"Claire remembered sitting between her mother's knees on a green plastic stool and crying this way: breathy and brutal and practically wild. Her mother refused to relax her hair but she also refused to learn to comb through it without causing Claire intense pain, the breakage of of Claire's hair, and the snap of some combs. That all changed when Claire discovered braids, and that she could have this pain only five times a year. In her third year of college, Claire decided five times was too much. When she returned home for Christmas with her dark brown hair in skinny-plaited locks, her mother looked at her and said, 'Let's just hope you can get a job with those things.'"