The Girl in the Window

New people moved in three houses down from where I lived. Looked like they brought their first house with them, with all the U-haul trucks they pulled up. I could only wonder… who would want to move in around here? Nothing good was going on but rap music. Even that was backwards. Moving in that neighborhood was backwards, didn’t matter where the person came from. Unless they were from Baltimore or the ghettos of New York. Nothing good happened there but the rap music.

I didn’t even care who it was moving in. It could have been Jesus and I wouldn’t even look at him straight. Never did like permed haired people anyway. All my neighbors were low down people who were one step from homeless. Or they would have too many kids to fit in their house or not enough food to put in their mouth. Always knocking on people’s door for more than sugar. Nobody could tell them left from right even if it was written on their hands. Always asking for money and never giving any back. I didn’t have time for people like that. I already had to deal with them day in and day out. So I didn’t bother to see who moved in.

I could only think: Who would want to live in these pitiful town houses that looked old enough for Rosa Parks to live in? Only those houses lacked the honor. They were like project eight houses that white people set up to keep niggas at bay. Those houses with rottening brick flat faced walls. Or molded shingles a rainbow of sienna, or the hue of a dead man’s skin. Houses with angry and sad shutters that could receive no repair. Outside those pitiful houses rested old rusted items worth less than a piece of used gum. The yards of those houses looked like grave yards of the life desired but could not be given. The people who lived in them were no more than a corpse of their own self, slowly being buried by the people around them. In that neighborhood there was a coldness that putting a jacket on couldn’t warm. Its cold wind whipped the face with no mercy causing tears to unknowingly fall. Who was foolish enough to move into this neighborhood? I could only think.

My mama came into my room the day after the neighbors moved in. She looked excited with her eyes popped out and said:

“I was thinking about inviting the neighbors over, but changed my min’ ‘cause you don’t want to change dem nasty sheets. Ain’t nobody want to see yo’ bare bed wit’ dem nasty ass sheets.”

“Don’t want to see dem neighbors anyway. What good they tah me anyway? Prolly a bunch of niggas,” I said.

“Girl, watch yo’ mouth. Got a nasty mouth too. ‘Sides, it could be a fine boy moving in there gon’ take care of you in da futrue. Might have some money too.” I sucked my teeth.

“Ain’t nobody moving in this hood got no money,” I sassed. “You always talkin’ about me gettin’ married to some boy wit’ some money.”

“Das how we make it out here, girl,” she joked, but I knew there was some seriousness there.

“Whatever ma.”

School never failed to upset me day in and day out. People were always talking shit about each other when their shit smelt the same. All of us were equally broke, equally smart, and equally attractive. Some of us were a little above or below the average, but when summed out, we’re close to the same.

Somehow I had to be different though. It was my eyes. One eye was grey while the other was brown. People called me names like two faced and half alien child. I said fuck them and hung with my friends, but it still hurt my feelings because sometimes my friends teased it too. Said I need to get my eyes fixed, or a grey contact (not brown, my true eye color) so I can have pretty eyes, and not mismatch ones. Mama said it was okay. She said it makes me unique, so I didn’t try to change it. I just didn’t like people teasing me about it.

This one day I was also mad because my friend Lorraine said she wasn’t going to the beach that summer like we always did.

“Why?” I asked her.

She said: “‘Cause it makes me darker. All ready bad enough I’m as dark as I am now.” I sucked my teeth.

“Bitch, ain’t nothing wrong with yo’ skin. You look good to me,” I said.

“Whatever, I think about it. But who feel like driving all the way to Wilmington all the time?”

“You act like it’s across the country,” our other friend Jada said. We all laughed. Lorraine and Jada were my best friends. Lorraine had a cinnamon complexion and a round forehead. She was kind of chubby but she had a good shape and bright eyes. But her hair was short and damaged by too many relaxers so she wore a lot of long, straight weaves.

Jada had a Japanese grandmother so she had wavy hair and an ashy peanut butter complexion. She also had slanted eyes. We used to tease her eyes and her short eyelashes, but when she got herself a pair of fake lashes, we didn’t make fun of her anymore because boys liked her looks.
The three of us knew each other when I moved from Maryland after my mom broke up with her second baby daddy. We were ten at the time and didn’t have a care in the world. Our neighborhood was as boring as any other neighborhood could get and there was nothing to do in the house but watch TV and eat. So we sometimes went outside to go to the corner store to get some soda and sing songs by Keisha Cole, Mary J. Blige and Chris Brown. We all could sing but Lorraine had the best voice, and I had the second best. I was a good song writer and Jada did good vocals and found good music. We sometimes sang songs I wrote and thought about recording them, but we never did.

Ever since then, we had been together as best friends. But I wasn’t close to them like they were to each other because they knew each other before I moved. So even my friends didn’t know about me completely. I liked it that way though. The less they knew, the better; especially about my always dirty sheets.

As we were walking home, Lorraine pointed out a girl walking down the street wearing straight legged pants.

“Who in the right mind would wear dem ugly ass pants?” Her and Jada started to crack up laughing. I didn’t laugh because if she wanted to wear straight legged pants, she could.

“What it matter to you?” I asked.

“Dem look like my grandma wear dem,” Lorraine said. “Bet you want dem pants, just like hers.” I shook my head and smirked. “Don’t you be liking that weird shit, though?”

