Such a Pretty Face

by Ann Angel

  I am the tallest girl in my class, and when my classmates want to be mean, they yell, Here comes the Jolly Green Giant. The taunt echoes through schoolyards and hallways. Comes . . . comes . . . comes. Giant . . . giant . . . giant.

  But it is summer now and I do not have to line up in size order anywhere. I do not have to listen to the taunting of classmates. No, it is summer. July perhaps. Or early August. Hot already. I am standing with my hands on my hips. Waiting. Behind me, someone keeps calling my name, but I ignore this. My block is clean this morning. This first clear day after a week of rain, my grandmother and other mothers came out to sweep damp newspaper, potato chip and candy wrappers, and brown paper bags into the street. This morning, the street-cleaning truck cruised by—bleach-scented water and heavy black brushes taking our trash, and everyone else’s, with it. It was early but already hot, and I stood there, my shorts pulled up, my feet bare—letting the truck’s cool, smelly water breeze over me. My head back, my dark arms out like wings, my T-shirt growing damp.

  The sweepers had all gone inside by then, my grandmother complaining, Looks like nobody lives here even as my front yard brightened with the absence of trash, even as a small breeze pushed the pale curtains lovingly through my family’s windows. In the mist of the street cleaner, I was alone. And even as the water cooled me, a sadness crept up, out of my very bones, pushing through marrow and blood and skin to drape me in itself. It was not unfamiliar, this sadness. But as always, it surprised me, seeming to come at once from no place and from the deepest parts of me.

  C’mon, Angie, I been calling you for like a year already.

  And now I turn in the hot afternoon to find my best friend standing beside me. Where I am dark, she is olive. Where my hair is straightened, hers curls down her back, ringlets circling her face. Where I am still flat chested and skinny, she is not. She is beautiful, and although we have been friends since we were five years old, I worry that the day will come when she will realize I am not beautiful like she is, that this will suddenly matter to her, and the seven years of friendship will mean nothing. But today is not the day. Today she stands before me dressed in pale pink shorts and a T-shirt with Maria across the front. Although we often dress alike, Maria’s mother is more daring than my own, allowing Maria to wear the clothes of the moment—miniskirts and go-go boots, ankle-length leather coats and platform shoes. I am confined to flat shoes and practical cottons—clothes my mother swears will feel better and last longer.

  Get your sister for double Dutch, Maria says, holding up the long cord we talked the telephone man into giving us.

  She won’t want to. Think of somebody else.

  This is the year my sister is moving away from us. She is fourteen, and there is a far-off look in her eyes. Her brilliance has been discovered—by teachers and social workers and everyone on the block. But while this is a moment I dream of often—to wake up understanding math and science and geography—my sister has moved inside herself, to a quiet place I do not understand. She sits for hours now, a bowl of popcorn and a glass of water next to her on the end table, with books whose words are as foreign to me as the understanding of pi and Fe and the USSR open on her lap. She reads with no sense of who is around her, what is happening in the room, on the block, in the world. When she closes a book at the end of the day, she looks up, surprised, it seems, that there is a world and she is in it still. We call her Einstein and Freak Show and any other name that will get her to react—to see us. Us regular, not-brilliant kids who are stuck right here on earth.

  There is a stillness to the air. Down the block, three boys are playing Skully—shooting tar-filled bottle tops over a diagram of numbers drawn with chalk on the street. They crouch down on their knees, their butts up in the air, and use their thumbs and pointers to shoot the tops. I am not allowed to play this game. Not allowed to crouch down like this. My mother doesn’t allow it and my friends don’t. You’re not a guy, Maria says when I speak of my longing to play. Down on the street, their bodies curved into the strange position of the game, the boys look powerful and free and oddly beautiful to me. They crawl around on the warm tar and laugh loudly when one bottle cap knocks another out of the game. Their knees and elbows are dirty. I watch, standing back, away from them. There is something in this game, in their laughter, in the ferocity of their togetherness, that I don’t yet understand. When Maria comes close, they duck their heads, look away while looking at her. She smiles at them, then turns quickly away.

