The Skin I'm in

by Sharon Flake

  ″Maleeka?″ she says.

  I don’t answer her question or look her way. I eye the ceiling and count the blobs of gum hanging there like pretty-colored snot.

  ″Can anybody else tell me what their face says to the world?″Miss Saunders asks. Her gold bangles jingle while she makes her way around the room. Miss Saunders is as quiet as a tiger sneaking up on its supper. It’s them Italian leather shoes of hers, I guess.

  Malcolm Moore raises his hand. Malcolm is fine. He’s got long, straight hair. Skin the color of a butterscotch milkshake. Gray, sad eyes. He’s half and half— got a white dad and a black momma. He’s lucky. He looks more like his dad than his mom.

  ″My face says I’m all that,″ Malcolm says, rubbing them six chin hairs he calls a beard. ″It says to the homies, I’m the doctor of love. I’m good to ya and good for ya.″

  Everybody laughs. Faith, his girlfriend of the week, throws a pencil across the room. It bounces off the back of his chair, and lands between his big feet. Miss Saunders gives Faith the eye, letting her know to cut it out.

  When the laughing’s done, hands go up. Some folks say funny stuff about their face. Others is real serious. Like John-John. He says his face tells the world he doesn’t take no stuff. That people better respect him, or else. I never seen nothing like that in John-John’s face. He looks more scared than mean. I guess there ain’t no accounting for what folks see in their own mirrors.

  When Miss Saunders asks, ″What’s my face say?″ don’t nobody say nothing.

  ″Don’t get all closed-mouthed, now,″ she says. ″I hear you whispering in the hall. Laughing at me.″ She walks the aisles again. She stops by me and sits on my desk. ″Faces say more than you think. Even mine. Don’t be shy. Say what’s on your mind.″

  My hand goes up. I figure she’s embarrassed me twice since she’s been here this week. Now it’s her turn. ″Not to hurt your feelings…but…I think it says, you know, you’re a freak.″

  ″That’s cold,″ Chrystal Johnson says, frowning.

  Miss Saunders put her hands up to her chin like she’s praying. She gets up and walks the room, pacing. We don’t say nothing. We just listen to the clock tick. Shuffle our papers. Watch for some reaction from Miss Saunders.

  ″Freak,″ she says. ″I saw that too when I was young.″ Then she explains how she was born with her face like that. How when she was little her parents had the preacher pray over it, the old folks work their roots on it, and her grandmother use some concoction to change the color of that blotch on her cheek so it matched the rest of her skin. Miss Saunders says none of the stuff she tried on her face worked. So she finally figured she’d better love what God gave her.

  ″Liking myself didn’t come overnight,″ she says, ″I took a lot of wrong turns to find out who I really was. You will, too.″ Everybody starts talking at once, asking her questions. Miss Saunders answers ’em all. Some kids even go up to her face and stare and point. She lets them do it too, like she’s proud of her face or something.

  Then Miss Saunders comes over to my desk and stares down at me. ″It takes a long time to accept yourself for who you are. To see the poetry in your walk,″ she says, shaking her hips like she’s doing some African dance. Kids bust out laughing. ″To look in the mirror and like what you see, even when it doesn’t look like anybody else’s idea of beauty.″

  For a minute, it seems like Miss Saunders is getting all spacey on us. Like her mind is somewhere else. Then she’s back, talking that talk. ″So, what’s my face say to the world?″ she asks. ″My face says I’m smart. Sassy. Sexy. Self-confident,″ she says, snapping her fingers rapid-fire. ″It says I’m caring and, yes, even a little cold sometimes. See these laugh lines,″ she says, almost poking herself in the eyes. ″They let people know that I love a good joke. These tiny bags? They tell the world I like to stay up late.″

  ″Doing what, Miss Saunders?″ John-John asks. ″Checking homework, or making out?″

  Miss Saunders throws her head back and laughs. The lines around her eyes crinkle. The bangles on her arm jingle. ″What do I think my face says to the world? I think it says I’m all that,″ she says, snapping her fingers.

