“Okay, okay, don’t get an attitude,” Samona sniffed. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I was asking her if she wanted to practice for the contest together. I thought she could help me. Do you know she’s been in the contest for the past three years?”
I stared at the white piece of paper in Samona’s hand. There it was, her official entry form, stamped and everything. “Well, I guess you’ve gone and done it now.”
“I told you I would.”
I shook my head. “Samona, why do you want to enter that old contest anyway? There’s no way you’re gonna win.”
“I got my reasons.” Samona lowered her eyes. “Who says I’m not gonna win?”
“My brother, for one. He said there ain’t no way those judges are gonna vote for you ’cause they’re all mixed up about beauty anyway.” I hoped this would make her change her mind. Samona loves to hear Jean-Claude talk. She thinks he’s better than the church preachers. “Besides, you don’t have any of the right qualifications.”
Samona scratched her head and squinted her eyes. “Jean-Claude said I shouldn’t enter the contest?”
I looked down at the ground. “No. He just said you’re not gonna win. Same thing.”
“But what’s he think about me being in the contest?”
I sighed. “He said you got guts.”
Samona lit up. “See? I’m doing the right thing. Besides, I already told Bessie I’d be in it. This contest is going to change my life. You’ll see.”
Now that was a funny thing to say. Since when did Samona care about Bessie Armstrong, who she never even talked to before today? And what did she mean the contest was gonna change her life?
“Well, seeing as you’re going to go through with this, Manmi, Chantal and Granmè said if there was anything you wanted help with that you should come right over. Though I don’t know what they think they can do.”
Samona scowled and turned away. I walked toward the other end of the schoolyard, where my friend Skid was shooting hoops.
I played basketball with Skid as long as I could after school so I wouldn’t have to go home, in case Samona was there. It didn’t work, though, ’cause me and Skid got into a fight over who was going to get into the NBA first. Anybody could see that wasn’t going to happen for Skid, ’cause both of his parents are real short and he’s not likely to grow over five foot three.
“Na-uh.” Skid shook his head violently. “No way, Seth. I’m a be six foot two at least. I’m gonna be just like Sweet.”
I shook my head too. Sweet was Madison High School’s star forward. He was so good, he already had NBA recruiters watching his game. He lived around the corner from me. But Sweet was six foot four. “Man, you’ll be lucky if you make five foot one. You’ve been sitting in the front of the class since first grade.”
Skid’s face scrunched up something awful. His eyes narrowed and wrinkles appeared all over his golden-colored skin. He just can’t stand to be told he’s short. “Least I can shoot.”
My mouth fell open. “What?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Skid picked up the ball and tucked it under his arm. “You can’t shoot and this is my ball and I don’t play with people who can’t shoot.”
“Skid, I was only kidding,” I said as he left. I felt sorry I had said anything at all now, not because Skid was mad—I knew he would forgive me—but because now I would have to go home.
I walked as slowly as I could, stopping at the corner to buy some gum and looking around to see if there was anyone hanging around at the community center. I saw Sweet there but he wasn’t playing any ball, he was talking to some girl. Probably putting the moves on her. Disgusting.
When I finally got home, it was worse than I thought. There were pink and green rollers all over the place. Manmi’s hot combs were sitting on the stove. I could smell grease, perfume and makeup in the air.
I found Jean-Claude hiding in the bedroom, reading the newspaper.
“Is she gone yet?” I asked, sticking my head in the door.
He shook his head disapprovingly. “They’re in Chantal’s room, making her as fake as they can.”
I was just about to join him when Granmè grabbed me by the arm and began steering me to the room she and Chantal share. “That’s okay, Granmè. I don’t need to see her.”
Granmè was shaking her head like she was upset. In the room Manmi and Chantal were standing in front of the mirror on the closet door and looking as if the world had taken a lot out of them. There was also some strange girl standing in between them.
It never entered my head that this girl was Samona. Samona didn’t have no long, curly hair like that. Samona wouldn’t be caught dead in a frilly yellow dress. This girl wasn’t half-bad. This girl was almost pretty.
