by Sharon Flake
Miss Birdy comes over and lectures us about why we’re here in detention, and what will happen to us if Caleb doesn’t move over and shut up.
For a little while, we write notes to each other.
I write: Why bother with that smelly bathroom if no one else cares about it?
Caleb writes back: You have to take a stand when things aren’t right.
I look at him and wonder why he didn’t take a stand last year when we was on the bus, and everybody was making fun of how black I am. Instead of writing back, I open up my folder and start writing in my diary.
Dear Diary:
Caleb smells good. Sometimes when I’m around him, I lose my head. I forget that I am mad at him and that I promised myself I would never, ever forgive him for not coming to my defense on the bus. Those white teeth. Them eyes, and that voice, they make me forget sometimes what he’s done. That’s why I try to keep away from him. I don’t want to forget.
—Maleeka
Caleb looks at me for the longest time. ″Things can change,″ he says. ″Like things between me and you, things at the school.″
″Don’t go there, Caleb,″ I say.
″I said I was sorry, remember? Said it ten thousand times. Give a brother a break, why don’t you?″
″This ain’t McDonald’s, Caleb. No breaks today,″ I say, moving to another seat. Caleb’s got about six books with him. He takes care of business, keeps up with homework. That’s how he is. But even two seats over I can smell him. He don’t wear that cheap stuff that hurts your nose like some boys do.
Dear Diary:
Should you ever forgive a boy who done you wrong?
—Maleeka
Caleb can be persistent. He moves down two seats. Miss Birdy, the teacher, tells us both to settle down, shut up, or be ready to spend the day in detention again tomorrow. That doesn’t phase Caleb none. He keeps running off at the mouth.
″Why you bothering me, Caleb?″ I ask.
″I shouldn’t have left you when they started teasing you,″ he says, finally. Then he starts playing with his pencil. Chewing on his lip. We both get quiet for a while. ″I figured if I left you, the other kids would stop messing with you.″
″How can you think something like that?″ I ask.
Caleb says that ever since him and me started hanging together, the kids teased me. So he figured if he got away from me, they’d stop.
″So why you trying to be friends with me again now?″ I ask.
He tells me that things are still going bad for me even with him not around, so he figures he can’t make my life no worse. ″Besides,″ he whispers, ″I still like you…a lot.″
Eyes don’t lie, that’s what Akeelma would say. So I look deep into Caleb’s eyes. God, they are gorgeous. Big and brown. I think about Akeelma. Right now she’d probably say, ″Maleeka, forgive and forget. That’s easier than dragging around anger like sacks of stone.″
I want to laugh at that one. Those is Momma’s words. She says them when I get mad at her. I want to forgive Caleb, but I’m scared. What if I start liking him again and he does what he did before. Momma and Akeelma, they could forgive him. I am not that strong at forgiving. Not yet.
Caleb stares at me, all dreamylike. ″I didn’t mean it, I swear,″ he says.
″I won’t ever let you down again,″ Caleb says softly.
I nod.
CHAPTER 20
MISS SAUNDERS IS CRAZY. Last week she’s got me stuck in in-house detention, this week she’s asking me to stay after school so she and me can go over my diary again. I’d promised to meet her as soon as the three-thirty bell rings. I lied. I get to her room at four-forty-five. Why should I bust my butt getting to her when she got me put in in-house detention?
Instead of rushing, I stay and help Miss Carol do some Xeroxing, then watch the cheerleaders rehearse outside. When I get to Miss Saunders’s room, she’s not even there. The janitor says she’s in the auditorium. We have to give speeches in her class tomorrow and she wants us to each do it from the stage in front of a mike. She’s there checking out the equipment.
I figure Miss Saunders is on the stage, so I go into the auditorium by the backstage. The ninth graders are putting on The Wiz and they got all kinds of junk on stage. I hit my toe on a wooden monkey, and almost trip over some long ropes and cables. I want to scream when I see the witch’s costume hanging on a hook in the corner like somebody’s in it.
