Skin I'm in, The (9 page)

Where do you run when there’s no place to run? They had me trapped. I could see no way out. Then I scratched one on the face, bit the other on his fat, dirty hands. And when I was running, running to hide deep in the crowd up there, I saw someone I knew. It was Kinjari! Kinjari is not dead!

—
Akeelma

I showed this last part to Miss Saunders. She said this is powerful stuff. ″Writing is clearly one of your gifts, Maleeka,″ she said. I know it sounds stupid, but when I was leaving Miss Saunders’s classroom, I hugged them papers to my chest like they was some boy I’ve been wanting to press up against for weeks. It feels good doing something not everybody can do.

Momma got a saying: ″Don’t go getting full of yourself ’cause soon as you do, somebody’s gonna come and let the wind out of your sails.″ Today that somebody is Char. She sees me walking down the hall like I’m wearing clouds for shoes.

″Why you looking all stupid?″ she asks, plucking me upside the head. Like a dummy, I tell her about Miss Saunders and my work. Soon as the words are out, I want to kick myself. I said I wasn’t telling nobody about this. Now look what I did.

″You Miss Saunders’s pet, anyhow,″ Char says, sticking gum in her mouth. ″She got you that job in the office just to keep you away from me, I bet.″

I start to tell Char that ain’t so, but she don’t want to listen. ″We’re hanging out in the bathroom next period. You coming?″ she asks.

″I have to work,″ I say.

″That’s what good little slaves do, obey their masters, right?″

If Char knew, really knew, what girls like Akeelma went through, she wouldn’t be talking down slaves.

″You gonna be a slave, or your own master?″ Char asks, crossing her arms. If I was my own master, I wouldn’t ever speak to you again, I want to say. But, instead, I just tell Char I’ll see her later.

″You better be there,″ she says, walking off. She’s halfway down the hall when I hear Worm call her name and see him run to catch up with her. Worm is sliding his arm around Char’s shoulder. She yanks it off like he’s got body odor. Now that Char has finally stole Worm away from Daphne, she don’t even want him no more. That’s how she is—sometimey.

It ain’t no real choice when you think about it. Hanging with Char and them in the bathroom is more fun than stapling papers in the school office. So when I push open the bathroom door, I put all that stuff about Akeelma and Miss Saunders and the office out of my head. Hanging out in the bathroom is party time, Char likes to say. So I go in there ready to have a good time.

I scoot myself up on the sink and kick off my shoes. Char gets up in the mirror and puts on another coat of mascara. She and the twins, Raise and Raina, laugh. They’re talking about Worm and some other boys I don’t care nothing about. I smile and act like I’m listening. Next thing I know, I’m reading one of Akeelma’s letters.

Char asks what I’m up to. I tell her nothing. She grabs my stuff so hard my books fall on the floor.

″Maleeka’s tripping on that slave stuff again,″ Char says, taking out her cigarette lighter and setting one of my pages on fire. I can feel my ears burning hot with anger. I blow out the burning papers.

″Why does Maleeka got to be with us, anyhow?″ Raina asks, putting lipstick on for the third time. ″Maleeka is corny and ugly.″ Raise sticks her face in the mirror right alongside her sister’s. A matching set.

″It used to be fun watching Maleeka half kill herself learning to smoke,″ Raina says, cutting her eyes at me.

″But Maleeka’s just a pain now,″ says Raise.

Raise and Raina pull back from the mirror at the same time. They both puff up their hair and scratch the same side of their necks at once.

Char says the only reason she lets me hang with her in the first place is to get her grades up.

″It seems like it’s been forever, and they ain’t up yet,″ Raina says.

Char shakes her head and smiles. ″You’re right, Raina. I’m thinking about letting her go anyhow.″ Char is talking like I ain’t even here. ″Only I can’t cut her loose yet. We got that big book report due in social studies. After that you’re history, girl.″ Now Char is looking my way.

Raina’s still on my case. ″Maleeka, ever since you got that new hairdo, you think you’re something, don’t you, Miss Baldy,″ she says, laughing.

I don’t laugh. I look at her like she’s getting on my last nerve.

Next thing I know, cigarette smoke is everywhere, and Raise is showing us how to do some new dance. Char asks me to hold her cigarette. She digs in her purse and takes out a marker. She writes her name in big, black letters on the wall near the sink:
Charlese Jones.

All of sudden, Miss Saunders comes busting into the bathroom, like she’s a cop. ″All right,″ she’s says.

″Dag,″ Raise says. ″Why you always gotta be ruining stuff, Miss Saunders?″

Charlese is pissed. This is the third time Miss Saunders has busted her in the bathroom this month.

Miss Saunders comes over to me and yanks the cigarette out of my hand. ″I’m surprised to see you here, Maleeka,″ she says, flushing the cigarette down the toilet. Then she rubs her hands on her slacks.

″Maleeka ain’t no goody two-shoes like you’re trying to make her out to be, Miss Saunders,″ Char says, putting her arm around my shoulder. ″Her and me done all kinds of things together.″

″Save it, Char,″ Miss Saunders says, moving up to where I’m standing. She accidentally bumps Charlese’s arm and makes her drop her lipstick on the floor. The lipstick lands right on its tip.

″You did that on purpose,″ Char yells, as she gets up on her toes, up in Miss Saunders’s face. But Miss Saunders gets as serious as a heart attack. ″I am not a child. I do not play games with children,″ she says, staring hard at Char.