  C’mon, Angie, Maria says. You ain’t no guy.

  It’s not about being no guy, I say. And we sit on the curb and watch them. Her not understanding why I would want to get down in the street, me not knowing how to talk about the word that comes to me: freedom. Not knowing now what I will one day know—that Maria already lives the word. That the word, freedom, exists for her in the slow turn of her heel, the flip of her dark, curling hair, her thick eyelashes, her smile.

  I watch the boys while Maria untangles the rope. How many games of double Dutch have we played this summer? How many games of hopscotch and Miss Lucy and handball? How many times have we run across the street to the park, climbed onto the swings, and tried to touch tree leaves with our toes?

  This summer there is a longing in me so deep, I feel some mornings that I will drown in it. A longing to belong. Not to my friends or my block, but to me somehow. To grow into my skin and hair and gap-teeth. To know what I feel, like everyone around me already knows or doesn’t care to know. Who am I?

  When the boys look past me, who am I?

  When the kids call me Jolly Green Giant, who am I?

  When the grown-ups talk about my manners and my long legs that I’ll grow into, who am I?

  When I lean into the bathroom mirror, trying to find the beauty there, who . . . ?

  It is Thursday night and my grandmother is brushing my hair. She pulls the brush quickly through it. Then there are the hard plastic teeth of the comb making a part down the center of my scalp. The kitchen is quiet. On the stove what is left of this evening’s meal remains—okra that I hate, fried chicken that I love, and mashed potatoes that I can either take or leave. Tonight, because my grandmother has used skim milk in them instead of whole, I have left them. Now my grandmother pulls the left side of my hair into a tight braid as she lectures me.

  That’s why you so skinny now, she says. Clothes just hanging off of you. I shouldn’t even have told you I used skim milk. You wouldn’t have known the difference.

  Yes, I would’ve. They tasted different.

  Different how?

  Nasty different. Like potato water.

  My grandmother taps the comb against my head. It is a firm tap but not a mean one.

  Shouldn’t even have told you. You would’ve eaten them right up.

  She braids my hair to the very end, and the neat, tight braids stop at my shoulder before curling up. This year I want to be able to comb my own hair, but when my grandmother holds out the brush and comb with a stubborn Go on, then. Comb your nappy hair, I don’t. Her hands are too sure, too strong. Too familiar.

  My sister pulls her own hair back into a ponytail. I am told I have my father’s hair—thick, crinkled, jet-black. My sister’s curls are looser, falling over her face and down her back in a way that my grandmother says her own mother’s hair once fell. I do not understand how my sister and I got such different hair.

  As my grandmother puts an elastic on the second braid, I say, I wanted a ponytail like Dana’s.

  My grandmother looks at me as though I’ve lost my mind. Then you better grow some hair like Dana’s.

  Outside, it is nearly dark. I stand by the window and wait for my brothers and sister to finish dressing. You better grow some hair like Dana’s. I know there is love and laughter and my grandmother’s own strange sense of humor in this statement. Still, it hurts. As I stand, dressed in a white cotton blouse and sky blue wraparound skirt, I can see my sister behind me—her reflection in the windowpane clear and sure. She is tall like I
am. When her breasts grew, she was no longer skinny but thin. One day, maybe I will have breasts and be thin. When we dress alike, people often ask if we are twins—same dark skin and gap-teeth. Same nose—long but broad. Dark eyes, thick brows and lashes. Our cheekbones jut up out of our faces in a way that makes strangers comment. Look at those bones, they say. Such strong bones, they say. Fraternal twins, they say. Different hair, though.

  Of course not, my sister says. I’m older. Can’t you tell? Jeez.

