The Skin I'm in

by Sharon Flake

  ″That Miss Saunders is the first teacher who ever called here to talk about what was going on with you. I like that. It shows she’s concerned, that this job ain’t just about the money.″

  I tell Momma that Miss Saunders don’t need the money. She got plenty. ″Don’t it make you wonder, Momma, why somebody with all that money and a good job would give it up to come to McClenton?″

  Momma sits there for a while, thinking. ″I wouldn’t think on it too much, Maleeka,″ she says. ″She’s here, that’s the important thing.″

  No way is Momma gonna let me not work in that office. She even threatens me, saying if I try to get out of it she will take away all my rights at home. So I figured, cool. I’ll do it. And while I’m doing it, I will find out the real deal on Miss Saunders. Get all up in her business like she’s up in mine. Payback, you know.

  So on the first day I work in the office, I ask Miss Carol, the secretary, about Miss Saunders. Miss Carol likes to gossip, so I figure she’ll tell me something.

  But Miss Carol just stares up at me with her arms crossed. ″You’re here to work, right?″

  ″Right,″ I say, biting on the dry skin hanging from my lip.

  ″Then do your work and stop minding grown folks’ business.″

  Maxine, the other girl working in the office, is acting like she’s filing papers. I know she’s listening, though. I leave Miss Carol standing there with her arms folded, and I file my stuff like she says. Turns out, I don’t need her to tell me about Miss Saunders. It don’t take me long to start piecing stuff together from the other teachers. They complain about her every chance they get.

  ″If you ask me, that program doesn’t work one bit,″ Mr. Mac, the science teacher, says. ″A school doesn’t run like a corporation. Things don’t happen at the snap of a finger or the drop of a pen. Change takes time.″

  ″A bull in a china shop, that’s what she is,″ Miss Benson, the librarian, says under her breath. ″She’s not following the curriculum the way it’s laid out. She’s pushing the kids too hard. Telling them to read fifty pages one night, thirty pages the next. I’m telling you, hiring her was a bad move.″

  If those teachers knew I was working at the desk, they would be more careful. But they don’t know I’m here. I’ve dropped some paper clips on the floor and I’m crouching under a desk to pick them up slowly. It looks like nobody’s around but Miss Carol, and she’s in the back Xeroxing. Maxine is running errands. When I stand up, Mr. Mac gets all red-faced. He thinks I’m trying to be a smart aleck. His lips curl up tight. ″My, my, Maleeka, aren’t you the lucky one? Here to work in the office, I see,″ he says, stomping out the door, right into Mr. Pajolli, who’s heard everything he’s said.

  ″Sometimes, Mr. Mac, you need new ideas, to do things differently. Nothing wrong with a little change, is there?″ he asks.

  ″I’m sorry, Mr. Pajolli, but the way I see it, rewarding those who misbehave and refuse to play by the rules is wrong. Dead wrong. How will you reward the good ones, put them on detention?″ Mr. Mac asks.

  ″They’re all good ones, Mr. Mac. Some of them just need more support than others.″

  Mr. Mac makes a clicking noise with his tongue. He and Miss Benson, walk down the hall together side by side. We all think those two got a thing going on, even though we never seen them kiss or even hold hands.

  Mr. Pajolli tells me not to worry. That things will work out fine for me if I try hard enough. All the time he’s talking, I’m trying to figure out how I can cut this gig loose. I mean, let’s face it, I got better things to do with my time than work for free.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE ONLY REASON MOMMA LETS ME off restriction at home is because I started that new job, and she thinks that’s gonna change me somehow. I don’t tell her she’s out of her head. Shoot, I’m just glad I can watch TV and talk on the phone again. After all, it is Saturday.

  But I can’t talk on the phone right this minute because as soon as my girl Sweets comes over to my house, she hogs the phone. Sweets’s momma is super-strict. She never lets Sweets on the phone. So here she is, laying across my bed on her stomach, with her short legs waving in the air every time Larry says something to her.

  Neither one of us is supposed to talk to boys. But we do every once in a while. With the way Sweets is acting, you’d think Larry could see her. She’s putting lip gloss on her lips, combing her hair, brushing off her clothes.

