“But they won’t be you,” I sniffed.
“No, they won’t, and I’ll never have another Lezley McSpadden, either.”
She smiled, and then I smiled back as she helped me wipe my tears. “Listen, you’re bright, you work really hard, and I just know you’re going to go far. And don’t ever let anybody tell you anything different.” For the first time Miss Zimmer was real serious. I was one of just a few black kids in her class. So it was like she knew something I didn’t know about what life might have in store for me.
Junior high was a breeze, and Miss Zimmer was right. But I was a freshman in high school now and should’ve been thinking more about that future that Miss Zimmer seemed so optimistic about. I wanted to go far, I guess, but how far and where I hadn’t figured out yet. I didn’t really know where to start. Bernard was five years older than me. Mama told me he was going to college, but since he never really lived with us, he hadn’t spent any time talking to me about school and stuff.
I knew one thing: when kids at school were talking about being a doctor or a teacher or a lawyer, shoot I can’t imagine going to school for seven more years after high school! I was just trying to get through these four.
The only person who expected me to do more in life and to go back to school to finish after I had Mike Mike was my aunt Mary, Sandra and Tracey’s mama. She was the only person who would be on me saying, “Nette, let me see your report card.” She’d call and ask me about my grades and how school was. If she bought me anything, it would be educational.
• • • •
The deseg bus turned into the main parking lot of Horton Watkins High School, also known as Ladue High. The student parking lot off in the distance was already filling up with BMWs, Jeep SUVs, and station wagons. Most of these kids had they own cars, probably got the keys the day they turned sixteen.
My bus waited for the regular buses carrying the students that actually lived out here in the district to pull up into the large horseshoe driveway directly in front of the school. Then, like they were on cue, all the buses opened their doors and white faces filed out one by one. The white girls looked happy, giggling with each other, their blond hair bouncing and flowing. The white boys were goofy and playful. Some of them jumping on each other’s backs, roughhousing.
When one of the last buses pulled in and opened its doors the faces of the students it let off were shades of brown, with just a few white faces mixed in. The girls looked like me, some with ponytails and braids, others with long hair, some with short cuts. They were just as happy and giggly as the white girls. The boys were more cool, some of them were dapping each other up, bumping fists, instead of jumping on each other like the white boys, acting all wild.
This bus had done its pickup in Indian Meadows, a subdivision on the border of Ladue and the municipality next to it called Olivette, a mostly black cluster of middle-class streets.
After the coast was clear, my bus revved up and continued on past the horseshoe around to the back entrance of the school. There was another deseg bus parked, letting kids out. When we stepped off my bus it didn’t look anything like the kids in the front. We all came off one by one, anxious to get out the cold.
Being around all the white people at Ladue and seeing them with the new cars and fancy boots didn’t bother me one bit. I might not have had the name-brand Timberland boots, but I had a close-enough-looking version. Me and my friends called them them Jodeci boots because they looked like them black combat boots Jodeci was rocking in their “Forever My Lady” video when they had them white walking shorts suits on, no shirts underneath, and hats to the back.
April and me got our morning whassups in to everybody. We had about fifteen minutes before the bell was going to ring, and just as everyone was starting to gather his or her bags, I suddenly felt uneasy. One black girl always walked around acting like she was all that, with her designer clothes and purse, and she hung with a group of girls that was the same type. They noses was always up in the air.
“That’s so ghetto!” I heard her mumble.
She was near me, and I don’t know if she was talking to me or about me to somebody else, but she had her damn nerve. We looked each other up and down.
“Humph, this bitch think she something ’cause she live out here in Indian Meadows,” I snapped. She rolled her eyes. “Damn, I’m out here, too! You think ’cause you stay out here you better than me? Bitch, please!” The bell rang and that squashed anything jumping off.
That exchange had my adrenaline going as I headed off to my class. It made me open my eyes that black girls was trying to draw a line that not even no white girls did. This wasn’t “he say, she say” gossip or getting mad over a boy. It wasn’t even about being jealous because of what somebody else got, or because they might be a little cuter than you. No, it was about black-on-black racism.