Before I could tell Manmi they had done up the wrong person, this girl marched up to me and whispered, “What are you staring at, bo-bo head?”
They had put a weave in Samona’s hair and piled it up on top of her head, dressed her up like a regular person and caked makeup on her face, but they couldn’t change the way she talked. And as long as she said things like that, Samona was not going to win that contest. Still, I couldn’t help staring.
Samona leaned toward me again and I almost choked on the smell of her perfume. “If you say I look stupid, I’ll lay you out, Seth Michelin.”
I blinked and kept staring. “You don’t look stupid.”
In fact, she looked right nice, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. She looked like any other eleven-year-old girl, I guess. What she didn’t look like was Samona, and though I may be sick in the head, I wasn’t sure I liked it. If they could change her on the outside so that she didn’t look like Samona, maybe they could change her on the inside so she didn’t act like Samona. Crazy as that girl is, I liked her better than the one standing in front of me.
“Well?” Chantal asked, looking like she didn’t know what to say. “She asked for it.”
I looked around the room and I could see that Manmi, Chantal and Granmè were all pretty horrified at what they’d done. I can understand why, seeing as they were Samona’s biggest fans when she looked like her normal self. Normal. I never thought of Samona as looking normal before. I remembered what Mrs. Gemini had said about Samona being lonely and this time I started to take it seriously. Maybe Samona was tired of being weird. Maybe she was finally taking my advice and was trying to turn herself into a normal girl so she could have friends and jump rope and be just like all the other girls at school.
It was a scary thought.
Well, like it or not, it looked like I was gonna have to go to the Little Miss Dorchester pageant. Samona came over to our apartment peddling tickets and Manmi bought one for everyone in the family, then hung them up on the refrigerator so I had to be reminded of it whenever I went into the kitchen. I tried to prepare my family for the worst but they still thought Samona could win this contest even though they didn’t approve of the new Samona’s looks. They kept going on and on about how we had to show Samona how much we supported her and how Samona was so smart and so talented. They just don’t know Samona like I do. Weave or no weave, she was just as likely to get up on the stage and do her favorite imitation of James Brown singing “Superbad” and jump around the stage like a chicken with its head cut off.
At least, that’s what I thought at first. But after watching Samona for a couple of days, I wasn’t so sure anymore.
She went and sold tickets to everybody at school before I could stop her. People just couldn’t get over the new Samona. Before they had time to close their mouths and come out of shock, she had a ticket sold to them and a dollar in her hand. Even Mrs. Whitmore bought one. That isn’t all. Samona was never around anymore, and she was acting funny. She was always running over Mrs. Fabiyi’s after school to do some mysterious stuff or hanging out with Bessie Armstrong, of all people. Ever since that afternoon in the schoolyard, they were always together at recess or at lunch giggling and whispering and practicing for the cont
est. They were also wearing the same color dresses to school and doing their hair the same way. The more I watched the two of them hanging around together, the more I realized Samona was changing. For one thing, I didn’t have to try to avoid her these days. She hadn’t come around to bother me at all. One time I went over to her house and Leticia told me she was over at Bessie’s.
A few days before the contest, I caught Samona alone at the end of lunch period. I wanted to talk to her ’cause I was feeling like this change was kind of my fault—a little. Maybe I was as wrong about Samona as Jean-Claude had been about Jerome. I was the one who was always telling her how crazy she was and trying to get her to act normal like everybody else.
But all Samona could talk about was Bessie Armstrong.
“I like Bessie,” Samona was saying, like she was surprised. “I wasn’t sure I was gonna ’cause she’s such a Miss Perfect Thang at school and doesn’t even know how to laugh like when the map fell on Mrs. Whitmore’s head. But then I started watching her and she doesn’t have any friends.”
I thought about that. Bessie spends all the class breaks and lunch period reading or studying. She sits in the front of the class where you can’t even talk to the person next to you. And she always walks home from school alone. Samona was right.