  Sweets has been liking Larry since she was six years old. She thinks he likes her, only he’s so shy, you can’t tell. All he ever talks about with her is basketball. They’re talking about the game the Knicks won the other night. If you could see that big smile Sweets has got on her face, you would think Larry’s just said he loves her.

  Sweets and me been best friends since kindergarten. She goes to the school across town, the school for smart girls with attitudes, she likes to say. I could have gone there. My grades were as good as Sweets’s. Better, in fact. Only I changed my mind at the last minute. I went to the interview and wouldn’t answer one question they asked. Momma was so embarrassed. She cried all the way on the subway ride home.

  I didn’t plan it that way. I just froze, I guess. The school is so big. So clean. So fancy. And them girls…they looked like they come out of a magazine. Long, straight hair. Skin the color of potato chips and cashews and Mary Jane candies. No Almond Joy-colored girls like me. No gum-smacking, wisecracking girls from my side of town.

  That didn’t bother Sweets none. She says she deserves to be in that school as much as anyone.

  ″You got the right color skin,″ I said, poking her fat tan face.

  ″It’s not about color,″ she said. ″It’s how you feel about who you are that counts. Hummph,″ she said, twirling around on her toes like a ballerina with bad feet. ″I’m as good as the queen of England, the president of the United States, and ten movie stars, all rolled into one. So they better let me in that there school or else,″ she said, shaking her fist up to the sky. I guess Sweets’s attitude paid off. They let her into that high-toned school.

  Up till last year, Sweets and me did everything together. Now all she does is study. ″I gotta keep up,″ she says. ″Getting straight A’s in this school, ain’t like getting A’s in our old school. You sweat to get these A’s. Gotta half die to keep ’em.″

  Sweets been on the phone for a half hour already. I tell her to cut it. She says to give her five more minutes. That really means fifteen minutes, so I go back to doing what I am doing. Looking at all the junk I got under my bed. Socks. Cards. Dust. An earring I’ve been looking for. A piece of old, hard toast. And a mirror I ain’t seen for a while. It’s a cheap little thing. But Daddy gave it to me a long time ago, so I try to hold onto it. It’s got a pink plastic handle with little white bunnies painted on it.

  I check my face out in the mirror. That cut from Daphne’s ring is gone. Momma says I’m like Daddy. I heal fast. That ain’t the only thing Daddy and me got in common. I got his eyes. Dark, almond-shaped eyes with long, thick black lashes.

  My lips, they’re like Momma’s. Full and wide. They look like that actor’s lips on TV. I can’t think of his name, just now. But he’s got the kind of lips that make you want to kiss him quick. Soft, smooth, pretty-looking lips. My nose and my ears, I don’t know where they came from. They don’t look like Momma’s or Daddy’s. My nose is small and pug. Daddy used to always pinch it when I was little.

  I am the same color Daddy was. When I was little, he would come home from work and say, ″I sure could use me a warm cup of cocoa.″ That meant for me to give him a big hug and lots of kisses. I liked that.

  I didn’t used to mind being this color. Then kids started teasing me about it. Making me feel like something was wrong with how I look. And when Daddy passed away, that just made things worse.

  I stare at myself for maybe twenty minutes in Daddy’s mirror. I don’t get it. I think I’m kind of nice-looking. Why don’t other people see what I see? I think. Out of the blue I
get an idea. I’m gonna cut my hair. Cut it real short like the girl on the cover of the magazine laying on my floor. I yell for Sweets to get off the phone. She ain’t listening. She’s smiling at something Larry just said to her.

  ″Off the phone,″ I yell so he can hear. ″Off the phone, before I tell Larry you like—″

  Before I finish the sentence Sweets is hanging up and hitting me over the head with a pillow. ″You know that ain’t right,″ she says, whacking me good.

  I tell Sweets I’m gonna cut my hair. Gonna cut it real close. ″People gonna see I ain’t who I used to be,″ I say.

  ″You gonna cut your hair off, like bald?″ Sweets asks.

  ″Well, not that off. But close, like this,″ I say, showing her the picture.

  Sweets helps me take out my braids, and lets me know that I shouldn’t be trying nothing like this by myself. ″If you jack up your hair, you really will look a mess,″ she says.

