Disgruntled (9 page)

“Repeat after me,” said Mrs. Lewis. “E-state sale. I think she’ll get it after a while, don’t you, Kenya?”

Kenya nodded.

Grandmama had left most of her money to a medical charity in Africa. To Kenya explicitly, she left a modest amount to continue helping pay for Barrett, which Kenya didn’t know she had been doing already. To Sheila she left the house and a tidy sum for upkeep and taxes. She and her mother would be moving into the house.

Kenya remembered back when they lived in the city, driving back from those secret visits when Sheila spoke derisively of Grandmama’s house with its six bedrooms and four bathrooms. “Shit don’t make no sense,” she’d say. “My foster sister and I slept in one bedroom! My mother slept on the couch. That woman has one grown-ass child who doesn’t even speak to her. What she need six bedrooms for?”

Now Sheila seemed to like the idea of multiple bathrooms and to enjoy calling the downstairs toilet a “powder room.” Kenya wondered if her mother had actually changed, or if this was just life without her father’s ideas about what was right and wrong. Maybe it was only inevitable that a girl from the projects might like to have a powder room.

What did not seem at all inevitable, and gave Kenya a sensation close to fear, was that Sheila could enjoy the company of someone like Alma Lewis, a thick-figured, brown-skinned woman who wore noticeably pale face powder. Alma’s curious accent combined the way uneducated white people in Philadelphia spoke with the sharp inflections of Mrs. Winston, the British gym teacher: like white people from scary racist neighborhoods, she said “hun”; like Mrs. Winston, she said “darling.” Now Kenya suppressed a cough as the scent of Mrs. Lewis’s Giorgio cologne filled the house. As popular as it was among Main Line mothers, it smelled to Kenya like burnt pastries.

Mrs. Lewis spoke to her again. “Wouldn’t you like some brand-new furniture, Kenya?” she asked as her manicured and bejeweled hand rested—threateningly, Kenya thought—on Grandmama’s dish of blue peppermints.

“I guess,” Kenya said, wondering for a split second if Alma Lewis was planning to buy these new things for them.

“And when you get the place all fixed up, you can finally have a party.”

“Why couldn’t I have a party before?” Kenya asked.

“Want to take a look upstairs, Alma?” asked Sheila.

Kenya tried to focus on her homework. But even when the women toured upstairs, phrases like “recessed lighting” and “wainscoting” and “good bones” came shooting out of Sheila’s mouth and ricocheted about the house.

“Alma, don’t forget to give me your decorator’s number,” Sheila was saying as they came back down.

“Of
course
, darling,” sang Alma. “Lars is like family to us, so please mention my name. My husband hates to see him coming. He knows it’s just going to be more money getting up and walking out the door.” She laughed. Sheila tried.

“How
does
somebody black get to be so
phony
?” Sheila asked Kenya as they watched Mrs. Lewis get into her Jaguar from the tall windows of their new-old house.

“Her daughter’s even worse,” said Kenya.

Before she knew anything, Kenya had tried to make friends with Grace Lewis, who was called Lolly for some unknown reason. Lolly wasn’t especially nice to Kenya but was too nice to tell her to go somewhere with herself, and so the friendship had stuck. Lolly’s best friend was Phyllis Fagin. Though as far as Kenya could see, Phyllis Fagin, who had shiny black hair and dark green eyes, was the prettiest girl in their class, she was universally regarded as a spaz. It was unclear what had drawn Lolly and Phyllis together, but Kenya noticed that Lolly seemed to actively enjoy betraying her friend. On more than one occasion, Kenya was nearby when someone said something nasty about Phyllis that was flattering to Lolly, like “I don’t know how you can hang out with her.” When this happened, Lolly would respond with a secret about Phyllis—she used baking soda instead of toothpaste, for instance, or that her mother made some of her clothes.

As for herself, Kenya was not grateful for Lolly’s polite friendship, because the girl was nearly insufferable. Often she screamed “Oh my God,” flecking white spit everywhere; she still believed militantly in the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus. (In music the class learned to sing spirituals. The teacher, Miss Clyburn, the first adult Kenya had seen with braces, asked, “Does anyone know why Afro-Americans came to this country from Africa?”)

“I don’t know, Kenya. Maybe we shouldn’t be so harsh,” Sheila was saying.

(In music class, Lolly Lewis raised her hand. “For a better life?”)

“Maybe we should be harsher,” Kenya said.

But Sheila was already walking toward the back of the house. “Finish your homework, all right? Might be a while before we get back to the apartment.”

