Skin I'm in, The (5 page)
I expect John-John not to like the cut. I mean, what does he like about me, anyhow? Nothing. And I expect Charlese and the twins to say they don’t like it, even if they secretly do.
In third period, kids really light into me. By fourth period, I’m wearing the baseball cap I brought from home, just in case. Mr. Klein, the social studies teacher, tells me to take off the hat, but I give him some lame excuse and he lets me keep it on. The next thing I know, somebody’s yanking off the hat and making cracks about my peanut head.
I don’t get it. I mean, I look good. I
know
I do. Desda comes up to me and says I shouldn’t let them get to me. I tell her I’ll check her later. I go to the bathroom. Nobody’s in there yet. I look in the mirror and start crying. ″You know, Maleeka,″ I hear myself say, ″you can glue on some hair, paint yourself white, come to school wearing a leather coat down to your toes and somebody will still say something mean to hurt your feelings. That’s how it goes at this school.″
I walk around that bathroom trying to think of what to do. I start reading some of the stuff on the walls.
″Char and Worm 4-ever.″
″Wash me.″
″If you like school, you stupid.″
I sit myself up on one of the sinks, and think back to Saturday when I got my hair cut.
Tears come to my eyes when I put my hands on my head and feel my little bit of hair. I mean, I know I asked for it, and that it looked good at Ronnie’s place, but seeing it in the school bathroom mirror is something else.
I jump off the sink and lean close to the mirror on the wall, and think of Daddy. ″Maleeka,″ he used to say, ″you got to see yourself with your own eyes. That’s the only way you gonna know who you really are.″
I reach down into my bag and pull out the little hand mirror Daddy gave me and look at myself real good. My nose is running. I blow it and throw the tissue away. I splash some water on my face and pat it dry. I reach deep down into my pocketbook and pull out the little jar of Vaseline and shine up my lips. Then I ball up my cap, stuff it in my backpack, and walk right on out of there.
WE NEED A NEW ALARM CLOCK
. Ours rings whenever it wants. Two in the morning. Ten at night. It don’t matter. But you can be sure of one thing, it ain’t never gonna ring when it’s supposed to.
When Momma comes in my room telling me I’m gonna be late if I don’t get a move on, I ain’t surprised. It’s the third time this week I’m late because of that clock. So I just ignore Momma, pull my quilt up over my head, and turn over.
Momma does what she always does. She pulls the covers off and threatens to yank down the sheet.
″I’m up. I’m up.″ I sit on the edge of the bed. Hands folded. Head drooping. My eyes are still closed when Momma goes back downstairs to cook breakfast. I wash up, then look through my closet for some jeans or something. I push my way past that new shirt Momma made, and hope she don’t ask me about it. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but one shoulder is higher than the other one. She fixed it three times already, but it just ain’t working. I don’t want to tell her that, though.
Sweets asks me all the time why I don’t just tell Momma I don’t want to wear her stuff. But I can’t. Momma needs to keep sewing. If she don’t, I ain’t sure what’s gonna happen to her.
When I finally get to the kitchen table, the oatmeal’s cold and slick, like Silly Putty. I eat dry toast instead. Momma gives me the once-over. She comes and straightens up my turtleneck collar. She made this one too, but the woman across the street helped her with it, so it ain’t so bad.
Momma is dressed in a blue uniform. Today she got herself some different kind of tea. It smells more like chicken noodle soup to me. She’s stirring it and stirring it, but not drinking it. I kiss her quick on the side of the head. She don’t even notice. She’s eyeing the newspaper like she does every morning. Two newspapers are spread wide open on the kitchen table. Every once in a while, pages slide onto the floor, or get greasy from some eggs or bacon Momma eats while she’s reading.
Momma’s always got to know what’s happening in the stock market. She sews my clothes to save money so that she can play the stocks. She thinks we’ll be rich one day, but she never invests any money. By the time she gets a few hundred dollars saved up here and there, the pipes start leaking or the roof needs fixing. Or Momma gets one of her dreams, where some dead relative comes back and tells her to play the lottery and put all her money on some number they told her about, like 557, 810, or 119. It never fails. Momma loses all the money. Every dime. But that’s the kind of luck we have—dumb dead relatives who go outta their way to interrupt your good-night’s sleep to give you a lucky number that only brings you bad luck. Now who needs that?
Momma never gives up, though. She’s always looking for new ways to make money. She’s sold Tupperware, magazines, and pretty junk for kitchen walls. We’re still poor as dirt.
A lot of folks think Momma don’t have all her marbles. I can tell by the way they talk to her, kind of loud—like folks do with crazy people—with a smirk on their face, like they know a secret she don’t. But the joke’s on them. Momma’s the smartest person in the world. She’s a math whiz and can add numbers faster than anybody I know.
Sometime she embarrasses me. She’s the type of woman that will put down her groceries and jump rope with eight-year-old kids on the street. She will play stick ball with the boys in the neighborhood and argue with the winos on the corner over who’s gonna win the next election. Sometimes, my friends laugh at Momma. But when I start to complain, Sweets and them tell me to shut up. They know, like I do, ain’t no one in the neighborhood gotta heart bigger than my Momma.
I blow a kiss to Momma and I rush past her and head for school. She says in the only French she knows,
″Je t’aime ma petite.
I love you my little one,″ and then she goes back to her stocks. I hear her mumbling something about General Electric stock falling twenty points. I have no idea what that means. Ain’t sure Momma does neither.