  Kids clap like they just seen a good movie, and they yell stuff like: ″Go on, Miss Saunders.″

  ″Give me five.″

  ″Tell us who you really is.″

  Miss Saunders quiets everybody down, then starts telling us more about herself. She’s a big shot at an advertising agency downtown. A few months ago, her company and the school board came up with a new program that lets professionals take a leave of absence for a year to teach in inner-city schools. She says she always wanted to teach. She says being at McClenton Middle School will help her figure out if she wants to make a career out of teaching.

  The next thing we know, Miss Saunders is asking us to take out some paper for a test. A surprise test. Some of the kids who was just giving out high fives are singing a different tune now. Worm thinks Miss Saunders is playing around for a minute. But she ain’t. She says she wants to evaluate us. You know, to figure out what we know and don’t know.

  Miss Saunders says the test won’t count for a grade. John-John starts to get smart, he don’t do so good on tests. ″Then why we got to do it?″ he asks, putting one leg across his desk.

  Miss Saunders struts over to his desk, and pushes his leg off. ″Because I say so,″ she says, handing out the papers and telling us to settle down.

  CHAPTER 5

  WHEN I GET HOME, MOMMA is waiting at the door to take me downtown to buy new clothes. She says she got a bonus at work, so she has some extra cash to throw around for once. I don’t care how she got the money, just as long as I get to spend some of it. So here I am today, looking fine. I got on enough lip gloss to shine a car and I have a crease in my pants sharp enough to cut somebody. For the first time in who knows when, I look like somebody, and Charlese Jones ain’t had nothing to do with it.

  At school, everybody’s staring at me. Even John-John’s doing a double-take. When I walk into class, all eyes is on me. Char’s the only one that’s got something negative to say.

  ″So your momma finally broke down and bought you some clothes. About time,″ she says, as soon as we get to Miss Saunders’s class.

  When I walk in Miss Saunders’s room, she’s already giving out an assignment. We get to work on this assignment with someone else, she says. Char lets Miss Saunders know that me and her are gonna be partners. Char’s figuring I’ll do all the work. But Miss Saunders is hip to that game. She says she’s picking our partners. She hooks me up with Desda. Char don’t like that one bit. She picks up her stuff and walks out the room. Miss Saunders acts like Char’s leaving don’t bother her none.

  Desda is the short, fat girl sitting by the door. Everybody in school knows she can cook up a storm. Turkey, stuffed chicken, gravy, three-cheese macaroni, pasta salad, fried steak, lasagna. She’s won all kinds of cooking awards. She even won five-hundred dollars from a Pillsbury Bake-Off contest. She called her receipe Desda Darling’s Delicious Double-Dutch Chocolate Chip Cake.

  She never will spend the five-hundred dollar prize money, though. It’s scholarship money for college, and Desda can’t hardly read what the award says, let alone try to get into college. I hear Miss Saunders’s gonna start tutoring Desda. Yeah, right, I’m thinking Desda’s gonna read on grade level when pigs fly.

  Anyhow, Miss Saunders asks the class to pretend we’re teenagers living in the seventeenth century. We have to write a diary ″chronicling″ our experiences. John-John raises his hand and asks why we got to do this assignment anyway. ″Don’t make no sense to me,″ he says, frowning.

  Miss Saunders looks like she’s thinking hard for a good reason herself. Her fingers go up on her lips. Her eyes check out the ceiling like she’s gonna find the answer up there. ″I want you to know what it feels like to live in somebody else’s skin and to see the world through somebody else’s eyes,″ she says.

  Miss Saunders
takes a deep breath. Closes her eyes. Then tells us to do the same. ″When you were little, you loved to play pretend. To be G.I. Joe or Barbie. This is the same thing. Playing pretend, she says.″

  ″G.I. Joe’s a punk. Don’t nobody wanna be him,″ John-John yells, cracking up the whole class.

  ″You get to be anyone you like,″ Miss Saunders says walking toward him. She tells us that this is an exercise that will show her how well we write and use our imaginations. So no more grumbling, she says. ″Get to work. Now.″

  I look at Desda. She’s sitting there showing off her big white teeth, and licking her lips like they’re candy.

  At first, I don’t say nothing. I roll my pencil around on the desk. I wait for Desda to start things. But nothing happens. Desda doesn’t say nothing for ten whole minutes. Then here comes Miss Saunders like she’s Big Ben, the clock. ″I hope you and your partner are using your time wisely. You only have twenty minutes left.″

  I rip out some loose-leaf paper and start writing. ″This here’s what we’re going to do,″ I tell Desda. She doesn’t say nothing. She is just smiling and picking at some crud caked in her eyes. So I get started without her.

