No Laughter Here (6 page)

Victoria wasn't in the library. She was sitting out
by the hopscotches like she did during recess.

“Here you are,” I said as if I had just discovered her. In reality I stood and watched her for a while before I came out into the school yard. “I went to the library looking for you.”

She didn't answer me, but I felt her willing me to sit next to her, so I did. We sat for a long time. Two or three minutes. Then she turned to me and said, “I don't look like that.”

I didn't understand what she meant, but I knew she'd explain. As I sat waiting, a happiness ran through me. Like Christmas morning at six
A.M
. I was finally getting what I wanted. Today Victoria would return to me from wherever she had been.

Looking at me directly and not staring off, she said, “Akilah. What I am going to tell you is a secret.”

We were already practically breath to breath, but I managed to move in closer.

“You cannot tell anyone.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Not
okay
,” she said. “
Okay
isn't good enough. You must take a vow. Repeat after me: If I should tell, I will die.”

I was stunned.

“Say it.” She sounded like the real Victoria. I took her seriously.

“If I should tell, I will die.”

“I will not tell my mother.”

“I will not tell my mother.”

“Even if she beats me.”

“My mother wouldn't—”

“Say it.”

“Even if she beats me.” I laughed to myself. Auntie Cass wouldn't hesitate to draw her belt, but my mother would never, ever hit me.

“I will not tell a soul. Dead or alive.”

I wanted to giggle when she said “dead.” She raised her eyebrows. I repeated after her, “Dead or alive.”

“Now show me your hands,” she said. “I don't want you to cross your fingers.”

I placed my hands on my lap where she could see them.

“Say I will not tell God, not even in my prayers.”

My mother would have said, “God already knows,” but I didn't dare. I said, “I will not tell God, not even in my prayers.”

“Or I will die in Victoria's eyes, for she will no longer be my true friend.”

I repeated all of it. A few minutes of silence passed before she said, “They showed the picture of the baby girl in class.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don't look like that.”

I didn't know what she meant. A chubby, white, baby girl with her legs open, showing her privates.

“Of course you don't look like her. I don't either.” In fact, before Victoria left for Africa we compared our soft, fuzzy hair growing down below. Mine was more visible than hers.

“I don't have what girls have,” she told me.

I still didn't know what she meant.

“They took it while I was sleeping.”

“Took it?” She made no sense.

“My mother. My Auntie Omodara and Auntie Olefemi. My Grandmother Iyapo. They took me to see Doctor Ajala. I thought for more shots or to look at my teeth.

“First my mother inspected Doctor Ajala's knife, and then she told him to put me to sleep first. My aunties started yelling at my mother. They said things like, ‘Do you think we will fail to hold her down?' My grandmother said she could have done it at home without so much fuss. She had done many girls, but my mother was very strong. ‘We are modern,' she said. Then the doctor told everyone to be quiet. He could lose his license because it was illegal.”

“Illegal?”

“Illegal. When he said
illegal
, my mind imagined the worst. I thought, How could my mother make us do something so horrible the doctor could lose his license? I could not imagine what it was. I was not sick. I did not need to see a doctor.

“But my aunties and grandmother would not stop yelling at her and at Doctor Ajala.

“My mother remained strong. She wouldn't give in to her sisters or her mother. She said things I was not accustomed to hearing her say. Do not ask me to repeat them.”

She read my mind so well.

“Then the doctor put me to sleep.”

“To sleep?”

“While he operated.”

“Operated?” Now I sounded like Victoria had when she first returned. Repeating and questioning. My mind raced with horror and curiosity, and yet I made no pictures for what she was telling me. It was as though the picture-making part of my brain had shut down.

“When I woke up, I thought I was dead inside my body. I could see, but I could not move. Then feeling came back to me slowly, not on the inside, but outside of my body. Like I was a ghost, visiting Grandmother Iyapo's house. Sound around me did not seem real. I heard music, but it seemed far away, like echoes. I heard laughter and talking, but it didn't seem real.

“I still did not know what had happened to me. I did not remember coming back to Grandmother's house. I
called for my mother. She helped me to the bathroom. I could barely stand. She had to hold me when I squatted. My ghost body fled, and my real body returned. When the pee came out of me, I screamed. I was being burned alive, but there were no flames creeping up my legs. For weeks and weeks I stood in a pot of fire.”

“Fire?” I slowly began to feel, although I still couldn't picture anything. Only
knife, took, fire
.

She knew this and said, “Have you ever played Touch My Raisin?”

I nodded.

“And it felt good and tickly when you touched it?”

Only to Victoria could I admit this. “Umhm,” I said.

“So good you didn't want to stop?”

I nodded again.