Kenya was not excited about the move to Grandmama’s house. It was true that she would have been embarrassed to have company from Barrett at the Ardmore Arms. She’d soured on the place once she discovered that no one—but no one—lived in an apartment. Some families did, of course, own apartments in Florida or Manhattan, or even apartment buildings in Philadelphia. From her research at other Barrett girls’ houses, she’d discovered that everything at the Ardmore Arms was old, but not in a grand way. Still, something in Kenya rebelled at the idea of taking possession of Grandmama’s large house, the house where her father had learned that
being black was no fuckin’ picnic
. And she had the sense that because of her mother’s passion for moving on, they were getting further away from where they could be found.

*   *   *

Despite her distaste for Lolly, and the fact that Phyllis Fagin had little to recommend her, Kenya became their third wheel. Zaineb Husain, a small, pointy-looking girl who had recently transferred to Barrett from a public school in the suburbs, eventually joined them. Kenya felt cheered when she discovered that, like her, Zaineb had to repeat a grade. She also found it endearing that in contrast to the excitable Lolly and hand-wringing Phyllis, Zaineb always seemed tired. By Kenya’s second year at Barrett, the four of them had calcified into a clique.

It was clear to Kenya that what drew them together was not laughing, fun, or a shared passion, but seating charts, laziness, and the desire to move in a group. Just about every Barrett student from kindergarten up aspired toward numbers. Kenya couldn’t quite understand the fear of being alone there. There was no L’Tisha Simmons or Mrs. Prescott to publicly humiliate you, as there had been at Lea. And yet at Barrett, walking the halls or waiting for the school bus alone seemed unimaginable. Only Dorrie Futter, who vocally expressed her love of science and had a pet tarantula, shrugged with indifference when she had to partner up with the teacher, and preferred to eat her lunch by herself. She sat nearby but not with Kenya’s group. Kenya sometimes wondered what she thought of their conversations, or if she was even listening as she wolfed down her food so she could read the books of Piers Anthony and chew on her hair.

“Mr. Stauffer is, like, so nice,” Phyllis was saying now, as if it wasn’t clear to everyone that she had a crush on the burly, red-nosed history teacher.

“He’s not
that
nice,” said Zaineb. “He only gave me a B-plus on the paper.”

“I wonder if he’s married,” said Phyllis.

“He’s, like, thirty! Who cares?” said Lolly, which reminded Kenya that she’d overheard her in the locker room telling Lizzie Canwell that Phyllis was in love with Mr. Stauffer.

“He doesn’t wear a ring,” said Kenya, though she knew from her father and mother, who had both worn gold bands, that wearing rings didn’t mean much.

“Oh my God, Kenya, you’re right!” said Phyllis.

“So what, Phyllis? Are you going to marry him?” asked Zaineb, pushing up her glasses.

“God, Zaineb!” Phyllis yelled.

“Maybe he dates one of the other teachers,” said Kenya. Sometimes she participated in these conversations like the others. Other times she half listened while caught up in her own thoughts and daydreams. In particular she daydreamed about having an actual best friend: someone who would laugh at her jokes and sit intently on the opposite of a long gossipy phone call, saying “Oooooooh!”; someone who also liked the minor-key songs on the radio—“What Is Love” by Howard Jones and the mournful “If You Were Here” by the Thompson Twins. She thought of a McDonald’s commercial she’d seen featuring two white girls who laughed and whispered together, jumped in the rain with matching raincoats, and then ate cheeseburgers, alternating bites with sips of milkshake. The commercial had pierced her with yearning.

*   *   *

“So your birthday falls on a Saturday this year, Kenya,” Sheila announced, a month before Kenya was to turn thirteen.

“That’s nice,” said Kenya. The winter holidays had just ended, and while Kenya didn’t particularly enjoy lonely Kwanzaas with her mother, she had enjoyed staying home from Barrett. “I won’t have to go to school on my birthday this year.”

“Well, no, but I meant maybe you might want to have, you know, a party. You could invite Grace Lewis and the other Daughters of Isis.”

