Shine (Short Story) (3 page)

“Wait—can you put the hood thing on and use the hot comb instead?” Ruth blurted out. “Please?”

Granny laughed, her hands on her wide hips. Ruth had always thought her granny looked like the sail of a ship—heavy-masted, wide, implacable. “Lou, you hear this? Queen of Sheba here wants a press.”

Mama, who was sewing a button onto one of Ruth's white school shirts, looked up from where she sitting at the kitchen table. “You should be grateful your granny's doing
anything
to your hair,” she said. “We're not running a salon.”

Granny was pulling tighter on her hair. “Ain't never had no complaints before from my own grandbaby…”

“It's not you,” Ruth said, hearing Christina's words beneath her own. “It's that I want to look more…grown up.”

What she wanted was to look like Maia, with her river of shining hair. But that was about as likely as Ruth waking up in a millionaire's penthouse. Granny and Mama exchanged a look, and then Mama shrugged.

“Fine,” Granny sighed. “Go get the comb.”

Ruth scrambled to the cabinet where they kept the bonnet dryer and hot comb. Granny set the drying cap over her head and then placed the comb on the metal coil of the stove. After the bonnet cut off, she ran the Super Gro through a section of hair. Ruth tried not to think about how she had explained this to the other girls; how they had looked at her like she was an alien.

She held still as Granny ran the comb through her hair; she'd been burned enough to know the consequences of fidgeting. By the time she was finished, Mama had mended two more shirts, let out one of Rachel's skirts (“That girl grows like a weed,” she muttered), and darned a sock. Rachel walked into the kitchen to get an apple out of the refrigerator and looked at Ruth. “You goin' somewhere special?” she asked.

“Just school.”

“It looks good,” Rachel said, as Ruth narrowed her eyes, suspicious. “Like that skater lady. Dorothy Hamill.”

“For real?” Ruth asked.

Rachel took a bite. “Nope,” she said.

“Rachel!” Mama warned, but her sister was already cruising out of the kitchen on a laugh.

“Don't you listen to her, baby,” Granny said. “You beautiful, inside and out.”

She held up the mirror so that Ruth could see both the front and the back. Her hair was straight and shiny, curving just slightly at the bottom. “You know what would make this even more perfect?” Ruth said. “A headband.”

“So go get a headband,” Granny said. “You got that nice red one you wore at Easter.”

“Some of the girls in my class have the kind that sparkle,” Ruth said, as casually as she could manage. “I wish I had one.”

Mama didn't even look up from the sock she was mending. “We're not made of money, Ruth,” she said, and she bit off the thread with her teeth.

On Columbus Day, Dalton was closed, but Mama still had to work. Rachel was invited to Nia's apartment and Ruth tagged along to the Upper West Side to play with Christina. Since Mr. Sam was out, Christina had Mama set up his movie projector, so that she and Ruth could watch the
Wonderful World of Disney
films that lined his shelves in their round metal tins. He worked in television, and their house was full of treasures Ruth could appreciate, like that, and others she couldn't—like the framed, signed photographs of movie stars she didn't know: Doris Day, Jack Lemmon, Steve McQueen.

Ruth and Christina ate grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup that Mama had made, and watched
Cinderella
. Christina was the only person Ruth knew who could watch a movie in her house and not have to go to a movie theater. They sat on Mr. Sam's red leather couch and shared an afghan that Ms. Mina had knitted when she was going through a crafty phase.

When the prince kissed Cinderella at the end, Christina said, “You know, it doesn't just work like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you can marry a prince if you're some nobody. You have to have a title.”

Ruth thought about this. “Like a book?”

“I don't know,” Christina admitted. “But not everyone has one. Maia said.”

Maia said
. Of course. “Does
she
have a title?” Ruth asked.

Christina considered this. “Bossypants?”

A surprised laugh bubbled out of Ruth. Then Christina was laughing, too, and it was the two of them and no one else, like it used to be.

