Into White (7 page)

I gave a quick wave, hung my head, and walked into the principal's office. Alex and I called the principal's secretary, Ms. Wade, the Gatekeeper, since she wouldn't allow any student to see the principal unless they were near death, and even then it was debatable. We slowly approached the counter. “What can I do you for?” She didn't bother looking up from her JC Penney catalog.

“Uh, well, ma'am, I need to register an exchange student,” announced Alex.

“Where from?” she said, not once diverting her eyes from the damn catalog.

“Kansas City, Kansas,” I blurted, before Alex had a chance to say Sweden. I really didn't want to fake an accent for the rest of my life.

“Form's over there.” She flicked her head toward a desk covered with stacks of papers. “Pink one.”

The form was simple. Name, address, telephone number, how long you're planning to stay (which we left blank because God only knew), what you hope to learn while you're here, and other crap like that. We filled the lines with stuff they wanted to hear, like
I hope to learn why Alabama is the greatest place on Earth, how Montgomery overcame such adversity, and the power of nationwide democracy and patriotism blah blah blah
. In actuality, Montgomery had accomplished very little as far as I was concerned. Sure the buses were integrated—the Rosa Parks statue on the corner of South Jackson Street proved it—but racism was just as rampant as before; only cleverly hidden. We handed the application to the Gatekeeper.

“Grade?” she asked.

“Tenth.” Since I'd nearly failed the tenth as Toya, I decided I might as well give it another shot.

She fumbled through a few files and pulled out a sample schedule. “Here are your classes.” She picked up the JC Penney catalog and proceeded to ignore us. I liked JC Penney as much as the next red-blooded American, but come on, lady!

“All right, then, little sister,” Alex whispered. “I have to go to class. Think you can handle this?”

“Yeah, I think so.” I was so scared I could hardly breathe. I wouldn't see him until three o'clock. “I'll meet you right here after school?”

He nodded and walked away.

I watched him disappear, unable to move until he was completely out of sight. Looking over the schedule, I realized my first period was Alabama History with Mrs. Roseland, a sweet old Jewish woman who wore more red lipstick on her teeth and coffee cup than she did on her lips. I walked to her closed door and held my fist in the air for a good half a minute before working up the nerve to knock.

You are a strong girl. A strong, capable white girl.

“Coming, coming, coming,” said Mrs. Roseland.

Last year, she offered Alex and me a ride home. It was raining, pouring, actually, and we'd barely made it off school grounds before the tornado sirens began howling. She pulled over to the side of the road, flung her passenger-side door open, and yelled for us to get in. She blasted Christmas tunes the majority of the ride home. I appreciated that she didn't show outward pity for the poor Williams siblings nearly sucked up by a tornado.

“Why are you listening to Christmas music?” Alex asked before I poked him in his side. “Ow! I'm just saying. Aren't you Jewish? Ow!”

“Sorry, Mrs. Roseland,” I said, eyeballing him. “Sometimes his curiosity gets the better of him.”

“No, no, no need to apologize,” she'd replied, yelling over the squeaking windshield wipers. She flipped her
Coexist
key chain and went into full history-teacher mode, explaining that most wars were initiated by minor religious differences. Then she transitioned with, “But to tell you the truth, I just love Christmas—the music, the ticker tapes,
The Santa Clause
, and back-to-back Will Ferrell dressed as an elf. It's just plain fun.”

She chattered until we pulled into the empty castle's driveway. She'd simply given us the ride, bid us farewell, and never brought it up again. Mrs. Roseland was one of only a few teachers at Edgewood High that I genuinely liked.

The classroom door creaked open. “What can I do for you this morning, young lady?” she asked. She wore a frilly, knee-length red skirt paired with a crisp pink collared shirt and kitten heels. I'd never seen her wear the same outfit twice, but her look never veered too far from home base—splashy, vibrant color, and heels so low they may as well have been flats.

“I am an exchange student, Katarina from Kansas City.” I used my own voice with an extra dash of exuberance.

“Kansas City, Missouri, or Kansas City, Kansas?” she asked, laughing at herself.

“Uhhh…”

“Oh. Oh. Oh. Class. Class. Class.” Mrs. Roseland had a habit of saying certain words in threes. “Do we know where Kansas City is on the map?” She unrolled the giant map hanging from the ceiling.

