Make Me Over: Eleven Stories of Transformation

At seventeen, I have to remake myself every single day.

Weekdays, I am a student, waking up at 6:00 A.M., scrounging around until I find something dorky to wear, eating crunchy sugar-packed cereal, and then catching a city bus to school.

“Jamillah, you’re late.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Pritchard, the bus broke down, the streetlights were busted, the driver passed out, flat tire, engine blew up, robbed, mugged, and that’s why I’m late.”

“Jamillah, can you sit up, please.”

“Yes, Mr. Dorn, I’m sorry, didn’t sleep last night, people in a fight, Mama drunk, friends held up, police raid, drug bust, rape next door, is why I’m laying my head down.”

“Jamillah, what is that smell? Have you been drinking alcohol?”

“No, Miss Cruise. I spilled Listerine, bottle of perfume broke, Mama wore my clothes, brother squirted me with water gun filled with something, bum ran into me on my way to school, is why I’m smelling like this.”

“Jamillah, why didn’t you finish this test?”

Stare.

“Jamillah, do you hear me talking to you?”

Stare.

“Jamillah, if you keep this up, there is no way you’re going to qualify for a scholarship.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Friday night, I’m an exotic dancer. That means I dress up, smear on heavy eyeliner, even heavier makeup, dark red lipstick, put on my mama’s push-up bra and matching top, a tight, tight, leather skirt, ankle strap, high-heeled shoes, and strut my stuff—that way I look older than I am. Catch the train—cringe when men whistle at me. Damn perverts! At the club, fake ID, no problem—don’t even need it unless cops show up. Friday—no raids, so they say. I don’t drink much, just down about three wine coolers, okay, most times six, my magic number.

Put on my uniform that the club makes me pay for out of my money—sleek black dress, tiger-print boa, long black gloves, and underneath, two tiger’s eyes where my tits are and a furry orange-and-black G-string that sports a cat’s tail on the back to go along with my stage name, Miss Puss. Then I dance till the sweat rolls off me in perfumed drops, while I’m taking off my uniform, slowly, slowly, real slow. I don’t have to worry about my hair kinking up ’cause I got a weave—a blond one. G-string stays on so I have a place to get paid.

I am up onstage, grab the pole, do the nasty with it, swing my ass ’round and ’round. Squeeze my breasts together to snatch some of the money from the grubby hands. Stick my tongue out, pretend to lick ice cream, all the time my eyes closed. Some nights I think I’ll actually fall off the stage. Serve me right.

When it’s all said and done, put my clothes back on, strap up my shoes, stagger back on the train, enter huge room, then flop on cot, slip most of the money, except a few dollars, into my spot.

The next day, Saturday, I hop up early, put on my other uniform, turtleneck sweater, long ankle skirt, no earrings, no makeup, and head to church; choir practice.

“Jamillah, I want you to sing the solo today.”

“Heifer, she gets all the solos.”

“No, she doesn’t, Phyllis. Jamillah sing.”

Underbreath: “Witch with a B.”

“Phyllis, shut up so Jamillah can sing.”

Outside church doors.

“Jamillah, you think you all that. Well, you ain’t.”

“Phyllis, say another damn word to me, and I’ll stomp your ass right here.”

“Ain’t nobody scared of you, Jamillah.”

“You better be. Now back off.”

“Come on, Phyllis, leave that hoing-ass Jamillah alone. At least you ain’t dancing naked on no stage.”

“You got that right, Kiki. Talking ’bout going to hell . . . Bitch, you on your way.”

Me—walking, crying, shaking with fury. Tired of this bull. Tired of it all. Seventeen more years of this shit and I’ll be like her.

“Jamillah, where the hell have you been? You know damn well I wanted you to keep the kids this morning while I look for a job.”

Keep the kids? What a laugh; half the time she don’t know where they at. She doing this now, talking all loud, ’cause the shelter’s warned her they’re going to call the authorities if she keeps going off for days at a time. I ask her, “How you gon’ find a job on Saturday?”

“That’s my damn business. You got any money?”

“No, Mama, I don’t—have—any—money,” I say, watching her prancing like some racehorse getting ready to run.

“What about the money in the jar?”

Once a week, I put fifty one-dollar bills in a jar under the bed in the box of shoes so that I can buy the kids candy or ice cream on the weekends, or pay for something for school for me or them.

“Don’t touch it,” I say, offering her the meanest look I got. “I ain’t playing, Mama.”

She glares back, but doesn’t make her move. Since I’m older now and taller, she doesn’t always know how to take me. She says, “Shit,” and heads out the door.

