I love celebrity news, so we watched Entertainment Tonight for six more minutes together in silence. When the timer went off, she put me back in the sink, washed and shampooed my hair, and then dried it. She removed the towel, and for the first time in my life, my hair fell into my face and I felt an unfamiliar thrill. It was bone straight. White straight. It was like a limb had appeared in a space where there was previously just phantom feeling. It was a surrogate solution to all the conflicted racial feelings I had. And it was a lie. But I had never felt lovelier, and beauty beats truth any
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