Uh-oh.

“Katarina. Katarina. Katarina. Would you point out your lovely city for the class?”

Why the freaking hell did I choose Kansas? There were at least twenty-five middle states that I knew absolutely nothing about, and Kansas was one of them. Dwarfed by the map, those states were jumbled up in the Midwest or Mideast, above California, near Seattle, and the Grand Canyon, and/or Arizona, by the desert plains of Middle-earth. I focused until I finally saw rectangular Kansas located in the literal middle of the country. But no cities were labeled. I had no clue where to point.

My eyes closed automatically. “Jesus.” I'd said it before I'd realized.

“Excuse me?” Mrs. Roseland replied. My eyes opened to Jesus standing behind Mrs. Roseland, pointing at tiny Kansas City on the giant wall-sized map. Everyone gawked at me, and no one paid any attention to the magical man standing at the head of the class. Clearly, no one else saw him. I went with it.

“Oh, no worries, I would be happy to.” I curtsied. It just seemed appropriate to curtsy. Jesus's finger vanished milliseconds before my finger touched the map. “Oh, I see! Missouri and Kansas share Kansas City.”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Mrs. Roseland gave me a round of applause like I had invented the Pythagorean theorem or something. “Most people don't realize this fact. They automatically think Kansas City must be in Kansas. People are so ill informed about the middle states.”

“Ah, yes,” I chuckled with her. “Oh, so very ill informed.”

A handful of boys joined in her ovation. Their eyes stripped every inch of clothing right off my body. I'd waited for this moment since I was a little girl, to be desired, to be wanted, to be the center of attention for being anything other than a stumblebum.

Instead of enjoying it, I hurried to the first empty seat to make sure my headlights weren't penetrating my lace shirt. Of course, that would be impossible, since I'd pulled out the heavy-duty, big-titty bra. I'd bought it as a Halloween costume while thrifting with Mom a few years back. Titty-Head, a female superhero who soared through the air with the help of her trusty pink cape and big-titty bra. That Halloween, I locked myself in my room and jogged figure eights around my bed, never revealing Titty-Head to anyone, not even Alex. I think I was going through some type of rebellion that year. Edgewood could do that to a girl, especially a black one.

I'd never felt so many eyes focused on me. Even when I closed my eyes for long blinks, I felt them. So many eyes. Eyes studying my eyes. Eyes sizing up my clothes. Eyes checking out my shoes. Eyeballing my big-titty bra. Eyes every freaking where. Even Mrs. Roseland's smiling eyes scrutinized me. I liked Mrs. Roseland, but damn. I chalked it up to some sort of new-girl disease and told myself it would subside after a few days. Plus, Jesus would surely be disappointed if I complained on the second day. Really, though, it wasn't Jesus who scared me. It was his dad. In the Sunday school picture Bible, he looked like Zeus on the mountaintop, searching for some ungrateful maggot to strike down. I didn't want to be that maggot, so I kept my trap shut.

Mrs. Roseland went on for an hour about the fighting tarpon, Alabama's state saltwater fish. Every few sentences she paused and said, “Anybody want to add anything? Anybody? Anybody? Anybody?” Crickets chirped in return. After the fourth effort, I felt sorry for her, but I couldn't afford to raise my hand, seeing that I was technically visiting from Kansas/Missouri, and I shouldn't know diddly about the state fish.

When Mrs. Roseland turned her back, a crooked paper airplane sailed across the room, poked me in the shoulder blade, and landed nose-first in the cleavage of my big-titty bra. When Raymond Neily smirked and avoided eye contact, I knew who had thrown it. Dumbass. And I don't use the word
dumbass
lightly; he really was, truly, in every sense of the word, a dumbass. Halfway through seventh grade, he taped a
KICK MY BROTHER
sign on my backpack, and vice versa on Alex's. I saw Alex's first and then he saw mine. That was the singular event that turned the tides for us. We went from regular kids to school jesters and never quite lived it down. Still, I couldn't resist. I unfolded the airplane.

Nice tits

See what I mean? The worst part was he probably thought it was a compliment.

Should I ball it up and throw it back? Or would a white chick dig that type of stuff?

Jesus?

No, I needed to handle this on my own. I refolded the airplane and shot it in his direction. Unfortunately for me, it hit an innocent redhead in the eyelid. “Hey!”

