No Laughter Here

  I didn’t have to pass by Victoria’s house to go home. I could have made a U around the school, gone down Henley Road, then walked up to my house instead of going the usual route. I could have taken the long way, the avoiding-Victoria way, but I wouldn’t. I was not the guilty one. Instead I was defiant. I was proud. My giant steps proclaimed I was not the bad friend.

  I was walking my defiant walk, feeling proud, when I saw Nelson entering the Ojikes’ yard.

  Nelson doesn’t take my breath away. I breathe just fine when he is near. Instead, my legs slide out from under me, and my arms want to flutter. Like I’m both falling off a cliff and floating in the air, like riding the Cyclone at Coney Island, but in slow motion.

  Nelson is the first boy I truly, truly liked. He’s sixteen. Practically a man. He stands taller than Mr. Ojike, which is amazing all by itself. Mr. Ojike is at least six feet and Dad is five ten. So, yeah. Nelson is taller than my father.

  Nelson’s teeth are white and even. When he smiles, those white teeth against all that chocolate, unh, unh, unh! Back when we were friends, I told Victoria that I was going to marry Nelson so we could be sisters, but that was a lie. Nelson is going to be mine for the sake of being mine. He is better than any boy I know, so why waste my time having silly crushes on boys who are not Nelson?

  I plain old love Nelson. Know how much? I organized a protest against school uniforms when they sent home notices announcing that our school was considering navy pleated skirts and white shirts with fake neckties. Of course Girl Warrior swung into action. I wrote up my own petition and collected signatures at Shop-Rite and after church. I even sent e-mail to the local newspapers that said, “Why should we all look alike? Think alike? Be alike?” And then the Ojikes moved into the neighborhood and I saw Nelson standing tall in his school uniform: a navy blazer, a white shirt, tan pants, and a real necktie. Unh, unh, unh. I dropped my petition and my e-mails against school uniforms right then and there.

  On Saturdays Victoria and I used to go to the park to watch Nelson play football (which was actually rugby) with other Africans who live around our way. We’d sit in the grass and guard Nelson’s stuff, and we rooted like fools no matter what he did. Then he’d jog over for his water bottle, which I held onto. He’d squeeze the bottle, swallow, then toss it back to me.

  And his accent! British like the Prince of Wales, except when he speaks to his parents. Then he speaks in a Yoruba dialect. Nelson is very twenty-first century and traditional at the same time.

  “How do I find you alone, Akilah?”

  Tell me I didn’t feel silly! I held myself together and just shrugged.

  “Where is your shadow?”

  “You tell me,” I said. “She quit me first.”

  “A falling out.” He said this so seriously, but I knew he wasn’t taking me seriously at all.

  “Should I fetch Victoria? She might already be inside.”

  I couldn’t look at Nelson without seeing Victoria. I wanted to stay mad at her, but I was now more puzzled than mad. Kinda like Ms. Saunders, trying to put it all together. If anyone knew why Victoria didn’t want to laugh or shoot her hand up in class like in the good old days, Nelson did.

  “Why’s Victoria acting so strange?”

  He repeated back, “Strange?” although he knew what I meant. He was just stalling. He couldn’t fool me. Just before they left for Africa, I conducted my own personal study on Nelson Ojike so I wouldn’t forget one detail about him. I spilled all my Nelson data inside my journal, using the pages for June second through the fourteenth. I know every look on his face. Every tone in his voice. Every polo shirt he owns.

  “She won’t laugh. Don’t want to laugh. She keeps to herself. And she writes in really tiny letters.”

  “Ah!” he said, like a lightbulb had flashed on. “She is getting over illness. She’ll soon be herself.”

  It was the first time I saw his teeth smiling at me that I didn’t have that deep-down Nelson love hurling me like the Coney Island Cyclone. Nelson was lying to me. Every inch of me knew it. My legs stayed firmly under me and my arms didn’t feel like flying. I hadn’t completely fallen out of love with Nelson, but once I knew he was lying to me, I wasn’t hardly falling off of no cliff.

