The Skin I’m In Quotes

The first time I seen her, I got a bad feeling inside. Not like I was in danger or nothing. Just like she was somebody I should stay clear of. To tell the truth, she was a freak like me. The kind of person folks can’t help but tease. That’s bad if you’re a kid like me. It’s worse for a new teacher like her.

“Thank you,” she says, walking off. Then she stops stone still, like some bright idea has just come to her, turns around, and heads back my way. My skin starts to crawl before she even opens her mouth. “Maleeka, your skin is pretty. Like a blue-black sky after it’s rained and rained,” she says. Then she smiles and explains how that line comes from a favorite poem of hers. Next thing I know, she’s heading down the hall again like nothing much happened.

John-John McIntyre is the smallest seventh grader in the world. Even fifth graders can see over his head. Sometimes I have a hard time believing he and me are both thirteen. He’s my color, but since second grade he’s been teasing me about being too black. Last year, when I thought things couldn’t get no worse, he came up with this here song. Now, here this woman comes talking that black stuff. Stirring him up again.

It’s bad enough that I’m the darkest, worst-dressed thing in school. I’m also the tallest, skinniest thing you ever seen. And people like John-John remind me of it every chance they get. They don’t say nothing about the fact that I’m a math whiz, and can outdo ninth graders when it comes to figuring numbers. Or that I got a good memory and never forget one single, solitary thing I read. They only see what they see, and they don’t seem to like what they see much.

Charlese, she’s crazylike. Next thing I know, she’s telling Miss Saunders to mind her own business. She says something about her face. Worm’s telling Char to cool it. He’s dragging her down the hall with his hand covering her big mouth. The new teacher don’t know when to quit. She tells Worm to hold on a minute. Then she says her piece. She’s letting Charlese know that she’s traveled all over the world, and there’s nothing Charlese can say about her face that she ain’t heard in at least four different languages.

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.

“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.

At school, everybody’s staring at me. Even John-John’s doing a double-take. When I walk into class, all eyes is on me. Char’s the only one that’s got something negative to say.

“So your momma finally broke down and bought you some clothes. About time,” she says, as soon as we get to Miss Saunders’s class.

Day in and day out Kinjari eyes me, staring like he sees the sun rising in my eyes. I want to ask him why he looks at me that way. Am I something so beautiful he can’t help but stare? I keep quiet. Beauty is where one finds it, my father used to say. […]

I was sick, bad, for a long while. When I woke up, Kinjari was gone. Dead. “He had the mark. The pocks,” the girl chained to me said, sucking her front teeth like they was soup bones. “The slavers tossed him over the side,” she said.

But this one, she steals my food. Can I trust her with the truth? I don’t know.

I didn’t plan it that way. I just froze, I guess. The school is so big. So clean. So fancy. And them girls…they looked like they come out of a magazine. Long, straight hair. Skin the color of potato chips and cashews and Mary Jane candies. No Almond Joy-colored girls like me. No gum-smacking, wisecracking girls from my side of town.

That didn’t bother Sweets none. She says she deserves to be in that school as much as anyone.

“You got the right color skin,” I said, poking her fat tan face.

“It’s not about color,” she said. “It’s how you feel about who you are that counts.”

I jump off the sink and lean close to the mirror on the wall, and think of Daddy. “Maleeka,” he used to say, “you got to see yourself with your own eyes. That’s the only way you gonna know who you really are.”

I reach down into my bag and pull out the little hand mirror Daddy gave me and look at myself real good. My nose is running. I blow it and throw the tissue away. I splash some water on my face and pat it dry. I reach deep down into my pocketbook and pull out the little jar of Vaseline and shine up my lips. Then I ball up my cap, stuff it in my backpack, and walk right on out of there.

“New clothes, huh?” he says, trying to be smart.

I stop walking and turn to him and ask real smart like, “Why you always picking on me?” I ain’t sure what’s come over me. I guess thinking about Akeelma makes me wonder why people treat others like they’re nothing.

