Usually everyone was safe, however, because the daily target of Cecily’s derision was most often Antoinette Jones, a girl who was in my second-period English class. Antoinette wasn’t popular in school. Word was her mother was a crack addict. She didn’t even talk to anyone except Demetrius Woods, a boy with whom she rode the bus to and from school. Her brother by a different father, some said. A cousin, others insisted, but everybody agreed that Demetrius and Antoinette looked in need of several pork-heavy meals, along with many biscuits and side dishes.
“That girl is so damned weird,” Cecily said. “Look at her. She makes my skin crawl.”
She pointed at Antoinette standing in line for the bus. The girl’s book bag was torn, and she was trying to keep the top closed with both hands. She climbed on the bus awkwardly, still holding on to the book bag.
“And what’s up with that damned hair? It’s not even two inches long. Antoinette’s, like, chronically baldheaded or some shit. I went to Wells-Barnett Elementary and Fauset Middle with that chick, and, like, in five years, her hair didn’t grow.”
“Maybe she got a bad perm. That’s kinda sad, don’t you think?” My mother had warned me about picking on people, even behind their backs. Did I want to be like Nana, thinking my farts were special? But I couldn’t tell my new friend that we were being mean. I wanted to sleep over at her house like the other girls who sat in the cafeteria with us.
“No, it’s not sad,” Cecily said. “It’s stupid. Why’d she keep going back to the same beautician who burned her hair out? Stupid, baldheaded heifer.”
She stretched out a shapely leg, picking a mote from her tights. Antoinette’s bus drove away, revealing a billboard illustrated with our First Lady’s solution to drug addiction: JUST SAY NO! Beside those words, someone had spray-painted rhyming lines: NANCY REAGAN IS A CRACK HOE!
I didn’t worry much about Antoinette, at the cruelty pointed her way. Not just by the students, either. The teacher of our English class constantly embarrassed her. Like the day Mrs. Youngley diagrammed sentences and asked Antoinette about the identity of a word on the board. Antoinette whispered her confusion, but our teacher kept prodding, “Don’t you remember? I told the class only yesterday!”
“No, ma’am.”
“Didn’t you even take notes?”
Antoinette shrugged.
“All right. That’s fine. I’ll give you a hint. It’s one of the eight parts of speech.”
She paused, eyebrows raised haughtily, but Antoinette only looked down at her desk. When our teacher called on others, they had adolescent loyalty. They didn’t know, either, but I raised my hand. I waved it enthusiastically and shouted that the word was a verb. I beamed when our teacher praised my intelligence, throwing a smug glance at Antoinette. Saving the memory of her stupidity to share with Cecily and the rest of the crew at lunch. But I didn’t have time to tell my story, because an hour later, Antoinette completely altered the trajectory of my short-lived social life and entire high school education.
When she appeared at my locker, it was like a scene out of a horror movie: I closed the locker door and there she was, shocking me into a low scream.
“You getting on my last nerve, bitch,” she said. “The way you think you so cute.”
“What did you say?”
I don’t know which shocked me the most: that Antoinette finally was speaking to somebody besides Demetrius Woods, or that I outweighed her by about fifty pounds and was inches taller, but she didn’t seem intimidated. A group of girls crowded around us and there was Cecily. She cautioned me in a loud voice to kick that heifer’s ass.
Antoinette repeated herself, pointing her index finger in my face. Before that I’d quickly planned to offer peaceful rhetoric, as our principal had counseled at assemblies, but now everyone was watching. Seeking peace would be a punk move.
“Uh-uh,” I said. “I don’t think I’m cute, neither.”
“Yes, you do, bitch,” Antoinette said.
“No, I don’t! And—and—don’t you keep calling me no bitch! And—and—you better get your finger out my face!”
“I’ma call you whatever I feel like, you siddity bitch. And you think you better than everybody ’cause you light-skinned and got that good hair. Bitch.”
My mother had told me that all hair was wonderful, no matter the texture, and that it was ignorant to separate hair into categories of “bad” and “good.” Furthermore, anybody could see I wasn’t even close to light-skinned. Even in the wintertime I approached mahogany—but it was too late to explain, because then Antoinette slapped me across my face.