“And she has a terrible home life,” Samona continued, looking very concerned.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no brothers or sisters—not one. She has a lot of toys and a hundred dolls but her mama doesn’t work so she’s home all the time and she doesn’t like noise. So Bessie always has to play real quiet and how are you supposed to get away with anything if your mama’s home all the time?” Samona lifted her shoulders. “I don’t like her house. There’s no fun allowed there.”
That did sound like a terrible home life.
“I guess everybody’s different,” I said, hoping Samona would get the point.
Then the bell rang and we had to go back to class.
On the day before the contest, I decided to go visit Mrs. Fabiyi and see if I could find out why Samona was spending all her time over there. I wasn’t used to not knowing what’s going on with Samona.
I heard Mrs. Fabiyi shouting, “Come in! You are welcome!” before I even knocked on her black door. I pushed it open and stepped through those slimy glass bead curtains. Mrs. Fabiyi was sitting on the floor in her living room wearing a bright yellow and blue cloth around her body and another head wrap made of the same material.
“Is that what they wear in Nigeria?” I asked, staring at her outfit. I hope she didn’t give Samona any ideas about dressing like that. Samona already dressed weird enough—or she used to anyway.
“Humph.” She looked at me for such a long time that I thought I could feel her eyes on my face. “Ah-ah, Seth. Is you. This? This you call iro in Yoruba—that is the language of my father’s people. You wear the iro with a bubba—a shirt—but I like to be different. Bubba and iro, can you say that? No, please do not try. You only make sounds that hurt my ears.”
“Booba and eero,” I said, trying to make it singsongy like Mrs. Fabiyi had made it sound.
Mrs. Fabiyi shook her head and grimaced. “Please. What you come here for? No Samona with you today?”
“No.” I shook my head and looked around. I guess that meant Samona hadn’t come here today.
Mrs. Fabiyi looked at me for a long time again and then began walking to the kitchen. “You want to know more about Nigeria, you drink my cassava. Come.”
I followed her into the kitchen and sat at the small, round table while she heated some water on the stove. On the table, there were two long rectangular pieces of wood that looked like two thick paddles on top of each other. The top was carved into the figure of a big fish.
Mrs. Fabiyi sat down at the table with two big steaming mugs. “This game: Ayo. You open it and see game. Samona like to play all the time. All the time she asking me to play Ayo. So when she come I just say, Go into kitchen, little black American girl, and do not bother me.”
I noticed that Mrs. Fabiyi called Samona a black American just like my parents do instead of using African-American like they tell you to in school. Jean-Claude said it was because black people have gone through so many name changes and African-American is just the latest one. Not everybody’s caught up with it yet. Papi said it’s because black people outside the United States don’t think of black people here as Africans—just like he doesn’t call himself African-Haitian even though all black Haitians are originally from Africa.
I moved the string that was holding the two paddles together and opened it. One of the pieces of wood flipped back and I could see that they were connected together. On each side were two rows of five holes, and in the last two holes were a bunch of marble-sized green balls that looked like beans.
“You drink.” Mrs. Fabiyi pushed the game away and put one of the mugs under my nose. I looked into it and wrinkled my nose. There was some grainy white stuff mixed with hot water in the cup. It looked a little like grits. Manmi always tells us that we have to eat what’s offered to us ’cause it’s rude not to, but there was no way I was gonna drink this. Who knows what could be in it? What if some of that stuff about Mrs. Fabiyi being a witch was partly true? She did tell Samona that cats taste like chicken. I pretended to take a sip out of the cup and looked up.
Mrs. Fabiyi laughed and moved her head up and down like a yo-yo. “You not come here to drink cassava, eh? You come to talk Samona. I give her Ayo game tomorrow when she win.”