  Sorry

  When your one true friend makes you mad, you think you will never have another friend. You will have a poodle before you have another friend—and poodles are nothing but trouble. I see how Gigi always has Miss Lady in circles trying to untangle the leash around her ankles.

  That only made me remember stuff Victoria and I did together, like start a dog-walking business. We were all psyched to walk dogs around the park but hadn’t thought who was going to pick up all that poop.

  I decided to write Victoria a note. One word: Sorry. Someone had to take the first step, and my steps were bigger than hers.

  This was hardly our first falling out. Shoot. We’d get mad, call each other names, insult each other’s shoes and lopsided braids, then pretend that the other didn’t exist. We’d get tired of acting out and would make excuses to be in each other’s space. After one grin everything would go back to normal. No questions asked.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those lonely girls with only one friend in the world. I have friends. It’s that Victoria is my one true friend. But not best friend. I don’t like that term. Sooner or later the “best friend” tests you. “Who is your best friend, her or me?” Janetta Mitchell put me through that. She said, “You my best friend, Akilah. We been close since Pre-K.” Then she wanted me to say it back, again and again. Victoria and I are different. We don’t talk about being friends. We are friends. True friends.

  We met two years ago at the playground. Her father worked in the Nigerian consulate’s office. In fact, Miss Lady spread the rumor that the Nigerian government paid for the Ojikes’ house and car. That only made Victoria seem more interesting to me.

  “My name is Victoria” was how she introduced herself. When I said “I’ll call you Vickie for short,” she repeated herself: “My name is Victoria.” She did not like for short.

  I said, “Okay. If you insist.”

  She said, “I insist.”

  Then I said, “My name is African.”

  She looked at me square on, no blinking, no smiling, and said, “Hello, African.”

  I laughed, then said, “No, my name is Akilah. It is African.” She said, “You said your name is African, so I called you by your name.”

  “Do you know what Akilah means?” I quizzed.

  “Of course I do,” Victoria said. “It means ‘born when the hyena was laughing.’”

  “Not hardly. It means ‘intelligent.’”

  “It means ‘laughs like an intelligent hyena.’”

  She said it so matter-of-factly that I couldn’t stop laughing. Then she said, “See?”—not even cracking a smile.

  “I am named for Queen Victoria. For the Victoria Falls, and Lake Victoria. Have you heard of Lake Victoria?”

  If it is in Africa, I was sure I had. My mother surrounds me with all things African. I have dolls from thirty African countries. Mom taught me some Swahili, some African dances (which Victoria later laughed at), and gave me books on African history and geography. Somewhere I must have run across Lake Victoria.

  “Why don’t you have an African name?” I asked her.

  “Why do you have an African name?”

  “Don’t answer with a question,” I said.

  “Don’t question.”

  We clicked. From that moment I knew Victoria was the missing piece to my puzzle. She didn’t say that typical “Yo’ greasy granny” stuff like Juwan. She was like me, an individual, and not about to hide it. From then on it was always she and I.

  During language arts, I used my best cursive letters to write the one word in the center of a paper. I tore it out of my loose-leaf binder, folded it down to a tight rectangle, and held onto it until the first warning bell rang.

  Finally school was over, so
I dropped the note on Victoria’s desk. I gave Victoria a chance to scoot out of her chair and walk with me, but she stayed seated, her head down.

  I looked up. Mrs. Ojike was standing at the door. She wore a blue and yellow printed head wrap and matching dress that had this swirling white embroidery around the neckline. That was nothing. Nisha’s mother drives up to the school wearing sandals and saris that show her belly even in the winter.

  Ms. Saunders was going to give Mrs. Ojike the bad news: Victoria had to transfer to one of the slow classes.

  I knew Mrs. Ojike had come in the nick of time. She was going to give Ms. Saunders some insight into Victoria’s behavior. Maybe Victoria is forbidden to laugh after the age of ten. Now that I thought about it, Mrs. Ojike doesn’t laugh. She smiles, but never breaks into a hearty haw-haw like my mother and aunties do.

