Yesterday was a hair day. Tuesday was as well. What with four heads to style, (what’s it gonna be like when Yasha needs a ‘do?) I have to split hair duty up. Tuesday I washed and braided the little girls. Yanni gave them pink beads for Valentines Day on Wednesday. Yesterday, after washing and twisting my own hair, I waded through Yanni’s forest of hair.

That’s a job not for the faint of heart, and the new hair technique I discovered, curling her hair on the end of a rat-tail comb took 4 hours or so. rat-tail curls!

Curtis had rented Dumbo as our family movie for Valentine’s Day, but we didn’t get a chance to watch it until Thursday. He and I both fell asleep on it, so I pulled it out Friday while I was twisting my hair.

On Thursday night, I had fallen asleep before the pink elephant scene, and had been awakened by the crows. I vaguely remember being offended by the crows before shutting them out by sleep.

I was wide awake yesterday when I saw them, and I rolled my eyes in Xay’s direction. “You watched this last night?” I asked him. “It’s not that bad,” he told me. I watched as the crows shucked and jived, and then they broke into song. “I be done seen mos eva thing if I seen an elephant fly.” What? You have got to be kidding me!

I was incredulous. And it went on. After the mouse chastised the crows, they cried, and they looked more like cartoons than coons. Then they started talking about seeing the light. If they would have gone into a gospel spoof, I would have turned that mess off. As it was, I was gawking at a train wreck.

When the catty, gossipy female elephants crooned “I be done seen mos eva thing. . . ” at the end, I nearly fell on the floor. O. K.

I searched all the DVD special features, demanding an explanation for that garbage. What I got was how Walt Disney loved Dumbo the best. How it was such a happy picture.

And something broke right there.

I have been patiently waiting for years for Disney to make a beautiful Black princess, like all the other beautiful Disney princesses. I collected orange dolls, like Jasmine and Esmerelda. They were close, but not it. The one story with African royalty was about lions.

I’m not waiting anymore. It’s not going to happen. Unless, of course, someone else makes money off of an African princess. Then Disney will break its neck trying to copy that.

And then I got sick of another thing. Black pathos. Yeah, it has been hard, and rough, and ugly, and bad, but that’s not our only story. Jesus came so that we could have abundant life, not mire in all the inequality of everything.

I remember when I used to get all excited about Black History Month. Back when I thought it was about celebrating Jan Matzeliger, or George Washington Carver, or Madame C.J. Walker. But, somewhere along the line, it came to mean wallowing in black sorrow month.

And as long as that’s what we’re doing, we won’t have the drive to produce our beautiful princess.

Another barrier to our princess is sexuality. Coming to America would have been a beautiful, timeless classic if it weren’t for all the sex. My children can’t watch a movie with royal bathers, etc. They can’t even watch any black Christian movies, like Tyler Perry’s efforts because of all the sex.

We are about more than sex and sorrow, and I’m more than ready to hear and tell different stories.

I remember Happily Ever After. I was so excited to see black versions of famous fairy tales. But they were light, funny, cartoonish, not artistic and beautiful like Disney’s movies.

It is high time for more. I want to be prepared to do more. My artistic skills are not there, though. Maybe I should take this vision to the BACC.