The Girl in the Window

“I need to lose some weight. I’m fat as fuck,” Lorraine said. It was morning at school in the cafeteria. People’s voices were coming together as gibberish. The conversations alone had similar value as gibberish. They weren’t worth listening to.

“You always talkin’ ‘bout how fat you are,” Jada said.

“You look perfectly fine,” I said. “‘Sides, you at least got curves.”

“Yeah but, I wanna take off a couple pounds.”

“Whatever.” We were quiet for a second, listening to gibberish.

“So what ya’ll do yesterday?” Jada asked.

“I went to da mall. Got me some new shoes. Some blue converse,” Lorraine answered.

“What you do, Shade?” Jada asked me.

“Nothing, really,” I answered.

“Nah, you say dat ereyday.”

“Wanya came back to be wit’ his mom.” Both of them gave me that look. It was that look people gave you when talking about ‘that thing usually done in the dark’.

“Mhm, always fucking some nigga,” Lorraine said. The way she said it made me feel low about myself.

“I don’t get it ‘dough,” Jada started to say. “How do you always get niggas to get wit’ you? Dat shit is hard for me.” I looked down, and then shrugged my shoulders.

“You act like I get wit’ random dudes,” I answered.

“Don’t you?” Lorraine asked.

“No. I only been wit’ six dudes.”

“Damn, you say dat like it ain’t a lot.”

“Well, das none of yo’ business.”

“Whatever.” They went on talking about nothing, dogging on that dark skin girl again, while I stayed silent. And I thought to myself, why did I let those losers lay me down so easily? I lied when I said six. My number was something more than that. Just didn’t remember. If I told them that, they’d look down on me and judge me. But they didn’t understand me and the confusion, desires, and isolation I felt. Some nights I cried because I felt so alone. My bed was cold sometimes and I couldn’t get warm. I couldn’t smell my sheets because my nose was stuffed from crying. Then I’d shudder. And no one would be there to hold me because my mama would be working. My brother and sister would be asleep. My friends were really hallowed out manikins.

So when I found that little bit of love, I took advantage of it. I wrapped my legs around it. My arms too. I kissed it, and touched it. I squeezed my vagina muscles around it and cried “yes”, at last, a little bit of passionate love. But it was always temporary, leaving me feeling ashamed of myself at the end. Then it was back to my cold sheets and shudders through the night.

In English Sasha sat by me again. I guess she thought I didn’t care if she sat by me. Wanted her to anyway. She asked me to read her the book since we were doing group work and she was way behind. I read to her because I didn’t care either way. I highly doubt she was listening, or cared about what I had to say, but it was good review for me. Something started to distract me because some girls behind me were talking. They were talking about me. They weren’t talking loud enough for the whole class to hear, but I heard them.

“That girl is a ho,” one of them said. “She fucked my ex Malik.”

“Who?” the other girl asked.

“That girl.” I kept reading, not knowing what I was reading.

“How you know?”

“I looked at his text message one day. I don’t know no other girl named Shade.” They kept talking about me and the whole time I was trying to remember Malik’s face. Was he the old looking guy with the goatee? Or the one with the stair cut? The guy with the green eyes? Or the one with the locks? Then it disgusted me that I didn’t even remember his face, or those people’s names. And what could I say to her that meant anything worth hearing? “Yes, I fucked your ex, probably, but I don’t remember what he looks like.” What would that sound like? I knew I would just start a fight. And again I felt that disgust. All these people soiling my body that meant nothing to me. I was “that ho with one grey eye” to anyone that knew. Or “that freak with a grey eye” to anyone that didn’t. I felt that I made people want to judge me. The few that knew called me whore and called me slut. But how was I any better than what they called me if I didn’t even do it for money?

When I felt tears start to flood and my throat start to knot, I knew I had to excuse myself. The teacher let me go to the bathroom. On my way there I swallowed my tears. The sound of my walking dead, but the snot was loud and clear. Just when I got to the empty bathroom and into the stall, my tears broke. I just felt so ashamed of myself that I didn’t know how to handle it. Cried like a baby too. Anyone passing by the bathroom could hear me. Snot ran out my nose, so I wiped it with the coarse toilet paper. My eyes started to burn. But I had been saving those tears. Took a lot of teasing and isolation to let them build up. But true self pity and guiltiness let them break free.

A good minute or so later and someone walked into the bathroom. I quickly got quiet. Couldn’t let anyone see me shaming myself. Then I heard:

“Shade?” It was Sasha’s voice. But I didn’t answer her. She found the stall I was in anyway. Somehow she opened the door with an eraser. She came in uninvited and looked at me with sympathy.

“You came in here to feel sorry for me?” I asked, mad that she just walked in.

“Not sorry. Just wanted to see if you were okay,” she answered.

“Why do you care?” She slightly laughed.

“Girl, people used to talk shit about my ways when it came to sex all the time. But ya’know, it is what it is and I like myself and what I do no matta what people think ‘bout me. I ain’t gon’ not be happy ‘cause of what some people think ‘bout me.”

