Skin I'm in, The (2 page)
Worm tells Charlese to forget about Miss Saunders and to get outta here. Charlese don’t let the new broad off so easy.
″You don’t scare me,″ she says, putting her hands on her hips, but before Miss Saunders can speak, here comes Tai, interrupting everything.
″I see you’ve met Charlese,″ Tai says to Miss Saunders.
Tai teaches math. She is weird, too. She stands at the blackboard with one leg leaning on the other like a flamingo. She does yoga and hums like a heater on the blink. Tai is a strange chick, I’m telling you.
″I see you made it,″ she says to Miss Saunders, grabbing both her arms and squeezing them tight in a friendly girl-to-girl squeeze.
Tai looks funny standing next to Miss Saunders, who must be close to six feet tall. Tai is short with long hair and two sets of silver hoop earrings in her ears, and a small hole in her nose where she puts her nose ring when she ain’t at work.
″We’re old college roommates,″ she says to Charlese. ″You will love having this woman around. She really makes things happen.″
I don’t know why Tai is telling all this to Charlese. She knows Charlese couldn’t care less. Tai and Miss Saunders head for the office. Tai tells Worm and Charlese to get to class.
″Sure, Tai,″ Char says, all sweet and innocent.
When Char is halfway up the hall, Tai looks over her shoulder at me and says, ″That goes for you, too, Miss Madison.″
WE’RE IN THE GIRLS’ ROOM
—like always. For once, I’m really trying to pee, not just talk about folk. That’s hard in this school. Ain’t no doors on the stalls. The principal took them off himself, so everything we do is out in the open. Like that’s gonna stop girls from smoking cigarettes, writing on the walls, and cutting class.
Everybody’s talking about the new teacher. ″Her face looks like somebody threw a hot pot of something on it,″ Char says, frowning. ″If I had a mug like that, I’d kill myself,″ she says, lifting up her arms and smelling her pits. I want to tell her that if I had hair balls as big as basketballs growing under my arms like she does,
I’d
kill
myself.
But I don’t say what’s on my mind. I keep quiet.
″Just think, if that was your mother,″ Raina, one of the twins, says.
″I wouldn’t even claim her if she
was
my moms,″ Char says, taking out deodorant. Then she pulls up her shirt and reaches inside to roll that sticky blue stuff on.
The four of us meet in the bathroom every morning. Me, Char, and the twins—Raina and Raise. We talk. Smoke. Stuff like that. I hang in the bathroom to get out of Momma’s homemade rags and into the clothes Charlese brings for me to try on. Today, it’s a skintight navy-blue jean dress, with thick gold buttons.
Char says the dress would look perfect if I had some hips and boobs to go with it. Char blows a fat ring of stinking gray smoke in my face. I laugh, like everybody else. You got to
go
along with Char if you want to
get
along with her. You can’t be all sensitive. That’s what Char says.
When the first period bell rings, I throw my backpack over my shoulders and head for class. Char and them are cutting class. Hanging out around the corner, probably. ″I ain’t for looking at that woman’s mug today,″ Char says. ″It’s enough to make you throw up.″
Char takes out another Kool cigarette, and taps it on her hand like she’s giving herself a needle. She puts it in her mouth, and waits for Raise to light it. Then she closes her eyes, and sucks in the smoke slow and long like she’s making a wish. The next thing I know, she’s blowing smoke in my face again. I guess that’s supposed to be funny. Char’s laughing real hard. She tells me to get out her face. I do what I’m told.
I didn’t always hang with Char. Last year, I hung by myself. I went to class. Got mostly A’s. Nobody even noticed me till Caleb Jamaal Assam came along. Caleb’s the smartest boy in school. Cute. Friendly. A poet. I should of known being with him was gonna cause me trouble.
He stared at me half the year. I thought he saw what everybody else saw. Skinny, poor, black Maleeka. But Caleb saw something different. He said I was pretty. Said he liked my eyes and sweet cocoa brown skin. He wrote me poems and letters. He put spearmint gum inside. Walked me to class. Gave me a ring. I ain’t told Momma.
