What I Do
Eat cereal. Read the back of the box over and over. Put on my red velvet jumper with white heart shaped buttons. Walk to the bus, pick up discarded cigarette butts and pretend to smoke.
Get on the bus. Girls yell, Wire head, ugly black skin. Take a window seat, under the radio speaker. Look for cats hunting in the fields.
Go to class. Stay in at recess. Steal chewing gum, plastic green monkeys and cookies from desks. Eat in bathroom stalls. Pure white light pours in.
Try to get a bloody nose by punching myself in the same bathroom after lunch.
The teacher passes around pictures of herself pregnant. You were fat! I yell. Everyone laughs. I lap it like licking honey from a spoon. I was pregnant, what’s your excuse? Everyone laughs. I swallow stones.
Grow tired in the afternoons, droop like a sunflower in the lengthening light.
Get on the bus. Girls yell, Brillo-head! Zebra! Sit in an aisle seat. Your father’s a nigger! I say, No, he’s a fireman. Laughter all around. Pinch myself shut like squeezing soap from a sponge.
Walk home. Sometimes find an unsmoked cigarette in the gravel along the curb—long, white, new. Put it to my lips, pull it away and hold it aloft, movie-star-like, all the way home.
Get on the bus. Girls yell, Wire head, ugly black skin. Take a window seat, under the radio speaker. Look for cats hunting in the fields.
Go to class. Stay in at recess. Steal chewing gum, plastic green monkeys and cookies from desks. Eat in bathroom stalls. Pure white light pours in.
Try to get a bloody nose by punching myself in the same bathroom after lunch.
The teacher passes around pictures of herself pregnant. You were fat! I yell. Everyone laughs. I lap it like licking honey from a spoon. I was pregnant, what’s your excuse? Everyone laughs. I swallow stones.
Grow tired in the afternoons, droop like a sunflower in the lengthening light.
Get on the bus. Girls yell, Brillo-head! Zebra! Sit in an aisle seat. Your father’s a nigger! I say, No, he’s a fireman. Laughter all around. Pinch myself shut like squeezing soap from a sponge.
Walk home. Sometimes find an unsmoked cigarette in the gravel along the curb—long, white, new. Put it to my lips, pull it away and hold it aloft, movie-star-like, all the way home.
Copyright Credit: Roxane Beth Johnson, “What I Do” from Jubilee. Copyright © 2006 by Roxane Beth Johnson. Reprinted by permission of Anhinga Press.
Source: Jubilee (Anhinga Press, 2006)