But the class was over and I was saved by the bell. Well, not a bell exactly: After an extensive case study in human behavior, the Montgomery County Board of Education installed ocean sounds in the place of bells. They were supposed to be calming but didn't change the frenzy in the hallways as far as I could tell. Just another inessential ornament to spend their money on.

I quickly gathered my things to scuttle out the door.

“'Ey!” Deanté yelled after me. “'Ey! 'Ey!”

I hurried along, pretending not to hear him.

The halls filled quickly. Waves of teenagers crisscrossed one another to get to their classes, a synchronized dance. The only thing out of place was me. The seas parted on my approach. Girlfriends elbowed boyfriends, cheerleaders looked at their feet. Football players, dance girls, flag girls, even mathletes hushed in my presence. It was like the first scene of
The Lion King
, when the entire forest of African animals travel to catch a glimpse of Simba's birth.

From the day she arrived at our high school,

Her big-titty bra stepped into the sun,

There's more to see than could ever be seen,

More to do than could ever be done.

But it wasn't Simba or Toya, it was Katarina who was parting the Edgewood seas, reshuffling the circle of life, finally ruling the school. No, not Katarina. Me.

And for the first time in my life, I felt powerful.

 

KATARINA ASCENDING

That was it: The door slammed on Toya, and Katarina emerged the victorious one. The hallway was a pressure cooker of emotion. Enthusiasm and horniness from the boys, fear and anger from the girls. I straightened my spine until it hurt;
America's Next Top Model
judges said that the less comfortable you felt, the better you looked. So be it. Familiar eyes pored over me, but instead of avoiding the stares, I now bathed in them.

I deliberately dropped my mechanical pencil. “Oh!” I said. Everyone stopped. Everyone! I bent down slowly, tooting my butt into the air to retrieve it. Mid-bend, the ocean waves stopped swooshing over the intercom, yet no one scrambled for class. Only silence. Stillness. Control.

I picked up the pencil and went on to my next class, and so did everyone else.

*   *   *

My remaining classes brought more of the same. That day produced two more folded notes from guys, more eye rolls from girls than I could count, and an invitation to join the show choir without even trying out. The frilly note had been slipped through the slits of my locker, and it was marked
Confidential
in big red letters. The eye rolls made me feel triumphant. The fact that I could evoke visceral expressions of angst from rich white girls put a little extra pep in my step. The show choir invite, on the other hand, pissed me off. Toya had tried out for show choir three times and never made it. How was that fair?

“Hey, Katarina! Wait up!” I stopped at the sound of Alex's voice.

“Alex, hey,” I whispered. “Let's go over here by the lockers.” I led him from the hallway to a more secluded alcove.

“Why are we whispering?”

“No reason,” I said. “Just don't want too many people asking questions. That's all.”

“Makes sense,” he said, matching my whisper. “You holding up okay?”

“Yeah, I'm great, actually.”

“Okay, just checking in. I want the play-by-play. See you at three.”

Swim was my next and final class. As Toya, I'd never once dressed out for swim class. You'd think white people would see that black people dominate every sport with one glaring exception—swimming. Why? Aunt Evilyn would say,
Cuckabugs and chlorine should never live in the same place
. She was absolutely right about that one. Also, ethnic butts burst out of swimsuit bottoms. Ask any black female over the age of twelve what's on her mind when she's wearing a swimsuit; if she answers honestly, she'll say her rear end. Some smart entrepreneur should invent ethnic bathing suits and chlorine substitute so blacks can finally take the sport of swimming from white people.

But I didn't have to worry about such nonsense any longer. Our swim teacher, Miss Baker, offered me a loaner suit. After stepping out of the stall, I could hear a pin drop in the locker room. The high-cut bright red one-piece made me look like a younger
Baywatch
babe. Usually that locker room was every boy's fantasy, nakedness all over the place. But that day, even the cutest girls with the tightest butts kept their towels firmly shut until they reached the pool. I, on the other hand, deserted my towel and switched my skinny hips to the edge of the water. I danced a big toe on the surface, teasing my crowd. Finally, I sat on the rim, arched my back, and slid in slowly. I reveled in the floating sensation. I'd never actually allowed my hair into any body of water other than the bathtub.