Naomis Too Read online

  “Welcome, sixth grade, and all the new members of the Chisholm family!” calls out a woman standing in front of a bunch of other adults on the stage. I’m guessing she’s the principal. And even though she’s wearing jeans, she has that “I mean business” look that principals have. She just looks out at us until everyone quiets down. It happens fast.

  “Again, welcome. I’m Carla, the principal, and we are happy to have you all as full members of our community. We are ready to treat you with love and respect, and expect the same in return.” Except for Tom, I’m not used to calling adults by their first names; I think it might be the one thing about Progressive School that Momma’s not that excited about. “As you saw in your Orientation letter, we will start the school year by working on the whole-school Community Project, which helps us get to know each other, and begin the work of conversation, collaboration, and action, which are the cornerstones of every aspect of life here. Our theme for this year is . . . drumroll, please—”

  The other adults onstage start stomping their feet. I guess they’re teachers, even though they’re not being that teacher-y right now. All of us in the audience look at each other, and then we start doing it too. We keep stomping until Carla holds up her hand.

  “STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY!” she finishes. And we clap again, but the girl next to me says, “I’m pretty sure my sister told me that was last year’s theme.” Her friend shrugs. “That’s everybody’s theme.” I wonder if Carla went to a bunch of summer workshops too.

  She tells us about the chicken coop in the yard (!!!) and vermicomposting (which I hope doesn’t involve rats). And sixth graders will get to be “Community Builders” and “Peer Mediators,” which sound like things I should be good at. She doesn’t say much about math and grades and ELA and stuff like that, though. I wonder if there’s an Honor Roll. Then there are more announcements that I don’t really hear because I’m looking around and trying to figure out who reminds me of people at my old school. I don’t see a Mikey Chen yet—no boy is tying anyone’s shoelaces together or having a burping contest with himself, but I live in hope (NOT).

  All of a sudden, Carla shouts “601!” and starts reading off a list of first names. I can’t understand the order; it doesn’t seem alphabetical because she goes from “Gabrielle” to “Ysaye” to “Jamilah” at one point. I nudge Naomi E. “What did I miss?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I was wondering what the bathrooms are going to be like.”

  We both shudder. I turn to the girl on my other side since she has a sister who went through this already. “What’s happening now?”

  “Advisory groups,” she said. “There are three—601, 602, 603. When you hear your name, go over to the teacher holding up the sign with the right Advisory.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and smile. She smiles back, and I hope that means that I seem new-but-not-clueless. She’s white, and wearing purple sneakers, and her T-shirt has red sequins on the sleeves and Live Love Laugh across the front. Her hair is dark brown with some reddish streaks in it.

  “Ugh, my mom says I better be in the gifted Advisory,” she says, putting her hair up in a ponytail. “Or she will have another talk with Carla.”

  “I didn’t know this school had gifted classes,” I say, worried. That’s something I should have known.

  “Not officially, but you’ll know by which other kids are in your class. I can always tell. When my sister started at this school, you had to take a test to get in, but then Carla came and got rid of the test so that . . . um, so that like”—she gives me a sideways glance. “So that more minorities could come.” She shrugs. “I guess it’s cool. Strength in Diversity, ha-ha.”

  “What do you mean—” I start, but Naomi E. shushes me, because Carla is still calling out names.

  “Naomi,” says Carla. Naomi E. and I look at each other. “Naomi,” Carla says again, looking around. We both start to stand, and then Carla looks at her paper again. “Oh! I see. Sorry, fam.” I did NOT KNOW principals could say “fam.” Is that even in the rules? “Naomi Edith Woods, 601.” Naomi E.’s face gets really red really fast, and I guess it’s because Carla said her middle name. I want to tell her not to worry, I’m pretty sure this school has seen it all when it comes to names, but I just squeeze her hand quick before she walks up to the front. Her teacher has very long brown hair and is dressed more like a regular principal than Carla is.

  We get through 601 and 602, so obviously the rest of us sitting in the seats are 603, but Carla calls out our names anyway. Red-sequin girl is still next to me, so we’re going to be in the same Advisory; her name turns out to be Jennifer, which gives me pause. Jenn Harlow from my old school ruined that name for me forever. But I’ll keep an open mind.

