Some of the girls had been even worse, acting as if they hated me on sight because of the way I looked. It wasn’t the white girls, either, as much as it was the black.
“Think you’re special, huh?” one dark-skinned, long-legged girl in my homeroom growled as I passed her desk on the way to my own.
“No,” I said, wishing Jasmine was here.
Struggling with my locker just before lunch on Wednesday, I’d been startled by a face shoved to within an inch of mine sneering, “Know what’s worse than a honky?”
I blinked.
A half-honky!”
I stepped back and onto the feet of another black girl behind me at her own locker.
“Watch yourself, or I’ll whup your candy ass!” the girl had shoved me back in the direction I had come.
What? Why? What had I done to deserve such animosity?
But now the week was almost over. It was Friday. Surely the worst was behind me.
***
Julian and I were among the last to collect our books from our lockers and straggle out of the building at the end of the day. My backpack was heavy with all the books I had to cover, but thank God not a lot of homework. At the top of the stairs we froze. Below us, two hefty ninth-graders were terrorizing Ashley, a pale, pretty girl we knew from elementary school. Ashley’s face had gone gray and she had both hands in a death grip on the railing. Every time she loosened one hand to take a step, the older girls gave her a shove.
Julian and I took one look at each other and were instantly of like mind. We swooped down the stairs and threw our weight into the backs of Ashley’s tormentors, who stumbled forward. Ashley fled.
Our triumph was short-lived, however. When the older girls caught their balance, they were none too pleased to see it was just a couple of scrawny seventh-graders who’d spoiled their fun. “Look, a coupla wiggers,” the taller one sneered. “Bit-a-shit!” the shorter one spit at me. Then they turned and waited for us at the bottom of the stairs. I almost wet my pants right there.
Not Julian, though. His biochemistry could turn fear into adrenaline. Mine just tried to evacuate my intestinal contents. But there was no other way out of the building. Sure, we could have gone back to the second floor and taken the other stairs, but the older girls would have just waited for us there. So we continued our descent until, about four steps from the bottom, Julian lifted his backpack in front of his chest like a shield, and I did the same. With a war cry, Julian launched himself into our waiting adversaries and I, faithful sister that I was, did the same.
I hit and bounced off the smaller of the two girls, who immediately placed a vice-like hand around my neck and began to fatten my lip with the other. Although I twisted and squirmed and flailed the air with my fists, her body was beyond the reach of my arms. I clawed at the forearm that held my neck as my peripheral vision went black. I could see only the girl’s determined face and her impressive chest. I heard Julian grunt, then was suddenly yanked from the girl’s grip and tossed backwards onto the floor, stunned. When my head cleared, Mr. Del Vecchio, the vice principal, was glowering over us, eyes popping, veins bulging out of his neck.
“What the hell is going on here?” he bellowed.
I was never so happy to be in trouble in my life.
***
Mami Luana materialized in the doorway of Mr. Del Vecchio’s office like our own dark savior. Wearing a plaid skirt and mismatched, ruffled blouse, scruffy slip-ons, and a no-nonsense look on her broad face—she was like no savior I’d ever seen in Sunday School. Still, she was as beautiful as sunshine on the ocean or snow at Christmas.
“What’s this all about?” she demanded of Mr. Del Vecchio, as if the vice principal had called her away from something more important than her telenovelas.
Mr. Del Vecchio looked up, started by Mama Luana’s tone, and said, “Your grandchildren are being suspended for fighting.”
“With each other?!” Mami Luana was incredulous.
“No, with two other students.” He nodded toward the two sullen ninth-graders slouched against the wall facing us. The larger girl had a plastic orange pick stuck in her ratty ‘fro and popped her gum at us. The smaller girl was still twice my size and had a green letter tattooed on each of her knuckles: B-I-C-H. She was the one who had fattened my lip.
“What was their reason?” Mami Luana shifted her weight, cocking a hip. Mr. Del Vecchio looked away so as not to be provoked.
“It doesn’t matter. We do not condone fighting for any reason. The penalty is three days’ suspension. If it happens again, expulsion, and you will have to find some other place to educate your grandchildren.” He scribbled away at some form on his desk, ignoring Mami Luana’s stare. But Mami Luana was patient. She continued drilling her gaze in Mr. Del Vecchio’s direction, ‘til I was afraid she’d set fire to the papers on his desk.
Mami Luana stared, and Mr. Del Vecchio stared right back. Then he stood, pointed to the door, and told us not to come back ‘til the following Thursday. Julian and I shouldered our backpacks and preceded Mami Luana out. As we passed the ninth-graders, the larger one snarled menacingly, “See you Thursday,” whereupon Mami Luana froze, turned to the girls, fixed her eye upon one, then the other, and said, her voice thick with syrup, “Oh no, there’s no need to wait for Thursday. You two are welcome to come over anytime.” Her velvet tone might have fooled Mr. Del Vecchio, but the girls caught her drift. Although Mami Luana was our grandmother, hard work had made her as strong and muscular as a man. The fact that she was as black as our adversaries, while Julian and I were a more washed-out color, also carried freight.
