Maizon at Blue Hill (8 page)

The dining hall looked bigger with such a few girls in it.

“Maizon!” A girl Susan had introduced me to yesterday, but whose name I couldn't remember, ran up to me. “Miss Norman told me you were thinking about joining the debate team. There's a meeting this afternoon.” She tore a piece of paper from her notebook and wrote the information down for me. “It's at four.”

Sybil. That was her name. I smiled and took the piece of paper from her. Sybil nodded, as though she had just done her good deed for the day.

Charli came up to me right after Sybil walked away.

“Debate team?” she asked, raising her shades. She had pushed her sleeves up to her elbows and stuck a picture of James Baldwin over the patch of her jacket. I knew she had snuck out of the dorm without anyone seeing her.

I carried a stack of plates to a table near the window, feeling her at my heels. “I'm thinking about it,” I said.

“That debate team is so corny, Maizon. It's like the nerdiest thing you could do here.”

I shrugged and headed back to the kitchen. One of the cooks handed me a plate of toast and a bowl of sliced melon. I carried them back out to the table. Charli was waiting for me.

“And besides,” she continued, as though I hadn't interrupted the conversation by leaving, “there are only white girls on the debate team. Don't go turning a Pauli on us.”

I rolled my eyes. “There're only five of us in this whole school, Charli. I can't only join the teams where the black girls are. I wouldn't be on anything.” I went back to the kitchen for another bowl of melon, set it down at Pauli's table, then came back and sat down across from Charli.

Charli picked up a piece of melon. “Come be on field hockey, girlfriend. Marie and Sheila are on the fencing team.”

“Fencing? Now,
that's
corny.”

Charli nodded. “I know, but at least they're both on it. We have to stick together, Maizon.”

I sat across from her. Two girls we didn't know sat down at our table and smiled. We smiled back, then I let my voice drop to a whisper. “Charli, I'm just gonna check it out. See what they're debating. I might not even join.”

“Well,” Charli said, grabbing her books and rising, “give it a lot of thought. Some people here make you feel like you shouldn't be here....” She looked at the two girls at our table, who quickly looked away. Charli lowered her voice. “If we want to be strong we have to stick together.”

“But you guys are going to be juniors and seniors next year, and where does that leave me?”

Charli shrugged. “Until then, Maizon ...” she said, grabbing a piece of toast and heading away from the table. “Think about it.”

I sighed and folded my arms. The room was loud now; a whole bunch of girls talking at once. I stared across the table, out the window behind it. I want to go home, I thought, feeling the toast go dry in my mouth.

14

M
r. Parsons hadn't lied about small classes. There were only twelve girls in my math class, eight in science, eight in French, nine in geography, and fourteen girls in my last class of the day, English. English class met in Laremy Hall, the gabled building I could see from my dorm window. It was right next to the main hall. We sat in a semicircle on the hardwood floor. Our teacher, Mrs. Dexter, wore a poncho and her hair cut short. She sat cross-legged at the opening of the circle. After we had gone around and introduced ourselves, Mrs. Dexter started talking. We would be doing Shakespeare this year, she promised. The class groaned. I hated the little bit of Shakespeare I had read.

“What's all the groaning?” Mrs. Dexter asked, smiling.

The class was silent.

“Can't he get his point across in fewer words?” I asked.

The class laughed. Some girls nodded.

For the next half hour we discussed what we'd be reading—
The Lottery, Animal Farm, A Light in the Forest,
A
Separate Peace,
and a bunch of other books I hadn't heard of. But other girls in the class seemed to know everything about every book already. I listened to them, embarrassed that I had nothing to contribute, promising myself I'd start in on those books the minute I had a chance.

Then Mrs. Dexter asked us to choose a book we'd like to read in class. Everyone named their favorite book. Mrs. Dexter said some books people suggested were too easy. They got the ax.

“What about you, Maizon?”