  But there is something else to my sister. Something that makes her the beautiful one. I don’t know what this something is, but I see it in the eyes of relatives and strangers. The way their looks linger. The way fear marches across their faces and dissolves their own confidence.

  Why are you just standing staring out at the darkness? my sister wants to know now.

  I shrug. No reason. Just thought I saw something.

  Every Monday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, there is religion. This Thursday evening is no exception. We have always been Jehovah’s Witnesses, the way my friends are born Catholics and Protestants and Seventh Day Adventists. Our religion is as much a part of us as the color of our skin. We know who God is and why. We believe in Christ and everlasting life. We don’t curse and we’re not supposed to lie or steal. We carry briefcases with the literature of our religion. As my grandmother locks the door behind us, we wait at our front gate—my brothers, my sister, and I dressed like little adults. My younger brother is nine years old. He pulls uncomfortably at his tie and shrugs out of his sport coat in the summer heat.

  I’ll put it on when we get there, he says when my grandmother starts to speak. He is my grandmother’s favorite, and we all know this so none of us questions it, and nobody else attempts to remove an article of clothing.

  I am a Jehovah’s Witness. I say this at the beginning of each school year, and upon hearing it, my teachers understand—this one is the one who will leave when we stand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. This one will not participate in any holiday celebrations. No Secret Santa for this one. No Valentine. No birthday cupcake on this one’s desk. No candle’s bright promise of something better to come. I am a Jehovah’s Witness and have been so all of my life. My Bible is highlighted and dog-eared. I believe this world will end with fire and brimstone and this ending is soon to come. I believe there are two roads—a wide one and a narrow one. Upon the wide road, people dance and curse and celebrate holidays. The narrow road is less crowded, and those walking it walk with their heads turned toward God. There will come a time, my grandmother promises, when the walkers of the narrow road will have cause to celebrate. This system of things will be destroyed, and we’ll live in a new world, a beautiful paradise on earth.

  My mother will not be a part of this paradise. As we walk away from our building, I turn to look where the curtains billow from the upstairs windows. My mother is in there somewhere. Maybe she is lying on her side, reading one of the many romance novels she owns. In the novels, white women with flowing hair live in wealthy communities with servants and beautiful clothes. They meet handsome men who love them deeply and endlessly. My mother turns the pages slowly, hoping to linger in this place. My mother is not a Jehovah’s Witness. Although she believes in God, she does not go with us when we leave for the Kingdom Hall. In our few hours away from her, she lets herself get lost in worlds she’ll never know. Her new world. Her paradise on earth.

  In her world now Al Green is singing, Lay your head upon my pillow . . . and maybe she is moving gently around the living room now, swaying to Al’s deep voice. Maybe she has the broom in her hands, imagining the broom is the man who will rescue her from this system of things, this world that still confuses her. Maybe she is asking, How did I get four children? And me only thirty-four.

  I walk slowly down our block—trailing behind my grandmother, brothers, and sister. Behind me I can hear kids taunting, Churchie, churchie, churchie. Churchie, churchie, churchie. Too many times, my sister has turned to them and shouted, It’s not church, it’s a Kingdom Hall, you morons. But tonight she doesn’t. We walk with our backs straight, our eyes directly in front of us. We walk down the block and away from it. The sun has set. The road is narrow. Our heads are turned slightly upward. Toward God.

  Lourdes and Gabriella are twins. Not identical. But when they put on their Catholic school uniforms, it is harder to tell them apart. They are pale skinned and gray eyed, their white-blond hair making us think of albinos. We whisper this—How can their mothers love them, and them so ugly like that? They have two brothers. One brother is seven and normal. The other is four and not. This is the one we tease. His name is Ramon, and he sits in his window with the elbow of his left arm in the palm of his right hand. For hours, he shakes the left arm and stares at it. Lourdes and her family move onto our block in May. Before long, we are all imitating her brother. When we see Lourdes we do as her brother does. We say, Hey, pale girl, watch this. And pretend that this is the way one says hello. Lourdes and Gabriella are twelve. The day after they move in, they sit on the stoop with their brothers and watch the rest of us. Cautiously. Looking away when we look back—except Ramon, who stares full on at us, shaking his arm. When I look at him full on, he smiles, a smile for all of us—aimless and open.

