Who Am I Without Him?

by Sharon Flake

  When I stand up, seventeen Oreo cookies come after me like flat black-and-white hockey pucks. Bouncing off my tailbone. Knocking into the side of my head and smacking my shoulder and cheeks. Winter ducks, but gets hit upside the head anyhow.

  “Cut it out!” Johnny shouts.

  “Cut it out!” a kid at the table repeats.

  Johnny asks me why they act like that.

  “Like what?” Winter says, brushing crumbs out my hair.

  “Forget it,” he says, brushing off his shirt, then walking out the room when more kids from table nine head our way.

  “That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” I hear one of ’em say when they pass by.

  Winter speaks up then. Says she’s gonna jack up the person who hit her with the cookie. The kids keep quiet and keep moving, because nobody messes with Winter. She is almost six feet tall, runs track, and fights like a boy. In sixth grade she beat the mess out of Gerald Manson for trying to touch her butt. In seventh grade she beat me up. She came up to me after school with her fist tight and her mouth running, and punched me in the face for telling the teacher she was cheating off my paper. I never told that she hit me, so she didn’t get suspended like she should have. But the English teacher gave her an E for cheating and made her come to me for tutoring. “Since you think Erika is so smart, let’s have her tutor you three days a week after school,” she said. That’s how we became friends. How I started telling her things I don’t tell anybody else.

  At the end of sixth period, Johnny comes up to me and says maybe he and I could finish the paper during study hall. I have him all to myself for a few minutes. But it’s all over when Wendy walks over to him and says, “Let’s go.”

  Johnny clears his throat when he tells her that he and I have to go finish up this paper. Wendy says something in his ear. Johnny looks down at his feet when he tells me he’ll meet me in study hall. But before I take ten good steps, he’s saying for me to just write what I want and put his name on it. Wendy’s got him over by the lockers now. Grinning in his face. Playing with the keys bunched in his back pocket.

  I don’t like it, but I head for study hall all by myself. The place is packed, so I end up with a seat right next to Chet Richards, the boy Winter thinks is perfect for me. I smile at him, because he’s smiling at me, not because I like him or anything.

  Finally, I sit down and write. “I like you,” the white boy says to the black girl in my story. “I like your big brown lips and the stuff you do with your hair.”

  Chet Richards interrupts me. “Hey, Erika?”

  I don’t even look his way. “Hi.”

  He keeps talking. Asking me about homework. Telling me about a new movie that’s out. Making it hard for me to concentrate. I tell him that, too.

  “You know I like you too,” the black girl tells the white boy on paper.

  Chet drops his pen.

  “Here!” I hand it to him.

  “Thanks,” he says, asking me if I’m going to the school carnival next week. Most kids go in couples.

  I stare at him awhile so he knows not to say one more word to me. That’s when I notice the way he looks at me. Dreamy-eyed. Kinda like I look at Johnny. “No,” I say. “I’m not going.”

  Chet is a nice-looking boy. Long brown locs, medium-build with a beginner’s mustache. But he’s not my type. And ten minutes later he’s at it again. Telling me how pretty my hair looks. My fingers roll over my curls. I want to tell him my hair is not like Wendy’s or long like Johnny likes, but “Thanks,” comes out instead.

  After study hall, I head for my locker. The other black kids bump into me every chance they get. That’s ’cause Winter isn’t around. By the time I get to my locker, my arms hurt. But I don’t care, ’cause soon as I get there, I see Johnny. He’s by himself. And for twenty whole minutes he talks to me. Puts his name on the paper and even tells me to call him tonight if Winter tries to take it off.

  Johnny reminds me of my cousin—his father is black and Jewish, and his mother is Swedish. He was the first boy I ever liked. The only boy who ever said I was beautiful.

  “You can’t marry your cousin,” my mother said when I was five and I told her I was gonna marry him one day.

  But I can marry Johnny, I think. And just when I go to ask him to the carnival, Wendy pops up. Two minutes later, Johnny is gone, walking up the hall, holding her hand and not thinking about me at all.

  Johnny doesn’t like me. Winter tells me that all the time. But I keep thinking maybe, maybe, one day he will. I drop the paper off on Mr. G’s desk before I head out.

