In March 1995, Tati is helping in her mother Nadia’s basement beauty salon while Nadia does Mimi’s hair. Nadia scolds Tati for standing idle instead of helping, admonishing her to earn her keep after spending money for her 14th birthday celebration. This provokes Mimi to argue with Nadia, criticizing her parenting approach and her taste in music. The conversation turns to Tati’s absent father, which is a forbidden topic in their family. Mimi blames Nadia for not forcing the man to take responsibility, while Nadia grows defensive, stating he disappeared after she became pregnant.

Tati’s best friend, Desirée, and her mother, Toya Grant, arrive. The tension escalates as Mimi is critical and condescending toward Toya, especially after learning the two single mothers are not chaperoning their daughters’ upcoming class trip to Washington, DC. After a heated exchange, Tati walks a critical but emotional Mimi to the door. Mimi warns Tati to be careful on the train, recalling her own difficult journey to Chicago with her husband, Eugene, and calls Tati a “blessing in a burden” (12). Upset by the day’s events and her grandmother’s words, Tati retreats to her room and writes a poem to her unknown father, describing herself and asking him what to look for should they ever meet.

The novel jumps back to the summer of 1870. A nine-year-old emancipated girl named Emma lives with Evangeline, the root-working woman who raised her. Emma knows nothing about the circumstances of her birth, including her age or parentage, since Evangeline keeps these details secret from her. As the local white landowner, Zephaniah Foster Dupree, is dying, he tells Emma that Evangeline saved the community from yellow fever and hints at a secret surrounding Emma’s birth. After his death, his will reveals he has left his entire estate to “Evangeline and daughter Emma” on the condition that Emma attend school to learn the facts and figuring of an enterprise (16).

At the local freedmen’s school, Emma’s teacher asks for her birthday, prompting Emma to question Evangeline about her birth again. It is only during the census that Evangeline reveals that Emma’s father was Zephaniah and that she was born in 1861. However, she still refuses to identify Emma’s mother. Later, Evangeline confesses that she delivered Emma on the same day Emma’s mother died. Evangeline still withholds the mother’s name, claiming it was a name given to the mother by Zephaniah when he forced her to become an enslaved person. When Emma writes Zephaniah’s name in the family Bible and then adds Evangeline’s name in the blank for her mother, Evangeline furiously scratches her own name out, forbidding lies in the Bible. She tells Emma her birthday is in planting season, three days after the vernal equinox. However, Evangeline refuses to celebrate a day marked by death, warning Emma not to ask so many questions about her mother lest she experience her mother’s fate.

The novel jumps to May 1953. A young Gladys Dupree is the subject of town gossip following an unspoken traumatic event. Her fiancé, a Pullman porter named Eugene, arrives to formally propose marriage, which she quickly accepts. A nosy church deaconess, Ms. Mattie, offers prayers and notes that it is a “fine time” for Gladys to marry. Gladys’s father, Sampson, is deeply distressed by the situation and hides from visitors.

Gladys and Eugene visit her grandmothers, Jubi and Emma, who live in a separate house protected by salt and other spiritual wards. Dressed in white “healing clothes,” the old women question Eugene about his intentions before sending him back to the main house. They instruct Gladys to bathe and wash her hair as part of a cleansing ritual. Later, on the train to her new life in Chicago with Eugene, Gladys experiences intense physical pain, which she tries to conceal. She dreams of her father Sampson, who turned the page of his newspaper as she said goodbye. 

In their Chicago apartment, Gladys slides to the bathroom floor, managing the physical distress that began on the train. Eugene finds her and admits he heard rumors in Land’s End about what happened to her. She confirms he knows enough, and he comforts her, braiding her hair to mark their new beginning. She feels the past recede and agrees to start over with him.

The novel jumps to July 1934. Seventeen-year-old Ruby Ann Dupree, who is Gladys’s mother, reunites with a childhood acquaintance, Sampson, while running errands in town. They reconnect while waiting to be served at the back of a general store, where the white owner, Logan Danube, and his niece are openly hostile to them. Sampson walks Ruby back toward her family’s farm, and they make plans to see each other at church.