Christina turned to her when the projector started flapping, the film having run its course. “Now what should we do?” she said. “Want to see my new Malibu Barbie?”

We
. Was there a better word in the English language?

“Christina?” Ruth said hesitantly. “This is fun, right?”

Christina looked at her sidelong. “Yeah, weirdo,” she said, grinning.

“So when we're at school, then…are you mad at me?”

There was a pause. “No,” Christina said, but in that hiccup of time, Ruth heard a thousand yeses. “Why would you even think that?”

“Because you act different when it's not just us.”

“No I don't!”

“You do,” Ruth said, but now she was second-guessing herself. Was she imagining it? Christina had been nothing short of nice all day. Maybe the problem wasn't Christina, but Ruth herself. It wasn't like it was Christina's job to defend Ruth from Maia; Ruth had to do that on her own. So why was she blaming Christina?

Suddenly she realized Christina was crying. “Why are you being so
mean
to me?” she said, just as Mama walked in to take away their empty plates.

“Christina?” Mama said, alarmed. She crouched down and gave Christina a tissue from her own pocket to dry her face. “What happened?”

“I don't want to play anymore,” Christina sobbed, red-faced, not even looking at Ruth.

“Okay, then, you go on up to your room, and I'll bring you some dessert. I baked fresh blondies. That sound good to you?”

Christina sniffled and nodded, and a minute later, she was gone. Mama folded her arms. “What did you say to upset Ms. Christina?”

The truth?
Ruth thought. But instead she lowered her eyes. “Christina's only my friend when we're here,” she confessed. “The minute we walk through the door of school, everything changes.”

She expected Mama to get mad at her for lying. After all, it had been nearly six weeks and Ruth had gone on and on about how great school was, how many friends she had made. But instead Mama sighed and took Ruth's hand. “Baby girl,” she said, “
nothing
changes.”

Two days later, Ms. Thomas got a student teacher. Miss Van Vleet was in college and would be coming to their classroom only on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. She would help the students who needed extra work with their writing, and she would be teaching some of the lessons. But that first day, her main job was to learn everyone's name, and she was really, really bad at it.

She called Maia
Mara,
and Lola
Lulu
. She mixed up Edward and Lucas.

Ms. Thomas tried to help her by giving her a stack of graded papers to hand out after recess. Miss Van Vleet wandered around the classroom, sometimes asking other students for help. Some of the boys tried to confuse her as a prank, and after that, when she had a question, she went straight to Ms. Thomas.

“Which one is Ruth again?” Miss Van Vleet asked.

Ms. Thomas looked up from where she was marking papers. She glanced around the room to see where Ruth was sitting, and Ruth met her gaze. Instead of pointing, she turned to Miss Van Vleet and hesitated for a moment. Then she said, “She's the girl with the red sneakers.”

Ruth looked down at her red Keds. There were three other girls in her classroom who had the same shoes.

On the other hand, she was the only Black student.

That night, Rachel was being grounded without television privileges because she'd decked a girl for stealing her HoHos at lunch. That punishment wouldn't have bothered Ruth, who would have happily sat in her room reading, but Rachel had never willingly picked up a book, as far as Ruth could remember. So instead, while Ruth tried to memorize words for her spelling test, she had to block out the sound of Rachel galumphing around the room they shared, trying to find some other way to occupy her time.

“You want me to test you?” Rachel offered.

“Why?”

There was probably a catch. With Rachel, there was always a catch. It wasn't that she didn't love her sister; it was just that they saw the world through two different lenses.

“Because I'm being nice. And because I'm bored as all get out.” She reached out her hand, and hesitantly Ruth gave her the list of words. Rachel climbed onto her bed and stuffed a pillow behind her head. “Baby words,” she muttered, reading them over.
“Means
.
”

“M-E-A-N-S.”

“Corn.”

“C-O-R-N.”

“Argue.”

“A-R-G-U-E.”

“This is stupid,” Rachel said. “You don't even have to try. Why doesn't your teacher bump you up a level?”