I thought for a moment, feeling everyone's eyes on me. “I read a book last summer called
The Bluest Eye,
by a woman named Toni Morrison. I'd want to read that again.”

Mrs. Dexter nodded. “That's a marvelous book,” she said, and I felt myself grow warm. She wrote our suggestions down on a stray piece of looseleaf paper.

“We're going to start with your suggestions,” she said to the class. “Then we'll do
my
reading.”

The class groaned again, but underneath the complaining I could feel everybody's excitement, especially my own. I couldn't wait to reread
The Bluest Eye.

After English, I made my way back to the main hall for the debate meeting. Some of the cross-country team were already doing half-mile sprints on the field. I watched them for a moment, wondering why anyone got a thrill running back and forth. Running only made me tired. Charli rushed by in her field hockey skirt.

“Miss Norman said to tell you to come by tomorrow if you have any interest in playing junior varsity.”

I nodded.

“I help her coach them sometimes,” Charli called, taking off into a jog.“ She lifted her shades and winked. ”They're so cute and tiny,“ she mocked. I rolled my eyes. I hated being the youngest person, anywhere.

 

 

“Hey, Maizon!” Sybil said, opening the door and stepping back to allow me to enter. The room was a corner one, surrounded by windows and covered with dark blue carpeting. The windows let in a lot of sun. There were pictures of explorers on the wall. Chairs were set up in a semicircle the way they had been in all of my classes, except English, where there were no chairs. As I stood in front of one to peel my knapsack from my shoulder, the rest of the girls in the circle stared at me.

“Hi,” I said softly, feeling strange. “Hi, everybody.”

“Hey, Maizon,” different people murmured. I recognized a few of the faces from different classes, but only knew two or three names.

“We've been talking about some of the issues we're going to be debating this year,” Sybil said brightly. “But now, I guess, since this is everyone, I hope, we should give our names and stuff before we go on.”

I nodded, figuring she was leading the group. “I'm Maizon,” I said, nodding toward the circle. “I'm a lower school freshman.”

The group murmured a hello and similar introductions followed.

“You're the only freshman, Maizon,” Sybil said, after all the introductions had been made.

“I'm used to being the only someone,” I said.

The other girls laughed uneasily. I shrugged. The room suddenly felt hot to me and I pulled my collar away from my neck a little and pushed the sleeves of my blouse up to my elbows. Everyone watched this.

“How does it feel?” someone asked me, a girl whose name I didn't remember.

I shrugged again. “I haven't really thought about it much.”

“I'd be interested in knowing what it's like here, actually . . .” Sybil said. “I mean, for you.”

I said, “I'd be interested in knowing what it's like for you.” Sybil gave a quick look around the room and shrugged. “I don't think that would be too interesting,” she said.

“Why not?”

“‘Cause for me, it's the same as it is for everybody, I guess. Except you and Charli and them,” she said.

“How do you know how it is for me?” The room was still. Eyes had stopped moving from me to Sybil then back again and had dropped. The others listened without making their listening seem obvious. They were the heart of our conversation, the edges and the middle of it. “I mean, you and I have never even talked to each other, Sybil. That's why I want to know what it's like for you, and then I can see if it's the same for me.”

Sybil looked up at me, her small dark eyes moving from one place on my face to another without meeting mine. “You know why it's different for you, Maizon,” she said.

“I don‘t,” I said, crossing my legs and leaning toward her. “I
am
smart, but I don't know everything. What makes Blue Hill so different for me?”

Someone coughed. I looked over at her and she covered her mouth with her hand.

I stared hard into Sybil's eyes, all the while knowing that what I was doing was wrong of me. What I saw there was Sybil's own fear of me and this made me madder than I had ever been. She had no right to have such a fear. She had never met me before, had never spoken to me or sat down beside me at dinner. It was the same fear that was in all of their eyes, but Sybil was the bravest. She was in charge and had chosen to raise her eyes and show me the fear there. I hated them all. But because she was brave, I hated Sybil the most.