  Then she tells me how her cousin Ronnie just opened up a shop on the avenue. ″I don’t have money to go to no shop,″ I tell her. Sweets says that her cousin did her hair for free last week, and all she had to do was sweep up the floor.

  Sweets calls her cousin for me, and her cousin says yeah. She will cut my hair, but I have to give her three Saturdays’ worth of work. And I have to bring a note from Momma saying the cut is OK with her. It takes me two hours to talk Momma into this thing. I don’t tell Sweets or Momma the real reason that I’m doing this. That I want a new look like that model in the magazine, so that maybe people will start to see me differently and treat me differently. Momma and Sweets wouldn’t understand me saying nothing like that. So I just keep my mouth shut, while Sweets and I walk to the avenue. Ronnie tells me to leave things to her. She puts a texturizer on my scalp, till it loosens up my hair, then she washes the texturizer out. When she is finished, it seems like ten thousand tiny black shiny curls was all over my head.

  Ronnie takes out the clippers, gives me some points on the side, and evens up the back of my hairline.

  ″Hmmm,″ she says. ″Now, you got to have a little attitude when you wear this cut. You got attitude, Maleeka?″ she asks, with her hands on her hips.

  I look at her and ask what she means.

  Then a woman comes out from under the dryer. She takes off her clip-on earrings and asks Ronnie for some alcohol. She cleans them clunky things off and clips them on my ears without even asking me.

  ″This is one of those hairdos you strut your stuff in. Sisters wearing these know they’re sharp,″ Ronnie says, taking out the clippers and going at my hairline again.

  I’m looking in the mirror, and I can’t believe my eyes. I like what I see.

  ″You got any lip gloss?″ she asks me, turning me around in the chair, still checking out my hair.

  I dig in my pocketbook and pull out some red lipstick from Murphy’s Drugstore.

  ″You’re too young to be wearing lipstick,″ Ronnie says. She makes me stick my finger in the gigantic jar of Vaseline she keeps near her mirror, and I rub a little on my lips. When Ronnie’s finished, the three other hairdressers get all up in my face, and so do some customers. One woman’s got relaxer cream all over her head. They’re all talking about how good I look. Sweets is nodding and smiling and agreeing with everybody.

  ″Give me some attitude,″ Ronnie says, taking off my cape.

  I have my head down and my arms crossed. Another woman comes out from under the dryer and starts strutting across the floor.

  ″Attitude, girl,″ she says, switching her butt around, dipping and turning like a fashion model.

  ″Attitude,″ Sweets says, getting into the act.

  Everybody turns and looks at me. I start snapping my fingers and walking around like I’m somebody. I look good. The woman who’s given me her earrings comes over to me and puts her hands on my hips. ″You got to shake ’em hard. Make people know you mean business.″

  I start pushing my hips from side to side, taking long steps and putting my arms out like I’m on a runway someplace.

  ″You go, girl,″ a woman says. ″Shake it. Shake it, don’t break it.″

  ″You do look good, Maleeka,″ Sweets agrees. ″That cut is you.″

  A new customer comes into the store and over to Ronnie. The woman with the earrings gets herself back under the dryer, and the other lady goes back to getting her relaxer washed out. I get Ronnie’s broom and start sweeping up.

  CHAPTER 9

  ON MONDAY MS. ALLEN, THE art teacher, does a double take when I walk into her class. I know she wants to ask me what happened, but teachers can’t always just come out and ask you stuff like that. Kids, they’re different. As soon as I walked into the school building they were all over me, wanting to know why I didn’t have no hair.

  I expect John-John not to like the cut. I mean, what does he like about me, anyhow? Nothing. And I expect Charlese and the twins to say they don’t like it, even if they secretly do.

  In third period, kids really light into me. By fourth period, I’m wearing the baseball cap I brought from home, just in case. Mr. Klein, the social studies teacher, tells me to take off the hat, but I give him some lame excuse and he lets me keep it on. The next thing I know, somebody’s yanking off the hat and making cracks about my peanut head.