I can overhear Tai and Miss Saunders talking. They can’t see me where I am. ″This stuff was supposed to be off the stage for my class tomorrow,″ Miss Saunders is saying. ″Nobody here does what they say they will, when they say they will. Thanks for agreeing to help me move it, Tai.″
Tai stands up and walks over to Miss Saunders. They push two tables toward the stage curtains, then stop to take a breath. ″I don’t mind. I like the kinds of things you’re doing to keep students interested,″ Tai says.
I start to leave backstage when something Miss Saunders says makes me stop in my tracks. ″I wish it was helping their grades, though. Half my seventh graders are flunking this semester.″
Tai’s eyes look like they gonna fall out of her head. Mine probably do, too. ″How can that be?″ Tai says, standing and stretching her arms to the ceiling. Then, bending over like a ballerina taking a bow, she grabs hold of her ankles and pulls her head in between them. ″I hear your students in class. They love it. They get so excited.″
Miss Saunders bends over to get a good look at Tai. ″They are so enthused in class. Full of great ideas.″
″That’s great,″ Tai says, standing and stretching from side to side.
″Their insights are fantastic,″ Miss Saunders says. ″Right on target. But their test-taking skills are just terrible.″
Tai heads for the bed Dorothy wakes up in when she finally makes it home, and grabs one end and starts talking. ″That’s not unusual for many of our kids. But you’ve managed to get them to like Shakespeare. To read something other than the TV Guide. Help them learn to test better. Don’t kill their spirits by flunking them and making them think that nothing they’ve done really counts.″
Miss Saunders sits down on the edge of the bed. ″I can’t give them what they haven’t earned.″
″Nobody is asking you to do that,″ Tai says.
Miss Saunders says McClenton students have to be held to the same standards as other kids around the city. Tai says that’s true, but that tests ain’t the only way to prove you know something.
″They will thank me later,″ Miss Saunders says.
Tai sits down on the bed and folds her legs. ″If you’re still here.″
Miss Saunders stands and folds her arms tight.
″I know the students have been hard on you. The picture on the blackboard. The name-calling in the halls. Kids telling you to buy a new face.″
″I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s get this stuff offstage.″ Miss Saunders gets up and starts dragging the end of the bed toward where I’m standing backstage. I’m fumbling with my bookbag and trying to get out of there. But I don’t make it too far. I can’t help wanting to hear what they’re saying.
Tai walks over to the edge of the stage and sits down. Her short legs look funny hanging over the side. She starts drawing circles on the floor with her fingers. ″Ease up,″ she says to Miss Saunders. ″None of us is perfect.″
″That’s easy for you to say,″ Miss Saunders says. Then she starts talking real soft and sad. Telling Tai how when she was little, she prayed to God to make her face perfect. ″He didn’t,″ she says, ″so I tried to make up for it. To be perfect at everything else I did.″
Then Miss Saunders says she always had to be better than everyone else at everything, because people always thought she was less-than due to her face. She says she’s always had to dress better. To get the highest grades and be the most creative. At her job, she had the highest sales record in the company for six years straight. ″Even here at McClenton,″ she says, ″I put in
longer hours and give students an educational experience that they won’t find anywhere else.″
″That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself and everyone else,″ Tai says, coming closer to Miss Saunders. ″You are a great teacher, with good ideas. These kids will like you no matter what you look like,″ she says. ″But it’s your need to be perfect that will ruin you here, not how you look.″
Miss Saunders takes out a mirror and starts redoing her lipstick. The next thing I know, she’s staring right at me through that mirror. ″Maleeka Madison, you little sneak.″
CHAPTER 21
IF IT WASN’T FOR TAI, I don’t know what Miss Saunders would have done to me. Even from where I’m standing backstage, I can see that she’s pissed. Teachers don’t go for you knowing their personal business. That’s the one thing besides hitting them that makes them go totally nuts.