MCCLENTON MIDDLE SCHOOL AIN’T THE KIND
of place where you want the lunch ladies mad at you. No matter how bad the food looks, or smells, you best keep your mouth shut. If you don’t, you can end up with hair in your spaghetti. Pencil shavings in your pizza. Pepper in your milk.
But something’s got into Charlese today. She acts like them lunch ladies won’t cause her no trouble. When she goes through the line, she says the hamburgers look like burnt dog doo-doo. Miss Brown, the lunch lady who’s serving, don’t say nothing. She just clears her throat and runs her hands through her short gray hair. By the time Charlese gets out the line, there it is. Lettuce in her milk. Dried-up food on her fork. Something indescribable on her hamburger bun. Me and her can’t figure out what it is, but we think it used to be alive.
I bring my own lunch from home, and I tell Char she can have it. Today I got a bologna sandwich. Char don’t want no part of it. She slams her lunch tray down on the table. The whole place gets quiet. ″They better give me some decent food,″ she yells loud enough for all the lunch ladies to hear. Miss Brown just keeps stirring peas and wiping sweat.
″Move out of my way,″ Char says to a girl sitting at the table. She don’t even give the girl a chance to move before she flicks a handful of them greasy, rock-hard peas in her face, then dares her to say something about it.
The girl knows what’s good for her. She wipes the slimy pea juice off her chin and moves on.
″Serves you right,″ Char says, drying her wet hands on my backpack. ″Next time, she’ll get out of my way before I ask.″
″They gonna give me what I paid for,″ Char says. She shoves her lunch tray at me so fast, it almost slides off the table. ″Take it back, Maleeka. Tell ’em I want another plate—now.″
I look at Charlese like she’s crazy. ″They won’t take it from me. You know that, Char,″ I say, in a dry, shaky voice.
Charlese doesn’t say nothing at first. She just stares at me without blinking for the longest time. ″Do I have to jack you up right here in front of everybody?″ she asks, slapping one of the twins five.
″I said you could have my bologna sandwich,″ I say. But Char turns to me with her hands on her hips and a face that says, ″I know you ain’t talking to me.″
I don’t have no choice. I pick up her tray and get back in line. It seems like twenty kids are in front of me. By the time I get to Miss Brown again, my stomach is growling.
Miss Brown ain’t smiling one little bit when she sees Char’s tray. I tell her what the problem is. She says she’ll take back the food, only not from me. Char starts yelling at me from way back in the lunchroom. Everybody can hear her. A teacher tells her to shut up, but the teacher can’t make Char’s eyes stop digging into me.
Miss Brown cuts me a break, and starts throwing the old food in the trash. I stop her when she gets to the hamburger bun with that stuff on top. ″Leave it,″ I say quietly. She looks like she wants to say something else, then she waves her hand at me, looks at the kid in the line after me, and says, ″Next.″
Char’s yelling, ″Hurry up, Maleeka.″ I take the tray with the same old hamburger bun on it over to the side of the cafeteria where the ketchup and mustard packs are. I scrape the yuck off the top of the bun, and smear it on top of Char’s hamburger. Then I squeeze ketchup and mustard on the meat, and take the whole thing to Char.
Char snatches the tray out of my hand. She opens up the hamburger bun, and picks up the meat. She puts it to her nose and sniffs it like she does to all of her food. Then she drops the burger back on the bun and covers it with the other piece of bread.
″What? You think she spit in it?″ Raina asks.
″Please.
Just eat so we can go.″
Char laughs and takes a big bite. ″Get lost, Maleeka,″ she says, with her mouth full. I don’t ask no questions. I pick up my lunch bag and head for another table with this big grin on my face.
Desda is over in the corner by herself, so I go and sit with her. Soon as I get there, my sandwich falls out of the paper bag and onto the floor. Momma loves salad oil. She thinks it’s good for your heart. Sometimes, like today, she gets a little heavy-handed with it. And it leaks all over the place.
Desda leans down and picks up my sandwich and hands it to me. I wipe off the cellophane with a tissue, unwrap it, and start eating.
While my mouth is stuffed with bologna and bread, Caleb comes over and starts telling me how good I look. Oil is oozing out the sides of my mouth as quick as I can wipe it off. Caleb don’t seem to notice, he just keeps right on talking.
″I need to talk to you, Maleeka,″ he says, taking a napkin and wiping some oil off my chin.
I tell Caleb I’ve got to talk to him some other time. That me and Desda are going over homework right now. He says he’ll talk to me later, and heads out of the lunchroom. Charlese stops him before he goes. She’s all up in his face. He doesn’t pay her no mind, he just keeps on stepping. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if Charlese wants Caleb because she knows he wants me.
Desda acts like I really meant what I said about her and me doing homework. She starts asking me if I’ve done the math homework—which I haven’t, of course. But that don’t stop Desda. She pulls out the homework anyhow and asks me ten thousand questions about the math problems. They are easy as pie, and I tell her so. Before I know it, I’m doing the work for her.
″If the homework’s so easy, why didn’t you do it last night?″ she wants to know.
″Don’t go there,″ I say.
″I worked on them problems for three hours straight,″ Desda says, stuffing chips in her mouth. ″After that, I finally gave up and started watching TV.″ Desda’s homework paper starts to spot from her greasy fingers.