  I don’t get it. I mean, I look good. I know I do. Desda comes up to me and says I shouldn’t let them get to me. I tell her I’ll check her later. I go to the bathroom. Nobody’s in there yet. I look in the mirror and start crying. ″You know, Maleeka,″ I hear myself say, ″you can glue on some hair, paint yourself white, come to school wearing a leather coat down to your toes and somebody will still say something mean to hurt your feelings. That’s how it goes at this school.″

  I walk around that bathroom trying to think of what to do. I start reading some of the stuff on the walls.

  ″Char and Worm 4-ever.″

  ″Wash me.″

  ″If you like school, you stupid.″

  I sit myself up on one of the sinks, and think back to Saturday when I got my hair cut.

  Tears come to my eyes when I put my hands on my head and feel my little bit of hair. I mean, I know I asked for it, and that it looked good at Ronnie’s place, but seeing it in the school bathroom mirror is something else.

  I jump off the sink and lean close to the mirror on the wall, and think of Daddy. ″Maleeka,″ he used to say, ″you got to see yourself with your own eyes. That’s the only way you gonna know who you really are.″

  I reach down into my bag and pull out the little hand mirror Daddy gave me and look at myself real good. My nose is running. I blow it and throw the tissue away. I splash some water on my face and pat it dry. I reach deep down into my pocketbook and pull out the little jar of Vaseline and shine up my lips. Then I ball up my cap, stuff it in my backpack, and walk right on out of there.

  CHAPTER 10

  WE NEED A NEW ALARM CLOCK. Ours rings whenever it wants. Two in the morning. Ten at night. It don’t matter. But you can be sure of one thing, it ain’t never gonna ring when it’s supposed to.

  When Momma comes in my room telling me I’m gonna be late if I don’t get a move on, I ain’t surprised. It’s the third time this week I’m late because of that clock. So I just ignore Momma, pull my quilt up over my head, and turn over.

  Momma does what she always does. She pulls the covers off and threatens to yank down the sheet.

  ″I’m up. I’m up.″ I sit on the edge of the bed. Hands folded. Head drooping. My eyes are still closed when Momma goes back downstairs to cook breakfast. I wash up, then look through my closet for some jeans or something. I push my way past that new shirt Momma made, and hope she don’t ask me about it. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but one shoulder is higher than the other one. She fixed it three times already, but it just ain’t working. I don’t want to tell her that, though.

  Sweets asks me all the time why I don’t just tell Momma I don’t want to wear her stuff. But I can’t. Momma needs to
keep sewing. If she don’t, I ain’t sure what’s gonna happen to her.

  When I finally get to the kitchen table, the oatmeal’s cold and slick, like Silly Putty. I eat dry toast instead. Momma gives me the once-over. She comes and straightens up my turtleneck collar. She made this one too, but the woman across the street helped her with it, so it ain’t so bad.

  Momma is dressed in a blue uniform. Today she got herself some different kind of tea. It smells more like chicken noodle soup to me. She’s stirring it and stirring it, but not drinking it. I kiss her quick on the side of the head. She don’t even notice. She’s eyeing the newspaper like she does every morning. Two newspapers are spread wide open on the kitchen table. Every once in a while, pages slide onto the floor, or get greasy from some eggs or bacon Momma eats while she’s reading.

  Momma’s always got to know what’s happening in the stock market. She sews my clothes to save money so that she can play the stocks. She thinks we’ll be rich one day, but she never invests any money. By the time she gets a few hundred dollars saved up here and there, the pipes start leaking or the roof needs fixing. Or Momma gets one of her dreams, where some dead relative comes back and tells her to play the lottery and put all her money on some number they told her about, like 557, 810, or 119. It never fails. Momma loses all the money. Every dime. But that’s the kind of luck we have—dumb dead relatives who go outta their way to interrupt your good-night’s sleep to give you a lucky number that only brings you bad luck. Now who needs that?

  Momma never gives up, though. She’s always looking for new ways to make money. She’s sold Tupperware, magazines, and pretty junk for kitchen walls. We’re still poor as dirt.

  A lot of folks think Momma don’t have all her marbles. I can tell by the way they talk to her, kind of loud—like folks do with crazy people—with a smirk on their face, like they know a secret she don’t. But the joke’s on them. Momma’s the smartest person in the world. She’s a math whiz and can add numbers faster than anybody I know.