“What's different?” I asked, giving a quick look around to include the others in this question. “I can't see me now, so you have to tell me, Sybil. What's so
different
about me?”

“You're black, Maizon,” Sybil said. There was a near-silent longing in the back of her voice. I heard her desire, if only for a moment, an hour or a day, to be who I am. In Sybil's voice I heard the part of her—of each of them sitting in the room—who had always wanted to be the special one. The one like no other, who stands out and above only because she is allowed to, only because others have chosen to shrink in her presence.

I brushed at my skirt with my hand like I was flicking lint away, but it was really the moment I was ridding myself of. I thought of Marie and how she had brushed her thigh in the same way the first day we met. I was brushing away all of them with a flick of my hand. I felt the room shrink back away from me, felt their individual disappointment and felt the new strength of this power I had discovered within myself. “Yes, I am,” I said, bringing the back of my hand to my eyes as though I were checking for the first time. “I am black, aren't I?”

No one said a word. I listened as someone called the meeting to order. It moved on slowly. I felt the other girls stealing glances at me. I felt mean all of a sudden. As they discussed the coming debates, my skirt had all of my attention. I stared at the pleats riding along the front, at my skinny brown legs beneath it. I raised my feet in front of me and stared at my penny loafers, folded my arms across my chest, exhaled loudly to show my boredom and gazed at the starched, white creases in the sleeves of my blouse.

It seemed like hours before Sybil adjourned the meeting. Only then, with the exits of the others, did the air in the room seem to lift.

“I hope we'll be friends, Maizon,” Sybil said, when only she and I were left.

“Yeah. I hope so too.” But the lie rode freely on the words, and Sybil knew it.

15

S
o what's the scoop, dupe?“ Charli asked, sitting across from me and blocking my view of the sunset. I had wanted to be alone and had hoped that no one would try to join me for dinner. ”To debate or not to debate?“

Marie and Sheila sat down next to us. Two other girls sat at the far end of the table, because all the other tables had already filled up.

“I don't know yet,” I said, even though I knew I wouldn't join the debate team.

I turned to Marie and Sheila. “I want to join something. That's the only way I'm going to feel like I belong here.”

“You ain't never gonna belong here,” Charli said.

“Charli!” Marie scolded.

“You won't ever belong here,” Charli corrected herself. “This school isn't about us. It's about them.” She gestured toward the two white girls seated at the end of the table. “And them,” she said, making a sweep of her arm to include the whole dining room hall.

“Then why are we here?” I demanded.

“To get their education, Maizon,” Marie said calmly. “To get what they get, small classes, good teachers... blah, blah, blah.”

“But not to be with them,” Sheila added. “There are too few of us.”

“You guys don't hang with
any
of them?” I asked.

All three shook their heads.

“I mean,” Sheila said, “I speak to some and some of them are cool and everything. But I know I'm not going to make any of those tight friends you grow old with like I've made with Charli and Marie.”

“But you don't even give it a chance,” I said.

“We gave it a chance, Maizon. We've all been here since we were twelve. I'll be seventeen next May.”

I looked at Sheila, but said nothing.

Charli used her knife and fork to cut into her pork chop, then took a bite before she spoke. “The first friend I made here was Elizabeth—she's not here anymore. But me and her were this tight,” Charli said, holding up her hand and crossing her middle finger over her index. “We did everything together. Then we went away for summer vacation and I called her. And I swear, the girl acted like she had never heard of me.” Charli pressed her hand against the side of her face, and tucked the corner of her lip in, trying to hide her dejection. “It was so messed up. And she wasn't the only one. Lots of girls here are like that.”

Sheila touched Charli's shoulder, then looked at me. “When I was in school in Cherryville, people did it to me all the time. They'd be all chummy with me in class. But the minute school was over, it was like ‘see ya.' When I heard that Blue Hill was predominantly white, I didn't even want to come here.”