New Daughters of Africa

by Margaret Busby

  Candice Carty-Williams

  A British author and publisher, she studied Media at Sussex University and started work at the Guardian Guide, before moving into publishing at the age of 23, working on marketing literary fiction, non-fiction and graphic novels. In 2016, she created and launched The Guardian and 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize, which aims to find, champion and celebrate black, Asian and minority ethnic writers. She is author of the novel Queenie (2019) and contributes regularly to Refinery29, i-D, Beat, and more. Her pieces and commentary around identity, sexuality and race have been shared globally.

  Body Hair: Conversations and Conflict

  I am only conflicted when it comes to one thing about myself and the politics of my body. I am not conflicted by being big, that doesn’t bother me at all. I have always been aware of how I could lose weight if I wanted to, but the desire to be thin has never risen high enough for me to pay it any attention. I’m not conflicted about the hair on my head; I don’t think it holds any more political weight when wrapped in a scarf than when it was straight and pulled into a tight bun at the top of my head.

  The conflict that I feel so strongly, and hate feeling so strongly, is around the hair on my body. I’m going to blame my mum for my uneasy relationship with body hair. I remember, annoyingly vividly, sitting in my grandmother’s house with my mum before I was a teenager. My mum’s relationship with body hair has been, through stories I’ve heard from her and my aunts, more traumatic than mine could ever be. My mum’s dad is Indian, was very hirsute when he had hair, and passed this on to my mum and her four sisters.

  A conversation with my mum when I was eleven:

  Mum: You’re coming with me to my electrolysis appointment.

  Me: What’s that?

  Mum: To get rid of my hair. Going to zap it all away.

  Me: Why do you want to get rid of your hair?

  Mum: Because it’s not nice.

  Me: Are you going to be bald?

  Mum: No! The hair on my body! My arms and legs, look how thick it is.

  Me: I hadn’t noticed.

  She is very talkative, my mum, but she wasn’t after her appointment.

  Me: Why are you crying?

  Mum: It’s really painful, Can.

  Me: So why did you get it done?

  Mum: You wait until yours starts growing properly, you’ll want to get rid of it too.

  Me: Not if it makes me cry, I won’t.

  Mum: I’ll tell you what, you’ll cry when people start making comments like they do to me and your aunts. We’ve all been called “werewolf” by different people at various points in our lives. You wait.

  Four years later, I’d secretly shaved my legs with my grandad’s disposable white and orange Bic razor because I’d been to a sleepover or two by this point and had the shock of my life when I realised that my white friends had very little hair underneath their tights, while I was already fully covered.

  A conversation with my mum’s sister, when I was fifteen:

  Aunt: Do you think you’ll laser, like I do?

  Me: . . . like laser tag?

  Aunt: No, to get rid of all of my body hair! Arms, legs, back, face, (quietly) private area, everywhere.

  Me: No? Why are you telling me that?

  Aunt: You’ll need to do it one day, I’m just letting you know! Just being helpful.

  Me: Leave me out of it.

  Aunt: You’re lucky. Me, your mum, our sisters, we all have to do it. Grandad is Indian, Can, didn’t you realise it runs in the family?

  Me: No. I wasn’t looking [I had been looking].

  Aunt: We were bullied horribly at school, all the white girls in the class used to laugh at us. It’ll come for you soon, then you’ll be asking me how to get rid of it.

  My grandmother is a very honest Jamaican woman. Nothing is off bounds to her. She is very logical and practical, so believes that when a problem (or what she would call a problem) is spotted, it is sorted.

  A conversation with my nan, when I was nineteen:

  Nan: It’s happening.

  Me: What? Are you okay?

  Nan: (Leaning closer to my face) The family moustache is finally coming through.

  Me: Oh, right. I didn’t realise that was our “thing”.

  Nan: We’d all thought you’d dodged it, but here it is.

  Me: Alright! Where’s yours, then, if it’s such a thing?

  Nan: I’ve been waxing it since the year 1800, nobody has ever seen it. But it’s lurking beneath, trust me.

  I have still never touched what she might call a moustache.

  When I was eighteen, I left my overbearing and overfamiliar family in London and went to Sussex University in Brighton, where I was one of about nine black people on campus at any given time. By this point, I was still doing the odd leg shave here and there but had upgraded from my grandad’s disposable Bic razors to some sort of overpriced Venus one.

  A conversation with my retail colleagues (all white) when I was twenty:

  Me: So you’re saying they took off everything? Everything?

  S: All of it. Every single hair. No gross bush for me.

  Me: Wasn’t that painful?

  T: A bit, but it was worth it. Haven’t you ever had a wax?

  Me: No. Shall I try it?

  K: You’re telling me you’ve never had a wax?

  Me: No?

  K: [Grabbing my arm and inspecting its hair] Never?

  Me: You’ve got arm hair too!

  S: But your hair is so dark, has nobody ever said anything about it?

  Me: My family, I guess?

  K: But what about guys? You don’t want to scare them off with your arms before they get down there.

