Sam thought love was quiet. Not the loud kind people argued about. Not promises shouted across crowded rooms. Love, to Sam, was the sound of water falling into the bathtub while someone gently washed your hair.
Every Sunday
evening, Delilah nurtured Samson’s hair like a black mother tending a child’s 4C
hair. A bathtub. Warm water. Conditioner that smelled like coconut, mango and some
other sweet thing he never quite identified.
“Your hair is
special,” she would say. Samson believed her. First came the wash, then the
deep conditioner, followed by the steaming cap that puffed around his head like
a small cloud.
“Moisture is
important,” Delilah would murmur as her fingers worked through the strands. Oil
followed by a careful comb. Sometimes, she would tuck the hair into neat braids
to protect the ends and other times a silk wrap before bed. ‘Protective styling’,
she called it. Samson called it love. Because who spends hours tending another
person’s hair if not someone who cares deeply?
Delilah had her
own thoughts.
She watched the
hair grow longer, thicker, healthier, and fuller week after week. Sometimes,
she lifted sections between her fingers, weighing them thoughtfully like
someone examining fabric in a market stall.
“Hmm,” she
would say. Samson mistook the sound for admiration. And so, she continued her
work. Wash. Condition. Steam. Oil. Protective styling. She cared for that hair
with the patience of a farmer tending a crop. And Samson watered this illusion
with trust. “You really care about my hair, Uto’m,” he said one evening.
Delilah smiled
softly. “I care about your strength.”
As the months
passed, Samson’s hair became something his friends could not stop talking about.
“Guy, wetin you dey use?” they asked.
Samson laughed.
“Na ihunanya o.” Delilah said nothing.
One evening,
she measured them again. The strands fell down his back like dark waters. Her
fingers stretched a lock carefully between both hands. Samson noticed the
silence. “Is my hair breaking?” he asked anxiously. Delilah shook her head slightly,
leaned forward and kissed his forehead.
“No,” she replied.
“Your hair is just perfect now.”
Samson smiled,
because sometimes a man believes the hands caring for him are guided by love. Sometimes
he believes patience is devotion and sometimes, he thinks the person tending
the garden is doing it for him.
But gardens can
have other harvests. And Delilah, patient as ever, had been waiting for the day
she could finally buss down.
Thirty inches.
Human hair.
Single donor.
