At-Risk

by Amina Gautier

  “What about those?” Each woman wore a gold pin with indecipherable symbols above her left breast.

  “They’re Greek letters,” she said, surprising me with her knowledge. My mother was a woman of many secrets. She knew many things but told me only what she thought I needed to know at any given moment. When I was old enough to notice that other kids had fathers and I didn’t and I asked her what my father was like, my mother gave the briefest of descriptions. “He was big like so,” she said, stretching her hand over her head, describing a man anywhere between five four and seven feet tall. “And black like so,” she said, pointing to the darkest object near at hand. No matter how many times I asked for more, her descriptions never went beyond this. I was never to know from her if he ever laughed, if he was stingy or carefree with his money, or even how they met. In describing my father as big and black, she told me all she thought I needed to know.

  The one woman who stood apart, the leader, went around the room, pumping all of our hands vigorously. She introduced herself as Miss Diane. Then she introduced the other women. Each one came forth and said a little about what she did. The women were engineers, physicians, computer specialists, lawyers, and scientists. They gave us a history of their sorority, Zeta Alpha Delta. We all rose as they sang their sorority’s hymn.

  My mother took pains to tuck her skirt beneath her as she sat back down on the small chair. These women, dressed in their elegant color-coordinated suits and pins, put our own mothers, dressed in their best, to shame. As Miss Diane explained the program to our mothers, thanking them for bringing us and saying that we would benefit from additional positive female role models at this crucial stage of our development, I listened and heard what sounded like a death knell to me. During these times together, we would focus on math, science, critical thinking, and writing skills, but they would make sure to cover the niceties as well, teaching us etiquette, hygiene, and grooming. We wouldn’t have to pay for anything. We were to spend two Saturdays a month with them from ten until one for the remainder of the school year.

  As Miss Diane talked, the other nine women circulated the tables, handing each girl a gift bag to thank us for coming. When I was handed mine, I looked at the other girls at the tables near me. Some of them I already knew, most I didn’t. We were all wearing the same expression, a combination of fear, awe, and distrust. Although the ladies didn’t say it out loud, their message was clear: they wanted to keep us from becoming the kind of women they would shudder to see. They wanted to save us from ourselves. The girl directly across the table from me caught my attention and whispered, “Who they supposed to be?” She was my age and American, with bad skin. We were classmates, but I couldn’t recall her name. Besides the red eruptions of pustules on her brown cheeks and forehead, nothing about her looked crucial to me.

  My mother pushed her way to the front of the room while other parents were gathering their coats and bags to leave. “I think this will be a wonderful program for my daughter,” she said. “She wants to be a doctor. She comes from a long line of doctors. Her grandfather and her uncle both practiced medicine in Jamaica.”

  I hated the sight of blood, and needles terrified me. I wanted to be a librarian, to live a quiet and orderly life. To walk among stacks of silent shelves, to know every book by its number and let no book go astray. I loved to read worn books, dog-eared by people who had loved them. I wondered why she was lying. I tried to stand apart from her, to disappear each time she gestured to me, saying, “This is my daughter, Dorothy. She’s a good girl. Smart.”

  You could tell that my mother was from the Caribbean. Even though her accent was almost completely gone, eroded away through the years, her foreignness appeared in phrases and on the ends of certain words, like my name. In school I was Dorothy, at home Dorotee. I absorbed my mother’s sounds and phrases, but didn’t repeat them. Her way of talking sounded more natural to me than the everyday language I heard outside of our home, but in her voice I heard an act of erasure, a code embedded in the words she couldn’t rid of her special pronunciation. I heard in those words a warning not to repeat them. Her words told me Don’t.

  “Come,” she said to me. I walked to her side, towering over her. I had to listen as she sang my praises. The women looked me over. I wondered if I looked crucial enough to them, if they saw themselves saving me from heated embraces with experienced boys, or if they could tell that I was always one of the last to be asked to dance at a house party. I was almost thirteen, but I might as well have been ten for all of my experience. I had never been kissed. Never attended a sleepover. Never done anything that did not have my mother’s hand in it. Like my mother said, I was a good girl. I didn’t see myself as being in a crucial stage, although I liked the way it sounded. Crucial stage. It was as if I was on the brink of something, standing with one toe at the edge of a cliff. At any moment I could plummet off the edge or be sharply pulled back in. Crucial. It meant I was one step away from my complete destruction. The slightest false move and I was done for. It gave my life an added sense of desperation that I liked immensely and didn’t want these women to take from me. And if I were truly on the brink of something terrible, it was arrogant of them to think that they could save me.

  “What was all that for?” I asked as we made our way out of the school and walked home.

  “Just making sure they know who you are,” my mother said. “Who you know is important. These women here can take you far.”

  I didn’t say anything else as we walked home. My mother had already made up her mind, and so there would be no getting out of the program. I watched her as she walked slightly ahead of me, swinging my gift bag in her right hand.

