Sister Mischief (15 page)

“I have no idea who’s gonna show up to this thing. I talked to some people and passed out a few flyers.” She rustles in her backpack and hands me a crumpled photocopied flyer that reads:
4H: Hip-Hop for Heteros and Homos. Think Holyhill is wack? Talk it out. Monday, first lunch, in the old warming house.
Above the handwritten text is a stick-figure couple of two dudes who appear to be some sort of homo thugs, wearing bandannas and spiked collars and holding hands.

“What the eff is this?” I hold up the flyer, cracking up. “And did you get Bob and Luke to model for it? This sort of looks like them after their Fourth of July golf game.” Our dads always play golf on the Fourth of July, even if it’s raining. Really they just ride around on the cart pounding beers and then come home and pretend not to be tipsy again. At this point, I wish they’d drop the charade and let us give them a ride home, but I guess it’s weird to make your teenage daughter be your DD, even if it’s only once a year.

“Listen, homes, you should be grateful for my initiative.” She snatches the flyer back.

“I am. Seriously, homeslice, I’m super grateful for you.” The confession hovers like an awkward kite between us for a minute, Marcy searching my face with a panicked look in her eyes that feelings may have entered the conversation, and then we both sputter, laughing at the thought of actually being grateful out loud for each other. Some secrets are less painful than others.
⁴¹

41. Marcy to me:
Maybe.


“You guys are weirdos,” Rowie says.

“Is this the gay-straight hip-hop meeting?” Emma Fazzio pouts her maroon lips as she enters with another theater girl whose name I forget.

“Um, yeah, I guess this is the gay-straight hip-hop meeting,” I say. “Welcome.”

Jane Njaka and Tess bust in behind her, pumping the magic pink iPod speakers. “What up, my sisters!” Tess hollers, breaking it down.

“Is anyone else coming?” I ask Marcy.

“Hoooooo!” Just then, a dude swaggers in and man-hugs Yusuf.

“This is my boy Angelo,” Yusuf introduces his friend, a tall, good-looking kid. “I told him he should roll through here. A-nez, you know these fools?”

“I think I’ve seen you around.” I extend a fist. “I’m Esme, and these are my girls Marcy, Rowie, and Tess.”

“
Enchanté,
ladies,” Angelo says, eyeing us. I know Tess is batting her eyelashes without having to look at her. He seems more interested in Rowie. I could probably take him.

“Angelo Martinez.” Yusuf grins. “The only living Blaxican in Holyhill.”

“Wow,” Rowie says. “Better recognize.”

“Yeah. So. Welcome to Hip-Hop for Heteros and Homos.” Marcy parks on a bench and clears her throat to introduce our cockamamie idea for a student group. “I guess we should start with a little background. At the beginning of this year, Holyhill’s administration issued this statement and made us all sign it.” She looks at me; I pull out my notebook and the copy of the policy I have in there.
“
Holyhill High School cannot condone violence in any form, nor can it condone any material known to incite violence. In this interest, loud, violent, heavily rhythmic music such as ‘rap’ will be prohibited on campus or at school events. Additionally, any apparel or other materials associated with a violence-inducing culture, such as pants sagging below the underwear line, gang apparel, or promotional artist material, will also be prohibited and punishable by suspension.”

I pick up the thread. “We refused to sign the policy because we didn’t like what it implied. We don’t want to go to a school that doesn’t recognize the importance of hip-hop music and culture. In protest, we decided to form a student discussion group to talk about hip-hop as a cultural movement. Also, because we’re interested in the idea of sex-positive hip-hop, and because we thought Holyhill needed a gay-straight alliance, we combined the two beliefs into one group: Hip-Hop for Heteros and Homos. Code name: 4H.” I throw down the semi-secret 4H sign Marcy and I have devised: four fingers horizontal on the left hand, crossed by one finger on the right, pressed to the breast.

“Fuck, man,” Angelo says. “That asshole Nordling told all the kids in my program that we couldn’t stay in it unless we signed.”