“I like what I like,” I answered.

“The only thing Shade really like is boys,” Jada said. We all laughed, but they didn’t know.

When I got home, I sat at the kitchen table to do my homework. Some days I felt like doing it (most days) and others I didn’t. Had to keep at least a B average for my mama’s sake.
She came home a little later with a crazy look on her face. Only two things made her have that look. One I liked, the other I didn’t.

“Shade, guess what,” she said excited.

“Oh lord,” I replied.

“Girl, don’t go ‘oh lording’ me. You know Jim?”

“Yeah, what about ‘em?”

“Well, he ‘bout to be yo’ new step daddy!” I cussed myself in my mind.

“I don’t even like dat nigga.” She slapped my shoulder.

“He ain’t no nigga and you gon’ like him wit’ da money he got.” I sucked my teeth.

“Mama, he ain’t no good,” I couldn’t say what else I wanted to say or I’d get slapped. But my mama was basically fucking him for his money. If she hadn’t given him her sex so fast and so much, he wouldn’t have married her in the first place. He barely knew anything about her, but she didn’t care either way.

“He good Shade. He got two jobs and one of them is selling cars.”

“But I don’t like him,” I said a little upset. My voice got little when I was upset.

“Aw baby, you’ll like him,” my mama said sweetly. “I know you will. He real good wit’ kids. He was nice to Trae and Ebony.”

“But they young. I’m sixteen years old. I ain’t no kid.” she tried to convince me some more but I wasn’t hearing it. She didn’t even know him.

On the next day of school, Jada came up to me and Lorraine hanging around in the cafeteria. She looked like she was about to tell us something.

“Did ya’ll hear about the new girl on da block? She come to dis school now, right in time too.”

“Word, what she look like?” I asked. I always liked hearing about new people although I didn’t really talk to them unless they did. Part of it was because I was scared of harassment about my eyes.

“Don’t know, ain’t seen her before. Just hear dere was a new girl by my friends’ friend.”

“I heard dere was two other new people too,” Lorraine started to say. “Another one a girl, the other a boy. Heard the boy cute too. Might try my luck wit’ ‘im, but we all know Shade prolly beat me to ‘im.” I lowered my eyes and smirked. “You da freakiest girl I know, Shade,” she kept saying.

“I need lots of love,” I said back.

“You get enough love for all of us,” Jada said.

“Still need more,” I said, my face slightly serious.

When I got to first period I saw someone new. It was this girl with short cut hair. It was so straight and velvety that it was like white girl hair. It put my stubborn relaxed hair even more to shame than it already was. My hair was long, but it stayed wherever I put it, even in crazy places. That was why I always put it in a bun.

She was tall too, like a model; long slim legs. But she had a killer figure. My eyes were glued to her.

“Okay Sasha, we’re reading the book Of Mice and Men,” my teacher Ms. Lin said quietly to her. “We read to page twenty so far, so that will be your homework.”

“Okay,” she said back. She took the book like she wasn’t interested in it at all. I stayed looking at her, trying to analyze her. She had on big, square, black plastic rimmed glasses that looked good on her slim tear drop face. Her skin was a little darker than cinnamon and her nose was cute like a teddy bear nose. Those white teeth she had looked good behind her soft looking full lips. When she looked at me looking at her, I looked away. She probably thought I was a weirdo already. I picked my fingers and thought about her legs. Mine were thick and long; hers were longer. I liked tall people.

After I did my work and read most of the book, I glanced at Sasha from time to time. Already I could tell she was one of those girls that didn’t care about school work. Like those dumb girls you see in the hallway yelling about something unimportant. I didn’t like people like that. Her eyes were wondering, looking for something more interesting to do. Every time she looked my direction, I pretended like I was looking at something behind her. But she knew I was looking at her and surprisingly enough, she smiled.

Come lunch time during third period I tended to sit at a table with people I never really talked to. Half the table on the right was full with these nameless people while the other half was empty. I sat right in the middle. I didn’t talk to those nameless people unless they spoke to me. Just my luck though, Sasha had my lunch period and sat across from me. It was typical for the new girl to sit with someone she felt comfortable sitting with although knowing nothing about them.

“Ay girl, what’s up?” she started to say. “Ain’t you in my English class?” she asked.

“Yeah, dat’s me,” I answered.

“Oh.” We were silent for a while before she said: “Why was you looking at me so much?” I thought of a quick lie and said: “‘Cause I like your hair.” She smiled.

“You know how we do, got that good perm, make my hair silky,” she said patting her hair. I smirked. She looked at me hard, and I could tell she was looking at my eyes, so I looked down.

“Dat’s cool,” she said.

“What is?” I asked, still looking at my food.

“You lucky you have one grey eye. It looks cool.” I looked back up at her.

“What? I look like a freak.”

“Nah, you look different. Dem people jus’ jealous ‘cause dey got boring ugly brown eyes.” It was crazy to me how she, who had brown eyes too, thought brown eyes were ugly. I actually liked my brown eye more than my grey. Maybe I wasn’t a complete freak for having two different colored eyes, but I wouldn’t choose the grey over the other.

When I finished eating and stared off, someone caught my eye. But by the time I focused in on them, they had moved out of my sight. Sasha and I were silent for the rest of our boring lunch with nothing to talk about. My typical school day.