I'm Down: A Memoir (19 page)

The second my father and Yvonne had gotten married, Yvonne decided that she would mold me from a twelve-year-old tomboy into a sophisticated young black woman. And even though I seemed utterly ungrateful, she would benevolently share everything she had ever learned about being a lady in her twenty-three
long years of life. By now she had convinced my father that my general weirdness reflected poorly on the family, and that it was his fault for not knowing about periods and such.

But no one in our house was particularly consistent, including Yvonne, so her charm school was intense and intermittent, and usually ended with Yvonne calling me Duck-Butt and leaving the room. I was what she described as “unteachable,” because I just couldn’t believe most of the things she told me about men and women. It depressed me to think that love was like steering a mule with a rubber carrot. Besides that, she was hymen-obsessed, and everyone’s virginity was constantly suspect. She insisted that my friend Violet was promiscuous because “virgins couldn’t wear tampons,” and Violet used them. And that turned into a big production with Dad about what kind of girls I should and shouldn’t be hanging out with. I insisted, “Violet is in the math club! Trust me, we’d all know if a boy even looked at her!” But then it was Lilith, and then Kirsten, and as time went on, I noticed that Yvonne just thought every twelve-year-old was a whore. She also had all these feminine taboos about what men could and could not see, and when we were doing laundry she went to great pains to make sure Dad never saw her underwear or bras. Saying, “Ladies . . . the only place a man should see your panties is on your body. They lose their power if men see them lying in a drawer.” She would even hide drying bras in closets and other weird places to keep their power charged while they were drying. It was like I was learning about adolescence from the mom in
Carrie
.

Dad seemed content to step aside and let Yvonne mold me. Even though, if he was as gullible as she made men out to be, he was a total tool.

Among my chores were new womanly endeavors, as well. My allowance went up for the first time in years and now part of
my new responsibilities was the job of looking after my stepbrother and -sister. This included a range of activities, from feeding them to doing their hair before school.

The first time I was asked to do the babies’ hair I was baffled. Their hair was soft and curly yet completely different from my sister’s hair. I had no clue what to do, so I just treated their hair like white hair. I ran a brush through Andreus’s flattop, and pulled Yvette’s hair into a ponytail. I stood back and took stock of my work, thinking they looked pretty good—paired down, but playful in a “kids being kids” kind of way. And seeing that Yvonne and Dad had already left for work, I walked Andreus and Yvette to day care.

But that evening when we picked them up, Andreus’s hair looked like a sheep’s back, and Yvette’s had popped out everywhere except where the hair tie was. It was worse than I expected. I mean I knew that black hair was unruly enough that Zwena was willing to subject herself to hot pressing combs and scalp-searing relaxers to maintain order. But Yvette’s hair defied gravity. She looked like she had spent the day in the dryer.

Yvonne was quiet as the two kids got in the car and started chatting about what they did at “school.” She listened to them adding an “uh-huh” here and there or a “That’s nice,” and I thought maybe she hadn’t noticed their hair. But as soon as they piped down, she looked at me and said under her breath, “What the hell did you do to my kids’ hair?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I think it looks good.”

“What’s good about it? My daughter looks like a Troll doll.”

“I mean . . . it’s a different look,” I said, hoping to defuse the situation. “It’s a more natural look.”

“What the hell are you talking about, ‘natural’? Her hair’s sticking up all over the place! Is that ‘natural’?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“So . . . what exactly do you mean by ‘natural’?” Yvonne asked pointedly, and glared at me for an uncomfortably long time. I avoided eye contact.

“What was that, Mrs. Natural?” Yvonne asked. “That’s what I thought.”

The next day I was eating breakfast while Yvonne tried to get ready for dental hygienist school. I always tried to steer clear of the frenzy that was her getting out the door. She kissed Andreus and Yvette, who were sitting next to me, and then on the breakfast counter, next to my bowl of cereal, she angrily deposited two products: a tub of something called Bone Strait, and a bottle of Luster’s Pink oil.

And as she walked out the door she pointed to the products and told me, “I think you can do beaucoup better on the hair than yesterday! Beaucoup!”

I hated that she pronounced the
p
on
beaucoup
.