  You know how to jump? Maria asks, holding out the rope. And Lourdes and her sister shake their heads.

  Where’d you move from that you don’t know how to jump? And Lourdes and her sister shrug.

  You don’t know where you moved from? I ask.

  They shrug again. Gabriella says, For us to know, for you to find out.

  Like anybody really cares, Maria says. Must be Mars if you can’t jump.

  Some other kids have come closer to listen and now Oooooh’s ripple through the crowd. These are fighting words. I turn and stare nervously up at my window. My mother is in there somewhere. My grandmother, too. If I am standing anywhere near a fight, I’ll be in trouble. Our house is full of rules. I am learning that the two most ridiculous ones are don’t fight and don’t come home with your butt beat, either. I put my hands in my pockets and move a little bit away from everything. Because this move isn’t new for me, I’ve been labeled a chicken, a chump, and a bunch of other names I’d get in a lot of trouble if I said. Somewhere far off, an ambulance siren is going, moving closer. We all look toward the sound, watch the ambulance speed down the avenue that is at one end of our block. The sun, high up and hot, moves behind a cloud. As the siren fades, Maria says, You act like you wanna jump in my face.

  We look at Gabriella, and I say a silent prayer: Please jump in her face, but please everybody move around the corner so my mother doesn’t see me watching a fight.

  Like I want to get anywhere near your ugly face, Gabriella says. And for a moment no one speaks, our confusion thick and silent as the heat. How can she not know, we wonder, that Maria and, by extension, all of us are the beautiful ones? How can Gabriella, with her pale skin and watery eyes, not see Maria’s beauty? How can she flip her own near-white hair and not tear up at the weight and life in Maria’s dark curls. We don’t know how to ask this—this simple and crazy question—How could you possibly not know?

  And we don’t know how to ask it. None of us. Maria throws the moves fast toward her. I take another step back, my stomach rising up with both excitement and fear. Then everyone is screaming and my mother is at the window, threatening every kid in the group, name by name. But Maria and Gabriella don’t hear her, and in another minute my mother is hurrying across the street, stepping between them. Maria’s face is unmarked, but Gabriella’s is now covered with scratches, thick red lines moving every which way. Maybe she is crying. Maybe, later on, she will look into her mirror and understand then what we already know.

  Hours later, sitting on my own stoop, I stare out at our block. Some boys are still playing Skully, but the clouds have moved in. After a few minutes, a steady summer rain begins to fall. I stick my tongue out, taste the drops—hear, still, the echo of my mother’
s threats. There will be no going to Maria’s house to play now—not for at least a week. And for at least a week I will have to hear about what a bad influence Maria is, how wild. Where is her mother, anyway? my own mother will say over and over. And don’t go across the street near those new girls, either. Can’t believe people let their kids act the fool. On and on and on. The rain is cool on my tongue. If water was a color, it would be sky blue. That’s the taste of it. Soft. Light. Free.

  I hold out my hand. Stare down at my long, dark arm. Whose beauty is this? I will ask one day. Whose beauty is this?

  Across the street, Lourdes and Gabriella glare out over the nearly empty block, their faces twisting between sadness and confusion. But Ramon gives everyone and no one his crazy, beautiful smile. Holds his elbow in his hand and, for a moment, looks as though he’s asking us all . . . to come closer.

  Reader’s Guide

  BOOK SUMMARY

  Such a Pretty Face, despite its title, isn’t going to make you prettier, at least not in the physical sense. It may make you feel more beautiful, though. The stories collected here talk about the subtle, infinite variations of beauty and the possibility of finding it, within yourself or close at hand.