  When I get to the bus stop, Chet Richards walks up behind me. Covers my eyes and asks me to guess who it is. I know without looking, by the cologne he wears.

  I tell him not to be so juvenile. He asks if he can wait for the bus with me. He lives three blocks from the school, so he doesn’t get bused like most black kids.

  “Yeah,” I say, letting him take my book bag. “Thanks.” I watch Johnny and Wendy pass by.

  Chet is funny and smart. And even though the bus is late, he waits with me. He asks me about my family and neighborhood. Tells me what his parents do for a living and how they will all go to Greece this summer for a whole month. You better hold on to him, Winter would say. He’s got money.

  Chet gets real close and asks me again if I want to go to the carnival. For a minute, I think about saying yes. I mean, it’s not like Johnny’s ever gonna ask me out. But then this other boy walks by, bouncing on his toes—his long, blond hair swinging.

  “Hey,” I say, running after him. Forgetting all about Chet.

  Jacobs’s Rules

  MR. JACOBS WAS getting mad. But that didn’t stop us from talking. “Settle down!” he yelled again.

  The boys did quiet down a bit. The big-mouthed girls kept right on yakking.

  “Do you understand English?” Jacobs said, smacking his hands like cymbals, right in Marimba’s face.

  “Whatever,” Marimba said, turning her back to him.

  Jacobs picked up an algebra book and dropped it on the floor. “Okay, girls. Out of my room— now!”

  Us boys really started talking then. Telling the girls to quiet down. “So y’all can stay.”

  Girls ain’t usually allowed in this class. Only boys. Up till this year, the school district wouldn’t even let Mr. Jacobs teach this class. They said it was against the law to have single-sex classes. But finally, after two years of fighting with the school board, our school won out. Now we got the only class of its kind in the city. It’s called Boy Stuff. It’s a tenth-grade elective where boys talk, write, and report on things important to us. Like sex, gangs, money, drugs, living, dying, and yeah, girls.

  I pull back my chair, stand on top of my desk, and shout, “Be quiet!”

  Jacobs pushes up his glasses and fingers his gray baby locs. “Leave now if you aren’t mature enough to handle things.”

  All thirty of us kids lock our lips and listen up when Jacobs heads for the blackboard.

  WHY DO BOYS ALWAYS DOG GIRLS? he writes in blue chalk. Then hot-pink words roll onto the blackboard. HOW COME GIRLS THINK THEY OWN BOYS?

  Nobody can hear anything after that, ’cause all thirty of us are talking at once.

  Jacobs shouts, “Who wants to go first?”

  Anna’s hand goes up. “What’s the question again?”

  “Stu-u-u-pid,” Tyrek says.

  “Go back to sleep,” I yell.

  Jacobs points to Ryan Sims.

  “Well. It’s like this,” Ryan says. “Girls, like . . . you know, ummm . . . treat us, like, like, I mean . . .”

  Melon-head Marimba covers Ryan’s lips with her hands. “Boys dog girls ’cause they dogs,” she says, ducking when Ryan takes a swing at her. “Rotten, no-good dogs.”

  Boys ain’t gotta take stuff like that from girls, especially girls that look like Marimba. So I ignore Jacobs banging his fist on the desk and I stand up and say my piece.

  “Boys dog girls ’cause y’all let us,
” I say, making my eyes stay extra long on the girls that I know will do anything a boy wants.

  Heavenly Smith’s got the biggest brown eyes and the biggest mouth. She don’t even let me finish talking. She’s on her feet, eyes popped and mouth going a mile a minute. “All y’all boys is dogs,” she says, waving her finger around the room. “Y’all big, fat, ugly, stinking, rotten dogs.” She fixes her eyes on my boy D’Little.

  Jacobs reminds everybody that his class ain’t about negativity. “It’s about growth.” He turns to me and tells me to finish making my comments. I tell the class that girls just get stuck on stupid when they fall for boys. “They believe what you tell ’em—anything.”

  D’Little jumps in after me. “Far as I’m concerned, girls want boys to treat ’em bad. Otherwise, why they keep letting the same thing happen to ’em over and over again, even when they with a different dude?”