“He messed around with us, too,” Tess says. “That’s why we’re meeting out here and not in an actual classroom.”

“Yo, so are we gonna listen to some hip-hop, or what?” Rowie asks. “Maybe we should play rap-and-tell. Does anyone have music they want to talk about?”

Jane and Yusuf’s hands shoot up simultaneously.

“Seriously guys, don’t raise your hands.” Marcy shakes her head.

“K’naan!” Jane gushes. “I’m way up in K’naan’s shit. I’m like getting with K’naan. With my mind.” She plugs her iPod into the speakers and puts on
The Dusty Foot Philosopher.

“Hell, yes,” Marcy says.

“K’naan’s a total poet,” I say. “He loves Dylan. Did you guys hear his mixtapes with J. Period?”

“So you guys are, like, from Somalia?” Michelle interrupts.
That’s
her name. Michelle.

Jane’s tone is polite but not too warm. “We’re originally from Somalia, but we were living in a camp in Kenya for a year until my father could bring us all over here.”

“Why’d he pick Minnesota?” Michelle asks.

“Haven’t you ever noticed there are tons of Somalis in Minneapolis? It’s because of all the Lutheran missionary groups,” Rowie replies. “Same with the Hmong.”

“There was also a war in Somalia,” Yusuf points out.

“Right,” Rowie says. “And in Vietnam and Laos.”

Michelle shifts in her seat. “What do you mean, a camp in Kenya? Like summer camp?” Emma thrusts an elbow into her ribs, hissing. “Ow, what?”

Jane looks disbelievingly at her. “Like a refugee camp.”

“Oh. Heavy.” The room goes silent as we all wonder why Michelle decided to come today.

“Sorry I’m late.” The door bursts open to reveal Mary Ashley. “It took me a while to figure out where the heck this was. Hip-Hop for Heteros and Homos, is it?”

“Who told psycho?” Rowie leans over and mutters to me.

“Mary Ashley, what are you doing here?” Tess sounds annoyed.

“Well, I was just a little curious,” Mary Ashley replies sweetly, “about Holyhill’s first all-gay hip-hop student group.”

“Being here doesn’t make you gay, moron,” Marcy snarls at her. “It’s not, like, contagious.”

“That’s cute.” Mary Ashley sits down. “Because I look around, and all I see is ABS losers and weird lesbos.”

“Who does this girl think she is?” Angelo says.

“We’re not in the ABS program,” Yusuf says. “We’ve gone to school here since fifth grade.”

“And so what if we were?” Jane pipes in.

“What’s wrong with you, Mary Ashley?” Tess asks.

“Come on, Tessie, you’re not like them,” Mary Ashley says, staring at me. “Freak, what’s in that notebook you’re always scribbling in?” She makes a lunge for it before I can pull away, and when she opens it, I feel a feverish panic, like I’m about to pee and I can’t stop it.

“‘1. Johanna Page Rockett. Mom,’” she reads aloud. “‘2. I will never send you these letters.’”

“God, what is your
problem
?” Marcy yells at her.

Without thinking, I emit an inhuman yawp and make a dive for her and the notebook, catching her around the middle. I tackle Mary Ashley Baumgarten to the ground, snatch back the notebook, and open-handed slap her
hard
across the face.

“I think you should leave,” I say, getting up. “Now.”

“You crazy bitch,” she sputters. “I’m totally reporting you.”

“And everyone here will corroborate that Esme did nothing more than politely ask you to leave,” Tess says calmly. My breath heaves in the silence.

“Traitor,” Mary Ashley seethes. “The baby Jesus totally hates you for this, you know.”

“You are totally effing losing it, Mary Ashley. Just leave.” Out of words, Mary Ashley turns on Tess and flounces out just as we hear the bell ending first lunch in the distance.

“Yo, who the fuck put pinecones in her oatmeal?” Jane asks as we all begin to pack up. Rowie’s face is purpling with disproportionate passion; I want to touch her, but I know that would make it worse. It feels awful.

“Damn, girl, you bitch-slapped that bitch
right,
” Angelo says, cackling and biting his fist. “I wouldn’t’ve thought you had it in you.”