Neither my mama nor granny had gotten me ready for this. I remember when I was in junior high and out the clear blue, Granny said, “You just as good as anybody, Nette.” She was sitting at the kitchen table, dipping her corn bread in her plate of greens. “Don’t let nobody call you no nigga! A nigga is an ignorant person, and you ain’t no ignorant nigga.”
I don’t know why she said what she said that day. Maybe she had just seen something on the news about something happening to a black person, and it made her mad. I don’t know, but Granny was old-school, and she knew what was up. She knew we were going to this school with these white people. Granny also made it clear that when we came out here to school that we had to be confident, we had to know that we got the same privileges as the other kids. Her philosophy was “If somebody turn a flip in that hallway, you better turn one better and straighter!”
I went on about my day and tried to forget about that girl, but as I sat in the cafeteria, I started thinking about her again, and just how the black kids from the city and county dealt with each other. There were other black kids who had the same attitude as she did. They didn’t come from where I came from, and were critiquing me on not just where I lived, but also on how I looked. Sometimes we’d all get into innocent jonin’ sessions, folks cracking jokes on each other if you county vs. city. But other times, just like with this girl, it would turn into something more serious like the heated words we had today.
Then I looked over to where most of the black people were sitting and saw old girl from that morning. We both rolled our eyes at each other. It was clear; this bitch was straight up judging me because I came from the city. So what was I supposed to do now that the racism wasn’t coming from no white girl or boy, or no white teacher? It was coming from somebody who looked like me.
• • • •
Having that run-in at school didn’t compare to what would happen back in my own neighborhood.
One day, I got off the bus, and this girl was standing at the stop with two guys next to her. The three of them were blocking my way and wouldn’t move.
“Oh, that bitch stuck up! She think she better than us,” she said, smacking on her gum like a cow.
“Naw, you think I’m better than you. Whatever!” I said, forcing my way past her. Suddenly, the girl pushed me from behind. I had my notebook and a couple of books in my hand, and all my papers flew everywhere. I wasn’t about to get stole on or sucka punched. I bent down, pretending to pick up my papers and books, and instead picked up a stick and turned around and started hitting her upside her head with it. I didn’t know who this chick was, but hell naw, I was still Nette Pooh from the hood! I wasn’t about to let her get the best of me just because I went to a white school.
My boy Mike was walking down the street and saw me whuppin’ that girl with the stick. Mike’s family and mine were real cool, and we had grown up together around this way. He ran over and broke the fight up. I was so revved up and upset that I didn’t even talk to him. I ran all the way home, and as my legs moved faster and faster, tears of anger were pouring down my face. I had won, but did I really? It was like damned if I do, damned if I don�
�t. The black girls in the county mad because you a black girl who maybe didn’t grow up on the side of the tracks they did, and they think you beneath them, but what makes them better? In the hood, the black girls were mad because you go to school in the county to get a better education to get out the hood. They want to fight you because they think you soft or that you done changed because you out with the white people.
The whole fight opened my eyes up to another reality. These were my people, so why did I have to prove my blackness?
CHAPTER SIX
THE PARTY . . . ROLO GOLD
“Mama, please let me get a gold tooth.” I started begging Mama as soon as she walked through the door. I followed her into the kitchen. She had an armload of groceries.
“Let me help you, Mama.” I smiled, trying to butter her up, taking a bag from her. “Please! I gotta get one. Key Key got two!”
“A gold tooth?” I heard a voice call out from the front room. It belonged to my cousin JoJo. “Ask Key Key to give you one a hers!” he said, laughing real loud and hard. JoJo, my auntie Mary’s son, is five years older than me. He grew up with Bernard and Chevelle. He was always cracking jokes and jonin’ on somebody with his tall, lanky self. I gave him one of them mind-yo’-own-business-fool looks, with razor-sharp eyes.
“Girl, if you wanna gold tooth, you’d better buy it yourself!” Mama snapped, stopping at the kitchen table and looking at me like I had three heads. She wasn’t having it and didn’t want to hear nothing else from me about it.
