“Oh, that was hot.” Vivica praised her friend in a singsong voice.
“Yeah, when you blow up, I’m goin be your stylist,” Sheena added.
“It ain’t nothing.” Nessa blushed a little. “Just something quick I did. It needs some work but I definitely want to expand it.”
“That was good,” I added. “It was like lyrics.”
“Duh, it was hip-hop.” Vivica defended her friend.
“Oh, I just never thought of rap as poetry.” The moment I said that, I knew I should have grabbed my foot and put it in my mouth instead of letting Vivica do it for me.
“Where are you from?” Vivica rolled her neck with extreme force. “Poetry is rap and rap is poetry.” Vivica said. “What, you think you could do better?” She was challenging me. But little did she know, she had already won.
“V, it’s cool,” Nessa said to defuse the situation. “Many people don’t think rap is poetry. They just need a little education, that’s all.”
“I really liked your poem, Nessa. I didn’t mean to offend anyone. I just hadn’t heard poetry like that before. In the poetry club I was in at my old school, we didn’t do anything nearly as creative as that.” I made a mental note to evaluate everything I wanted to say before actually releasing the words.
Nessa patted my shoulder—finally I’d said the right thing. Over our last few bites of pizza, she and I talked briefly about my poetry club and I told her about my attempts at writing. She told me to bring my book because she’d love to see them.
For the first time that day since seeing Jeffrey, I had a genuine smile on my face.
CHAPTER 7
After lunch, I sat in history class confused. Vivica had a serious chip on her shoulder that was more the size of a chunk. Even though we were almost in all the same classes, she didn’t want to sit next to me. I liked Nessa. And Sheena, well, she was Sheena.
Sister Souljah took a seat beside me, and before the teacher arrived, she initiated conversation.
“You have an accent,” she said.
At first I didn’t feel like being bothered, but the fact that she said accent and not something racial piqued my curiosity.
“So what’s the plight of black people living in Italy?” she asked.
Huh? What kind of question was that? A&I were obsessed with race, but that was because they were old and from a generation where race decided where they were going to sit, eat, and live. I hadn’t heard so much talk about race among young people as I had today. But then again, I guess the kids in Rainhaven didn’t have to concern themselves with the subject too often.
“Um, I’m not sure.” I thought that was a safe answer.
“What do you mean? Didn’t you connect with black people when you went there?” Her facial expression went sour.
“Not really. I mean, my family and I just went on vaca—”
“Oh, you one of those black people who think you better than everyone else.”
“Excuse me?” I asked innocently.
“I should have known. You rock an Afro but ain’t got a clue.” Sister Souljah got up, picked up her book bag, and changed seats. The entire time, I stared at her in shock. I spent the rest of class trying to figure out what just happened, only to come up with nothing but a headache.
By the time last period arrived, I was defeated. The ringing of the bell felt like an escape to freedom. As I walked out of my classroom toward my locker, Vivica ended up next to me.
“I told you Maplewood ain’t no joke,” she said nonchalantly. “You can’t just come through and think because white people like you that we’d like you.”
“Why don’t you like me when you don’t know me?” I asked her outright. It didn’t make sense.
“’Cause I know about you. You don’t know what you want to be. You only want to be black when it’s convenient for you. You can’t flip-flop back and forth. If you want to be a white girl, go be a white girl, but stop frontin’ like you black. Either you’re down or you’re not.”
How could I possibly be a white girl with skin the color of tar? I walked away briskly, just in time to catch the tears with the back of my hand.
As I was walking out the door, Sheena caught me. I shielded my eyes to avoid any potential inquiries. She invited me to hang out with the Big Three after school. But all I wanted to do was go home, so I didn’t care if I had to ride by myself.
The bus filled up quickly with some of the same fashionable black kids from the morning. I was able to grab a window seat toward the back, so I could glance through the glass when the tears decided to flow.
I felt like fried manure. I tried to replay the day in my mind, but it was nerve-racking. Depressing. Pathetic. Someone sat next to me but I didn’t waste the energy to turn.
“Hey you,” a familiar voice said.
I turned my head lazily to see Jeffrey’s smile. It reminded me of a rainbow.
I had no choice but to smile back. He put his book bag on his lap.
“How was your first day?”
I didn’t have the energy to lie.
“Horrible,” I blurted out.
“Why?”
“I don’t fit in. I’m too different. I’m…I’m too white,” I concluded.
“Well, you got a bomb tan, if you are a white girl.” He laughed.
I flashed a fake grin.
“See, it’s not that bad.” He pinched my cheek. No one’s done that since I was a kid. Nonetheless, his touch sent shock waves through my body. Very electric.
“When I first arrived to this country as a seven-year-old, I couldn’t even speak the language. Kids made fun of the way I looked, talked, dressed. They were really mean. Called me all types of names and told me to go back to my country. It was like everything about me was funny to them. I would go home crying and angry at my parents for moving us here.”
“How did you finally adjust?” I wanted to know the special secret.
He pondered my question for a few seconds before answering. I had to catch myself because I was staring through him, trying to see his heart.
