Into White (3 page)

As I entered the bathroom, other students ran to make their first classes; still, I checked every single stall for feet. My heart punched my chest so loudly it felt like the drum line took a detour through the restroom. Stress sweat made my pits smell oniony and gross, and telltale white-girl pink targets flushed my cheeks, showing the world my awkwardness. I turned toward the mirror to rebraid my hair for comfort. I still couldn't believe the reflection staring back at me. My skin glowed golden, and my eyes sparkled like bright blue marbles. Perfection. Sweaty, oniony perfection, but perfection nonetheless.

“Lord have mercy.” I paced back and forth alone in the bathroom when another dilemma plagued my thoughts. Did I sound white enough? “Lawd, hayuv mercy,” I said to my reflection, attempting a white Southern drawl. I threw the back of my hand to my forehead. “Oh, Lawd have mercy.” The reflection was right, but the voice was all wrong, and Deanté could spot a phony from a hundred paces. I started to panic. “What have I done?”

I needed to know if I sounded black, so I decided to call the most honest Southerner I knew. I tiptoed out of the girls' room and down the empty hall toward the media center. I let out an involuntary sigh after a quick glance at the magazine display. The April issues of
Teen Vogue
,
Seventeen
, and
Cosmo
were in, hot off the presses. All covers featured the blond, the blue eyed, the skinny, and the white, of course. I stroked my own soft waves for reassurance.

Thank God.

I reached the shiny black no-pay pay phone in the far left corner of the media center. It looked like a pay phone, smelled like a pay phone, felt like a pay phone, but when you picked up the receiver, you got a happy dial tone without depositing any coins. The no-pay pay phone was there for the handful of bused-in students whose parents couldn't afford to give them a cell. Everybody knew that the old-as-dirt, hard-of-hearing media center helper slept on the job, so she wouldn't be a bother. I sat on the counter and dialed my evil aunt, Evilyn. I always felt that my grandmother knew what she was doing when she put
evil
in her name.

“Hello,” she said, her voice deeply twanged with sugar-sweet deception.

“Aunt Evilyn? It's Toya.”

“Oh, hey there. It's been a while since I heard from you, little girl,” she replied. Her nickname for me had always been “little girl,” and I'd often wondered if she knew my real name.

“Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry, I've been busy with school and stuff.”

“Lies! I know your mama doesn't make you and your brother go to school. Y'all at home every other day. You flunking out? You must be flunking out. Keep that up and y'all are going to be losers. I don't want no losers in my family, you hear? You know your cousin Joyce is in her sophomore year at University of Alabama?”

“Yes, Aunt Evilyn, I've heard.” She'd bragged on her daughter's success since as far back as I could remember. In high school, Joyce wore peacoats and pearls year-round to please Evilyn, but she secretly despised her mother. Two days after her graduation, she blazed rubber toward Tuscaloosa, grew a giant Afro, and pawned her pearls for off-campus housing.

“You should model yourself after someone like Joyce. She went a little off the deep end at UA, but she ain't never been no loser. Of course, your daddy's a loser, but he ain't blood. He ain't—”

“All right! Thank you for that, Aunt Evilyn. I have a question for you.”

“Yes, baby?” she replied. That voice was like Splenda: You might be fooled at first by the sweetness, but it will leave a damn nasty aftertaste and may just cause testicular cancer in laboratory rats.

“Do I talk white or black?”

“You sound like a white girl to me. Your skin is the darkest in the family, but even when you were a little girl, you always talked proper. You get that skin from your daddy's side, by the way. When you came out of your mama, I knew you would turn black like your daddy, because your ears were darker than the rest of your body. I said, Lord have mercy, that child is gonna be the blackest of all of us, and Lord said it to be true. I was right. You a dark little girl—”

“All right! Thank you, Aunt Evil One, I mean Evilyn.” I hung up.