  “I guess we’re in the same Advisory; that’s weird!” she says. “Call me Jen, one N.”

  Weird? And isn’t saying “one N” the weird thing, since it’s not like you pronounce two Ns?

  “Naomi Marie Porter,” says Carla, and after I get up to meet our Advisory teacher, whose name is India, Jen whispers to me, “That’s cute that you and your friend have the same name. Did you know each other before you got here?”

  I nod. “Yeah, pretty much. We’re, uh . . . sisters.”

  Jen raises one eyebrow. “Like, are you adopted?”

  I roll my eyes. We’ve gotten that one before. Maybe Jen isn’t that cool. “No.”

  “Wait . . . are you twins, but like those babies that I saw on the news?”

  I know exactly what babies she’s talking about, because apparently it’s big news when twins are born and one is dark and one is light, which is so dumb. Not the twins, I mean . . . the news.

  I just say no and turn toward India, who is leading us back out to the school yard for Part One of our project. I want the teachers at this school to think I’m focused.

  “Trey is in this Advisory too. Weird,” Jen murmurs. I’m not sure if she’s still talking about me or who Trey is, and I don’t turn around. Part of me wants to say WHAT’S SO WEIRD, HUH? But then she might call me weirder.

  She’s still talking. “Wait till I tell my mom.”

  Now I do turn back to her and try to raise one eyebrow, but they both go up so I probably just look surprised. Last year, Jenn Harlow always made me feel like I was making myself smaller so she could feel bigger. This Jen acts like she’s trying to decide who I am for me. And also like her mom is kind of annoying.

  As we walk by Carla, I hear her say to a woman who is wearing a tracksuit and a whistle (and I would assume that she is the gym teacher except unlike SOME people named Jen I don’t ASSUME), “We have three Thomases this year, and two Naomis too.” She sees me and lowers her voice, probably explaining the Naomi “situation.”

  I’ve never been a situation. I need to figure out what else I’m going to be at this school, and fast.

  In the classroom, the desks are all pushed together into bigger rectangles, and we’re free to choose our own seats. I can tell that most of the kids were in the elementary school together, because a lot of them save seats for each other, and start talking and laughing. I try to pick a group that doesn’t seem too full of friends who all know each other but isn’t one of those tables made up of people who no one wants to sit with. You can always tell. A girl sits next to me who looks like she was going for the same strategy; we smile at each other. Jen from the auditorium comes in, and I almost wave because maybe she wasn’t calling me weird, and maybe she didn’t say minorities, maybe it was priorities, which doesn’t make sense but . . . Then a boy calls out “Jen!” and she sits with him. When a tall Black boy walks in and a couple of kids call out “Treyyyyy,” I look back at Jen, but she’s talking and getting her hair French braided by another girl.

  India lets us know just by how she stands that she’s not here for any your-name-is-a-country jokes and that probably all these friend tables are not going to stay that way for long. She smiles a lot, though, and when she asks each of us to say one special thing about ou
rself during attendance, I feel like I get an extra smile when I say that I am working on creating my own narrative board game with a digital component. (Which is what Julie from my Girls Gaming the System workshop told me to call it. I used to just say “a story game that you could also play online with your friends,” but this sounds a lot cooler.)

  “Love that! Did you know we have a middle school chapter of Girls Who Code here? Maybe you’ll check it out.” She moves on to the next person.

  I smile. I’m interested, but I like that India didn’t try to force me (or “strongly encourage,” which is when your mom pretends it’s just a suggestion but you know you don’t have much of a choice . . . and it usually ends up being fun but you would never tell her that). Maybe I’ll go to a meeting, but I won’t tell Momma right away; she might ruin it by being all HAPPY.

  A boy at my table whose name seems to be Milk raises his hand. He starts talking without waiting for India to say he can.

  “I’ve actually been a member of the middle school computer science society since I was in fourth grade,” he says. He’s not looking at me with his eyes, but the whole rest of his body is. “They let advanced people join early.”

  India just nods and moves on to the next person. I smile, but then I also see Jen and her friend giggling and pointing at Milk, so I’m not sure whose side to be on.