I wipe the sweat from my face. I can remember when she’d of busted my mouth open.

I grab some clothes, head to the bathroom. Wash up in the sink. Put on jeans and a T-shirt that says Women Rock. Come back out.

“Jamillah, can you help me with my homework?”

“Jamillah, Chucky is hurting me.”

“Jamillah, can I ask that man for candy?”

“Jamillah.”

“Jamillah, can I go to the store?”

“Jamillah, how many more days we got?”

Sitting on my cot, I look up. Hmm. “Bring me that calendar, Peaches. Chucky, let go of Brian before you hurt him for real. Brian, sit your ass down. Cookie, you better not take your fast self over there bothering that man. How many times I got to tell you about that. Celia, come sit by me and I’ll help you as soon as I check out this calendar.”

I stare. We have one more week of school. And here, two more days—that’s it. We got two more days. Shelters have a long waiting list of people trying to get a few days. We’ve been here three months; supposed to be enough time for Mama to find a job or a more permanent place for us, an example of the shelter’s fantasies.

Celia says, “You gon’ help me, Jamillah?”

I look over her paper again. “Celia, you take away five right here. See that minus, that means to subtract.”

“What do subtract mean, Jamillah?”

“Chucky, my God, you’re in the fourth grade. You don’t know what subtract means?”

“I know, Jamillah. Chucky know, too. He just playing, ain’t you, Chucky?”

“I ain’t playing, Brian. Just ’cause we twins don’t mean I know what you know, stupid. What is it, Jamillah?”

I sigh a big, long sigh. Everybody in this joint should know about subtraction. Check out the room. It’s a huge room with cots every few feet, little warped white plastic table between each one for your toothbrush and shit. The cots are so close to the floor, if you sit on one, your knees are at your chin. Some of the old people have to be pulled up out of bed each morning.

On the side where we are, a few metal tables line the wall near a fridge. They moved this one out here because they didn’t want anyone in the kitchen without supervision. The fridge usually has some water, cheese, crackers, and a few pieces of fruit in it. Lately, they put the sugar for the coffee inside on account of the roaches.

There’s one picture on the wall of Jesus holding a heart with blood dripping out of it. Reminds me of the horror movie I’m living. Nothing else. The room is bare, grayish, and hot. The building’s air-conditioned, but five giant-size fans clank, like cars with bad motors, to save on electricity. The cots are old, the sheets on them dingy and some ripped. A few cots have army blankets, despite the fact that it’s hot and stinks like a homeless man’s socks. Of course, in this joint it probably is a homeless man’s socks stinking.

“Hmm. Take away. Okay, it’s like this,” I finally say. “Cookie, give me that apple, off that table over there.”

“But it don’t belong to us, Jamillah. That woman will be mad at me.”

The old woman is sitting down with a plate of cheese and crackers. The apple is near her plate, her dessert.

“Get it anyway,” I say. “Don’t worry, just run over there and snatch it, then run back over here to me. Quick now!” The woman is new. If you’re not a family, you only get to stay a few days before you rotate out. It don’t matter that she new, since Mama makes it hard for us to get to know anyone in the shelters. She’s always picking fights or stealing something. The shelters can’t prove she took it, but the people know.

“Jamillah, let me do it.”

“No, Chucky, you just wait.”

I watch Cookie snatch the apple and run. She drops it. It rolls away; she grabs it quickly and makes it back to me, just as the woman’s hands grip her collar.

“Turn her the hell a loose,” I say to the woman.

“But she took my apple,” she says, panting, her gray hair melting down into her face. Bending over, holding her arthritic kneepads.

“Here,” I say, snatching the apple from Cookie’s pudgy fingers. “Take it away.”

“I get it,” Chucky says.

I look at him. “Do you?”

The woman says, “What the . . . ?”

I shrug. “I’m trying to teach them subtraction.”

“Oh,” she says. “All right, but you best be teaching addition.”

I shake my head. She’s right. Subtraction is going to be what they know most.

Sunday morning, I wake up early, put on my uniform, same one I had on Saturday. I only have one turtleneck and one ankle-length skirt. The kids are gone on a “Sunday school” bus. Every Sunday, a bus from some church comes early to take all the little kids—probably just to fill up their classes, since the churches don’t come back on no routine or nothing.

I check my watch. It’s 10:20. I bend down like I’m rubbing my shoe clean. I glance around hoping no one sees me. This is the best time to handle your business, since the shelter makes everyone leave by 10:30 to go to church. Most don’t go, but they got to get out anyway. By now, only a few stragglers remain.

