The Cell, The Water, and My Real Hair

The Cell, The Water, and My Real Hair

In 2023 I sat in a jail cell and my whole life flashed before my eyes. Not in a rush. Frame by frame. Childhood, mistakes, men, mania, the nights I thought were freedom but were really flight. The concrete was cold. The lights never shut off. And in that light I told the truth for the first time in years.

I said, “My earthly father is dead to me.”

And then I said, “My Godly father is Rev. Cecil Williams.”

Rev. Cecil Williams hadn’t passed yet. But in that cell I saw his vision. I can’t explain all of it. Images of open doors, of people no one else would touch being fed, of radical love that didn’t ask you to be respectable first. I saw Glide. I saw what it meant to be held without condition. I saw it, and I claimed it, right there on that steel bench.

That was the day the performance died. The daughter, the preacher’s kid, the “strong Black woman” who smiled through crisis. She didn’t make it out of that cell. I did.

When I got to Salem, I got baptized. No cameras. No family watching. Just water and me, shaking, real. I came up saying the only words that have ever felt like mine: “Lord have mercy.” Those are my signature words now. Lord have mercy on the woman who lost her glasses before the handcuffs. Lord have mercy on the woman who walked away when her hair got pulled. Lord have mercy on me, who survived to tell it without shame.

I used to wear wigs like armor. Straight. Sleek. “Presentable.” I bought one recently out of habit. Put it on. Took it off in two minutes. It looked so fake. So not real. So not me. I can’t do fake anymore. Not on my head, not in my life.

Tomorrow I’m getting my hair flat ironed. Not to hide the curl. To honor it. To feel it move from my own scalp and know every inch grew through homelessness, hospitals, courtrooms, and back. My imperfections make me beautiful. The scar at my hairline. The gap in my teeth. The way my hands shake when I’m nervous and the way they don’t when I write the truth.

I don’t want to be like anyone else. Not the women I thought I had to impress. Not even the Rev. Cecil I called my Godly father. He had his calling. I have mine. Mine is to be 51, Black, bipolar, formerly homeless, and starting a Ph.D. Mine is to work at Center Street and mean it when I tell a resident, “You’re not your worst day.” Mine is to love myself out loud.

The jail cell didn’t steal my life. It gave it back. Stripped down, baptized, natural hair and all.

Lord have mercy, I’m free.