Lyric Essay

My little sister’s favorite thing to do is to play with hair. My other sisters and I take turns, sometimes because we all wanted her to do our hair and sometimes because none of us wanted her to. Generally, you came away with more tangles than braids and more hair ties than you need for a lifetime, but it showed that you were sisters. You meant something to each other.

A little girl at Good in the Hood was talking to me, and because she was only as tall as my waist I crouched down so I could see her face better. I don’t really remember her name; to be honest, I probably could never pronounce any of the Bhutanese names I learned on Saturday. Her hair was French braided and she told me all about how her mother did it, and how her sister did her hair. She told me how her mom wasn’t always home because she worked a lot. When she noticed my hair was braided the same way, she walked behind me and pulled out the hair ties, undid and re-braided some of my hair, and but the tie back in.

Another little girl sat on my shoulders as we played tag and sharks and minnows and Simon Says. She screamed when I spun too quickly and laughed when I went the opposite way than she told me to go.

When I bent down to pick up a coin, a little boy came and jumped on my back. I’m not sure how old he was, but he was tiny and barely spoke. He asked me over and over what my name was but only gave his once, even though I never caught it.  He stayed on my back for about a half and hour, just letting me run around with him until he decided the game would be easier played on the ground.

My sister went to Tonga this summer. She stayed on a little island called Vava’u just north of Tongatapu, and it was a different life. She said one of her host mom’s children picked up a knife and ran around with it until one of his parents just took it and put it on the counter with no fuss. She said it happened a lot.

A ten-year-old boy picked up a hammer in the parking lot and started playing with it.

We were in the middle of Salt Lake City. We weren’t in a foreign country and a few blocks away the house were huge and homey. We played tag in the parking lot outside the smallest apartments I’ve ever seen. We were in the U.S., but we weren’t in America.

As an afterword, this last Saturday I worked at Good in the Hood, a nonprofit in Salt Lake. Most of the children we played games with were Bhutanese, Thai, or Nepalese. Many of their parents struggle with English and they live on low incomes.