“It took time. But I learned how to be down. It didn’t happen overnight. I also learned to like myself since no one else did.” He smiled a rainbow again. “But it was also something my mother told me that put everything in perspective. She said people usually make fun of you to make themselves feel better. They usually have low self-esteem and want to direct feelings of inadequacy towards something else. I was just an easy target.” Another guy stopped in front of Jeffrey and they gave each other pounds. “I see you,” Jeffrey said to the guy as he grabbed the hand of a lovely-looking girl.
“I’m not saying don’t try to fit in,” he continued. “You’re going to have to do a certain amount of that, but don’t change completely just to make friends. You may realize that the people you’re trying to change for aren’t really your friends.”
“That’s great advice. You’re pretty wise.”
He blushed. I made him blush.
“Nah, I just went through what you’re going through. That’s all.”
He was modest. I liked modest.
“You seem real cool.”
I blushed. He made me blush.
Was this a crush?
CHAPTER 8
When I got home, I was relieved that A&I were in one of the apartments doing renovations. I took the opportunity to sneak into my room and think in solitude.
In a soft fury of tears, I retrieved a pair of scissors and my old Clearview uniforms from a box. I began cutting the clothes. It was a makeshift ritual to air my frustration and accept the fact that I was starting my life all over again.
Green and white shreds of fabric collected on the hardwood floor, along with memories of tennis lessons with Jill, bat mitzvahs ceremonies and Gilmore Girls marathons. I dropped to the floor.
I picked up one of the fabric scraps and my mind drifted to my old life. I thought about how less than two weeks ago, I was glued to the brick stairs that led up to our big house on the hill. It wa
s strategic. The three movers could barely pass me. I didn’t budge. The big one with the scary mustache, who showed off his underwear whenever he bent over, mumbled things as he stepped over me. The skinny one with stringy, girl-like hair gave me fake smiles anytime he passed. The short one with the elephant ears never once looked at me. But I didn’t care. These men played a significant role in the ultimate conspiracy: moving me miles away from my friends and forcing me to re-create a life in Baltimore, Maryland.
I remembered doomsday like it was yesterday, although it was more than a year ago. A&I sat me down for a “family meeting.” We arranged ourselves in the library on the multicolored floor pillows. My mother sat Indian-style, an ability that her weekly yoga classes afforded her. My father took off his glasses and squeezed that place at the top of his nose between his eyes. I knew what that meant.
The conversation was short. Was it really a conversation? They talked. Explained. Apologized. Convinced. Arranged. I sat quietly until the end of their presentation and softly said, “I don’t want to move.” My response changed nothing.
I peeked in a box and saw my old poetry book and pulled it out. About three quarters of it was filled with my novice poetic attempts. I found a blank page and wrote “How to Be Down” at the top of it. Part of me felt it was silly to create a list of ways to be cool, but part of me was scared not to fit in. So I was willing to undergo the necessary metamorphosis.
How to Be Down:
Talk cooler (use more slang)
Hide being smart (don’t try to answer questions even if you know the answers)
Get a perm
Get a better wardrobe
Don’t read books (or at least don’t put it on blast)
Don’t think you’re better than others
Learn to work a bus card: upside down facing me
Read The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah
Watch what you say
Learn how to rap
Stay on Sheena’s good side
I studied the list. It was predictable and ridiculous. Yet it was my strategy and my lifesaver.
I flipped through the rest of my book to some of my old poems. Most of them were silly musings about puppy love—what I had experienced the first two months of dating Matt—but they were catchy and humorous. I put the notebook in my backpack so I wouldn’t forget it.
I decided to e-mail Jill. E-mail was always the best way when you wanted to say something that you didn’t have the nerve to say on the phone or in person. I pulled out the laptop A&I had bought me for my freshman year at Clearview.
After I logged on and filtered through the junk mail—a collection of indecipherable symbols, disgusting requests to look at the body parts of strangers, and e-mails asking me to check my bank account—I composed the following:
To: [email protected]
Subject: Question
Hey Jill—
So the first day of school was a disaster. Actually, I’m not sure if disaster can really capture the catastrophic collection of events. I’ll have to fill in the horrible details when we talk over the telephone. There’s really too much to type.
I had a question for you. It’s a stupid question, but a question nonetheless. The girls here don’t think I’m “black enough.” Has anyone ever told you that you need to be more black, or more white, for that matter?
I mean, if you don’t want to answer you don’t have to, but I just needed some perspective.
How was cheerleading tryouts?
Nina
“So, honey, are you feeling a little better?” my mother asked during dinner. My parents knew my first day was not what they had expected it to be. Although I wasn’t quite sure what they’d expected under the circumstances. I swallowed a spoonful of corn while I formulated an answer.
“I need to blacken up.” I was curious to see their reactions, because to my artistic/activist/independent-thinking parents, blackness couldn’t fit in a neat box.
A&I had identical looks on their faces. A mix between horror, remembrance, and anguish. You would have thought I said that I needed to get jumped into the black culture through a violent initiation rite, like some gangs require.
