Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl (29 page)

“I guess things happen for a reason,” she continues.
“Although, I was recently thinking about your two partners in crime.”

“I don’t see them so much anymore. I guess I’m figuring out they’re not my real friends. You know, they never even checked to see if I was okay after everything that happened in that store and with the security guard. They were those two
possibles
I told you about before. But now, they’re not even that.”

We sit there quietly for a while.

“I don’t want you to steal anymore,” she says. “If you really need something and you can’t ask your mother, you can ask me. Okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say. I want to tell her that it wasn’t all about needing things. It was also about having control over something. About showing those who think they’re better that you have some power too, that you’re good at something too. But I don’t know how I could ever explain this to her, so I just let it go.

“Do those girls know you come over here?”

“Oh no. They would never understand that.”

“I’m not so sure
I
understand. You’re young, and there’s so much out there you could be doing with kids your own age. Why do you choose to waste your time with me?”

“Guess I feel better about things when I’m around you.”

“You mean you don’t feel as guilty about what you did to me?”

“Maybe at first. But the real, honest to goodness truth is, now I come because I like it. When I’m with you, it’s easy. I can just be myself. You know the bad stuff I’ve done, so I
don’t have to pretend that doesn’t exist. But also, when I’m with you, I don’t
want
to do the bad stuff. It’s like I have something good to look forward to. You know, sometimes when I’d go to sleep, I would really pray the Lord my soul to keep. I would pray that I just wouldn’t wake up the next morning. Things would be simpler that way, and Mama would be happier.”

The old lady clamps her bony fingers down onto my hand and squeezes really tight.

“You have no idea how good a person you really are and how you’re able to affect other people. If you weren’t here, this world would be different somehow. Don’t ever underestimate your value. And don’t ever let me hear anything like that come out of your mouth again. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She finally lets go of my hand, but she doesn’t turn away.

“Now, I also remember you mentioning one definite friend. Why don’t you tell me about her?”

“Keisha? She’s great. She’s smart and she’s nice.”

“So why don’t you spend more time with her?”

“She doesn’t know about you, or a lot of the stuff I’ve done. Sometimes I feel she’s too good for me.”

“A woman will always have her secrets. Not everyone needs to know all you’ve done. But you should never feel someone is better than you, because if you do, they’ll sense it and feel that way too, or worse, feel sorry for you. Faye, the fact that we have any sort of relationship is testament to how amazing you are. But I do think I’ve been selfish. I’ve come to rely on you to not feel as lonely. But it’s unfair
to you. You’ve got, what, a little over two weeks left in the school year?”

“Yeah.”

“That will go by in the blink of an eye. Then you’ll have summer break, when you should be going to movies and to Coney Island with friends. You shouldn’t be cooped up with an old woman all the time. You’ve got to spend some time with kids your own age. Besides, I won’t be here forever, and then what?”

“What are you trying to say? That you don’t want me coming around anymore?”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m just saying you should also spend time with friends you have more in common with.”

“I kinda feel like I have more in common with you than with anyone else,” I say quietly. I reach my arm around her waist and allow my head to fall against her shoulder. She feels so slight and so frail, but she feels like love.

“He’s the cutest
thing I’ve ever seen,” Keisha coos in this high-pitched voice.

“Keisha, these pictures have been hanging here a week now, and every time I open my locker, you act like it’s the first time you’re seeing them.”

“I know. I’m just so excited for you. Even though my brother’s a freak of nature, it’s good having him around sometimes. And it’s gonna be even better having a baby brother, because you won’t have to put up with any lip from him.” After a long giggle, Keisha lets out a sigh. “But it’s funny how I’m more excited about it than you are.”

“What’s there to be so excited about? I’ve never even met him,” I say as I study the picture that has only my little brother in it. It’s taped to the inside of the door to my locker, next to the other two pictures Daddy sent. Finally, some of the empty space is filled. I always felt like such a loser since the only picture I ever had in there was one Keisha and I took at a portable photo booth in downtown
Brooklyn. You walk by other kids’ lockers, and it’s like collage central.

“You know, that’s your problem, Faye. You just don’t enjoy the great moments in life,” Keisha says.

“Maybe if I had any, I would.”

“Well, you will today. We’ll go look in a couple stores. It’ll be cool,” she says as I close my locker.

“What about Nicole?”

“She can come next time.”

I think about this for a little while.

“No, Nicole’s cool,” I say. “I’ve just been all screwed up. I wouldn’t mind if she came along.”

“Really?” Keisha says. “I’m glad you feel that way. And I’m happy we’re hanging out again. How about this? Nicole can come next time. Today, it’ll just be us.”

I give Keisha a smile as we head out of the school.

“You think your mom will be able to make it to the ceremony?” Keisha asks once we’re walking down Eastern Parkway.

“She probably won’t be able to get off work.”

“So who’s gonna come see you?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve told my aunt Nola and my uncle Paul. Maybe my mom’s boyfriend. Maybe a friend of mine from the neighborhood. Who knows?”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll find somebody. Seven more days and then we’re no longer freshmen. And after the weekend, only five. No one will be able to call us newbies anymore! It’s crazy even thinking about it.”