I’ve punctured a hole in the bottom of the cot mattress. It’s a risk to keep my bling here, because when nobody’s much watching, people check out the mattresses for stashes just like this. I rotate mine from somewhere on my body to the mattress every six days. I always take it with me on Sundays, though. So far, I’ve been lucky.

I have two thousand dollars in tips for four months of dancing. I changed it into hundreds at the bank. Well, not exactly a real bank, since I had to pay. I paid my boss to change it into hundred-dollar bills; cost me a ten for every hundred. I have never had this much money. Actually, I have never seen this much money. I doubt my mama’s seen this much at one time. I pop it from the mattress, and with my head still scoping the room, I stick the cash inside the top of the bands of my skirt and panties in one smooth move.

I hop up and head for the bathroom. I feel the wad silking next to my skin as I walk, tugging and pulling up against the hairs as it works its way downward. I know the money is dirty, but I don’t care. It was just as dirty when they stuffed it inside my G-string. I’ll never dance again, at least not that way. Water can’t wash that dirt away. In the bathroom, I hunker down in one of the three stalls. None of them have doors on them. Privacy is something you don’t get much of in most shelters, not even to shit.

I flatten the money, fold it, and wrap toilet tissue around it a few times. The tissue is stiffer than newspaper. I use a big safety pin to keep the tissue in place. I pray that it won’t slip out. Pants would be better, but I don’t see nobody at this church wearing pants.

I almost run all the way to church. I quickly slip on my choir robe and join the procession. When it’s time, I sing the solo, “Give Me a Clean Heart.” I choke up a few times, but don’t mess up the key. I hear the people sniffling, shouting out, “Yes, Lord. Help me, Jesus.”

I keep my eyes shut, praying over and over as I sing “Give Me a Clean Heart.”

After church, I say to the preacher, “Do you think that God will give us a clean heart if we pray for it? I mean, no matter what we’ve done? How mean we’ve been? The kind of sins we’ve done?”

The preacher stands very still for a minute. I can hear his heart beat. Everything is like in a vacuum-sealed pack. Finally he says, “No, Jamillah.”

I turn to walk away. Tears burn my eyes. Another wasted prayer. It’s too late for me. No more makeovers.

“Jamillah,” he says, “you already have one.”

I look back. “One what?”

“A clean heart,” he says, smiling.

I don’t believe him, but I smile back.

When I get back, Mama is waiting. “Jamillah, I’m going out for a bit. You got any money?”

“No, ma’am. Mama. You know we only have one more day before we have to get out, right?”

“Damn shelters,” she says. “Motherfuckers always got some goddamn stupid-ass rules. We’ll talk about what we gon’ do when I get back. You just watch them kids. I took the treat money out the jar. Them younguns’ teeth already rott’n; they don’t need no sweets.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I say, staring at her back. There’s no arguing with the logic of a drug addict. She’s got on all leopard-skin-looking shit. Nose running. I know where she’s headed. So do the other kids. I hug them close to me and decide—I’ve had it.

I wash my hair in one of four bathroom sinks. All of them so rusty, they look like they’ve been painted orange. It takes forever because the sink is about the size of a basketball. I have to fill a cup with water a thousand times to rinse the suds out. I cut my weave out with some nail scissors. Today is the day.

Celia, who always sticks to me like glue, is watching, alarm on her face. “What you doing, Jamillah? I like your long hair.”

“It was only mine ’cause I paid for it. I want natural now.” When I come out of the bathroom, the kids all gather around. “Why you chop your hair off like that, Jamillah?”

“I’m changing myself. In fact, y’all know what?”

“What, Jamillah,” they say, “what?”

“I’m going to teach y’all addition today.”

“For real,” Chucky says, grinning. “I caught on to that subtraction stuff. You a good teacher, Jamillah.”

“Yeah, you the best teacher,” Cookie and Celia say.

“Yeah, you the bomb, Jamillah,” Brian and Peaches sing together.

The old woman comes over.

Cookie runs behind me. “Don’t let her get me, Jamillah.”

“I won’t,” I say. “What you want? I gave you the apple back.”

“I know,” she says. “Here, this will help you when you ready to teach them younguns some addition.”

She places a man’s dingy handkerchief in my hand.

“What is it?”

“Open it later,” she says. “You’ll see.”

“Thank you,” I say, wondering if she’s being funny and it’s an apple core or something. I look at the kids. They’re all staring at me.

“I don’t have much time,” I say. “We’re leaving today, kids. Get your shit.”

“What about Mama, Jamillah?”