After a while, everybody knew. Charlese and them laughed when Caleb and I walked by. They’d stuck out their legs and tried to trip me. They wrote Caleb notes saying not even the Goodwill would want my clothes. Somebody said I had hair so nappy I needed a rake to comb it.
It was that class trip to Washington, D.C., where things really fell apart. Caleb sat next to me. They teased us all the way there. Barks came from the back of the bus. Spit bombs flew my way. Then John-John started singing his song.″Maleeka, Maleeka, we sure want to keep her but she so black, we just can’t see her.″ The whole bus started in. Teachers tried to make them stop. By then, it was too late.
I looked at Caleb. He gave me the goofiest smile and said, ″Sorry, Maleeka…,″ and moved to the front of the bus with his boys. They slapped him five. Everybody laughed and clapped. I sat there with a frozen smile on my face like that stupid Mona Lisa. Till this day, I don’t know nothing about Washington, D.C., just that I don’t ever want to go there no more.
Things got worse after that. Kids picked on me more than ever. They sang John-John’s stupid song whenever I walked the halls. They got on my case about every little thing. My hair. My clothes. My color. My good grades. The fact that teachers liked me.
I didn’t want to go to school after a while, but Momma said I had to. So I came up with a plan. I went to Char and said if she would let me hang out with her, you know, kind of look out for me, I would do her homework and stuff. She laughed at first. Said for me to get out of her face. That she don’t want no geeks hanging round her, especially no ugly ones. I didn’t listen. I turned up everywhere she was. The bathroom. Lunchroom. The water fountain. I even did her homework a few times to show her I knew my stuff. She gave in after a while, and kids started leaving me alone. After that, Char started bringing clothes to school for me. ″You got to look like something when you with me,″ she said, kicking a bag of stuff my way.
But even those hundred-dollar pants suits she brought in for me to wear can’t make up for the hurt I feel when she slaps me with them mean words of hers.
WHEN THE SECOND BELL RINGS
, I run to Miss Saunders’s class like somebody set my shoes on fire. It don’t help none. Soon as I walk in, I know I’m in trouble. Everybody’s got their head down and they’re writing. Miss Saunders nods for me to take out paper and get to my seat. ″What does your face say to the world?″ is written on the blackboard. I laugh, only it comes out like a sneeze through my nose.
Miss Saunders is collecting papers before I even got three sentences down on my paper. She knows I just slipped in. That don’t stop her from asking me to answer the question, though.
″My face?″ I point to myself.
″Maleeka’s face says she needs to stay out of the sun,″ Larry Baker says, covering his face with a book.
″Naw, man,″ Gregory Williams says. ″Maleeka’s face says, Black is beautiful.″
Miss Saunders don’t say nothing. She just crosses her arms and gets real quiet. She don’t care if she done embarrassed me again.
″Maleeka?″ she says.
I don’t answer her question or look her way. I eye the ceiling and count the blobs of gum hanging there like pretty-colored snot.
″Can anybody else tell me what their face says to the world?″Miss Saunders asks. Her gold bangles jingle while she makes her way around the room. Miss Saunders is as quiet as a tiger sneaking up on its supper. It’s them Italian leather shoes of hers, I guess.
Malcolm Moore raises his hand. Malcolm is fine. He’s got long, straight hair. Skin the color of a butterscotch milkshake. Gray, sad eyes. He’s half and half— got a white dad and a black momma. He’s lucky. He looks more like his dad than his mom.
″My face says I’m all that,″ Malcolm says, rubbing them six chin hairs he calls a beard. ″It says to the homies, I’m the doctor of love. I’m good
to
ya and good
for
ya.″
Everybody laughs. Faith, his girlfriend of the week, throws a pencil across the room. It bounces off the back of his chair, and lands between his big feet. Miss Saunders gives Faith the eye, letting her know to cut it out.