I sat Yvette down in the living room and opened the tub of Bone Strait. It smelled familiar, and my immediate reaction was,
Oh, that’s what that smell is
. As I started to brush it into her hair, Yvette got squirmy and kept trying to get up, so I turned the TV on to
DuckTales
. Yvette was only three, so her vocabulary was limited to what my sister and I taught her when no one was looking and food words. But she knew how to say, “
DuckTales
ooh-hoo, ooh-hoo.” And as she mumbled-sang to the opening song, I pulled her hair back into a ponytail at which point Yvette stopped singing and started hollering at the top of her lungs, “Ow! Ow! Ooooww!” as though I were killing her. In fact, even after I had completely stopped touching her hair, she was still screaming as dramatic tears streamed down her face.

“Oh, come on,” I said.

“It hurts,” Yvette sniffed, and stood up, stopping me from continuing.

“I’m not even touching you,” I said.

“Don’t pull, Duck-Butt!”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Now can I finish your hair?”

Yvette sat back down warning me, “Don’t pull, den.”

So, giving in, I pulled her hair as tight as I could without her screaming, which wasn’t very tight. And rather than leave it as a ponytail in the back, I braided it, closing the end with a poodle barrette, and then smoothed on a touch of the Bone Strait, which made it look much less frizzy. For Andre, I rubbed some of the product into my hands and then worked it into his hair as I brushed it. I felt confident that the product would keep their hair looking perfectly styled for the whole day and that I had done a fantastic job.

But that afternoon when we picked them up from daycare, Yvette’s hair was worse than the day before. The barrette was long gone and all her hair was sticking out except for one clump with the hair tie hanging on to the end for dear life. And as they got in the car, Yvonne looked at me and said sarcastically, “good job on the babies’ hair . . . very natural.” I didn’t know what it was gonna take to make those kids’ hair look neat for more than an hour, and I clearly wasn’t the person for the job.

“Maybe I shouldn’t do their hair,” I said. “I’m not very good at it.”

“You just need to try a little harder. Not half-ass it,” Yvonne said. “Yvette wants to look her best, same as you. I mean, don’t you want to look your best?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I never really thought about it.”

“You might want to think about it,” Yvonne said.

That night while Yvonne got ready for a date with my father, I worked on my homework at the kitchen counter. I was in the
middle of an essay question when Yvonne called, “Mishna, come here.” I got up and followed her voice into the bathroom.

“What?” I asked.

“Just come here,” Yvonne said.

She stood at the bathroom sink in a bright blue silk dress, and her hair and makeup were flawless. She looked so good, it actually startled me.

“Yes, Yvonne?” I asked.

“Just come here,” she said.

I walked over to where she was standing by the mirror. The bathroom hadn’t been remodeled yet, so you had to steady yourself between where the linoleum floor ended and where it was just uneven plywood. The wall she was standing next to was torn up exposing the fiberglass and beams. But Yvonne in her blue dress and heels transcended that. And looking at her all made up in the light of the clamp-on work light, she seemed to glow. I wondered if this was how Dad always saw her. I walked across the bathroom and stood next to her.

“Look up,” she said, suddenly producing an eyeliner. I backed away. “Don’t be afraid. Look up.” She was so pretty.

I silently obeyed her as she held my eyelid open and shoved the eye pencil into my eye and started drawing. It was so uncomfortable, it actually answered the question, “Why do we have eyelids?” I teared up and I was dying to rub, but as she let go of my lid, Yvonne said, “Don’t rub your eye.” And it took all my will to resist. Then she stood back and said, “Wow.”

“I can’t believe you do that every day. It hurts so bad.”

“It’s not so bad!” she insisted. “Beauty isn’t free.”

“Does it look good?” I asked.

“Almost,” she said, reaching for the blush. She put blush on
my cheeks and smoothed on a bright red lip liner, which she blended with Vaseline. I had to stand perfectly still as she curled my lashes and put on thick black mascara, warning me the whole time not to blink. And she finished it off by running a curling iron through my bangs and making two soft curls to frame my face, burning my ear as she did.

When she was finished, my eyes and lips felt weird, and my ear was burning, but I just focused on the way Yvonne’s dress gathered around her waist and flattered her shoulders and how pretty her red lipstick looked against her skin tone. Ultimately the pain seemed negotiable.

“Let me see,” I said.

But Yvonne teased, “No,” and walked me away from the mirror. “I want you to see yourself how everyone else sees you.” Yvonne walked me out the door and into the dining room where Anora was sitting with Andreus and Yvette. And like a needle scratching across a record player, everyone turned their attention to me. That was when my six-year-old stepbrother wolf-whistled.