  Leon was out emptying his garbage. He waved us over when he spotted us. We lived three blocks away from the school, on a street populated by other West Indians, and Leon owned the Laundromat on our street. His Laundromat was more than a place to wash clothes. It was a place to buy phone cards and key chains, a place to ship goods. Twice a year, my mother bought two barrels and loaded them full of dry goods, taped them up, and sent them to relatives I’d never met.

  “Where the two of you been all dressed and thing?” he asked.

  “Dorothy started a program today at the school. Can’t have the mothers showing up raggedy and such, eh.”

  “That’s right now. You have to represent and show them you mean business!” he said, slamming the lid of the Dumpster down hard. “It’s good to see young people with something to do to keep themselves occupied. Remember when we were that age? Our parents kept us busy. There was no lying around all day, watching TV and such. Leave you with too much time to yourself and you run around and get in trouble and all kind of mess.”

  “Not Dorothy. I have no worries on that account,” my mother said.

  “That’s so,” Leon said. “You doing a fine job with her”.

  My mother smiled modestly.

  Leon was encouraged. “You sure look fine today,” he said, giving her a wistful look as he grinned and showed off his gold-capped teeth.

  I stood there for ten minutes while they discussed me like I was invisible, and I watched girls my age wheel their shopping carts full of dirty clothes past us and up the three steps to the Laundromat. Leon’s infatuation was obvious, although my mother pretended not to notice it. I wanted to warn him about my mother, to tell him that she preferred to be left alone. There were no men in our lives. My mother’s father died during my infancy and her one brother had no desire to come over. This uncle of mine now had six children, and my mother was always packing barrels full of Sweet’n Low to send to him. I had never seen my mother go out on a date, never seen her stop and smile or respond to any of the many men that expressed interest in her. Nice as he was, Leon was all wrong for her. Although he’d been living here for some time, he still seemed new.

  On our first session, the Zeta Alpha Deltas showed us a video featuring “famous women of African descent.” Then they gave us notebooks and asked us to write an essay about
a woman of our choice who hadn’t appeared in the video. When we were done, they had us read them aloud.

  One by one, we each stood up and read essays about our mothers. Halfway through the eleventh essay, I could see the women’s faces falling. They seemed bewildered and disappointed. Miss Diane looked as if she was going to cry.

  When we were done, Miss Elaine put a hand on Miss Diane’s shoulder. “I don’t think they understood the assignment, soror.”

  Miss Diane took a deep breath and stood in front of us. She seemed to be making an effort to smile. Miss Linda motioned her to sit back down and she spoke to us instead.

  “Well, girls, I commend you for your efforts,” she said.

  Miss Tracy chimed in, “To write such beautiful essays in so little time!”

  Miss Anita added, “And it’s certainly encouraging to know that you all love your mothers.”

  Miss Diane cut them off. “Yes, it was very good. But why don’t we do this? Why don’t you girls take the assignment home and work on it for our next meeting?”

  We all groaned aloud at the thought of another essay, but Miss Diane was undaunted. She said, “This time, try to think of women outside of your immediate sphere. Try to think of dynamic women, women who were the first of their kind ever to do something, women who broke the race and gender barriers. Women who carved a space for themselves outside the realm that people have come to think of as a woman’s role. Now do you understand?” she asked us.

  We all nodded. I raised my hand.

  Miss Diane called on me. “Yes, Dorothy?”

  “My mother was the first woman in her family to leave Jamaica and come live in the U.S.”

  Although I came to hate them, my mother was pleased with my Saturday sessions. She wanted me to distinguish myself from the others in my class, to stand out. She wanted to write home about me, finally to be able to use me as an example for my relatives over the sea who all thought I was lazy and spoiled. I imagined that my young cousins hated me. Here I was going to school in whatever type of clothing I chose, watching music videos until it was time for dinner, and having the time of my life, while they were forced into uniforms and still had to go to the kinds of schools where the teachers could hit you and your parents would thank them for it. Where girls who spoke to boys were fast and loose, where they didn’t have time for television after school because they had chores. These were my mother’s recollections of her youth growing up in St. Elizabeth, and although two decades had passed since she’d been a girl in grade school, I imagined that much had not changed.

  I hated the Saturdays, but there I was session after session. My grades weren’t suffering, and so I didn’t see why I had to give up my Saturdays to learn how to sit, when to cross or uncross my legs, and play with knives and forks. But, like the other girls, I didn’t have a choice. None of us wanted to be there. We took our frustration out by barely participating, by looking past and through the women so bent on saving us. Our mothers could make us go, but they couldn’t make us like it. So we slumped in our chairs and answered in mono-syllables. Of the women, we took no notice. We doodled while the Zeta Alpha Deltas talked. We smacked our gum. If we had liked each other, we would have passed notes. But we did not think of leaving or skipping out. We were all there because our mothers made us go. Because the Zeta Alpha Deltas took attendance and we couldn’t cut. Because we didn’t have anywhere else to be. The library surrounded us; our sounds echoed off its high ceilings. Normally, we felt crowded in there with several classes meeting at once. But with just us there, the room seemed to swallow us. We filled only two of the eight tables. We had journals to write in, but after the fiasco with the mother essays, no one ever checked them to see what we wrote.