  Me: Okay, Okay, I’ll book it. It’s quite fancy, though, isn’t it expensive?

  S: It’s all right, we get a discount, tell them you work next door.

  More curious than anything (and ignoring the comment about men being turned off), I took myself off to the beauty salon. It was incredibly plush and pink and soft in design, so my immediate thought was to turn around before even getting though the door because I didn’t belong. I pushed through, though, propelled by this curiosity. I said hello, said quietly what I wanted done, and sat nervously in the waiting room, my mum’s yelps and shouts from her electrolysis sessions loud in my mind.

  And then, from the small room next to the reception desk, I heard a barely concealed conversation between the woman who would be my first waxer (white), and her manager (also white):

  Waxer: . . . is there nobody else who can do it?

  Manager: No, everyone else is in with clients.

  Waxer: I don’t think I’m best to do her, though, shouldn’t she have someone who knows how to work with someone like her?

  Manager: It’s good experience for you, you’ll have another coloured client soon and at least you’ll know what to expect.

  I sat glued to my seat with embarrassment and shame. I knew that as soon as I heard the use of the term “coloured” I should have stood up and given those women a piece of my mind and not given them my money, but instead, I stayed. I’m not sure why.

  A conversation with my first waxer (white), when I was twenty:

  Waxer: (Sighing) Now, if you could just take your tights and pants off, hop onto the bed and cover yourself with that towel?

  Me: Okay, sure. Sorry, this is my first time, so I’m a bit nervous. How much is it going to hurt?

  Waxer: It depends. For someone like you, probably quite a lot.

  Me: Someone like me?

  Waxer: Black. You’re always hairier than white women.

  Me: Oh, right. Sorry.

  Waxer: It’s okay. (Rolling up her sleeves) Good for me to get the experience, I guess.

  Me: Okay, ready.

  Waxer: (Lifting the towel) Oh! Phew! It’s not so bad!

  Me: Not so bad?

  Waxer: I was expecting loads of hair, but this is fine! It’s still more than I’m used to, but it’s not, like, a jungle.<
br />
  Eight years later, I’m still embarrassed to admit that I was grateful for her “praise”. Though I didn’t go back to any beauty salon for a long, long time.

  Three years after that, I ended up going out with a boy I’d lived in the same halls with at Sussex. The relationship had its moments, but he could be very, very cruel. Never really about my body even though I was bigger than him, but he was definitely very cutting about everything else. When I recently moved house, I found a diary and almost cringed myself inside out over its contents, including one entry written a few days before I stayed over at his house for the first time that read:

  Things I need to sort before I stay at [name redacted’s] house:

  —Nice pyjamas—maybe silk? Either way, cute shorts.

  —Paint toenails.

  —A discreet headscarf?

  —I need a wax!!!!!!!!!!

  Despite my size, I had (and still have) no issue with being naked in front of another person, but the thought of being seen to have body hair warranted ten (10) exclamation points. Unbelievable.

  A conversation with my ex-boyfriend (white) when I was twenty-three:

  Me: Oh!

  Him: What?

  Me: (Shoving my hand in his face) Look at this!

  Him: What am I looking at?

  Me: I’ve got loads of little hairs on my knuckles. I wonder if they were always there?

  Him: EW.

  Me: Pardon?

  Him: Gross.

  Me: That’s not very nice.

  Him: Sorry, I guess. But it’s not normal, is it?

  My group of friends from university are all white. Two brunettes, and two blondes. They’re genuinely woke, and not performatively so. One of them is the only person ever to have gone chest to chest with a grown man for groping me in a club, and won. She once almost punched a girl at Notting Hill Carnival for putting her hands in my hair. Anyway, they’re all white, and all have different attitudes to their body hair, but they’re all very pro body hair. Their body hair ranges from fine and light to thick and coarse.

  A conversation with one best friend (brunette) when I was twenty-five:

  Me: You’re telling me you get your friend to wax you?

  T: Yeah? Why not? That used to be her job.

  Me: You don’t mind her seeing you like that?

  T: She’s seen it all before, I guess. And I’m one of the most hairy, she says. Me: You aren’t that hairy, though.

  T: Yeah, true, so it’s over in about five seconds.

  Me: Why do you bother then?

  T: Good point. Look at [brunette] and [blonde], they’ve got loads of body hair and nobody ever says anything. Hold on, you get waxed too! Why don’t we both stop doing it?

  Me: You’re all white, though. You lot can step out with unshaven legs and nobody can even see it because it’s either blonde or it’s so fine, if I don’t shave my legs the hair looks like trousers.

  T: Yeah, fair. I’d never thought of it like that.

  I’d thought of it like that, though. I’d thought about it like that a lot.