  Girls are just too emotional. That’s what I think. So they going off on us boys again— Heavenly especially. She’s still mad that D’Little dumped her last semester, so every chance she gets, she’s on his case. Jacobs takes her hand and leads her over to his desk. “Ms. Smith. Your next step is out that door.” He points.

  Jacobs’s shiny black penny loafers move through the room, stepping over backpacks and big feet. “Jonathan,” Jacobs says, sitting down next to him. “Why don’t girls know what boys really want? How they really feel?”

  Jonathan is smart. Got hisself a 4.2 average. Ain’t got no girl, though. “I don’t know,” he says, not looking Jacobs in the eyes.

  Jacobs stays put. He asks him again.

  Jonathan taps his fingers on his desk like he’s typing out what he’s gonna say. “Girls think they know what they want until they get it. Then when it ain’t right, instead of ditching it like an old skirt that don’t fit no more, they let out the seam, dye it, or try to change it into something it’s not.” His fingers stop moving. His voice drops. “Then they complain about it not fitting and stuff.”

  Nobody says nothing for a minute. I mean, we all surprised, especially us boys, ’cause Jonathan got it right.

  “Who agrees with Jonathan on this one?” Jacobs asks. Almost everybody’s hand goes up. “Then how come boys like Jonathan can’t get no play?”

  It takes five whole minutes for Jacobs to settle us back down after that one.

  Marimba answers the question first. “He’s too nice.”

  “Boring,” another girl shouts.

  Jacobs goes and sits by Marimba. “Give me more,” he says.

  Her thumb goes in her mouth, then comes out wet and wrinkled. “You can feel the scared coming off boys like him,” she says.

  Heavenly butts in. “Like a force field or something.”

  That’s it. Everybody is loud and laughing now. Making it so Jacobs gotta flick the lights off and on and tell three girls to leave the room. By the time class is over, Jacobs reminds us again that tomorrow we won’t be just talking about relationships. “We’re gonna be testing ’em out, like new cars fresh off the showroom floor.”

  D’Little asks if that means he gets to kiss Michelle’s pretty brown lips. “Or rub Denise’s . . .”

  Jacobs throws an eraser at him. “Mr. D’Little,” he says, “you can put your arms to good use right now—wipe off all three boards. As for your lips,” Jacobs says, tapping the floor with his new shoes, “well, the floor could use a little cleaning too.”

  Jacobs teaches the kind of class you think about four periods before you gotta go to it. So in biology class the next day, me and D’Little already trying to figure out what Jacobs gonna have us doing when we get to his class two periods from now. Heavenly sits near us, and even though we aren’t talking to her, she got plenty to say. D’Little asks her very nicely to mind her own business. But he the one that gets kicked outta class when she goes off on him. Saying he said something inappropriate to her. Our teacher, Mr. Pillo, always takes the girls’ side. He don’t know that Heavenly used to go with D’Little. That she’s mad at him all the time now, ’cause she paid $400 for a gown to the ninth-grade ball and he never did show up to take her.

  Jacobs is a short, skinny man with an itty-bitty head. But he walks around the room like he is seven feet tall. Arms folded, mouth wide open, clapping his hands whether we say something he likes or doesn’t like.

  “Mr. D’Little,” Jacobs says when D’Little walks into his room late. “Hall pass, please.”

  D’Little pulls the balled-up pass out his back pocket. “Heavenly’s gonna get hurt, Jacobs. I’m telling you.”

  Jacobs takes him aside and settles him down. Then he tosses the hall pass into the trash and walks over to the window and pulls it wide open. “We are going to try something that’s never been done in this school before.” He goes to the next window and lifts. “And please, people,” he says, picking up a paper blown onto the floor, “don’t give me any lip.”

  In the course description for this class, it says that boys will learn to interact better with girls by engaging in something called “an arrangement.” I remember that part because my mother had problems with it at first. Then Jacobs explained things. “Young men today think dating is about finding a girl, mounting a girl, and ditching a girl,” he told her. “I want them to see there’s more to it than that.”

  I almost didn’t take this class because of that part. I mean, what right does a teacher have to be messing round with your personal business anyhow? But my mother liked what Jacobs said about a man being more than the sum of his parts. I didn’t get it, myself. But my mother did, and she signed me up before I had my mind made up good.