  At first, I pretend I’m a girl living in a drafty castle that I hate because my parents don’t got enough candles to light the place. Then I start thinking. Back then, I would of been a slave. Maybe a slave girl in the bottom of a boat, chained to some boy with the prettiest eyes and some girl who keeps stealing my little scraps of food. Skinny and stinking and starving and all the time next to a cute boy who I like so much, it hurts. I start to write:

  Dear Diary:

  I hate fish, but I could eat a whale right now. I haven’t had nothing much to eat for three weeks…or is it five weeks? Watery rice with maggots in it is all they give us here. Momma used to always say I was the skinny one. She would cry if she saw me now. All ribs and knees. Ankles, big as yams.

  Worse than no food and stink everywhere is having Kinjari see me now. Momma would say I am a vain and foolish girl. Here dying and wondering what some boy thinks about me. But I can’t help it. In my village, Kinjari’s family would know my family and maybe arrange for us to be married. Even at my age—thirteen. But no one would ask to marry me like this. Sitting in my own filth. My head shaved clean to keep lice away. Skin dry and ashy like tree bark ate away by the desert wind.

  Day in and day out Kinjari eyes me, staring like he sees the sun rising in my eyes. I want to ask him why he looks at me that way. Am I something so beautiful he can’t help but stare? I keep quiet. Beauty is where one finds it, my father used to say. Sometimes, when I wake, I am so close to Kinjari I can smell his breath. Like mine, it is awful. But I don’t care. It is good knowing he is near. Knowing he was near, I mean.

  I was sick, bad, for a long while. When I woke up, Kinjari was gone. Dead. ″He had the mark. The pocks,″ the girl chained to me said, sucking her front teeth like they was soup bones. ″The slavers tossed him over the side,″ she said.

  But this one, she steals my food. Can I trust her with the truth? I don’t know.

  —Akeelma

  I read the diary letter to Desda. She asks how I came up with the girl’s name, Akeelma? It’s close to my name spelled backward, I tell her.

  ″How come you don’t talk proper, like Akeelma talks in her diary?″ she asks.

  ″Don’t nobody talk like that for real, only people in old movies and books.″ Then I tell her how, before he died, my father read me books where people spoke like that. ″Some of it stuck, I guess.″

  Miss Saunders picks up the papers and starts reading some out loud.

  Don’t read mine, I think, turning my head to the wall.

  Desda raises her hand and asks Miss Saunders to read ours. Miss Saunders says it’s the best, most thoughtful piece she’s heard so far. ″Desda, Maleeka, good job,″ she says.

  Desda smiles. She sits up straight and tall and shows off them giant teeth of hers. I should be pissed off at her, since she didn’t do a dang thing to help me write my essay. But today I’ve got on my new clothes and I’m feeling mighty fine. I don’t crack on Desda, or nothing. I just get myself on out of there. I don’t even answer Char when she calls for me to come her way. This is my day, and I’m not letting nobody spoil it. Nobody.

  Miss Saunders has got other ideas, though. She pulls me and Desda aside and says she wants us to keep doing the assignment. No one else, just us. Desda asks what we gonna get out of it. Extra credit is all. Hummph. Desda pulls out right then. Admits she didn’t have nothing much to do with writing the assignment. That I did all the work. Miss Saunders turns around to me. Desda walks off.

  I don’t know. Maybe it’s these new clothes and all. But I say OK. I don’t want to spoil my good mood by telling no teacher where to get off today. Besides, I liked writing that stuff. I didn’t tell that to Miss Saunders, though. She could use it against me, somehow.

  CHAPTER 6

  ONE MINUTE I’M WALKING DOWN THE hall watching people watching me in my new clothes. The next minute Daphne Robinson is all up in my face ready to fight. She’s saying she just found out I was kissing her boyfriend in the hall the other day. ″Worm wasn’t sucking my lips off. He was kissing Charlese,″ I want to yell. But I don’t. Bad things happen around here to people who can’t keep their mouth shut.