  Nelson laughs and Mr. Ojike laughs. But now Victoria would be like her mother and lose her laughter. Maybe becoming a lady in Nigeria is like becoming a lady here. Sit up straight, cross your legs, smile, and don’t beat up boys in the park.

  Ms. Saunders rose and beckoned Mrs. Ojike inside. I went up to greet her.

  “Hi, Mrs. Ojike.”

  “Well, hello, Akilah.” Mrs. Ojike looked down at me. It was weird, like looking at Victoria thirty years from now.

  “Can I wait and walk home with y’all?” I had no shame. My mother would have died if she had heard me.

  “I’m afraid not today, dear. We will be a while.”

  I glanced back at Victoria, but her head was still down on her desk next to the note.

  New Normal

  By the next morning things were back to normal between Victoria and me. We walked to school together, then sat by the hopscotches until the bell rang. Whether I liked it or not, this was now normal. Not running down the street kicking a stone, our “in the meantime” soccer ball. Not laughing at each other’s hairstyles, or treating each other to the word of the day. No. New normal meant we filled in space around each other. I did all the talking, not too much of it, and said nothing funny. She nodded, shrugged, or stared. I just sat with Victoria to make it seem like she wasn’t alone.

  Even though I didn’t ask her about her mother’s meeting with Ms. Saunders, I knew it helped. Victoria wrote in paragraphs instead of in Japanese poetry lines. Her letters weren’t fat and loopy, but I could read them on her paper from my desk. She raised her hand at least once in language arts, science, and math to give short answers.

  I wanted to believe these were all good signs, that Victoria was getting over her illness, as Nelson put it. But I knew that the girl sitting next to me wasn’t the real Victoria. She had just perfected her staring trick to include one-word answers. The real Victoria was famous for interjecting “Actually” to add more detail to our fourth-grade teacher’s explanations. I liked that girl. She was a geek and not afraid to show it.

  Ms. Saunders passed out the math dittos for homework. Three pages of them. It was all review, the same stuff I zipped through in workbooks over the summer, so I didn’t care—unlike Juwan, who was having puppies. He pounded his fist on his desk and said, “Aw, man. Three sheets.” I stuck my tongue out at him and Ms. Saunders caught me, so I had to write thirty times, “I will not taunt my fellow classmates.” How fair was that? I’d have to write small and carefully to make it fit on one line.

  I raised my hand. “Ms. Saunders, can’t I just write ‘I will not stick my tongue out’? I can make that fit easier. Taunt, fellow, and classmates will take too much room.”

  Ms. Saunders repeated the phrase “I will not taunt my fellow classmates” clearly, like I was hard of hearing. When the entire class, except for Victoria, laughed, Ms. Saunders got serious. First she hushed the class. Then she said, “Akilah, I want you to think about what taunting does and discuss it with your parents. Then summarize your findings and have your parents sign your sheet.”

  I felt Juwan’s eyes dancing in his big clown head. I knew he wanted me to look his way, but I wouldn’t give him any satisfaction.

  Ms. Saunders held up another sheet of paper and said, “In two weeks we will begin a new and exciting discovery.”

  Discovery? A science word! Instantly I was healed from having been humiliated. I always knew science would get better in the fifth grade.

  As sharp as my eyes were, I couldn’t make out a single word on the yellow sheet, but I could see dotted lines, straight lines, and check boxes. These were all the things needed for a field trip. Already I could see an excavation site or a rock quarry, at the very least.

  Ms. Saunders started a pile of yellow sheets at each row. We could barely contain our enthusiasm until she said, “We are going to learn about ourselves.”

  I, and the rest of my classmates, came crashing down with a thud.

  “This is a permission form to attend sex education classes. Have your parents or guardian read this form, sign it, and return it to me. Some of your parents will want to teach this subject at home. That’s okay,” she said. “But if your parents check No, or if you do not return the signed permission slip, you will have library science during that period. Does anyone need it in a language other than English?”

  Ms. Saunders had translations in Chinese, Spanish, and French, but she didn’t have them in Hindi and Arabic. We had kids from all over.

  Victoria and I walked home slowly, as we usually did. Her feet still shlushed along. I asked her, “Is your mother going to sign it?”

