Born a Crime

Bongani then dragged me back
to the first salon, and the woman
agreed to cornrow my hair. She
worked slowly. It took six hours.
Finally she said, “Okay, you can
look in the mirror.” She turned me
around in the chair and I looked in
the mirror and...I had never seen
myself like that before. It was like
the makeover scenes in my
American movies, where they take
the dorky guy or girl, fix the hair
and change the clothes, and the
ugly duckling becomes the swan. I’d
been so convinced I’d never get a
date that I never tried to look nice
for a girl, so I didn’t know that I