  I keep stepping, and tell Daphne she’s got the wrong girl. But I ain’t as cool as I seem. My fingers are starting to shake, and my throat is dry as toast. Daphne’s itching for a fight. I can feel it. The next thing I know, she’s grabbing hold of my braids. She got them wrapped around her hands like boxing tape and is punching me upside the head with them.

  I am taller than Daphne, so it seems like all I have to do is reach down and slap her off me like a bug. I’m pushing her away as best I can. Only every time I do it, it feels like my hair is being ripped from my scalp.

  Kids are yelling all around me. ″Beat her butt good. Ain’t nobody got the right to steal your man.″ Teachers say to break it up and for kids to move so they can stop this thing.

  Char’s just standing there eating a candy bar like she’s at the movies. I’m eyeing her, hoping maybe she’ll jump in or at least say she was the one that was kissing Worm. She digs the chocolate out from between her teeth and takes another bite of candy.

  All of a sudden here comes Miss Saunders, pushing her way past everybody to where me and Daphne are fighting. I never thought I’d be so glad to see that woman. But I am. She’s pushing her way through the crowd, like there ain’t nobody at McClenton big or bad enough to stop her. I don’t know what’s got into me, I ain’t no fighter. Never fought one day in my life. But all of a sudden, I’m feeling strong when I see Miss Saunders headed my way. So I raise my hand in the air and give Daphne some of what she been giving me. Next thing I know, Miss Saunders’s grabbing hold of my hand, telling me to cut it out. Big mistake. Now Daphne’s got the chance to get in one last hit. She takes her hand, the one with Worm’s dad’s big basketball ring on it, and smacks me across my face. My cheek puffs up like hot cookie dough. I can feel the blood oozing down to my chin.

  Miss Saunders shoves her hands in her suit pocket and pulls out tissues like she’s got boxes of them stashed away. The principal starts breaking up the crowd, telling everyone to move along or come to his office. Next thing I know, Daphne’s gathering up snot in her throat like she’s summoning up demons. Before I even think about it, that big, green slimy stuff comes flying my way, landing right on my shirt. Charlese is one of the first people to crack up.

  The principal, Mr. Pajolli, has got Daphne by the arm and is telling her to come to his office. Miss Saunders has got them tissues, rubbing blood and snot off me, still holding my arm like I’m gonna do something dangerous.

  ″Get off me,″ I say, jerking my arm away. ″Why don’t you go back to where you come from?″

  ″That will be enough,″ Mr. Pajolli says, heading my way.

  ″What’s she doing here anyway, Mr. P.?″ I say, hol
ding my face. ″She don’t know what she’s doing.″

  Mr. Pajolli takes me by the elbow and tells some kid to get me to the nurse’s office. He takes Daphne with him. She’s mouthing off, saying if she gets suspended, I better, too.

  Miss Saunders has got her arms raised, telling people to get to class. Me, I’m just wondering when she’s gonna get out my life.

  CHAPTER 7

  NO TELEVISION, TELEPHONE, OR HANGING OUT with friends for three weeks, all because of that fight. And that ain’t even the worse part. The principal, Miss Saunders, and Momma got their heads together and came up with a way to punish me good. They say it ain’t punishment, but it sure feels that way. They found me a job. A job that don’t pay no money and ain’t no fun at all. I don’t even want it. But Momma’s got her mind set, so that’s that.

  I will be working in the school office, filing papers, stapling letters, that kind of stuff. This is Miss Saunders’s bright idea. She talked it over with Momma last night on the telephone. I could hear some of the conversation coming through the receiver. Miss Saunders was saying something about me wasting my potential. That the school needed a better way to keep up with me so I don’t fall through the cracks. And Momma believes all that crap, when the truth is that Miss Saunders is just a big mouth, bossy broad who likes to throw her weight around and treat everybody like they are some broken pot she’s got to patch up.

  I could smell the peppermint tea Momma was sipping, while she spoke to Miss Saunders. ″Maleeka’s got more potential than she’s letting on. Keeping her under the principal’s nose may be just the way to get her back in line.″

  Momma and Miss Saunders talk a long time. When they’re done, I try to tell Momma that Miss Saunders doesn’t know what she’s doing. That she ain’t even a real teacher. Momma says she doesn’t care. She likes her.