The Living Museum: Mayall Road to Shakespeare Road.
I must have been six years old. Behind the front room windows, psychedelic curtains glowed. Yellow, brown and orange, with white squares that weren’t joined but weren’t separated. They hovered …
Black News 
I must have been six years old.
Behind the front room windows, psychedelic curtains glowed. Yellow, brown and orange, with white squares that weren’t joined but weren’t separated. They hovered there.
Nylon flares. Four inch tan platform shoes. A striped polo neck. And the afro.
Not a hairstyle. A presence.
It was shaped carefully in the morning. Lifted gently. Never forced. The comb didn’t drag. It travelled through slowly, lifting the hair outward and upward until it formed its perfect balance.
Soft to the touch, but strong in its shape. It held its own space.
The green and red hinged afro comb with the metal teeth was part of that architecture. Folded in the pocket when you left the house. Opened when needed.
The hinge clicking softly. The cold metal teeth entering the hair and rising upward, never downward. Over time, the teeth fell out like pine needles off a Christmas tree, but the comb remained. And the afro remained.
Sometimes the comb stayed there, resting in the hair itself. Not hidden. Visible. A quiet signal.
Every kid was young, gifted and Black.
We saw Black children on Sesame Street.
We saw ourselves in the Jackson 5 cartoon. We never missed one.
If jelly babies were handed out, you made sure you got the black one.
If that little transistor radio played My Boy Lollipop, everything paused.
If you lifted the lid on the red hinged automatic box record player and placed the vinyl down, you watched the arm lower and waited for the sound.
And when we walked between those houses, from Mayall Road to Shakespeare Road, we all tried to walk like the Pink Panther.
He had that impossible skip. That effortless glide.
We were only kids.
But our hair told the truth before we had the words.