  I showed up late for one of the Saturday meetings. The girls were clustered around the tables in the library. Something was different. They weren’t their usual sullen selves. No one seemed to be biding their time. Not one pair of eyes was watching the tedious movement of the minute hand on the clock at the front of the room. The girls were all whispering. A current of energy filled the room. After I hung my coat over my chair and sat down, I heard one of the girls say, “Wait until I tell my father. He’ll probably go and buy a new suit.”

  “Who are you going to bring?” she asked me.

  “To what?”

  “To our tea,” she said. She slid me an ivory-colored envelope from a stack off the table. While the sorority women were setting up a game for us, I opened the envelope and read the invitation. They were samples of the invitations the ladies were sending to our homes. The tea would commemorate the end of our year’s program and we would all be awarded certificates for our participation. The ladies thought we would be excited about the chance to get dressed up and show off. They said the tea would give us a chance to display our social polish.

  “What’s the big deal about tea anyway?” I didn’t understand why we needed a special event just to sit around and drink tea. Tea was what my mother and I had each day after school as we sat in the kitchen together, before we did anything else, before we turned on the TV or prepared dinner. Tea was how we settled into the evening. It was our private cozy shared intimacy.

  All the eyes at my table turned on me. Four girls started talking at once.

  “Duh. It’s not just tea,” the girl to my left said.

  One girl said that it was good practice for social functions we would attend in the future.

  The girl to my right said that it would be like a miniature debutante ball, only without boys.

  “Rich people go to things like this all the time,” the girl with the bad skin said. I could tell that they were just repeating what they’d heard before I arrived, but their enthusiasm was genuine. The women had finally gotten to them. They’d found the one activity that would make the other girls come alive. Up until the mention of the tea, our Saturdays had been boring. Each time we came, we were forced to play stupid games we hated. One of the sorority women made us play Jeopardy! only the questions she made up for us were all in math. Another time, we’d played bingo. Every square on the board was a fact about their sorority. Sometimes, we didn’t play any silly games. We would just gather around one table, knotting and pulling embroidery floss into friendship bracelets. In February, they quizzed us on famous black inventors and scientists. Most sessions ended with them awarding some prize to the winner. Once I won a sachet made of rose-scented potpourri, which I kept in my underwear drawer long after the scent had faded.

  Everyone seemed to be excited but me. Girls who were normally despondent, who didn’t speak until called upon, were chattering away and making plans that included their fathers. Those that didn’t have fathers were borrowing their uncles or grandfathers for the day. I was the only one in the group without someone to escort me as I made my debut. I could see it now. Each girl would make a grand entrance into the rented hall as the ladies called her name. She would leave her father momentarily as she went forward to accept her certificate; then she would return to him and take his arm as he led her to her seat. Each girl but me. I felt sick, imagining how freakish I would look that day, all dressed up with no escort. Instead of a father, I had only the barest description.

  “What will our mothers do? Do they have a special role?” the girl with the bad skin asked.

  Miss Diane smiled as if it pained her and said, “Your mothers will be there to support and encourage. That’s an important enough role for them.”

  Another girl asked, “What if mine can’t make it? She works weekends.”

  This time the leader’s smile was genuine. “Then we’ll just have to make do.”

  Fathers, or male figures, were required. Mothers were optional.

  The girl with the bad skin looked at me, eyebrows raised. Neither of us was surprised. The Zeta Alpha Deltas had not been subtle in the least way about their desire to wean us from the women they didn’t want us to become. They kept encouraging us to look beyond our immediate circle, to expand our definition of role mode
l to include women who had made real contributions to the world at large. Women such as themselves.

  “Are there are any more questions?” Miss Diane asked.

  The girl on my left raised her hand. “Yeah. Why do you all wear blue and red all of the time?”

  Miss Diane flushed with pride. She was dressed in a blue pantsuit with a red silk scarf knotted at her throat. “That’s a good question, but I can’t tell you the answer.”

  “How come?” she asked.

  “Because only Zeta Alpha Deltas know the answer. These colors are symbolic to our sorority. Perhaps one day, when you’re older, you’ll join our organization. Then you can learn what the colors are all about.”

  The official invitation arrived a week later. My mother was in the kitchen making fried fish and festival when I dropped the stack of mail on the table.

  After she read the invitation, she got on the phone and called the mothers of some of my girlfriends. Nine of the original twenty-two girls had dropped the program, and my mother now called their mothers to gloat. She didn’t come right out and say that she had told them so. Instead, she predicted great things for me, of which this tea was only the first. The Zeta Alpha Deltas would take me under their wings and give me a scholarship when it was time to go to college. Once I got to college, I would pledge their sorority and be connected to all the right people for the rest of my life. Doors would open for me left and right. All because I gave them a few of my Saturdays and was willing to drink tea.

  When my mother got off the phone, she announced, “You’ll need a dress.”

  “Leave me the money, and I’ll go down to Pitkin Avenue and get one,” I said. I’d been picking out my clothes for the last year because she was usually too busy to go with me.

  She shook her head. “Not a dress from there. It has to be A&S or Macy’s.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged. “I’ll go downtown then.”