All that yoga and kung fu stuff Tai does must really work because she’s calm. Real chilled out. Miss Saunders is fidgeting. She is sitting there with her arms crossed.
Tai asks me to have a seat. Then she explains how it’s not polite to listen in on other people’s conversations. I know she’s right. I tell her I won’t repeat nothing I heard. Tai believes me, but Miss Saunders, she just ain’t buying it.
I didn’t tell Char nothing about the incident when I saw her the next day. Char is one of the kids flunking English, so I know hearing some dirt on Miss Saunders would make her day. But I keep quiet about it. Besides, Miss Saunders is gonna get hers soon enough. Char told Juju she was flunking English and it’s because Miss Saunders don’t like her. Char says Juju told her not to worry. Juju says she’ll handle things.
In class Miss Saunders says she wants to see me after school. It seems that woman don’t know how to make nothing happen during the school day. She always makes you stick around later for her.
After school when I walk into Miss Saunders’s classroom, she’s got her feet on the desk and her head shoved all up in a book. When she sees me, she takes her feet down off the desk.
″Good. You came,″ she says. ″Sit, sit down.″
I sit down and hope she’s gonna make it quick.
Miss Saunders is suited-down and buttoned-up tight, like usual. Today she’s got on a blue suit with gold buttons, the same kind they got on navy uniforms.
″I wanted to speak with you, Maleeka.″ Miss Saunders starts rubbing her hands together, cracking her knuckles. ″About your diary. We never did discuss it. How is it coming along?″
Before she says anything else, I pull out papers and show her my stuff. I’m talking to her about Akeelma, like Akeelma’s a real person.
Miss Saunders says my stuff is good. She tells me I get two A’s for it. Says I can keep it up if I want to, but she won’t make me. I look her up and down. I tell her I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I ain’t for doing schoolwork when I don’t have to.
Miss Saunders gets real quiet. She acts like she doesn’t want me to leave. I’m missing the ″I Love Lucy″ show on account of her, so I stand up to go. She finally gets around to what she’s been wanting to say all along, I guess. ″Have you told anyone about my conversation with Tai?″ Miss Saunders gives me a hard look and goes on about how important it is for a teacher to not have her personal business out among students. How it can ″undermind her credibility,″ whatever that means.
″Well, you don’t need to worry,″ I say, coming closer to Miss Saunders’s desk, ″I ain’t telling.″ Some teachers got pictures of their family on their desks. Their kids, husbands, even their dogs. Tai, she got pictures of this little Korean girl she sends money to every month. Miss Saunders ain’t got nothing or nobody on hers. It’s like she ain’t got no life except for her life at work.
Miss Saunders gets up, and paces the room. She don’t know what to say next. I can tell. All this walking around she’s doing is starting to get to me. I go to the blackboard and start drawing on it. ″You act like you’re the only one in the world who’s been teased,″ I say, looking her right in the eyes. ″Please. Look at me.
Miss Saunders stiffens up.
I keep talking. ″Some of us is the wrong color. Some is the wrong size or got the wrong face. But that don’t make us wrong people, now does it?″ I sit myself on my desk and put my feet up, like Miss Saunders had done. ″Shoot, I know I got my good points, too.″
Miss Saunders cracks a smile. ″Maleeka, you have a lot of good points,″ she says. Then she says how good I am at writing and math. And she starts in on me about bringing up my grades.
Before she gets too far, I ask, ″You got any friends?″
Miss Saunders hunches her shoulders. ″I’ve had a few in my time. It’s hard to keep them, with all the traveling I did in my corporate job.″
″Tai and you are buddies, right?″
″Girl, you ask a thousand questions,″ Miss Saunders says. Then she answers me straight. ″Yeah, Tai and I have been friends since college. Tai was the one that suggested I come here to McClenton.″
I gather my books and prepare to leave. ″I’m glad you’ve got one friend,″ I say.