The label A&I hated more than “Afro-American,” which people at Rainhaven still used on occasion, was “sellout”. I never really got what “sellout” meant, but I guess today added a little more to my understanding.
A&I had been called sellouts more times than they could count. I think it was because they lived in an all-white town and sent their daughter to all-white private schools yet worked hard to maintain a connection to African-American culture. My father made a living painting portraits of black people. My mother made an even healthier living writing about black people.
My mother put her fork down and gently wiped her mouth. She took a deep breath before answering. “Honey, where did you get that from?”
I didn’t want to tell on my new friends. But was friendship an accurate assessment of my relationship with the Big Three? Were they really my friends? I remained silent.
My mother continued, “Now, you know we have taught you that being black means many things. It isn’t about how you sound, how you look, how you wear your hair, or what type of music you like.”
Her speech sounded rehearsed. She’d been practicing it.
“I know, Ma, but I’m worried that I won’t fit in at Maplewood.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” my father chimed in. “You’re smart, funny, and a ball to be around. Who wouldn’t want to be your friend?”
Typical Dad answer. It’ll have to do for now. But A&I would have to think of something more substantial if I came home tomorrow afternoon in tears again.
CHAPTER 9
I arrived three minutes early to meet Vivica. There was no need to rush to my “destiny.” It was 7:25 and she still hadn’t come out. I didn’t want to miss the 7:29 bus, so I made the lonely walk by myself. It took me forty-four steps.
In the short distance to the bus, I realized that Baltimore was trying to prove its worth. It was like a beautiful woman with a black eye. It was trying to prove that it was the little big city that could. It was more dangerous than it should be. It was trying to prove that it deserved attention. It was loud for no reason. It was trying to prove that it had something to say. So I listened.
When I arrived at the stop for the number forty-two bus, I immediately spotted Sheena because of her blond hair. Nessa wore a red cap and Vivica was standing next to her, but she turned her head and our eyes met. I thought about waiting by myself, but I walked in their direction. Being alone was not something I was used to.
On my way, Jeffrey stopped me.
“Hey, miss,” he said. His button-down shirt, crisp khakis, and soft leather shoes made him look like a Gap employee. He couldn’t be boxed in.
“Oh, hi, how’s it going?” I asked. My mother twisted my hair last night since the bushy ponytail was an overall loser in yesterday’s hair game. I played with one of my twists. Did I look cute doing it?
“Chillin’.” He lowered his voice a little to respect my privacy. “Feeling better?”
Before I answered, the Big Three joined us to chaperone our conversation.
“What up?” Vivica asked.
“Coolin’,” Jeffrey answered before excusing himself. He lightly smacked my arm and told me he’d see me later.
“Hallelujah, you did somethin’ with that bush on your head.” Sheena greeted me with two fake air kisses like she was French.
“You know, Nina, not only am I going to be one of the meanest hairdressers in B’more, I’m also goin’ to be the slickest stylist. You should let me help you—” she paused “—do somethin’ with your look.”
I thought I did better this morning. In reality, it was just a variation of yesterday’s outfit, except my T-shirt fit a little better. And I’d put on newer jeans.
“Why you got on a shirt that says ‘Italy’? You want to be white?” Vivica asked.
I looked at the gr
een T-shirt with red and white lettering and didn’t equate it with race.
“No, I just grabbed this one, I didn’t think about it like that.” My answer seemed sufficient, because she didn’t continue.
“Nessa, I wondered if you’d look at my poetry book and give me some feedback?” I asked.
She took the lollipop out of her purple mouth, took the notebook, and said she’d return it to me at lunch.
During homeroom, Ms. Jimu passed out study materials for our first round of testing. Our program required regular evaluation of our progress. She explained that if we failed two of the tests, we would be dismissed from the program. We had to take our first test in two weeks.
“Oh, that’s messed up,” Jay whined. “I don’t know if I can deal with all the pressure.” The class laughed, as they always did when he opened his mouth.
After class, Ms. Jimu asked me how I liked Baltimore City so far.
“It’s okay,” I said. I could actually see from the softness of her face that she was fairly young. It wasn’t just good skin cream.
“I know it can be hard to move to a new city and have to restart your life. But I wanted to let you know that I’m here if you ever need to talk.” Teachers actually cared about you besides what you scored on tests? That was a new one.
I avoided Vivica for the first part of the day. Or maybe she avoided me.
That was until English, when Ms. Jimu had us free write about a hardship in our life. She then paired us up to discuss each other’s writing. I was Vivica’s partner.
Before we began, Vivica said, “I saw you all up in Jeffrey’s face again. You know he don’t like white girls.”
“I thought you said he doesn’t like light-skinned girls,” I countered. Wow, I didn’t know I had a little fire in me.
When Ms. Jimu didn’t see us actively reading each other’s work, she came over and made us. Vivica reluctantly exchanged papers with me.
Vivica’s read:
Absent from the beginning
Not long after I exited the womb
Hallway Diaries Page 5