  In private, my attitudes to body hair are very different. I like having hairy legs. I don’t find them ugly or unattractive. Whenever I’ve gone for a Brazilian and the waxer has taken everything off because she thinks “it looks better like that” I always feel robbed, bereft, infantilised. I like the hair on my face and even wish that my eyebrows were thicker. It’s only when I see my body hair through the lens of others that the conflict begins to take hold and not loosen its grip until I walk into a salon and leave later, the parts that people will see smooth and acceptable. I hope that one day I can kick this fear of mine. One thing I do know, one thing that I have no conflict around, is that if I have daughter, she will never, ever follow me to a beauty salon.

  Yrsa Daley-Ward

  Born to a Jamaican mother and a Nigerian father, she was raised by her devout Seventh Day Adventist grandparents in the small town of Chorley in the north of England. In her teens she became a model, and worked in South Africa for three years, before winning recognition as a performance poet. Her published writing includes short stories and memoir, as well as poems, in which she notably addresses topics such as identity, race, mental health, and femininity. She is the author of On Snakes and Other Stories (2013), Bone (self-published in 2014, new Penguin edition in 2017) and The Terrible (2018). She now lives in New York.

  What they leave you with—three poems

  1) What IT leaves you with

  I don’t know what I am

  or am not tonight.

  The physics of my body are changing.

  I am not a doctor

  or detective

  but I feel some part of me

  gone. My head is Thirsty.

  the liquid in my bones is Thin.

  A four-letter word is haunting me.

  My thighs are softer than usual.

  I’m falling away.

  I’ve fallen away.

  I suck in my waist and distract people with my hair. If I make my

  lips redder

  if I walk, swing hip

  like this. If I push these breasts together and up,

  up,

  give these brows a stronger arch

  if I blacken my lashes,

  if I wear a tighter shirt

  no one will know that I left the room.

  I cannot feel my mouth.

  Something is breathing

  but it is not me.

  2) everything is uncomfortable

  But why the difficulty?

  you wonder

  You almost made it. You’re pushing thirty. twenty. forty.

  You never found a city large enough. Your palms are forever on fire.

  No sooner do you put the rubbish

  out or wash the dishes in the sink

  there is always more waste

  waste

  waste

  more to wash, either of the house or yourself. And when will the

  work end? You ask yourself. When? It’s a tough space now in life

  you work and go to bed and wake up

  and its as though it all begins again

  as though it

  all

  begins.

  Again.

  You stretch. You run on the treadmill and try not to eat late. You kiss

  better people than before and you’re careful

  (you’re as careful as the lonely can be)

  you’re careful who gets in your bed.

  All reasonable problems.

  Nothing too dire

  so why do you feel so dead?

  3) not all families look the same

  Two years after her funeral

  her lover comes to visit.

  Nice little place you got here

  Where can I put my bike?

  He parks it in the hallway.

  It’s the first time you’ve spoken since

  he pawned all of her jewellery

  and moved back to his mother’s.

  But everything is done now

  plus

  things,

  we all know

  are only things

  and people,

  we all know

  are only people

  He sits hunched, thin

  one leg over the other

  You ask what brings him back to

  this side,

  on this day. Tings, he says,

  looking right at you

  and not at you at all.

  Work tings.

  He tries to smile

  twitches

  and the flowers on the sofa

  wilt.

  It’s getting late,

  he sighs,

  resting his hands on your writing desk

  darkening the room with his breath.

  Want a bump?

  Even if you do

  you know that drugs in a room with a man your mother loved

  might finish you.

  Later when he’s
gone

  you lift the desk out on the pavement.

  The room sits back on itself

  and the moon swells.

  Tjawangwa Dema

  Born in Gaborone, Botswana, she is a poet and arts administrator, who received an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. Her chapbook, Mandible, was published in 2014 with Slapering Hol under the auspices of the African Poetry Book Fund, and she went on to win the 2018 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets for her book The Careless Seamstress (2019). Her writing has appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, The Ofi Press, Elsewhere Lit and Read Women Anthology. Her poetry has been translated into Spanish, Swedish, German and Chinese.

  Born Sleeping

  I didn’t know the child was coming

  till it was gone.

  I regret that more than the loss.

  More than the wrench of loss

  is loss itself—the thing never there

  where it was before—

  its miserly hand stirring at the smallest thought.

  Its clench and yank;

  no-use what-ifs strapped to the back like a newborn,

  the spectre of sharp teeth tight at the nipple.

  No one to say breathe,

  just an upward punch through belly and lung.

  The smallest nick

  there

  and there, a fistful of blood and more.

  More than all the could’ve-beens

  is the was.

  A perfect face,

  small in the mind’s rear view,

  coming,

  coming, till it’s gone.

  Pugilist

  Not yet thirteen

  with your slipped jaw

  dancing its talk of obvious pain,

  bloodied nose glistening,

  you come to our mother

  with your broken mouth open—

  certain you are no longer at ease

  in this kingdom of boyhood.

  Glad to meet its death

  at your own hand.

  Confinement

  To make a child

  narrow the berth.

  When you have a baby

  she’d place the words on her tongue like a thing that’s done.

  I’d think of now as never,

  me thirty-six, arms empty and still frowning into cribs,