“Chill, Maleeka,” John-John says, strutting down the hall alongside me. He gets quiet, and I hear his big sneakers squeaking every time they hit the floor.

He says something stupid-crazy. Says it was back in second grade when I first moved to the Heights. I walked into class that first day with my new pink polka-dotted dress on and black patent leather shoes. The teacher told me to sit in the desk next to his. I said I didn’t want to. I wanted to sit in the one up front, next to Caleb.

“That half-white punk,” John-John says, knowing full well Caleb ain’t mixed.

Now my mouth’s hanging open. “I didn’t even know Caleb back then,” I say. “I wanted to sit up front, ‘cause I couldn’t see the board,” I explain. […]

“No matter,” he says. “You given me plenty of reasons not to like you since then. Thinking you super-smart. Acting like you too good for me.”

The class gets so quiet, it’s scary. “I was ten years old and brushing her teeth, feeding her oatmeal like a baby. She cried all the time. Last year, she finally came to. Got up one day, went and bought a sewing machine, and started making clothes. Ain’t never sewed nothing before. Just started, day and night, sewing.”

Some kids at the back of the room start to snicker and make smart remarks. Shut up, I’m thinking. Just shut up.

“The more she sewed them clothes, the better she got. She started picking up after herself. Got a job and all. No, ain’t nothing good come from loving somebody so much you can’t live without ‘em,” I say. “No good at all.”

Mostly I’m thinking and writing in my diary—our diary, Akeelma’s and mine. Lately it’s hard to know where Akeelma’s thoughts begin and mine end. I mean, I might be starting off with her talking about how scared she is with the smallpox spreading around the ship and killing people. Then I end up the same paragraph with Akeelma saying she’s scared that maybe people will always think she’s ugly. But I’m really talking about myself. I’m scared people will always think I’m ugly.

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.

The words is written out real neat and straight and strong.

Brown
Beautiful
Brilliant
My my Maleeka
is
Brown
Beautiful
Brilliant
Mine

Momma is calling me. I can’t answer. My mouth is full of Daddy’s words, and my head is remembering him again. Tall, dark, and smiling all the time. Then gone when his cab crashed into that big old bread truck. Gone away from me for good, till now.

At midnight, if you have eyes to see
There’s beauty and there’s majesty.

Char don’t understand what’s going on with me. She looks at me and calls me stupid, the way I’m smiling to myself.

“Listen up, Maleeka,” Caleb says, grabbing hold of my arm, and whispering in my ear. “Your girl Char is whacked. You better stay clear of her before she ends up taking you down with her.”

“Char and me are friends,” I say quietly.

“Yeah, right,” Caleb says, shaking his head. “Char’s the kind of friend that will get you locked up or shot up,” he says, walking away.

“This ain’t right,” I whisper.

Char grabs hold of my hand, and says, “Do it, or I ain’t never gonna bring you no clothes.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“You protecting Miss Saunders?” Char wants to know. “You protecting that hussy? Why? She don’t like you, neither. All the time making a fool out of you in class. You stupid girl. Do like I say or I’ll do something to mess you up.”

“All I done for you,” Char says. “You gonna leave me out to dry like this. Wait till later, you ugly, stupid black thing.”

Call me by my name! I hear Akeelma say, and I scream it out, too. “Call me by my name! I am not ugly. I am not stupid. I am Maleeka Madison, and, yeah, I’m black, real black, and if you don’t like me, too bad ‘cause black is the skin I’m in!”

Charlese gives me a hard look.

She pushes past Miss Saunders and me and makes her way to the door. “Look at you two—two ugly-faced losers,” she says. Miss Saunders don’t even stop Char. She lets her go. Then Miss Saunders hugs me to her, and I feel safe inside.

Would you be my Almond Joy
My chocolate chip, my Hershey Kiss
My sweet dark chocolate butter crisp?

Caleb’s poem makes me cry. It is so sweet. I look at my face in the mirror and smile. I promise myself to hang Caleb’s poem on the wall with Daddy’s and the one from the library.