“Yes, ma’am,” the girls grumbled, examining their shoes. For the first time in an hour, my heart felt a fluttering of hope. Perhaps we weren’t going to be pulverized when we returned on Thursday.
The three of us stepped from the air-conditioned school building into the sweltering street, where Mami Luana was again our warm and effusive grandmother.
“Aye, muchachos, que pasó? Aye Dios mio, Jessica! Let me see your mouth… ”
I tilted my swollen lip in her direction. Two tears took the chance they were seeking to escape.
“Pobrecita,” Mami Luana said. “Que hicieron ustedes? What did you do?”
“Those big kids were pushing our friend down the stairs, Mami Luana!” Julian blustered. “We were behind them and gave them a shove just to see how they liked it!”
“You started pushing those girls? The ones in the office with you?” Mami Luana was more than a little aghast.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “So they waited for us at the bottom of the stairs. They called us ‘Bit-a-shit’ and ‘wiggers.’” That might have hurt even more than the pounding. It was getting hard to talk with my swollen lip.
“Wigger? What’s a wigger?” Mami Luana asked.
I shrugged. I just knew I didn’t want to be one.
“It’s a white nigger,” Julian explained. “It means we’re fake; we’re just trying to be black.”
Mami Luana looked surprised. She’d heard of people trying to pass for white; she’d never heard of anyone trying to pass for black—especially people who were black; or at least half-black.
“Because black is cool,” Julian continued, addressing her confusion.
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Mami Luana assured him. “So then what happened?”
“We kicked their butts!” Julian crowed.
I looked at him in disbelief.
“We didn’t kick their butts,” I said, amazed at the facility with which my brother could turn a rout into a victory. He seemed to inhabit an entirely different universe. “We couldn’t even reach them, Mami Luana! They just held us at arm’s length and pounded us. If Mr. Del Vecchio hadn’t come along, they could’ve killed us!”
“Hunh!” Julian was insulted. “They’d never have killed me!”
“What happened to your friend who was being pushed?” Like a good shepherd, Mami Luana tried to steer us back to the story line.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “She ran away.”
“Ahhhh,” Mami Luana said. “You saved her.”
“Yeah, we saved her!” Julian said. “We kicked their butts and we saved her!”
I was silent a moment while I let this possibility sink in.
Julian shadow-boxed the remaining few blocks home, belting the Rocky theme song. Really, it was too hot to have so much energy. I kept my eyes on the upended sidewalks, split by oak roots, and blinked to clear the sweat from my eyes. Finally, we rounded the corner to the shelter of our two-story brick house, reassuring with its traditional posts and stately solidity. We approached the faded green door but before we crossed the threshold, Mami Luana knelt so that her face was eye-level with mine.
“Mira, muchacha, sometimes you have to fight. I’m not saying you should try to be the boss of the schoolyard, but aren’t you proud of yourself for defending your friend? How do you think she feels right now? Probably a lot better, knowing you two stood up for her. Tonight when she goes to bed, she’ll probably say a special prayer of thanks for you. Or maybe she’ll make a little altar with your pictures on it. An altar to St. Julian and St. Jessica, Protectors of Skinny Schoolgirls.” Mami Luana smiled.
“Next week when you go back to school, make sure you bring her a photograph, so she can do that.”
I shook my head at Mami Luana’s attempt to put a positive spin on the day’s debacle. But Mami Luana wasn’t finished.
“Plus, you made a statement to those bullies: Just because you’re bigger, doesn’t mean you rule. You taught them a lesson. If you mess with other people, you never know who might mess with you.”
I stole a look at Julian, who was puffed up like a rooster and scoffing at my remorse. I envied his bravado.
“But if we’re such saints, Mami Luana, how come we got suspended?”
“Aye, m’ija,” Mami Luana said. “Do you think that God and Mr. Del Vecchio are the same person? Saints are usually in trouble with the law. Why do you think they get crucified, or burned at the stake, or peor? If the powers on earth were the same as the powers of heaven, muchacha, then earth would BE heaven.”
“Great,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Death by fire or crucifixion. More to look forward to.” But when I looked at Mami Luana I saw such love and pride reflected there that I couldn’t keep feeling bad. As she rose to her feet, I circled my arms around her waist and gave her a hug, which she returned with feeling.
“Now let’s go in the house and have a slack,” she suggested. “Maybe a milkshake. Something you can get around that lip.
“It’s ‘snack’ Mami Luana,” I corrected.
“And I’ll promise you something else,” Mami Luana continued, unconcerned. “When you go to bed tonight, a story.”
“Yeah!” Julian grinned.
Even I smiled.
The above is excerpted from an unpublished novel, St. Jessica in Voodoo Land.
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