When the laughing’s done, hands go up. Some folks say funny stuff about their face. Others is real serious. Like John-John. He says his face tells the world he doesn’t take no stuff. That people better respect him, or else. I never seen nothing like that in John-John’s face. He looks more scared than mean. I guess there ain’t no accounting for what folks see in their own mirrors.
When Miss Saunders asks, ″What’s my face say?″ don’t nobody say nothing.
″Don’t get all closed-mouthed, now,″ she says. ″I hear you whispering in the hall. Laughing at me.″ She walks the aisles again. She stops by me and sits on my desk. ″Faces say more than you think. Even mine. Don’t be shy. Say what’s on your mind.″
My hand goes up. I figure she’s embarrassed me twice since she’s been here this week. Now it’s her turn. ″Not to hurt your feelings…but…I think it says, you know, you’re a freak.″
″That’s cold,″ Chrystal Johnson says, frowning.
Miss Saunders put her hands up to her chin like she’s praying. She gets up and walks the room, pacing. We don’t say nothing. We just listen to the clock tick. Shuffle our papers. Watch for some reaction from Miss Saunders.
″Freak,″ she says. ″I saw that too when I was young.″ Then she explains how she was born with her face like that. How when she was little her parents had the preacher pray over it, the old folks work their roots on it, and her grandmother use some concoction to change the color of that blotch on her cheek so it matched the rest of her skin. Miss Saunders says none of the stuff she tried on her face worked. So she finally figured she’d better love what God gave her.
″Liking myself didn’t come overnight,″ she says, ″I took a lot of wrong turns to find out who I really was. You will, too.″ Everybody starts talking at once, asking her questions. Miss Saunders answers ’em all. Some kids even go up to her face and stare and point. She lets them do it too, like she’s proud of her face or something.
Then Miss Saunders comes over to my desk and stares down at me. ″It takes a long time to accept yourself for who you are. To see the poetry in your walk,″ she says, shaking her hips like she’s doing some African dance. Kids bust out laughing. ″To look in the mirror and like what you see, even when it doesn’t look like anybody else’s idea of beauty.″
For a minute, it seems like Miss Saunders is getting all spacey on us. Like her mind is somewhere else. Then she’s back, talking that talk. ″So, what’s my face say to the world?″ she asks. ″My face says I’m smart. Sassy. Sexy. Self-confident,″ she says, snapping her fingers rapid-fire. ″It says I’m caring and, yes, even a little cold sometimes. See these laugh lines,″ she says, almost poking herself in the eyes. ″They let people know that I love a good joke. These tiny bags? They tell the world I like to stay up late.″
″Doing
what,
Miss Saunders?″ John-John asks. ″Checking homework, or making out?″
Miss Saunders throws her head back and laughs. The lines around her eyes crinkle. The bangles on her arm jingle. ″What do I think my face says to the world? I think it says I’m
all that,″
she says, snapping her fingers.
Kids clap like they just seen a good movie, and they yell stuff like: ″Go on, Miss Saunders.″
″Give me five.″
″Tell us who you really is.″
Miss Saunders quiets everybody down, then starts telling us more about herself. She’s a big shot at an advertising agency downtown. A few months ago, her company and the school board came up with a new program that lets professionals take a leave of absence for a year to teach in inner-city schools. She says she always wanted to teach. She says being at McClenton Middle School will help her figure out if she wants to make a career out of teaching.
The next thing we know, Miss Saunders is asking us to take out some paper for a test. A surprise test. Some of the kids who was just giving out high fives are singing a different tune now. Worm thinks Miss Saunders is playing around for a minute. But she ain’t. She says she wants to evaluate us. You know, to figure out what we know and don’t know.
Miss Saunders says the test won’t count for a grade. John-John starts to get smart, he don’t do so good on tests. ″Then why we got to do it?″ he asks, putting one leg across his desk.