“But I have a problem,” I answered.

“Yeah, we all do. But it’s how we deal wit’ it is what make us happy, then who cares?”

“Don’t make me happy.” She smiled then hugged me. But the way she hugged me made me think differently about her.

“You jus’ unhappy ‘cause of what ereybody else think.” She said to my head. I hugged her back because it only seemed right to. “‘Sides, dem bitches jus’ as bad as you. Dey can’t be talkin’.” When she pulled away from my hug, she gave me a look. It wasn’t just any regular look either. It was the kind of look a guy gives a girl when he’s feeling her.

“We should go back to class,” I said breaking the silence. The look slowly went away before she smiled. “I’ll go first since I left first.”

“Yeah, dat’s cool.” I left the bathroom and walked down the hallways. I couldn’t help but smirk.

In my third period, I couldn’t wait for the lunch bell to ring. Wasn’t because I was hungry either. It was because I wanted to make sure what I thought about Sasha was true. So when the lunch bell rang I walked like I was in a hurry. I didn’t know why though because I saw her everyday when I walked normally at the same time. So I started slowing down.

I got to the table and waited. I looked at my food then looked around for Sasha. When I looked around, the same thing that caught my eyes the other day did again. This time I saw it. It was a girl. But what got my attention was her hair. Her hair was cut like a boy’s, but from where I was, I could see that on the sides of her head, there were interesting designs cut into her head. They were different from other people and their ghetto cuts on their head. They were out of this world patterns that I’d never seen before. Plus she had on big circle earrings that moved with her. They were colorful and beaded with designs in them. As soon as Sasha sat next to me, I looked away from the girl and at Sasha.

“Hey,” she said. I smiled then checked for the girl again. But I didn’t see her. “Feelin’ better?” she asked.

“A little,” I lied. Although what she said was right, at that time I still felt down about myself. I didn’t like what I did and how I dealt with my problem.

She chuckled. Took a lot of power, but I was too weak not to look at her. To look at the position of her body in the chair. She smiled, then got serious all of a sudden.

“Shade,” she started to say. She looked at me closely like she was studying me. All my attention was on her. The gibberish around me was put on mute. My eyes on her lips. “Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Can’t stay wit’ one guy yet,” I said quietly.

“Oh.” She looked around like she was nervous.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” I asked. She looked at me and smirked.

“I don’t like dogs. Cats are cleaner,” she answered, then looked away. That proved my assumptions right. Couldn’t think of what to say back, though, so I said nothing. Lunch ended in silence.

At the end of the day, I was thinking about Sasha too much to know what my friends were talking about. Most of what they talked about a lot of the time didn’t mean anything anyway.

“Shade, why you so quiet, what happened with you today?” Jada asked.

“Nothin’,” I answered. I couldn’t tell them about my feelings. They already thought I was weird as is. If I told them that, I knew they would outcast me.

“Girl, somethin’ always happen wit’ you,” Lorraine said.

“Not at school,” I said. They took my word and talked to each other.

“Yo Lorraine, you know dat dark girl you was talkin’ ‘bout?” Jada started to say. “Lemme tell you, I saw her and she sure is dark. But I can’t lie, even though she dark, she got nice style, and she ain’t really ugly.”

“To me, anyone dat dark ugly, regardless. And she ain’t got no hair! She ball headed.”

“True, but her hair work wit’ her face.”

“She ain’t all that. Dat bitch look like a black spook.” They both laughed. Jada’s laugh was a little uneasy.

“I think I know who ya’ll talkin’ ‘bout,” I said. “Did she have designs cut in her hair?” Jada thought about it.

“Yeah, das her,” Jada said.

“Yeah, look like you can find a fossil in that tar skin of hers,” Lorraine said. I didn’t tell them that I thought the girl looked interesting to me, or that I liked her even skin tone, and unblemished face.

“Look like she belong in someone shadow,” Lorraine added. Jada laughed hard that time.

“Oh shit, dis too funny,” Lorraine said.

“Honestly, it ain’t dat funny,” I said. Lorraine and Jada sucked their teeth.

“Whateva Shade, you wack.” Then we went our own ways.

After I did my homework and got something to eat, I was bored. Come dinner time I fixed my brother and sister something to eat and wrote lyrics while eating with them. Sang the song too and asked them what they thought. They said it was pretty but they say everything I sing is pretty. When I put them to bed, I was still bored. Mama was out either working late or with Jim, so I had nothing to do. Then I thought to see Sasha (or at least the girl I thought was Sasha). Again I wore shorts and a tank with flip-flops, and walked through the woods to her house. When I got there, the light was on then she showed up wrapped in a towel. My heart drummed against my chest. That time I looked at her hair to see if it was Sasha or not. Her hair was wrapped so I didn’t know. But when she dropped her towel, revealing her body, I didn’t worry about her hair anymore. My eyes moved with her curves and I bit my bottom lip. Lord let it be Sasha, I thought. If she was what she said she was, I might have had to take a break from boys for a second.

The show ended and it was time for me to leave. I knew I had to get to know Sasha a little more.