biira's fingers tapped a twist to its finish, down my cheek.
Another discussion in Luganda revealed that Biira also wanted a banana and another glass of water. Apparently, Penninah never ate on the job. I got up to move to the kitchen, simultaneously stretching my legs. As I handed the banana and water to Biira I again tried to look her in the eyes to see if she knew what I knew, if she knew about the Vaseline, and the couch. She looked away as she reached for the food and thanked me in Luganda, “Webale nyo.”
“Just two more hours, Nicole. We have to finish the last section and then do some trimming. OK? We should be finished by 5:30,” Penninah assured me.
I kept my eyes open and watched and listened to Friday pass on and the sun return through the windows. Lulled into a stupor again with the twisting one-two-three, I felt the heavy slide of my eyelids.
Biira was leaving. She stood up from the couch to silently leave and then turned to me as I sat where she had left me on the couch. Her body was magnificent, still lightly gleaming from the Vaseline she lowered to her knees as I sat. As she leaned into my body, her slightly folded stomach resting on my shins, I felt her breathing. Biira slowly worked her knobby hand between my still-shut thighs, traveling up my legs slowly.
One-two-three.
Again, the watchman passed by the window.
I looked down to follow her movements and was startled to discover that I, too, was naked. My full brown curls stood from between my legs, slightly damp from perspiration. Shit!â¦how would I hide the wet spot I was undoubtedly leaving on the cushion? Shit again!â¦how was this woman making me so wet? Biira reached up to touch meâ¦sliding her still-oiled palms up the length of my now-parted thighs, and I realized we still had not spoken. I wanted her anywayâ¦. She seemed to read my thoughts. She seemed to know I wanted to feel her mouth on myâ¦.