Char tries to stare down Miss Saunders, only you can tell Miss Saunders ain’t backing off.

″That lipstick cost me twenty dollars. It’s designer stuff. I want my money,″ Char says.

When Miss Saunders tells us all to get to the office, there’s no mistaking that she means business. She tells everybody to walk a few steps ahead of me and her.

Miss Saunders is harder on me than anybody else. She grabs me by the arm and pulls me off near the lockers. I’m looking at her hand, like she better get off me. I guess she has a second thought about what she’s doing, because she turns my arm loose and starts giving me one of her speeches. Talking about how well I was doing in class and working in the office. Telling me I need to choose my friends better.

When we walk into the office, Miss Carol and Maxine act like they haven’t even noticed Charlese or the twins. But they have sure noticed me. And I swear I can see the corner of Maxine’s mouth go up, like she’s holding back a smirk. A teacher standing in the office asks what’s happened. Miss Saunders says we were cutting class in the bathroom, smoking, destroying property. Dag, I’m thinking, it wasn’t like Char was ripping out the sink. She was just writing her name on the wall with a marker. Just letting people know she’d been there.

CHAPTER 19

Dear Diary
,

They took us up top today. I cried when the sun touched my face. It has been a long time since I seen it. The others, they jumped and ran and laughed like they was free. I sat down in a corner by myself. I stared at the sun, then shut my eyes tight. I want to hold onto the sun for as long as I can. To save up the picture for when I am below again and need to remember that the sun is always shining. I squeeze my eyes closed till I see stars. When I open them again, Kinjari is there.

—
Akeelma

The school detention room is in the basement, next to the boiler room. Damp. Cramped. Hot. Nothing but desks and chairs, with Miss Birdy, the detention teacher. Even when it’s snowing out, you can go sleeveless in there and still be sweating. Today ain’t no different. It’s hot. I’m sweating, and it ain’t nobody’s fault but Miss Saunders’s. So here I am, writing in my diary, trying to see the sun.

I’m supposed to be doing English homework. Miss Saunders gave me twenty-five pages to read in two days. I don’t get too far with it, though. Caleb comes into the detention room, making noise. He’s excusing himself all the way across the room. Squeezing between desks. Knocking over books. You’d think a boy that has been the president of the class and student representative on the PTA would know how to walk into a room.

I’m hoping he will sit up front. No such luck. He plops down two seats away from me, and starts talking before he’s seated.

″Hey,″ he says in that low, soft voice of his.

I stretch my legs out till they’re even with the front legs of the chair in front of mine. ″What are
you
doing here?″ I ask.

″Mr. P. put me in here,″ he says. ″I was doing the boys’ bathroom.″

For a while, I just doodle on the edges of my paper. But I can’t help asking, ″Doing what in the boys’ room?″

″Scrubbing down the joint,″ he says plain as day.

″You
cleaned
the boys’ room?″ I’m frowning up my face. ″You touched the toilet and all that stuff?″ Caleb’s shaking his head yes with every word I say.

″Disgusting.″ I suck my teeth.

Miss Birdy comes over to us and tells us to separate. ″Get some more space between you,″ she says. ″Two more seats over, Caleb,″ she insists.

Caleb moves over, then, as soon as Miss Birdy starts grading papers again, he’s back near me.

″I don’t believe you,″ I whisper. ″Ain’t nobody at this school crazy enough to clean the bathrooms,″ I say, then I shut my mouth.

But Caleb, he does seem crazy sometimes. He and his dad go feed the homeless on the weekends, and once a month Caleb volunteers at the senior citizens home. Last year, he even got the school to hold a neighborhood cleanup day.

″Yeah, I cleaned up the boys’ room,″ Caleb says, smiling. ″Got down on my hands and knees like my Momma taught me.″

″You should’ve asked the janitor to help.″

″He’s doing his job,″ Caleb says. ″It’s the rest of us that aren’t doing ours.″

Caleb’s hands don’t look like they been in no toilets, even if he was wearing gloves. His hands are big, with nice white straight nails, and his fingers are long and strong and they move all over the place when he gets excited.

Miss Birdy comes over and lectures us about why we’re here in detention, and what will happen to us if Caleb doesn’t move over and shut up.

For a little while, we write notes to each other.

I write:
Why bother with that smelly bathroom if no one else cares about it?

Caleb writes back:
You have to take a stand when things aren’t right.

I look at him and wonder why he didn’t take a stand last year when we was on the bus, and everybody was making fun of how black I am. Instead of writing back, I open up my folder and start writing in my diary.

Dear Diary:

Caleb smells good. Sometimes when I’m around him, I lose my head. I forget that I am mad at him and that I promised myself I would never, ever forgive him for not coming to my defense on the bus. Those white teeth. Them eyes, and that voice, they make me forget sometimes what he’s done. That’s why I try to keep away from him. I don’t want to forget.

—
Maleeka

Caleb looks at me for the longest time. ″Things can change,″ he says. ″Like things between me and you, things at the school.″

″Don’t go there, Caleb,″ I say.

″I said I was sorry, remember? Said it ten thousand times. Give a brother a break, why don’t you?″

″This ain’t McDonald’s, Caleb. No breaks today,″ I say, moving to another seat. Caleb’s got about six books with him. He takes care of business, keeps up with homework. That’s how he is. But even two seats over I can smell him. He don’t wear that cheap stuff that hurts your nose like some boys do.