This morning I opened my locker and saw a dead rat, and that was pretty much all I saw. I’m more a shrieker than a screamer, so I shrieked, slammed the locker shut, and sort of buried my head into Uly’s chest. Wrapping his arms around me, he kept asking, “What’s wrong? What happened?” but all I could do was point at my locker. My tongue had forgotten how to talk.
He opened the locker, and a second later, I heard him say, “Holy shit.”
As it turned out, somebody had tied a note to the dead rat’s foot, and on the note was this typed message: if you don’t stop seeing him, you’ll never see him again.
Uly and I figured there was probably a matching rat-corpse-message with his name on it too so I went with him to his locker and, with shaking hands that tried not to seem too much like they were shaking, he twirled his combination lock’s dial, unlocked the latch, then pulled open the locker . . . and saw nothing but books and a sweater.
It didn’t take us long to figure out why I was the only one who got a rat: for the last three months, my locker’s combination lock had been broken, and I was too busy and lazy to ask Mr. Rezigno for a replacement. But I wasn’t too busy or lazy today. After my new combination lock was in and the dead rat was out (Mr. Rezigno held on to the message), I still didn’t feel relaxed. It really creeped me out that someone (or someones?) had been watching me closely enough to know that my locker’s combination lock was busted. If they watched me opening my locker, what else were they watching me do?
And if they were bold enough to either kill a rat or find a rat already killed and put it in my locker, who’s to say they weren’t bold enough to not be joking about hurting my boyfriend?
By dinnertime my fear had morphed to anger with fear-flavoring. I was angry that I went to a school where two people with a simple pigmentation difference couldn’t date without one of them worrying about a dead rodent with a death-threat shoe ending up in their locker.
And that anger is the only reason I can think of for why I decided what I decided tonight.
It started with a casual comment from my sister. We were all sitting at the dinner table—Leona, me, Wilk, Wilk’s sister Ashley, her boyfriend Skip, and Lady M—and Leona was talking about a bad experience she’d had with a Staples worker the other day.
Leona told us, “Oh my God, it was such a nightmare. I didn’t think a cashier could be so nasty. I mean, she wasn’t just rude—she was, like, black-girl rude, you know?”
Ashley looked confused. “She was black?”
Leona said, “No, she was white. But she was black-girl rude, you know. So I asked to speak to the manager and . . .”
I barely heard the rest of what she said. Because the words “black-girl rude” kept echoing in my head. Suddenly everything else sounded like I was hearing it underwater.
All I could hear clearly was black-girl rude . . .
Black-girl rude . . .
Black-girl rude . . .
I got up from the table and wandered out of the kitchen.
“. . . rything all right, Sallie?” Lady M underwatered.
But I didn’t say anything. Just kept walking.
When I got to my room I picked up the framed picture of my sister and me at Six Flags and sat on the bed with it. The echo continued:
Black-girl rude . . .
Black-girl rude . . .
As I slid my finger down my thirteen-year-old sister’s face in the picture, I could feel tears stinging my eyes. And then I felt the same tears stinging my cheeks.
Because that’s when I knew.
That’s when I knew what I’d been forcing myself not to know all these months and even the last couple of years.
Other comments she’d recently made started echoing in my head.
Describing Shirelle Willows, one of the most beautiful girls at our school, to a student who’d never seen Shirelle before: She’s black, but she’s really pretty.
Telling our cousins that our car was almost too full: One more person and it’s gonna get Puerto Rican in here.
Expressing her shock at Celeste LaGuardia’s high Math SAT score: She scored a 650?? She must’ve had an Asian in her purse.
As my tears continued to splat onto the framed picture, I knew what I had to do.
I dried my face, wiped my eyes, went back to the kitchen, and told my sister I needed to speak with her in the living room.
When we were both in the living room, she said, “Sal, what’s wrong?”
I said, “I quit.”
She said, “You quit what?”
I said, “Being your campaign manager. I quit.”
She stared at me for a moment, then she said, “This is a joke, right?”
I said, “No.”
She said, “Did Uly tell you to do this?”
I said, “It has nothing to do with him.”
“Then why are you quitting?” she asked.
I said, “Because of what you said in the kitchen.”
“What did I say?”
“Black-girl rude.”
My sister rolled her eyes and said, “Aw, come on, I don’t need this shit now.”
With tears refilling my eyes, I said, “. . . Leona, you’re a racist.” It was the worst thing I’d ever said to my sister, and it didn’t exactly roll off my tongue; it sort of limped off my tongue. I suddenly felt nauseous.
I could tell it shocked her but she tried her best not to look shocked. She sighed and shook her head. “Can’t you just wait till after the election to pour Woke-a-cola all over me? You can’t quit now. We still got two more weeks! I need you!”
I shook my head and said, “I’m out.”
She gave me a long stare, then said, “So you’re choosing your boyfriend over your sister?”
I said, “I’m choosing not to be a campaign manager for a racist.”
She sort of narrowed her eyes. “How could you call me that?”
I said, “Leona, you basically turned ‘black girl’ into a synonym for rude. You said ninety-five percent of the black kids at our school should leave our school. You’re dating a guy who’s just two white-paint-cans away from being a KKK member. This isn’t the way you and I were brought up. Where’s all this coming from? I mean, who are you?”
She said, “I’m just someone who tells the truth. You should try it sometime. You think I’m the first person to say I don’t wanna go to school with black people? People were saying that hundreds of years before I was born, and people will still be saying it hundreds of years after I’m dead. They’re toxic people. Just look at the news. You wanna ruin a place real fast? Just invite them in. Even black people don’t wanna be around black people. The minute they get enough education and make enough money, what’s the first thing they do? Move to a neighborhood where there’s mostly white people. I’m not a racist, Sal. I’m just someone who pays attention.”
I nodded. “Me too. And that’s why I’m not your campaign manager anymore . . . You and your campaign ruined our school. It’s a prejudiced hellhole right now, ’cause of you. I so regret the day I came up with the word Leonite.”
She nodded as her face turned sort of red. “So you’re deserting me, is what you’re saying.”
I said, “I’m not deserting you. I’m just moving on.”
She shrugged and said, “You say tomato, I say kiss my ass.”
Then she turned around and went back into the kitchen.
I went up to my room and started doing my homework, but it’s hard to do your homework when you’ve just realized your sister is a racist.
And it’s even harder to do your homework when you suddenly realize your boyfriend’s life might be in danger because of your sister’s presidential campaign.