I scolded him, “Andre!”

“But, you look like a babe!”

And Anora just threw up her hands and said, “Finally!”

Yvonne was beaming as she said, “Okay. Look in the mirror, Mishna.” I was glad she didn’t call me Duck-Butt, and I got on a chair and checked myself out in the mirror over the fireplace. It was too much makeup, but I definitely looked like hot shit. I was immediately captivated with my own appearance. It was huge and took up the whole mirror. And looking in the mirror at my younger siblings reflection so far behind me, they really looked like little people. They were talking, but all I heard was “Blah blah blah.” Vanity coursed through my veins like heroin. I looked like a babe.

Yvonne must have sensed that because she said, “Don’t get too cocky. You aren’t as pretty as me.”

That was when Dad bounced in the door. He set the mail on the counter, kissed Yvonne, took one look at me, and stopped like he had been hit by a freight train.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

“Oooh,” Yvette said, acknowledging the F-bomb.

Yvonne tried to ease his mood. “Nothing, John. I just put a little makeup on Mishna.” She rubbed Dad’s back as she said, “I think she looks great.”

“I think I look kind of pretty,” I said.

But Dad looked horrified. He searched my made-up face to try to find something good about it, which just made him madder. “You all went a little crazy with the shit.”

“Oooooh!” Yvette put her hand over her mouth.

He looked at me again, angrily. “I don’t like this!”

“John,” she said. “You said Mishna and I could have woman time.”

“Young lady time,” Dad said.

I tried changing the subject. “Oh, by the way, Dad, at school we are supposed to go to the water treatment plant to see how it works or something,” I ran over to my book bag. “So . . . I just need you to sign my slip.” I tried to hand Dad the permission slip, but he didn’t take it. He actually backed away as I walked toward him.

“Yvonne, you do it,” Dad said, and Yvonne came over and signed my slip as he continued, “Goddamn it, Yvonne. I don’t like you making her up like that. You know it sends out the wrong message! And she’s too young to know about sending out messages.”

This was all over my head. “I can wash it off.”

But Yvonne rubbed Dad’s shoulders and said, “Oh, John. It’s just a little makeup for fun.” But Dad still looked angry as
she soothed him. “Of course I’m gonna teach your daughter to handle herself.”

“But . . .”

“John,” she said. “Just, trust me.”

And Dad let out a yielding, “Okay.”

The next morning at hairdressing time, I wasn’t listening to any complaints. I had had a pencil in my eye the night before and beauty wasn’t free for anyone, not even Yvette. I sat with the three-year-old in my lap and tugged her hair hard and tight, smoothing handfuls of Bone Strait into her hair until it had no choice but to lie flat.

“Ow!” she cried. “It hurts . . . No, no, no. You’re—ow!” But I only pulled tighter, confident that Yvette needed to look her best. And to my surprise, after about a minute of screaming, she went back to watching
DuckTales
and completely ignored the fact that my hands were in her hair. I was really starting to understand beauty. And when I was done Yvette had two perfect braids on her perfectly parted head. And if, God forbid, her hair started even trying to stick up, I had fortified either side with two ribbon clips in colors that matched her outfit. She looked neat and tidy, and not the least bit natural. Andre got way more Pink oil than seemed necessary, but his hair looked shiny and neat and twenty minutes later, it didn’t look like too much.

That evening when we picked them up, though their hairdos had deteriorated, they’d started out so tidy that they still looked pretty neat. And when the babies got into the car, Yvonne didn’t even mention their hair, which was the same as getting a trophy. Yvonne wasn’t in the habit of handing out kudos for things that were expected of you.

That night, every time I went to the bathroom, I lingered at her makeup on the counter, looking at her various powders
and brushes that had magically made me look like a woman the night before. I wished Yvonne would offer to do my makeup again. I wanted for her to make me look pretty so I could spend hours looking in the mirror. But instead my sister and I cleaned the kitchen while Yvonne spent the evening in the bedroom with Dad. No one emerged all night except for Dad, who came out to make Yvonne a sandwich. And I had to admit, no matter how crazy I had thought she was, and no matter how smart I thought I was, Yvonne had a lot of power. She had the power to make me beautiful, she had the power to make men make her sandwiches, and everyone in our house wanted to be near her—she had mystique.