CHAPTER 22
I’M ALMOST HOME BEFORE I REMEMBER that I want to enter my writing in a library contest. So I turn around, walk back to the library, and talk to the librarian. She says the contest winner will get one hundred dollars. I sign myself up right away. I tell the librarian I’m gonna turn my papers in tomorrow.
At home after I eat, I go straight to my room and rewrite all of Akeelma’s stuff. I write them up real nice and neat. When I’m finished, I only have five pages. That ain’t enough, I’m thinking. So I stay up half the night writing more. Momma comes to my room a few times and tells me to go to bed. But I beg her to let me stay up till I finish.
Dear Diary:
Kinjari isn’t so skinny anymore. They had him working the crew, so they let him eat good. I cried when I saw him. I curled up in a ball and hid my face. Kinjari came closer, and sat next to me. ″There is no one more beautiful than you, Akeelma,″ he said. That only made me cry more.
″I’ll go where you go,″ he said in my ear.
″You were a good boatbuilder at home,″ I said. ″They will want to keep you here when the ship docks. You will be free, almost.″
Kinjari told me that he could never work on a boat like this just to see the sun and feel the wind whenever he pleased. ″I would rather be a slave with you than be free by myself,″ he said.
Then he held my chin and helped me drink water from a wooden cup. At first I would not look him in the eyes. But then when I did, I was glad. Kinjari’s eyes warmed me like the sun.
—Akeelma
I never talked to Momma about Akeelma till last night. When I got up this morning, she asks how things turned out. I let her read my diary page.
″You’re a good writer,″ Momma says, setting the papers down gently. ″You could be a professional writer someday,″ Momma continues, sounding just like Miss Saunders. ″Like your father.″
″Daddy wrote stuff? Stuff like this?″ I ask, putting my hand down on the papers.
″He wasn’t as good as you,″ Momma says, going to the sink for a glass of water. She won’t drink cold water from the fridge, just warm tap water. ″But your father, he wrote nice letters, poems, stuff like that.″
″He ever write a poem about you—or me?″ I ask.
″Don’t you remember the poem he wrote about you? The one about you being beautiful?″ Momma asks.
″Me? What?″ I ask, getting excited. ″No, I don’t remember. When did Daddy write that? Where is it?″
″I don’t remember,″ Momma says, getting up for more water. Then she stops in her tracks. ″Well, now, let’s see,″ she says, scratching her head. ″Maybe it’s in that box in my closet. I put stuff there that your dad gave me. I forgot about the poem, though, till just now.″
I run up the stairs, two at a time. I hop over the top step and almost fall into Momma’s room. I push past the shoe boxes full of dream books and no-g
ood lottery tickets and fabric scraps, and go for the one marked with my dad’s name—Gregory. I lift the box out of the closet like a fragile piece of glass. But I’m too scared to open it up. When I do, tears come to my eyes. There’s pictures of me and Daddy standing in front of the house. Playing football in the yard. Him carrying me on his back up the stairs. I haven’t seen these pictures since Daddy died.
Momma’s yelling for me to hurry up because I got to go to school in a half hour. I’m looking through all the pictures but I don’t see no poems. I find Daddy’s birth certificate and the driver’s license from when he drove a cab. I just about give up, but then I see a crumpled brown paper bag that’s been smoothed out and folded tight. The words is written out real neat and straight and strong.
Brown
Beautiful
Brilliant
My my Maleeka
is
Brown
Beautiful
Brilliant
Mine
Momma is calling me. I can’t answer. My mouth is full of Daddy’s words, and my head is remembering him again. Tall, dark, and smiling all the time. Then gone when his cab crashed into that big old bread truck. Gone away from me for good, till now.
″Maleeka, you got to go to school, girl,″ Momma says, heading upstairs.
I fold the poem and stuff it in my pocket. Then I take the picture of Daddy with me on his back and put that in my other pocket.
″Find anything?″ Momma asks, sitting next to me on the bed.