“Don’t worry about Mama, just get your shit. Hurry. We’re leaving this shelter, and we’re leaving this town.”

Cookie says, “But, Jamillah, we don’t have to leave until tomorrow. And what about school?”

“Only got a week. You’ve taken your test. We leaving today,” I say, throwing my shit into a black plastic trash bag. “Get all your stuff and put it in these bags. Leave Mama the suitcase.”

The kids throw clothes and worn shoes into bags. It’s no use folding what’s already wrinkled.

While they pack I call the church on the one pay phone. When they’re all ready, I pat my panties. “Let’s go.”

We head for the church. Outside, I wait for the reverend’s wife. I open the handkerchief. There’s six tightly twisted dollars in it, my lucky number. Somehow this makes me feel hopeful.

Chucky says, “Shit, it’s hot out here.”

I say, “Kids, no more cursing. Okay. Not from anybody. Not even me.”

“We subtracting that?” Celia says.

“I thought it first,” Chucky says.

The preacher’s wife comes out. We pile into her van. “Where are you and the kids going, Jamillah?” She’s taking us to the bus stop. The Trailways.

“Greensboro, North Carolina. Your husband told me once that was a good place to start over. I am going to make myself into someone new. Going to get a place, in a good neighborhood, and go to night school and work in the day. Then I’m going to college.”

The kids know my dreams, they all sing, “Yeah, Jamillah is going to college. Jamillah is going to college.”

“Do you need any money?” she asks.

“No, ma’am. I have some.”

“You’re sure about this? Won’t your mama have a fit?”

“Only if I’m taking her drugs with me. She don’t care.”

“What about them?” she says. “Won’t they miss your mama?”

“To them, I’m the mama. Our mama has been gone for a very long time.”

“Will she give us trouble? Call the cops?”

I laugh. “You’re kidding, right?” I see she’s not. People just don’t get it. They don’t understand the life a crack addict leads. It ain’t like television. “First off, she don’t even know I go to church. Second, she wouldn’t call the cops if somebody was beating all of us to death. Cops are like kryptonite to her.”

The preacher’s wife looks like she’ll be crying in a second. She holds out a piece of paper, “Here, here is the name of a friend of mine in Burlington, North Carolina; that’s only twenty minutes from Greensboro. She’s my old teacher, Annie Saunders. I bet she’ll let you stay with her until you get a place. Yes, go there; people will look out for you. She goes to this church, Ebenezer United Church of Christ.”

“But you’re Baptist?”

“That doesn’t matter,” she says. “The preacher’s name is Reverend Covington. He and his wife are doing marvelous things to help the community.”

“Thank you,” I say, taking the paper from her manicured fingers.

“Do he know addition, Jamillah?” Chucky says. “I want to learn addition.”

“Yes,” I say, “Chucky, I’m sure he does. From now on, our life is about addition. Okay. And I want you to say, ‘Does he know addition?’”

“Okay, Jamillah,” Chucky says.

“Do that mean we gon’ be adding stuff?”

“Yes, Celia. Good stuff, though. No bad stuff. And say, are we adding stuff? Not gon’ be adding, okay?” I squeeze my eyes shut. Lay my head back. I don’t say it, but we’re subtracting Mama. We have to.

At the terminal, we all hop out of the van. We’re in the back of the station where the passengers load.

“All aboard,” a man says to a line of people. “Got your tickets?”

“Come on,” I say. “We’ve got to go inside and buy our tickets.”

The preacher’s wife gives us a hug good-bye. She’s about to break down, so she heads back to her van. Good thing. I don’t want the kids to see her sadness.

We stand in line. I straighten my shoulders as we inch closer in the line to the window. I pat down my new Afro. Put on clear lip gloss. Realize I don’t know the preacher’s first name or his wife’s. I’ve got to pay more attention to small things like that if I am going to take care of the kids.

I smell alcohol wavering in the air. I wish we could take the plane or even the train—never been on either one—probably wouldn’t be so many drunks around. But that would take too much of my money. When I am at the window, the man barely glances at me.

“Next,” he says.

I clear my throat. “Sir, good afternoon. I’d like to purchase tickets for one adult and five children.”

He looks up. “Sorry, how many again, ma’am?”

“That’s six in all,” Chucky says. “Right, Jamillah?”

“Jamillah, six is your lucky number,” Celia says.

“You’re both right,” I say, smiling. “Yes, sir, that adds up to six tickets in all.”

“Here you are, ma’am,” he says, passing me the tickets. “Have a nice day.”

I smile. My new makeover is working already.