“What JoJo doin’ here, anyway, Mama?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“He gonna stay here for a while until he get on his feet.”
Granny let any and all of us stay at her house no matter if it was a crisis with our money or one of us needed to be there until things got better at home with our mama. My mama, my aunts, and my uncles, they all took after her, and if they was able, tried to look out for each other’s kids. Just like my auntie Bobbie helping to raise my brother, Bernard.
I had Key Key’s big sweet sixteen birthday jam coming up on the weekend, and I needed to be fly, and a gold tooth would set my look off. I was going to have to take matters into my own hands.
It wasn’t just that Key Key and me were cousins who had grown up together or the fact that she was one of my best friends, but more than that, she was that cousin who I looked to for style. Don’t get me wrong, my mama always had us dressed nice, and I knew how to coordinate, but Key Key had flava, in other words, a natural sense of style.
• • • •
I had had my party clothes picked out for days, and on Friday night I pulled out a fresh pack of Rolo candy, slowly peeled off the shiny gold paper, and carefully tore a tiny square of it off. I opened my mouth as wide as I could and neatly wrapped the gold paper around my left front tooth. I checked myself in the mirror and flashed a big old Koo1-Aid million-dollar, gold-tooth smile. Aw, yeah, I was looking fly!
I needed to practice how to speak with it in my mouth. It was all in the technique.
“Haaa-peee birf-daaay, gurl!” I said, curling my top lip slightly over my front teeth, giving my lips an awkward pucker. “Whas-sup! Haaaay!” I contorted my mouth to hold my makeshift gold tooth in place. Shoot, I was good to go!
I’d be on point. I slipped on my new blue jean shirt. It had white polka dots on the back and white stripes on the front. I had a brand-new pair of jeans. To top it off, my hair was slamming. I had definitely come a long way from the days of Aunt Bobbie giving me a cute little girl style, like back when my cousins and me were kids and she would do our hair for Easter. We just settled for whatever hairstyle she decided to give us. Me, Key Key, Tonya, and Sandra might’ve all looked the same when we left the shop, but we had fun while we were there.
A trip to Auntie Bobbie’s was an all-day adventure. Our job was to be her helpers, and we stood front and center in her shop, like good beauty-shop soldiers reporting to duty. Auntie Bobbie was all that to us. She was a female who owned her own business and had a big house. Shoot, we thought she was rich. She always had candy or a gift for us too. She only had one son, Chavelle, so she treated us girls like princesses.
I remember one year in particular when we arrived, Auntie Bobbie was working on a customer’s head, about to press it, when there was a hard knock outside the screened gate that was in front of the shop’s door.
“Heeeey, Miss Bobbie, um, you got two dollars I can borrow?” The man, who was scratching his face and arms and was all jittery, proceeded to bang on the gate even harder.
“Chile, that’s that beggin’-ass fool that be comin’ ’round here,” Auntie Bobbie’s shampoo lady said. They both rolled their eyes. Auntie Bobbie was so angry she slammed down the pressing comb she had in her hand and stormed over to the door.
“Get on back, fool!” she shouted. “Before I come out there and knock you upside yo’ head, then you’d really have somethin’ to beg about!”
I had never seen somebody run so fast. We were in shock. To us Auntie Bobbie was this classy, sweet lady, but she could clearly handle her own. It was already hard to picture her even having this shop in the deep North Side on Union Boulevard and Terry Street.
“I’ll be with y’all in a minute. But y’all can get to work in the meantime.” Auntie Bobbie nodded toward Tonya to grab the broom. She always swept the hair up. Key Key passed out magazines to Auntie Bobbie’s waiting customers. Sandra watered her plants. We were always happy to help out around her shop.
There was another knock at the door, and when Auntie Bobbie looked up, she motioned to me to let a stocky, gray-haired man in. He had two big bags over his shoulders.
“Hey, Miss Bobbie. I got some nice designer socks, Calvin Klein and Polo. And I got brand-new videos that’s still at the movies.”