At home, Ruby’s mother, Jubi, scolds her for speaking with Sampson, whose dark skin she looks down on. Alone in her room, Ruby reflects on her own dark complexion, a source of shame and mystery in her light-skinned family. An unknown impulse guides her hands, and she braids her own hair for the first time. Seeing herself in the mirror, she feels a powerful sense of self-recognition. When Jubi sees the braids, she reacts with anger and sorrow, accusing Ruby of trying to hurt her because Ruby was “the baby who lived” (53). After her outburst, Jubi calms down and asks where Ruby learned the skill. Ruby can only say that something came over her.

The novel jumps to June 1980. Twenty-five-year-old Nadia is a college dropout living with her parents and working as a cashier. She is in a fraught relationship with a married man who has not yet formalized his divorce from his wife. Nadia’s dream of a career in finance was abandoned after her mother, Gladys, insisted she prioritize caring for her younger brothers, Bryan and Terry, which led to her failing her classes.

One morning after staying with her lover, Nadia returns home to a confrontation with Gladys, who criticizes her aimless life and affair. Nadia argues that Gladys’s demands are what forced her to drop out of school in the first place. Nadia’s father, Eugene, intervenes, telling both women they are being unreasonable. After Eugene leaves, Gladys softens and asks Nadia about her future plans. On a whim, Nadia says she is considering hair school, a skill she has developed out of necessity and now takes pride in. Gladys is enraged by the idea, recalling her mother, Ruby, who was despised by Emma and Jubi for having a natural talent for styling hair. Gladys, however, does not know the full story about her mother’s talent. What she knows was gleaned from the rumors she heard from Emma and Jubi. Refusing to support it, Gladys gives Nadia an ultimatum: If she pursues beauty culture, she must move out. Nadia defiantly agrees.

The novel jumps back to 1995. Tati celebrates her eighth-grade graduation in June with her family, including Nadia, grandmother Mimi (Gladys), and uncles Bryan and Terry with their wives. Desirée and Toya are also present. The event is fraught with tension as Tati feels the absence of her father.

During photographs, Mimi insists on “family only,” deliberately excluding Toya and Desirée. Tati protests, but Mimi dismisses her, stating, “Not all skinfolk is kinfolk” (68). The animosity continues as Mimi criticizes her sons and makes pointed remarks to her daughters-in-law, particularly Terry’s wife, Chloe, causing them to leave early. Bryan, Mimi’s favorite son, also leaves with his wife Lorraine, which visibly distresses Mimi. As she watches them go, Mimi mutters that her children are ungrateful for all she “went through to get them here” (74), a cryptic reference that Tati and Nadia do not understand.

The narrative flashes back to the life of Emma Dupree and her husband, George. After losing three pregnancies through miscarriage, Emma is desperate for a child. Her guardian, Evangeline, determines that the spirit of Emma’s deceased mother is taking the babies. Evangeline performs a blood ritual to protect the next pregnancy, and Emma successfully gives birth to a daughter, whom she names Jubilee.

Emma’s loses two more pregnancies. A third one results in her giving birth to a son, whom she names Jeremiah. Jeremiah dies after five days, causing Emma to experience grief. In response, Evangeline burns her protective altars, and George buries his three sons in the yard, eventually building a fence to hide their small graves. Only after these losses does Evangeline explain the nature of the “curse” that has fallen upon Emma: Because Emma’s mother could not raise her, her spirit ensures that only daughters can survive in her lineage. This haunts the family for generations.

The novel jumps back to 1995. The morning after her first high school homecoming dance, Tati is tasked with doing Mimi’s hair. Mimi and Nadia team up to interrogate Tati about the dance, where she shared her first kiss with a boy named Xavier. The questioning quickly devolves into a bitter argument between Nadia and Mimi. Nadia accuses Mimi of hypocrisy for judging her life choices, revealing that her father, Eugene, told her that Mimi had other children before they got married and had Nadia. Mimi screams back that Nadia has no idea what she endured to have those children.

The fight culminates when Mimi angrily blames Tati’s father for being Nadia’s “only burden.” Tati, overwhelmed by years of unanswered questions, breaks down and repeatedly screams, “What is his name!” (106). As Nadia tries to comfort her sobbing daughter, Mimi coldly reveals the name: Roman Brown. Nadia is furious, insisting that Roman never wanted Tati and that she herself has always been enough as a parent for Tati. After Mimi leaves, a distraught Nadia goes outside. Tati, feeling betrayed by Nadia’s years of lies, goes to her room and writes an angry poem to Roman, wondering if she is his shame, just as she is for her mother and grandmother.