Oh, boy. Another person who thought Samona was gonna win. I frowned and stared down at the Ayo game. Suddenly, I wished Samona had never even heard of this contest. I know the whole idea came as one of her stories to me and she just got stuck in it. Yesterday was one of the first real conversations Samona and I had where I wasn’t trying to get away from her and she wasn’t telling one of her stories. I used to think Samona told stories just to keep me from going away. Now it seemed like she didn’t need to do that anymore. And with Bessie, she finally had a real friend. But everybody thought I was Samona’s friend, too. Was I? I’d always told myself she was just Samona and I was just me. I thought I knew everything about her, until she changed. I guess the old Samona and I were kind of like friends. But would Samona go back to being herself after the contest?
“Mrs. Fabiyi, how does Samona look to you?”
“Ah!” Mrs. Fabiyi smiled, and I could see her shiny white teeth. “Samona look like her doll now. Pretty doll. She think she like play doll. New hair. New dress. New game. New Samona.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I mumbled.
“Afraid? What afraid for? Samona make some good change, some bad. You help her see what is good and what is bad. Come, pick up balls. I teach you Ayo,” Mrs. Fabiyi said, pushing the game across the table and laughing again. “You like frogs, eh, Seth?”
I shrugged and began to pick up the green balls. “They’re okay, I guess.” Mrs. Fabiyi was right. I did have a responsibility toward Samona. Maybe Samona needed my help.
“Good to eat.” Mrs. Fabiyi nodded. “Taste like chicken. I make for you someday.”
The one good thing about the beauty contest was that I didn’t have to dress up. Manmi rushed us all out of the apartment a whole hour and a half early so we could get good seats. I saw her looking at me funny but she was too busy pushing everyone out the door to bother with me. I had put on Jean-Claude’s Yankees baseball cap and some big dark sunglasses that I found in the library at school. I didn’t want anybody to recognize me. Last night I had made a decision about Samona. I had to find a way to prove to her that she didn’t have to change. I’d done what Papi had said and tried hard to think of life without Samona. It was peaceful, just like I’d told Papi. But it was also boring. Then I thought about life with the new Samona in it, and it was just as boring. When I’d tried to help Jean-Claude that Sunday I’d helped to make things better with my family. Now it was time to make things better with Samona.
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When we got to the auditorium, Manmi and Granmè made us walk all the way up front and take some seats in the third row. Jean-Claude slouched down in his seat and started snoring right away. I could tell he was faking it. While Papi read the newspaper, Manmi, Granmè and Chantal started talking in whispers about Samona’s chances for winning. They kept looking around them like they expected enemy spies to be listening to what they had to say. Then they started talking about what everyone was wearing. Finally, Jean-Claude opened up one eye and said something about beauty contests being about exploitation and that Chantal, Manmi and Granmè were a bunch of “un-feminists.” That got Chantal all mad and she leaned toward him and started arguing that beauty contests were getting better and how they weren’t all about looks anymore and how about Miss America 1990 who was black and Haitian and smart and in law school but not all that beautiful and that’s when I stopped listening. At least they weren’t fighting about Jerome anymore. In fact, when Jean-Claude and Chantal did fight now, it was more like the way Samona’s brothers and sister fight. It wasn’t about serious stuff and they forgot about it almost right away. Most of the time they even seemed to get along.
I got up to look around the auditorium. It was half-full. A lot of people were dressed up in suits and church dresses. You could tell who the parents of the contestants were ’cause they were set up on one side of the stage in the reserved seats. They were looking around all nervous and giving each other fake smiles.
Way in the back I saw Mrs. Whitmore sitting in a seat with a big pole in front of it. I guessed that she didn’t have much faith in this new Samona and was expecting the real Samona to make an appearance and embarrass the entire fifth-grade class of Atticus Elementary School.
Way up front, sitting by herself in a white dress with her hands folded in her lap, was Mrs. Roberta Armstrong, Bessie’s mother. She was looking straight at the stage and not paying any attention to anyone else around her.
I saw Mrs. Fabiyi marching down the aisle heading for the reserved seating. She had on one of her Nigerian dresses but this one was a whole lot fancier. She had on a new head wrap too that was blue and black and stiff-looking. She looked like an old African queen and everybody turned their heads to stare at her.
Seth and Samona Page 7