A customer who was asleep under the dryer suddenly woke up and said, “How much is House Party? I heard that’s funny as hell!”
“Gimme ten dollars for it!” the man replied.
“No, sir. I run a respectable business here. You gon’ get on outta here chargin’ all that money.” Auntie Bobbie stopped doing her customer’s hair and walked over to the door and let the man out herself.
Customers would come and go, and we’d just have to wait patiently.
“We gon’ be the last people,” I mumbled.
“I know. Why we gotta wait?” Tonya said under her breath.
“Are you payin’?” Auntie Bobbie’s head snapped up, startling us. We all shook our heads no at the same time. “Well, then you gotta wait.”
Finally, when all her customers was gone and the door was locked, Auntie Bobbie would wash our hair, plat it up, and put us under the hairdryer. The cone-shaped hairdryers faced the large wall mirror, and we were each sitting on a small stack of phone books to prop us up taller. When she turned the dryers on, we’d get a kick out of our plats swirling around up in the hairdryer.
Next it was time to get our hair pressed. The smoke would come off the pressing comb when that iron hit the hair and make a sizzle sound, like bacon frying. Auntie Bobbie would get so close to the nape of our necks, where we knew it to be called the “kitchen,” that the heat felt like that iron was laying on our necks. We’d be almost in tears when she’d get down on them edges. After that came the curling iron, and then our transformation was complete. Our hair would be bouncing and behaving as we all ran up the steps to Granny’s house, where Auntie Bobbie would drop us afterward to spend the night.
• • • •
I gave myself a once-over before leaving the house for the party. Baby, lip gloss was popping, hairstyle was popping, and outfit was popping. Check! I looked like I could’ve been in a Jodeci video, with KC singing “Forever My Lady” to me.
Key Key and Tonya stayed in a working-class neighborhood with nice single-family brick houses. They had parties all the time, so the neighbors sometimes sat out on their back porches to enjoy the music from the parties. Even the police was cool, patrolling the vicinity and keeping the f
low of traffic in order.
I rushed in and barely took a moment to speak to my auntie Evelyn. I made sure to hardly open my mouth, because I wasn’t ready to unveil my golden masterpiece. The hallway was lined with decorative mirrors; I stopped to give myself a last-minute once-over. “Oh yeah, girl, you betta work it!” I opened the door to Key Key’s room and shouted, “Surprise!” My homemade gold tooth was flashing in all its glory.
“Nette Pooh!” Key Key shouted.
“Look, I gotta gold tooth too!” I screeched, proudly spinning around to show off my new ’do and outfit. I was cheesing so hard I thought my face was going to break.
“You look fly, cuz! And I can’t believe Auntie Dez let you get a gold!”
I was feeling myself, maybe a little too much. “It’s dope, right?” I started smiling and high-fiving some more. “You like my too—” Next thing you know my fake gold tooth flew right out of my mouth. Key Key and me couldn’t do nothing but laugh. We were cracking up so hard I nearly passed out. But not even my fake gold tooth flying out was going to stop my shine. I was ready to get my groove on.
The basement lights were dimmed and coming down the steps it looked like a sea of heads. The bass had the walls vibrating. Key Key and me weaved our way through wall-to-wall bodies. I was more reserved as she worked the room. Each person we passed wanted to give her a birthday hug. The heat coming off everyone’s bodies made the basement air thick.
When Aaliyah’s “Back & Forth” came on, I watched people dancing on the sardine-packed dance floor. Key Key came and found me dancing in place to my other jam, “Real Love” by Mary J Blige.
“Nette Pooh, somebody wanna meet you,” she said with a slight attitude.
I looked up and saw this tall, dark-skinned dude dressed in Dickies pants and a T-shirt. I wasn’t real impressed, but it felt nice that a boy wanted to meet me.
“Hey Nette Pooh, I’m MB.” His voice was deep and low like a grown man’s.
“Hey, how are you?” I said, nervously standing there.
Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil Page 6