Aunt Evilyn could inhale the joy from a room and breathe out only bad things. I knew it, Dad knew it, Alex knew it, hell, her own daughter knew it. The only somebody in town that didn't was my mother—Evilyn's only real soft spot. Aunt Evilyn treated my mother like a breakable bit of priceless china. Every time Evilyn looked at my mom, her eyes filled up in weird ways like she wanted to cry but couldn't allow anyone to see it. Evilyn was seventeen when Mom was born, and since my grandparents had no business having more children, Evilyn took on my mom as her own. She'd always loved my mother more than anyone or anything on this earth. As a child, my mother all but belonged to her older sister, and in many ways, she still does.

After one last eye roll at the no-pay pay phone, I gathered my things and tipped past the fast-asleep media center attendant and out the door, only to run head-on into Alex.

“What's going on with you?” he asked.

 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

My mouth fell open. Alex had radar that beeped like a garbage truck when I was troubled. I was cast as the only black Pick-a-Little Lady in our over-the-top production of
The Music Man
. When the teacher found out that I was failing everything but girls' choir, she kicked me out—
beep beep beep!
My big brother was there. Or that time in ninth grade when I slowly stuttered my way through a passage from
Our Town
in English class
, beep beep beep!
He was in the hallway, waiting to walk me home. I could read, just not in front of all those uppities with their fancy seersucker shorts and Lunchables. Of course my dream in life was to be one of those uppities, but I never claimed to be logical.

As he stared, my palms dampened and dread passed through my belly, resulting in a low stomach growl. For the first time in my life, I was lost for words with my big brother. There he was, brow wrinkled with worry, eyes darting across my face in search of something only he could read.

“You skipped first period,” he said, still squinting, searching my face for valid reasoning. I forced my mouth shut, but it was too late. He knew that was one of my facial tics. “That's it, let's blow this Popsicle stand. You got everything?” When I nodded, he grabbed my forearm and pulled me toward the janitor's exit.

“After what Deanté did yesterday, we should've just stayed home, anyway. That bastard. A powerless people turns on itself. That damn Deanté proves it.” Alex's breathing quickened.

“Wow, Alex. Did you just come up with that?”

“Nope, Cornel West.” He stopped to check around a corner. “Coast is clear. This way,” he whispered.

I followed him closely, eager to shift the attention away from me. “We shouldn't skip. You're the one who told Mom we were going to get kicked out if we missed any more days.”

“Something's going on with you. I can tell.” We tipped down the hall. “You need a day.”

“'Ey! 'Ey! Where y'all headed?” My heart jumped at the sound of Deanté's voice.

“My God.” I stopped.

“Keep walking, Toya,” said Alex, without looking back. “Leave us alone, Deanté!”

“Wait up, dude. We cool, I just wanted to ask y'all something.” I could tell from his voice that he was gaining on us.

“Toya, go.” Alex shoved me through the janitor's exit and stayed behind. I pressed my ear to the steel door to listen. “Look, if you don't leave my sister alone, you'll be sorry—I swear it.”

“What you gone do?” Deanté chuckled.

“I don't want any trouble.” Alex's speech was sharp and strong, which surprised me, since he hated confrontation just as much as I did. “Leave us alone.”

“That girl is extra fine. What's up with her?”

“Deanté, stop treating my little sister like Hester Prynne.” Something rose from my brother's voice that I'd never heard before. “Don't test me.”

I cracked the door to see a mix of fear and confusion in Deanté's eyes. He began backing away. “Aight, then, flunk out if y'all want to.”

A few seconds later, Alex slid through the door. “Ready?”

I looked up at him, amazed. “Thanks,” I told him, not wanting to address the threat. “Who's Hester Prynne?”

He took the books from my hands and mussed my hair. “Wait, you're serious?” I shrugged and he continued, “
Scarlet Letter
?”

“Never read it,” I said.

“Toya!” He threw his hands up. “Hester Prynne is the lady who has to wear a red
A
because she committed adultery in Puritan Boston in 1642.”

“And how am I anything like her?”

“Because the crowd gathers to witness her public humiliation. Toya, I know you're not a Puritan.” He laughed at his own joke. “And you're definitely not a floozy. Come on, I have a copy in my room. Let's go home.”

