For Black Girls Like Me: Part I

Eve has the same thick brown hair and pale complexion as Mama and Papa and sometimes when you look at pictures of Mama from childhood you’d swear you were looking right at Eve.

Eve used to be a lot more fun but these days all she seems to care about are her pores texting or complaining about her mysterious “cramps” at the most inconvenient times.

And Makeda. An Ethiopian name meaning “Queen of Sheba” all because Mama read an article about famine in Ethiopia and decided to name me after a girl listed among the dead.

Mama is a solo violinist. She played with her first symphony at the age of eight. Had visited over twenty countries by the time she was my age and had played in Carnegie Hall in New York City twice before either Eve or I came along in her early twenties.
“I was a prodigy.”

We also know better than to bother her when she starts reminiscing about past concerts and recordings.

She orders a sad-looking salad while Eve and I slather our plates in so much ketchup our table looks like a mini crime scene.

Cicadas hissing all through the leaves.

And that a lot of the houses here are single-story and made of a mud called "adobe"? Everything here is the color of fire and burnt things.

We are environmentally conscious women. We just care about what we put in our bodies. What we leave on this earth.

That first night
I fight sleep
Curl in and out
Of thicket dreams

But I watch as Papa picks up his left hand and cups his callused palm and rocks it back and forth.

At lunch today I sat with a few girls but they spoke over me in Spanish and joked about my hummus and turkey sandwich.

When I’m making up or improvising songs I try to remember this.

It’s my song. I get up in my pjs and prance around the room on my tiptoes. I dip and twirl and pretend to wave scarves over my head.

The first note. Hers. Then crescendo. Her whole body singing.

“Don’t forget!” I tell him.
“Never,” he says earnestly.

“I just thought it might feel good. To play. To keep in shape. I know you are still upset about losing that gig in London this winter but...”

I hoist the dictionary off the shelf and find an empty table.

I get lost in the words. So lost that the library around me disappears. Then the squat adobe houses surrounding the library. Then the whole simmering city. Until I’m in a forest far away.

“I’m coming. Stop making such a cacophony,” I whisper-yell.

My stomach seesaws at the smell of grease and burnt cheese wafting from the kitchen.

I watch Katy saunter in and load her tray with pepperoni pizza.

All of these were names I could endure. But not this one. She cannot get away with this one.

But Mama has turned away from me and is yelling at the principal now. Something about their “incompetent teaching staff.”

How no daughter of hers will be part of a school that “condones the use of oppressive language. A school that cannot see past color and difference and accept all its students as human.”

“You each are to pick out two books. One nonfiction book about a period in history you’re interested in. One book of fiction. Classic or contemporary. And I’m going to pick up some AP English books for Eve and look at the curriculum aisle.”

You know that school is just another oppressive capitalist institution right?

And Eve and I stand behind Mama. Mortified. As he takes Mama’s credit card. And Mama just stands there. Oblivious.

And Eve and I stand behind Mama. Mortified. As he takes Mama’s credit card. And Mama just stands there. Oblivious.

I kiss its iridescent beak and put it back in the box.

She is frail. With vampire pale skin.

They wear coordinated teal and purple floral rompers but Alyse has a short bob haircut and Amy wears a long ponytail.

The whole reason I have Iocs in the first place is because she told me it was the easiest way to keep my hair nice. “Low maintenance,” she’d said.

We drive across town and pull up in front of a low building with a hot pink window decal that reads STORMY’S NATURAL HAIR & LOCS.

A black woman with the most beautiful Iocs I’ve ever seen walks over. They are thin and dyed a burgundy red with different gold beads in them. They hang regal and neat down past her shoulders. She looks like an actual queen.

"...Why try to conform to some white ideal of beauty? And your Iocs are so lovely. You must understand— ”

“This is the perfect walking stick!” he yells and then forges ahead stabbing it into the ground next to him as he powers on.

And Papa sits frozen in the pool with a sheepish look on his face until Mama yells at him to get out.

Every Wednesday morning Mrs. Umanski has been drilling us on scales arpeggios and music theory before letting us practice our new pieces.

At some point I pressed each end of the pillow so close to my ears that all I could hear were their muffled voices.