  Jacobs and the teacher next door worked it so that girls can take part in the class for the next four weeks. The girls are getting paired up with the boys. I know the girl I want. But Jacobs got other ideas. He’s sitting on his desk, reading names off a list. He points, and a girl goes and sits by a boy. He points again, and a boy drags his feet, holds his head down, and walks over to a girl with gold highlights in her hair. Dog barks and cat hisses fly through the air when somebody gets hooked up with an ugly girl or some dude that stinks or can’t match his clothes.

  “Aw, no, man. Please?” D’Little says, when Jacobs takes Marimba by the arm and stands her between him and me.

  Jacobs tells us to accept the partner he gives us, or take an F for the course.

  I speak up then ’cause I don’t want no ugly girl for my partner neither. “This ain’t India or Africa, Mr. Jacobs. This here’s America. We got the right to pick the person we wanna hook up with.”

  Jacobs is the golf coach. His thick brown fingers feel like pliers when he takes hold of my neck. “Mr. Wilson, if you don’t close your mouth . . .”

  Marimba eyes me and D’Little. “You don’t know nothing about Africa. ’Cause if you did, you’d know your family would have to pay money, a dowry, for you to marry me.” She puts her hand out. “Money. Cash. Lots of it too.”

  I look at Marimba and bust out laughing—the whole class does. First off, because she’s wrong. It’s the woman’s family that pays a dowry to the man’s. Secondly, ’cause nobody would pay money for her. I mean, ain’t nothing pretty ’bout Marimba except her name. She’s a short, stubby thing that plays b-ball, baseball, and tennis. She looks like a dude in her baggy pants, giant shirts, and zigzag braids, so that’s what we call her most times—“dude.”

  D’Little looks at Marimba and tells Jacobs there’s no way he’s gonna partner with somebody that looks like her. Marimba slams her fist into his right shoulder. His knees buckle.

  I shake my head. “Jacobs hooked you up with a dude, man.”

  Jacobs asks the girl next to me to move over, and he stands Marimba in her place. “This here’s your fiancée,” he tells me.

  Everybody laughs, except me.

  I tell Jacobs that I ain’t never gonna hook up with Marimba, even if it’s just for pretend.

  He gets loud. “Don’t like it? Leave.”

  For the next twenty
minutes, we all take what we get. No complaints. Then Jacobs explains what he’s really up to. “Boys and girls in this country can date anyone they like. So today Jack’s dating Jill, but tomorrow he’s kissing Jill’s best friend and trying to get next to her cousin.”

  D’Little slaps his chest. “He’s talking ’bout me, y’all.”

  Jacobs keeps talking. “We’re going to spend the next few weeks seeing just what you all know about making relationships work well.”

  He assigns each couple a recorder, someone who will follow them around and give the couple feedback about how well they communicate, respect one another, and manage finances—three key ingredients to a successful relationship, so Jacobs says.

  If the couple doesn’t do something the way the recorder thinks they should, the couple loses points. Kenya Adams is our recorder. That’s messed up too, ’cause I been liking Kenya since forever and here she is gonna decide if I’ll make a good boyfriend or not.

  “Yo, Jacobs,” I say, walking up to him. “Hook me up with Kenya?”

  Jacobs is sitting at his desk, writing. The fat gold bracelet he always wears drags across the paper right behind his little brown fingers. “No.”

  I look over at Kenya and wonder why Jacobs didn’t see that he shoulda hooked me up with that.

  Jacobs meets with the recorders while he makes us take our fiancées into the halls to get to know them better. I turn my back to Marimba when we get out there. She hits me in the head with her fist. “You . . . you ain’t all that good-looking neither, you know.”

  I try not to let on it hurts. “Whatever,” I say. “So what we supposed to do?”

  She hunches her shoulders, then slides spearmint gum into her mouth. Her and me, we stand around looking at our feet. Then Kenya comes our way, smiling.

  Kenya could be a model. She’s, like, five-foot ten, got enough boobs for two and a half girls, perfect teeth, big eyes, and a butt so round your hands just naturally wanna touch it.