She pointed between her legs to what I call private place, the
Paths to Discovery
video calls genitals, and kids on the playground have nasty names for. She said, “When I was sleeping, they took my raisin.”

My belly flopped. I felt dizzy. I didn't expect to hear what she told me.

“Mum said not to cry. All proper Nigerian girls have this done to stop the feeling.”

“Stop the feeling?”

She said, “The feeling that comes from touching your raisin. I still cry.”

“That's okay.”

Victoria whispered, “When we returned home, you know, to Queens?”

I nodded.

“I locked myself in my room and got my mirror to squat over it and see. Akilah, after they took my raisin, they sewed my skin together to hide what they did.”

I couldn't stand my father's voice calling me
puddin
' at the dinner table. The sweet stickiness of it turned the butter beans in my mouth sour. It made me sick, then angry, then mad.

“Can I be excused?”

I went up to my room, but I couldn't sleep. I couldn't stand the sheets against my skin. The pillowcase touching my head. The coils in the mattress. I couldn't stand my room. My brown-skinned, big-eyed dolls made me sick. The globe tilting upward made me sick. The books on my bookshelf, starting with
Nomusa and the New Magic
, made me sick. I read those books. I believed in them. My autographed soccer ball. My math and spelling trophies gleaming on the bookshelf. My stupid Girl Power flag. All made me sick. Sick. Sick. Sick. Girls don't have no power.

First I was angry at my mother for filling my head with stuff about Africa. Then I was angry at Dad for calling me puddin' and Girl Warrior. Then I was angry at Mrs. Ojike for taking Victoria to that illegal doctor. And
angry at Mr. Ojike for doing nothing. I could see his big teeth smiling and hear him speaking politely while Victoria was screaming. But I was really angry at Nelson for telling me Victoria was getting over her illness. Liar. You can't get over what they did to her. You can't get over that.

Then I was mad. Crazy mad. Dizzy mad. Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad.

 

Tuesday Victoria and I walked to school together without saying a word. We sat at the hopscotches and stared out past the balls bouncing and the kids running and tagging each other and yelling.

In class we took our seats but did not volunteer to be class monitors or to bring the attendance sheets to the office. Victoria answered one question in math, one in science, and one in language arts. Not me. I couldn't raise my hand to call out a quotient, or share my knowledge about sharks, or identify one of the parts of speech. I couldn't talk about these silly things when anything could happen to a girl against her will. Against her knowledge. Against her body. Instead I did what Victoria did when she first came back. I let all the balls fly and the hands shoot up around us.

Once she told me, I felt like I was standing in the pot of fire with her. It didn't matter that her mother made the doctor put a needle in her arm so she would sleep while he cut her. And what if her aunts had held her down while her grandmother cut her body in their home?

I had to turn off my mind. I couldn't let my thoughts go flying off. I couldn't let myself imagine any more.

 

Wednesday Victoria and I were sitting by the hopscotches doing what we'd been doing for the past month. Except now we weren't just sitting in silence. We were making a statement. Depriving everyone of our girlness.

Jerilyn was looking for extra players for Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. I wasn't in the hand-clapping, foot-stomping mood, so I shook my head no. Victoria did also. Jerilyn wouldn't take no for an answer. She had only five players, and she needed at least one more so everyone would have a partner.

“Just one game, just one, just one. Please?”

Her mother still does her hair.

“I said
no
.”

“But y'all never play,” Jerilyn wailed. “Y'all just sit there.”

I felt so much older than Jerilyn. Older than everybody. All they had to worry about was finding another set of hands to clap Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

She gave up on us and went to Ida.

As soon as we got rid of Jerilyn, Juwan came over bouncing a basketball. I tried to stare past him, but he took up my view in his big, striped shirt. He knew we were ignoring him, but he kept bouncing his ball closer. So close the ball missed Victoria's foot by inches. She didn't react. Her hypnotic trick was amazing. Unfortunately I didn't have the art of ignoring knuckleheads
down to a science. I reacted for her.

“Hey. Watch it.”

“Or what?”

“You know what.”

He stood there, threatening us, bouncing his ball.
Bam, bam, bam.

“Speak, mummy, speak.”

“Your mama's a mummy,” I said.

He kept bouncing, but Victoria wouldn't give him any energy. That made him mad.
Bam
. He was too close, with his big stripes and big head.
Bam, bam, bam.
I could see the dust from the ball as it hit the ground.
Bam, bam, bam.

“She went to deepest, darkest Africa and they turned her into a mummy.” This time he missed her shoe by a centimeter.

“Shut up, you big fathead.”

Then he started doing a stiff walk around us. We ignored him. That made him even madder.

