Piecing Me Together(3)

Dad saw a different future for himself too. But unlike Mom, I think I changed him in all the best ways. He’s always telling me how I made him settle down, get himself together. “And just because me and your mom didn’t work out, doesn’t mean I don’t love you,” he tells me. He lives with his girlfriend, who I actually like, even though I’d never tell Mom that. Mom never talks bad about her, but I know I am not supposed to like this woman, who knew my dad had a girlfriend, a daughter, but flirted with him anyway. This woman, who is white and everything opposite of my mom, with her college degree and good-paying job. I try to stay out of any talk about Dad, his girlfriend, and what happened with him and Mom. At least he’s in my life. A lot of my friends can’t say that. Dad calls me his queen, says I am the best thing that happened to him.

I think about this as I ride to school. How I am someone’s answered prayer but also someone’s deferred dream. The bus moves and stops, moves and stops, making its way through North Portland. We pass the transition blocks, where North Portland becomes Northeast. Within just a block or two, you stop seeing modest apartment complexes and start seeing houses and luxury apartment buildings, restaurants with outdoor patios, and shops of all kinds.

The bus stops and four people get off. A white girl gets on and goes to sit in the first empty seat she sees. She has dark brown hair pulled back and twisted into a mess of a ponytail. She is thin, so it’s easy for her to slide between the two people sitting at the front of the bus. She opens a book and disappears into it, never looking up.

We enter downtown and Book Girl is still on the bus. Anyone who stays on after this stop, besides me, is someone headed to work. She looks my age, so I doubt she’s got a job to go to. I wonder if she’s going to St. Francis.

I get off the bus at the same stop as Book Girl. She walks out the front door; I go out the back. I have never seen her before—and I would have noticed if she were taking the bus with me last year. Most of the students at St. Francis live over here, so they walk or drive to school. She is walking fast, too fast for me to catch up to, so I don’t get to ask her if she’s new. She blends into the flock of students entering the school.

There are a few sections of color in the crowd. There’s Rose, one of the other black girls here, who I thought I’d become friends with because on my first day we talked about our braids and swapped ideas for styles. She’s a year above me, so we don’t have classes together and never have the same lunch period. But whenever we see each other in the hallway, we smile. I should have told Mom about her.

Then there’s Josiah—the tech nerd who somehow in a place like this is one of the coolest, most popular guys in the school. I like him when he’s with only me, when I’m tutoring him and drilling him on Spanish vocabulary. When it’s us, he’s regular, just a black guy who loves to geek out and experiment with making apps and learning coding. He’s smart. Real smart. Just not so great at making his tongue roll an r. But when he gets around his white friends—especially the boys—he puts on a voice and uses slang and acts in ways that seem so opposite of who he really is.

Josiah stops me in the hallway. “Hey, a group of us are going to Zack’s Burgers at lunch. You in?”

“Sorry, can’t,” I tell him. “I have a meeting with Mrs. Parker.” He doesn’t have to know I can’t afford to eat out for lunch.

“Okay,” Josiah says. “Next time.” He walks away. For so many reasons, I want to say yes to him. Eating a burger at Zack’s would be so much better than eating a turkey wrap from the cafeteria, but nothing would make me miss this meeting with Mrs. Parker. I can’t wait to find out what country we’re going to, what the service learning project will be. Of everything Mrs. Parker has signed me up for, this one means the most. This time it’s not a program offering something I need, but it’s about what I can give.





4


querer

to want

I am sitting in Mr. Flores’s Spanish class, and I see that the girl from the bus is here too. Mr. Flores puts the class in pairs, and for a moment I think he’s going to have the two of us get together, but instead I am partnered with Glamour Girl. Glamour Girl is one of the few black girls in my grade. But she doesn’t exchange smiles with me in the hallway. Her real name is Kennedy, but I call her Glamour Girl because every time I see her, she is applying lip gloss or fixing her hair.

Right now her head is buried in her designer book bag. I look at all the things Glamour Girl is taking out of her bag and tossing onto the desk: a cell phone, a makeup carrier, a coin purse the same color as her bag, a small bottle of lotion, two kinds of lip gloss—one with a pink tint, the other clear—a debit card, and a small tin of peppermints.

I stare at the mints, and my stomach growls. Loud. I wish I could silence it. Big girls can’t have growling stomachs.

Glamour Girl curses. She can’t find her pen. I’m not surprised. I’ve never seen her with anything school-related. She puts everything back into her bag. Except the mints. She opens the tin and takes out one round candy. As soon as she puts it into her mouth, I smell peppermint and my stomach rumbles again.

“You want one?” Glamour Girl asks. But she is not talking to me. She is tapping the shoulder of the girl in front of her. Then everyone around us is reaching their greedy fingers into the tin, taking out small round candies. Someone passes the tin to me. There aren’t any whole ones left. Just peppermint dust and a few that are broken in half. I take two halves and rest them on my tongue. I close my eyes and suck hard, savoring the cool flavor.