The Skin I'm In: Chapters 13–32

“When my daddy died three years ago, Momma fell apart. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. She stayed up all night long, washing and scrubbing till her hands was raw,” I say, chewing on my finger.

Momma’s got a sister in New York. Daddy had brothers all over the place. But they weren’t close. And getting in touch with them would have meant taking me away or putting Momma in some institution someplace.

Six months later she found out about the school board’s new plan for letting executives teach in the schools.

“The business world can be very competitive,” Miss Saunders says. “I was always trying to out-think, outperform, even out-dress my competitors. It was wearing me down.”

All of this makes the other teachers resent Miss Saunders even more.

“Charlese, shouldn’t you be in class?” Miss Carol asks, still tending to Desda.

She meditates a lot so during her class break it ain’t unusual to see her sitting on the desk with her legs folded and her arms crossed.

The music’s too loud. Some African stuff is playing. Drums are beating. Singers are making animal noises. Maracas are shaking.

As soon as I get to the street two boys I ain’t never seen before start hassling me.

Ain’t nothing alive on this block except mangy cats and stray dogs, and they look like they want to jack me up, too.

You’d think a boy that has been the president of the class and student representative on the PTA would know how to walk into a room.

Caleb can be persistent.

Miss Birdy, the teacher, tells us both to settle down, shut up, or be ready to spend the day in detention again tomorrow. That doesn’t faze Caleb none. He keeps running off at the mouth.

“Their insights are fantastic,” Miss Saunders says. “Right on target. But their test-taking skills are just terrible.”

Miss Saunders says McClenton students have to be held to the same standards as other kids around the city.

I’m fumbling with my book bag and trying to get out of there.

Miss Saunders gives me a hard look and goes on about how important it is for a teacher to not have her personal business out among students. How it can “undermine her credibility,” whatever that means.

Miss Saunders gives me a hard look and goes on about how important it is for a teacher to not have her personal business out among students. How it can “undermine her credibility,” whatever that means.

Miss Saunders hunches her shoulders.

“I’ve had a few in my time. It’s hard to keep them, with all the traveling I did in my corporate job.”

She’s banging her fist like a gavel on the front desk.

Miss Carol told me to go get the janitor and tell him the principal wants him to clean up the mess in the boys’ room. Miss Carol could have called the janitor on the intercom. She wanted to get rid of me, is all.

At midnight, if you have eyes to see,
There’s beauty and there’s majesty.

He’s got on a lime-green African dashiki with tiny golden swirls stitched on it.

Her classroom has got about a hundred ribbons hanging from the ceiling. Sheer puffy curtains are tacked to the walls.

“How am I gonna sleep with all this racket,” she says, scaring me so bad I almost drop the phone.

“I been thinking all day. Trying to figure out how to raise two thousand dollars to pay for the damages. The more I thought about it, the more I broke out in bumps,” she says, scratching.

She just needs some eggs and a slab of bacon for breakfast, she says.

When I go outside, everybody’s on their front stoops.

“I’m here to get the truth from you firsthand, to say no matter what, we can work this out, Maleeka.”