Ruth didn't know the answer to that; there were other students who had more challenging words, although she had never gotten less than a 95 on a spelling test.

“Well,
I
know why, even if you don't,” Rachel said. “Because your teacher doesn't think a Black girl can be at the top of the class.”

“That's not true,” Ruth immediately said, defending Ms. Thomas. “She knows I'm smart.”

“Uh-huh,” Rachel answered, in a way that meant anything but that.

“She doesn't even see me as Black,” Ruth countered.

Rachel laughed. “Yeah, 'cause she's too busy seeing you as a charity case.”

Ruth knew that her sister meant this as a dig, but she fiercely believed that Ms. Thomas saw more than just her skin color. She saw a girl who always said please and thank you and who never interrupted someone else if they were talking. She saw a student who was one of the best readers in the class, who loved learning astronomy. She saw a good listener, a willing friend.

She saw someone who was one of them.

Smugly, Ruth told Rachel what had happened that day at school. How Ms. Thomas had identified her.

“You really think the reason she pointed you out by your sneakers was because it was the only thing she could use to describe you?” Rachel asked.

That was all it took—that chink in the foundation, that worm of a question—for Ruth to peek behind the fancy wrapping of the story she'd created in her own mind. The justification, the wishful thinking—it was swept away by the broom of doubt like so much smoke.

Ruth knew she was partly right: Ms. Thomas had been showing a kindness by not singling Ruth out for her appearance. She was trying to be inclusive by not calling Ruth “the Black girl.”

But that was because to Ms. Thomas, to Maia, to Miss Van Vleet—to everyone in that school—Black wasn't just any adjective.

It was something they'd never want to be.

“I know you don't want to be my friend,” Ruth said by way of prefacing her conversation with Christina in the sedan on the way to school. “But can I ask you something?”

For almost a week now, they had moved in similar orbits, but they had not interacted unless they were forced to in a group project. Christina didn't look at Ruth, but she jerked her chin:
Okay
.

Ruth explained what had happened with Ms. Thomas and Miss Van Vleet. “If you were in a crowd with a lot of people and someone asked me who you were, I wouldn't say you're the one with the scar on your ankle from where you fell last summer. I'd use something everyone would see right away, like…your purple shirt or your Holly Hobbie lunch box. Doesn't it seem weird?” Ruth asked. “To not call something what it
is
?”

Christina didn't answer, and Ruth thought it was because she was still mad at her. But then she turned in her seat so that she was facing Ruth. “Maybe no one notices that you're Black,” she said. “I mean, you act and sound just like
we
do.”

Ruth thought about this. It couldn't really be true, could it? If she dressed in pants and played baseball and did gross things that boys did, like have burping contests, would teachers not know that she was a girl? You couldn't
unsee
what was right before your eyes, could you?

Before she could mull on this further, Christina spoke again. “I never said I didn't want to be your friend,” she said, her voice small. “It's just…all of a sudden you're at
my
school, with
my
friends, and I thought…I thought…” She raised her hand to the window and spread her fingers like a starfish. “What if they liked you more than they like me?”

Ruth didn't know what to say. It was the first time she realized that a person might look like Christina, and live in a fancy home, and dress in designer clothing, and have everything her heart desired, and still go to sleep at night worrying.

Maybe we
are
more alike than we're different,
Ruth thought.

When Ms. Thomas turned off the lights in the classroom, everyone got quiet. Then she flicked them back on again. “Now,” she asked, “how long did it take for the light to come back?”

It was instantaneous, immediate. There was probably a word for faster-than-a-heartbeat but Ruth didn't know it.

“Light moves fast. It can move 186,000 miles per second,” Ms. Thomas said. “The reason it seems like we see light the instant I turn on the switch is because light is so quick, and because we're so close to it. But some light comes from much farther away—light from stars. They're so far away, in fact, that we don't even measure the distance in miles. We measure it in light-years—the amount of time it takes for light from that star to reach us, on earth. The reason stars look so small in the night sky is because they're so far away from us.”