“I would.” Marcy raises her hand.

“I don’t want to talk about her. I don’t even want to think about her. What’s the topic for the next meeting?” I ask.

“Female MCs,” Marcy says. “Everyone bring in songs by their favorite chicks on the stick.”

“Done,” Yusuf says. Everyone else agrees, and I prepare to go back indoors, feeling sharply the lack of safety in space. If she’d had time to read one more line of my notebook — I don’t want to think about that, either.

Rowie is feral when I climb up to the treehouse later that night, hungry. She’s on me without speaking before I pull the floor door closed, clawing at my back.

“Whoa, whoa, hey.” I laugh a little, covering her arms around my stomach with my own.

“Let’s not talk,” she muffles into my back.

I oblige, letting her pull me under the blankets, as if under a tide. She kisses me hard, like she’s been waiting for it. We make out in this way like I never have any idea how much time is passing. It could be minutes, could be hours, could be days — hardly matters. I bury my hands in her hair and kiss the curvature of her ears.

“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper to her.

She pulls off my shirt and brushes her lips across my bare shoulders, sending a thrill down my spine. I unbutton her dress, discovering her small breasts again, welcoming their return. Sometimes I think about Rowie’s breasts and nothing else for, like, hours. I reach around to unhook her bra.

“Hold on,” she says, pulling back. “I — I don’t know. I just — I wish we could be alone together all the time.” She puts her face in her hands and sits back on her knees with the covers fully enveloping her; I sit the same way, propping up an impromptu tent with our heads, protected in our confidence. It’s getting colder too fast; we’re bundled under a sleeping bag and two blankets now. Rowie smuggled out an ancient space heater, but we can’t leave it on too long without risking a fiery treehouse death.

“What’s eating you, kitten?” I ask tentatively, unable to see her face. My eyes begin to adjust to the dark, but the scent of her fear is thick, distracting.

“Today just freaked me out. Did you have anything about us in your notebook? Did she see it?”

I take a breath. “Calm down. She didn’t see anything. But it scared me, too.”

“It’s like, I started thinking about what would happen if my parents ever found out about us. If all of Holyhill found out.”

“I mean, I can see where you’re coming from in terms of your dad,” I say. “But would your mom really bug out that hard if you were — with a girl? She seems so feisty and smart to me.”

“She is, but all my parents want is for me to get into a good school and eventually to end up with a nice Bengali boy,” Rowie insists. “They’re always talking about a son of some family they know who’s going to Princeton next year. Fuck it.”

I choose my words carefully. “What do you say?”

“I say I have to go do homework, which is probably what they want to hear anyway.”

“And then?”

“That’s it. They’re never long conversations. We don’t really have those.”

“I wonder what that would be like, that kind of family conversation,” I speculate. “Pops and I just beat the emotional shit out of everything until we’re too tired to talk anymore.”

“Humph,” she harrumphs. “White people are so into talking about their feelings.”

“Oh, sure,” I tease her. “Make it racial.” I stroke her hair. “MashBaum really got to you today, didn’t she?”

She cracks a grin. “I think
you
really got to
MashBaum
today.”

I grin back. “Bitch had my heart in her hands. I didn’t stop to think.”

“Whatever,” she says dismissively. “I really don’t want to talk about it. I just want — to feel something else.” She buries herself in my shoulder, and I wrap my arms around her, and we hunker down into the blankets to make a stay against the encroaching cold.

Next thing I know, I look at the clock and it says 5:38 a.m.

“I gotta get, pretty.” I trace a map on her back, over the perfect fins of her shoulder blades.

She nods, snuggling down in the covers. Dawn is just breaking, bleak and freezing, drizzling weak light over the frosted grass.

I will myself to leave, yanking on my jeans and sneakers and jacket. “I’ll see you at school. Don’t forget to go back inside soon.”

“Mmm,” she grunts in response, already half-asleep. Some nights I come home and she’s still trapped in my nose, gardenia and almond and that third fragrance that is, I know now, cardamom.