I think about the other countdown I have going on. Or
maybe in this case, I should say count-up. It’s been more than a week since my trip to see Delaine Lawson. Eight days, and nothing. Now, I’m not head-in-the-clouds hopeful and stupid about stuff, but I really thought she would have called by now, or popped in to see the old lady. After all, it
is
her mother. Then again, sometimes I wish for a train to jump the tracks and take out
my
mother, so I guess I can understand how she can be mad. I can understand that after forty or fifty years of not talking to somebody, you might not be able to think of a thing to say, even if you got the chance.

Then again, maybe she lost the old lady’s contact information. Maybe when she took off her uniform pants, she forgot she had put the piece of paper in the pocket, and she threw them into the washer by mistake. Only, by the time she figured this out, it was too late and the water and All-Temperature Cheer had faded the ink on the paper and made it impossible to read. Or maybe she accidentally spilled some medicine on the paper. Maybe she wants to go, but after all the time that has passed, she can’t seem to will herself to take that first step. I’m going to have to figure something else out.

“You’re quiet,” Keisha says as she fishes a couple of those individual packets of saltines out of her pocket. I think she swiped them from the cafeteria. She rips open the plastic, crumples up the crackers, and scatters them along the sidewalk for the nasty little gray and white rat-birds gathered there. I watch as they run, hop, and fly over to peck at the food.

“No, I’m fine. But why do you feed the pigeons? They’re pretty disgusting.”

“No they’re not,” she says. “They’re the city’s special pets. They can adapt to anything, and they’re tough and can survive the streets of Brooklyn … kinda like you.”

I elbow her and she elbows me back.

Some of the stores in this part of Brooklyn—Park Slope—are kind of chichi-froufrou. Clothes aren’t so overstuffed on racks that you risk breaking a finger trying to sift through them. There aren’t boxes stacked up right there in the showroom. These boutiques have a lot of light and space, and they feel clean and smell sweet. They’re quite different from the stores farther down on Flatbush—the stores near where I live.

Keisha points to a candy-cane-striped poodle-style skirt, and I just giggle.

“I would never wear that,” I say.

“That’s exactly why you should try it on. I’m gonna go for this polka-dotted jumpsuit. We’ll see which outfit looks worse.”

It’s definitely a draw. As we step out of the fitting room, I realize that not only do we look equally bad in our outfits, we look as if we belong on a Disneyland float. Once we finally stop laughing, I grab the price tag.

“Oh my God. This thing is a hundred bucks,” I say.

Keisha tugs at the price tag on her jumpsuit. “I got you beat. One-twenty.”

“Are they serious?” Once Keisha nods her head, I continue. “I only have thirty bucks. I could never afford the
stuff in here. I mean, I wouldn’t want to afford this particular skirt thing, but even if I did …”

“So what? We’re not about to buy any of this.”

“We’re not?”

“No.”

“Then why are we here?”

“Just to look around, get ideas, have fun.”

“Don’t you and Nicole shop in these places all the time?”

“No.”

“You go to Macy’s on Thirty-Fourth Street. That’s not cheap.”

“No. But they have sales sometimes. And it’s not like we come out with bags full of stuff. Lots of times, we hit up the thrift stores. Ten bucks for some Sergio Valente jeans. Three bucks for a blouse.”

“Really? We don’t have thrift stores around my way.”

“Well, let’s go to one now. See what we might find.”

“All this time when you and Nicole would be talking about Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, I thought that was where you guys bought all your clothes. And I knew I couldn’t afford that, so …”

“So you’d act like you couldn’t come or you couldn’t hang out that day?”

“Yeah.”

“Faye, you don’t have to be embarrassed with me. And so what if window-shopping is all you can afford to do? That’s half the fun. Then you can take those ideas and try to find similar clothes at a place where the prices are more your speed. And don’t worry about it if we don’t find anything
at that thrift store. We’ll just try another. I’m not giving up until we get you an outfit.”

“I like the sound of that,” I say.

Keisha smiles. “Good. Now let’s get out of these ugly outfits. And quick, before we run into someone we know.”

The last day
of school finally rolls around. The seniors will be graduating tomorrow at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, but today it’s the underclassmen’s turn to shine. The freshman ceremony will take place first in the school assembly hall, followed by the sophomore ceremony and then the one for the juniors.

We spend the first couple of hours in our usual Friday classes, but everyone already has summer fever, so no one’s paying much attention to anything our teachers are saying. There’s just this nervous/excited buzz about the two months we’re about to have off. I can’t say I’m looking forward to this as much as everyone else. For one, I’m still not sure whether Mama will allow me to go visit Daddy down in Florida. I’m thinking no is the likelier answer. And if I remain in Brooklyn, chances are I’ll be at the sitter’s every day reliving the days of slavery, when black people worked but didn’t get a cent of pay. Since there will be no school, I won’t be able to use the whole “math tutoring” ruse. Maybe
I’ll come up with a summer-school scenario, although once Mama sees that despite all the so-called tutoring, my math grades never really did improve, it might be a harder sell.

By a quarter past ten, all of us freshmen begin filing into the auditorium. We’re to be seated according to homeroom classes, and even though I’m in a different homeroom from Keisha and Nicole, I manage to finagle a seat next to them. That way we’ll have each other to joke around with through all the boring speeches and the handing out of certificates.