I used to get excited about salon days. They were always weekends, and that meant no school. I would wake up early on Saturday, put on my best dress, and wait for my father to take my hand and lead me to his car. It would have been my mother, but this was that one thing: you know, the one thing a person thinks their partner can actually do. When we arrived, and I was secure in the eyes and arms of other people whose names I didn’t quite know, he’d leave with a loving smile. I sometimes wondered why he needed hours away for single hour hair styles. One time, a man with nice eyes picked me up after he’d left: I giggled as he told me how pretty I was and spun me in front of the mirror. Salon days with dad ended sometime after the affair. Years later, when I told my mom about the nice-eyed man, she told me they’d never happen again.
Emmanuela Eneh writes: “I’ve spent my entire college career trying to figure out how to tell my own story. I avoided non-fiction my whole life, but now I’m using this genre to give life to little, fragmented memories that I set aside a long time ago. My hobbies include gaming when I should probably be asleep, scrolling through fanfiction, and wishing that the bending from Avatar: The Last Airbender existed.”