Our empty castle was a sturdy three miles away, with the last quarter mile all uphill. No
Sound of Music
rolling hill, either—I'm talking full-on stall-out-a-stick-shift, burn-your-legs-off, heart-attack hill. It was the tallest, most daunting hill in Edgewood—almost impossible to conquer.

When we first moved to Edgewood, I named it “the big hill,” but after a few failed climb attempts, Alex rechristened it after his favorite X-Men character, Colossus. In his comic's mutant form, Colossus is by far the strongest member of the team. At almost eight feet tall and made of steel, he towers over Wolverine, Cyclops, and of course, Professor Xavier. Alex loves Colossus because he could easily use his height to intimidate or strong-arm, though he never does. Instead he's soft-spoken, honest, and sweet-natured. Alex once told me he thought Colossus would make the perfect Alabamian. Only he was from
the Alabama of the future
. Alex said the phrase in passing, but it stuck with me since I knew what he meant.
The Alabama of the future:
where Deanté's reign of terror is finally finished.
The Alabama of the future:
where Alex's kid sister doesn't ask God for the power to change her race.

Colossus, the big hill, was an hour away from Edgewood High on foot, an hour and a half if we stopped at Brookland Mall to go fishing for quarters in the fountain. Which meant I had at least a sixty-minute walk to convince my black sibling, birthed of our black mother, fathered by our black father, that I was white.

By the time we'd cleared school grounds and entered the creepy foot trail in the woods, the naked tree limbs cast eerie shadows that made the path floor look alive. I usually quick-walked through, but that day I took my time. “I got something going on that I need to tell you about,” I said, already chewing at loose skin on my fingernail bed.

“I know you're really a sophomore,” he blurted.

“What?” Alex always attempted to guess the topic rather than exercise patience and listen. He was rarely correct. No, scratch that—he was never correct.

“I know that you don't have enough credits to technically qualify as a junior, but I'll fix that. I asked Mrs. Roseland if you could do some extra credit to make up those missed tests. She agreed. I'll ask a few of your other teachers later this week. I wanted word to get around in the teachers' lounge that your big brother cared enough to ask. Teachers like that type of stuff.”

“What do you mean I'm really a sophomore?” I asked. “I'm taking junior-level English.”

“I blame Mom and Dad. I read a study about tiger moms; they're, like, the ultimate helicopter parents. They destroy their kids' toys if they don't do their homework. Destroy! Like bite the head off the Barbie, and stab Cabbage Patch type stuff. That's why their kids wind up at Harvard and Yale and places. The only thing our parents ever made us do was watch reruns of
Unsolved Mysteries
. Actually, I think they might be certifiably insane.” His eyes darted around the woods, and he dropped his voice to a whisper. “Do you think we should have them committed?”

“No, Alex. Where would we go? Foster parents in Montgomery, Alabama, would turn us into Miss Celie and Harpo slaves like in
The Color Purple
.” I realized I should probably look into that whole sophomore thing. “I have something to tell you, seriously.”

“Found one!” He bent down to snag a dirty quarter. Since our parents never adequately stocked the refrigerator with anything other than freaking black-eyed freaking peas, we had a running quarter collection game. Quarters are everywhere if you look hard enough. Every day we gathered as many quarters as possible and pooled them together for dinnertime McChickens and the occasional Quarter Pounder. Alex always won. He was a quarter-spotting genius. I swear, the thing could be half-buried a mile up the road and he would say,
I think I see a quarter up ahead
.

“I have something to tell you,” I repeated. “Did you hear me?”

“Did you hear
me
? I found another quarter,” he said, amazed that I wasn't more excited.

At that point I realized there was no ideal time to tell my brother. I decided to rip off the Band-Aid. “I'm white,” I blurted.

He twirled the found quarter between his thumb and index finger. “It's a bit bent. Do you think McDonald's will still take it?”

“Alex!” I squealed, getting frustrated. “Listen.”

“All right, all right.” He glided the quarter into his pocket. “What do you mean you're white? Like white as in white? Or white as in white?” He was dead serious, too.

“White.” I unbraided my hair and held it out for him to touch. “Here, feel this. Jesus said that my family wouldn't see me as everybody else does, but maybe you can feel the hair. Try it.”