“I bet if I hit her, she won't move. Know why? She's a mummy. A dummy mummy.” Then he bounced the ball and it hit Victoria square on the toe of her shoe.
Bam!
I jumped up and hit Juwan as hard as I could in the gut. He hit me back, so I hauled back to China and let him have it, right on his nose. I got him good because my hand and his face were bloody. By this time kids swarmed around us, shouting, “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!” Then Mrs. Anderson, the recess aide, separated us. First we'd have to go to the nurse's office to clean up. After that, the vice principal's office. As we left the
playground, I turned back to see if Victoria was all right, but Mrs. Anderson poked me and said, “March, young lady.” The last I saw, Victoria hadn't moved from our spot.

While I was waiting for Miss Lady to pick me up,
Vice Principal Skinner called Mom at her job. All they told her was there had been a fight and that she or Dad had to come to school before I could return to class. When they came home from work, Mom and Dad asked if I was all right. I said yeah. But no one asked me what happened, which was okay because I couldn't put it into words. Not without justifying hitting Juwan, or betraying my vow to Victoria.

Dad was mad. He didn't want to wait for the morning meeting in Vice Principal Skinner's office. He had had enough of Juwan Spenser's “fatherless antics” and wanted to have a talk with Miss Spenser about her son.

“Where does that boy live?” he demanded.

“And accomplish what, Roy?” my mother said. “Where do you think the bad seed sprang from?”

“That boy needs to learn how to treat a young lady.”

Mom sighed heavily. She was more tired of Dad than upset about the whole Juwan thing. “We'll handle it at school, Roy. That's why we received the phone call. To
iron it out with a school official. That's the right thing to do, and we do what's right.”

She had been through this too many times to get excited. In Pre-K Juwan spilled a carton of green paint all over my picture because mine looked better than his. In the first grade he smashed my hard-boiled Easter egg for no reason. Each year, except for the third grade, there was always an incident between Juwan and me.

Dad finally gave in. “You're sure you're okay, puddin'?”

“I'm okay.”

“That's my Girl Warrior. Brave and beautiful. Show me that left hook.”

“Roy.”

 

I wasn't sure what would happen in Vice Principal Skinner's office the next morning. As far as my parents were concerned, this fight was just another Juwan episode. During those parent meetings in the vice principal's office, Mom spoke calmly and politely to Miss Spenser. But underneath her calm was an attitude that said, “I don't expect anything more from your child.” Mom is sort of a snob. She always points out other kids' public behavior—mostly black kids—and says, “There's no reason for you to behave like that.” That's why she likes the Ojikes, besides their being from Africa. She thinks the Ojikes are quiet, refined people. Mom describes Mrs. Ojike as Queen Nefertiti herself. Graceful and regal. Victoria giggled when I told her. Victoria said,
“Doesn't your mother know that Queen Nefertiti was Egyptian? And dead?”

I giggled, hearing Victoria's voice in my head. Then I realized, I wasn't the only one nervous about tomorrow. Victoria was probably worried about what I'd say to justify my socking Juwan. Victoria knew that my talking is like my essay writing: once I get going, I can't stop myself.

I had to let her know that I wouldn't break my vow, no matter what. I got on-line before I went to bed and sent an e-mail to QueenV3: “If I should tell, I will die.”

 

That Thursday morning we were all standing in the hallway outside the principal's office. Miss Spenser and Juwan. Mom and me. Mom told Dad to go to work. There was no need for all of us to gang up on Miss Spenser.

After awkward greetings between our mothers and a long silence in the hallway, Juwan's mother said, “I suppose you think
my
child started it.”

Mom was sure Juwan had thrown the first punch. So sure she didn't even ask for my side. Mom just said, “We shouldn't have this discussion in the hallway.”

Then Vice Principal Skinner, a tall, light-skinned man with wavy, combed-back hair, opened the door and welcomed us in like he was hosting a PTA meeting. Vice Principal Skinner wore a gray suit with a burgundy tie. Come to think of it, Vice Principal Skinner always wore a suit. He attended a lot of parent meetings.

Juwan told his side first. He said, “I was dribbling a
basketball, not even bothering them, and she punched me in the nose.”

My mother wasn't an eyeball roller, but this time she couldn't help herself.

Miss Spenser said, “I don't send my son to school to fight. Your child”—she pointed at Mom—“should keep her hands to herself.”

Mom coughed to keep from laughing. If I didn't know my mother was going to punish me later, I would have truly enjoyed all of this.

Vice Principal Skinner said, with the utmost confidence in me, “Akilah, tell us your side.”

I stood up, cleared my throat, and said, “I hit Juwan Spenser as hard as I could.” Then I took my seat.