“Uh-huh,” Kenya answered. She didn’t mention that Lolly was not really part of Daughters of Isis. Only two or so meetings per year brought the Daughters of Isis together, at events that were mostly for their parents. When they ran into one another in the high-ceilinged halls of Barrett, they would make sure no one white was looking before they mumbled hello. A couple of them were nice. There was Sarabeth in the Upper School, who enjoyed regaling younger girls with stories about the boys she’d gone with, including the one who liked to put his penis on her stomach. There was China, who always talked about Prince, who would recount the plot of
Purple Rain
if you gave her even a second. Her favorite scene involved Prince luring Apollonia into a cold lake. “Prince totally has a great sense of humor,” she would say. “That’s what makes him my type.” (Kenya could sense the tragedy in China, dark-skinned, tall for her age, and heavy of hip, fantasizing about a romance with the fey and creamy Prince. But she would not understand the extent of the tragedy until the monstrous-black-mammy dream sequence in
Under the Cherry Moon
.)

“Well, who do
you
want to invite?” Sheila persisted. “Besides Grace Lewis.”

“It’s Lolly.”

“What’s Lolly?”

“They call Grace Lolly,” Kenya said, her voice teetering on the edge of snotty. Then she became outright reckless. “I’ve been telling you that for two years. Anyway, you just want to show off the house to her mother.”

“First of all, Alma refers to her as Grace. And second of all, who do you think you’re talking to?” Sheila asked. “I know how those white girls talk to their mothers.” (She knew because Kenya had told her about it with amazement: “
Mo-om
, you’re so
stupid
!”) “Start talking to me like that and you’ll be lucky to have a birthday, let alone a party.”

“Fine, then. Let’s not have a party,” Kenya said.

Sheila’s face crumpled. “You really don’t want a party?”

A few days later at lunch Kenya reluctantly invited her friends.

“Oh my God, awesome!” said Phyllis. “Can we get beer?”

Lolly seemed nervous. “Who are you gonna invite? I mean, besides us.”

“I don’t know,” said Kenya. “It’s my mom’s idea.”

“My mom loves throwing birthday parties,” Lolly said.

“I know,” said Kenya.

“So who
are
you going to invite?” Zaineb asked.

“Guys, don’t talk so loud,” said Phyllis, gesturing toward Dorrie Futter with her head. But Kenya vaguely wondered what it would be like to have Dorrie Futter at her house. She had even tried unsuccessfully to talk to her a few times, but the truth was that Dorrie Futter was not especially friendly.

The more Lolly, Phyllis, and Zaineb discussed it, the more miserable Kenya began to feel about the whole thing. Though much had changed in her life, she and her mother still didn’t eat pork, so she wouldn’t be allowed to order pepperoni on any of the pizzas; they’d be stuck with plain old cheese and then some disgusting slices clotted with dry vegetables. Kenya didn’t know what her guests would do for fun. She didn’t have cable television and the VCR worked only half of the time. At Lizzie Canwell’s sleepover, when someone suggested board games, the other girls called her a baby. Instead they played Truth or Dare, which mostly involved doing things to Lizzie’s brother, who was hiding in his room. Also lately everyone had been playing the choking game, where someone propped you up from behind while you held your breath until you fainted in her arms. If Sheila so much as got a whiff of that entertainment, Kenya knew that her guests would be stuck with her mother for the entire party.

“I guess I’ll invite Lizzie, since she invited me to hers,” she said.

“Oh,” said Lolly, her face falling. “Do you think she’ll come?”

Kenya knew that Lolly, who aspired to a friendship with Lizzie that would propel her out of their clique and into Lizzie’s, would be embarrassed to be at Kenya’s sleepover, even if Lizzie herself was there. And this was exactly the kind of wearying mess that made throwing a party seem like something you should do only if you absolutely did not want to have fun.

But the train was on the track. Sheila researched piñatas at the library, even though Kenya felt she was way too old for a piñata. Every night as they watched TV after dinner, they soaked newspaper in a slimy glue concoction and pasted it on the balloon core. Then, a week before the party, a blizzard appeared in the forecast.

“Why couldn’t you have had me in the summer?” Kenya asked.

“You should be grateful I had you at all,” quipped Sheila.

The weatherman tripped over his words in excitement, wielding his pointer with extra zeal. It was as if he was also planning a party for Saturday but could have his only in blizzard conditions. Seven to ten inches, maybe a foot! It would be heavier to the west of the city, he said, which is exactly where Kenya and her mother now lived. Maybe if they still lived in West Philadelphia she wouldn’t have had to worry. But then again, if she lived there, no one from Barrett would come to her party. That’s what had happened to China, who lived not far from Kenya’s old house. The week after, China’s mother had let her stay home for two days, nursing humiliation. When Kenya told Sheila about it, Sheila made it clear that she thought China was a big baby and her mother was, too.