Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self - By Danielle Evans Page 0,72
knew her name already—everybody did—but Geena was a girl like sunlight: if you were a girl like I was back then, you didn’t look at her directly. Usually there were girls following Geena’s lead, often literally, wobbling behind her in platform boots they had just barely learned to walk in, but she was alone the first day she actually spoke to me. From the top of the hill where our high school began, I had seen her walking ahead of me, briskly and by herself. When she got to the chain-link fence encircling the water dam at the bottom of the hill, Geena threw her backpack over the top of the fence, balanced the heel of her boot against its wobbly surface, and expertly hoisted herself over, barely breaking stride. When I hopped the fence a few moments later, I took my time. Even in sneakers I was not as slick as Geena, and plus, the balloon kept hitting the side of my face and trying to pop itself on the top of the fence. I was less awkward crossing the high, rickety bridge that was probably the reason the water dam shortcut was closed off to begin with. I took some perverse pleasure in knowing that a fall at the right angle could have killed me, one slip, and no more Crystal.
On the other side of the dam, home surprised me. I always took a minute to recognize my own neighborhood. It seemed like every day a new apartment building was being built or an older store or house torn down. Things changed quickly in those years: Eastdale pushed into the suburb of Lakewood from one side, while white flight created suburbs of the suburbs on the other. This was the new New South: same rules, new languages. The people who could afford to leave Lakewood left; the ones who couldn’t put up better fences. The rest of us were left in Eastdale: old houses, garden apartments, signs in Spanish and Vietnamese. We adapted well enough; we could all curse in Spanish and we’d skip school for noodle soup as soon as we’d skip for McDonald’s. The handful of white kids who still lived in Eastdale adopted linguistic affectations with varying degrees of success and would have nothing to do with the Lakewood kids. Eastdale kids and Lakewood kids walked on opposite sides of the hallway and ate on opposite sides of the cafeteria and probably would have worn opposite-colored clothes if they could have coordinated it without communicating. The neighborhood in the immediate vicinity of our high school was called The Crossroads; don’t ever let anyone tell you that the South is big on subtlety.
Geena and I weren’t big on subtlety, either—not then, anyway. We were fourteen; she was flashy, I was brave the way you are when you don’t know what you have to lose. When I emerged on the other side of the dam and walked the wrong way down the side of the park-way just because I could, I was not surprised to see her ahead of me, doing the same. My balloon mirrored our walk in a hazy silver film: ELENA’SCHICKENARROZCONPOLLO29.99MANICUREANDPEDICUREPAWNSHOPKIM’SMARKETCALLHOMECHEAPPHONECARDS!
A block from my apartment building, I stopped at the 7-Eleven to waste the few minutes my shortcut across the bridge had saved. I spent five minutes debating the merits of blue raspberry versus cherry limeade Slurpee, before blending them into a disgusting purple slush. Geena was strolling around the store like she owned it and was taking inventory, and when she finally made it to the Slurpee machine, she picked grape and was quick about it. We waited in line at the same time, but not together. The man behind the counter grinned as I laid my change on the counter with one hand and tried to balance my Slurpee and balloon in the other. He pointed upward at the bobbing surface, and read: Congratulations. He smiled and looked me over.
“You had a baby?”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head.
“Someone in your family had a baby?”
I stared at him stupidly. His face looked open, like he was waiting for an answer so he knew the right expression to make. I wanted to hit him or I wanted to say something clever or I wanted to leave, with or without my stupid Slurpee. I was waiting to be a different person when Geena stepped around from behind me. I thought for a minute she was getting in my face to laugh at me,