  She shrugged. In the middle of missing her voice, I felt the thwack of a wet dart against the back of my neck. Juwan stuck his head out of the bus window. “Gotcha, Akilah. I gotcha! Ha-ha!”

  “Wait till tomorrow, Juwan!” I yelled, shaking my fist at him.

  He yelled back, “I will not taunt my fellow classmates!” Then the bus pulled off.

  I turned to Victoria. “That Juwan gets me so mad. He’s going to get it.”

  She stared ahead and nodded.

  Sitting Duck

  Mom gave me a lecture about stooping to Juwan’s level. After I wrote my punishment thirty times, she made me write a full-page essay about taunting instead of the summary Ms. Saunders asked for. She said, “None of this talking out of your head, Akilah. I want actual examples about the effects of taunting.” Then I had to rewrite it for neatness before she signed it.

  Dad said, “Gladys, lighten up. If Juwan Spenser was involved, I’m sure Akilah was provoked and couldn’t help herself.”

  I smiled at my daddy. Yeah. I know I’m the princess and I was loving it—even though it didn’t save me from having to write a full page.

  As far as Mom was concerned, my self-esteem could have used a little grounding. She said, “How Juwan’s mother raised him is her business. It doesn’t have to rub off on my child.”

  I had almost forgotten about the permission slip, but there it was, in my backpack. “Oh, yeah. Sex education class,” I said, pushing the form toward Mom.

  “Sex education?” Dad asked. “You’re in elementary school.”

  Mom gave Dad a look like she wanted to stick out her tongue and sing, “Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah.” She signed her name with large, sharp strokes, grinning at Dad all the while. “She’s not a baby, Roy.”

  Poor Daddy. He looked so betrayed. I’ll bet he didn’t know about our backyard tea talks.

  When we were alone, Mom said, “Akilah, I was going to wait until you needed them, but there’s no use holding onto these. Besides, you should be prepared.”

  You know how my mind takes off, just soars into flight? Instantly I pictured every wonderful surprise that she could have had waiting for me. But the ruby stud earrings in Mom’s jewelry box, the ones I used to hold up to my naked earlobes, turned out to be a pack of sanitary napkins. A stupid starter kit.

  I didn’t put the sack of napkins in my drawer like Mom suggested. Instead I tossed them up in my closet, way back where I couldn’t see them.

  Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t against getting my period. I just wanted to get min
e when Victoria got hers so we could talk about it and compare notes. I needed Victoria to be with me, as in present, and not doing her staring-into-space trick.

  There had to be a way to delay my period and buy us more time. At least six to eight months. If Mom was right and I started early, then I was a sitting duck. As it was, I had less than four months before my eleventh birthday. Not that I thought I’d magically get it on my birthday. I wasn’t that naive. But if I could get it closer to twelve, which was when most of the sixth graders got it, then Victoria and I had a better chance of both getting it the same year. The last thing I wanted was to get it at ten. We wouldn’t be going through it together. It would be like she was in Nigeria and I was in Queens.

  I went on-line to do a search and typed in minstruation, but not one article popped up from the web. On a second try I spelled it correctly and got over 600,000 hits. Can you believe that? The Internet was chock-full of articles on what people talked about in private. There were tons of medical articles with diagrams and statistics, and all the different names for periods. Then there were postings from girls writing about first periods and embarrassing period moments. None of this stuff was what I was looking for, so I kept on searching. The deeper I searched, the kookier it got. There were myths about periods and even celebration rituals. Hah! I’d never let my mother know about that. Mom loves rituals. I should know. I had an African naming ceremony and my umbilical cord was buried in the backyard. You name the ritual, Mom insists we do it. I understand, though. After her sisters went through everything, no one made a fuss when it was Mom’s turn—except when she wanted to marry Dad.

  I just kept clicking on links, looking for clues. Anything I could use to delay my period. So far my best shot was to become a super-duper athlete and exercise nonstop like a maniac. But there were no guarantees that that would work. If I was lucky, I might just get an irregular period, which I wasn’t too sure I wanted.