  After attendance, India goes into a long explanation of our “Opening Project,” which is kind of what Carla already said but with more details and words like core values and courageous. Finally, she says that it’s best to just figure it out by doing it, so we start out with the “Find Someone Who” game. We each get a sheet of orange paper, and India calls out the list. When she gets to “Find Someone Who Has Family in Another Country,” a bunch of us end up talking together. “Anyone else from DR?” calls out a girl. One other girl high-fives her, and they both say “Oye.” I can’t wait to tell Xio when I get home. There was nobody else from her country in our old school. Milk, who’s standing next to me, mutters, “This is not a bilingual classroom. What country is DR?”

  “The Dominican Republic,” I whisper.

  And he says, “Oh. They should just say that.”

  There are two other people with family in Jamaica like me, and one boy named Toussaint who was actually born in Haiti, and Traxler tells him to just go over to the DR people, but Toussaint shakes his head no and so do the DR people. Jen is fooling around, kind of running back and forth saying, “London! São Paulo! Toronto! Split! San José!”

  Milk calls out, “San Jose’s in California, not another country.”

  Jen says in a low voice, “Um, no, Milk. I’m talking about San José in Costa Rica. Like, where people go on vacation.” She snorts in that you’re-so-stupid way, and Milk’s face turns red. “You are so ignorant of, like, life.”

  I think I want to stay away from both of them.

  “What a global classroom we have,” India says at the end, even though a lot of people say they don’t know anything about anyplace except Brooklyn. India promises that we’ll put up a big “Heritage” map so that we can put pins in all our countries. She tells us that we are going to explore places in the city that are connected to different cultures and that we’ll go on a neighborhood walk to see what’s right in the school’s community.

  When the “Find Someone Who Likes Pizza” question comes, everyone just runs to the center of the room and laughs, and it turns out that everyone at my table likes pineapple pizza, plus the girl next to me read Brown Girl Dreaming six times, just like me.

  I’m really, really hoping that I can make my mark at Chisholm. Nobody noticed my pockets yet, though.

  I hope Brianna is okay, and I wonder if they will come get me if she starts crying. They might not know that if you make Rahel sing “This Little Light of Mine,” Bri always stops crying. They probably don’t know that Rahel is inside Bri’s backpack, even though there was a strict NO TOYS policy too. I also wonder how Naomi E.’s day is going. Maybe I can convince Momma to take us all to Yumi’s first. Sometimes a piece of cake is the best way to ease into a new school. I just thought of that, but it’s obviously a universal truth. And it’s nice to know I’ll have backup—I’m sure Naomi E. will agree.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Naomi E.

  The teacher leads us up three flights of stairs. This building is huge!

  When we reach the fourth floor, the hallways look endless. The bulletin boards have big banners on them:

  WELCOME BACK! STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY! GOOD CHARACTER IS OUR SUPERPOWER!

  The areas beneath the giant letters are blank—waiting to be filled up with all the work we’ll be doing, I guess.

  “I thought it might be nice to meet in the library,” the teacher says. She’s really good at walking backward and talking to us at the same time. “There’s plenty of room to sit comfortably. It’s more informal than our classroom. It’s perfect.”

  We walk into the library, and it really is kind of perfect. There’s a whole little-kid section with tiny chairs and shelves of colorful picture books. I think about my best friend, Annie, who’s having her first day at the school I would have gone to with her if my whole life hadn’t changed in June, when Dad married Valerie. I make myself stop thinking about her, because it’s easy to get sucked into an I-wish-everything-didn’t-have-to-change swirl, and I really do want to give Chisholm a chance.

  We follow the teacher to the left side of the library, where the desks and chairs are larger. I’m raising my hand to ask where we’re supposed to sit when all at once, kids start to sit, as though everyone but me heard an announcement that we’re playing musical chairs. I happen to be standing next to a beanbag chair, so I drop onto it quickly. I tilt and slide right off, onto the floor, and it feels like everyone is looking at me. Because everyone is looking at me.

  I take a deep breath to get through the moment (thanks, Girls Empowerment Workshop, for teaching me that we all have “laugh and learn” moments). I force my shoulders down—they’re up near my ears in some kind of permanent shrug.

  There’s a lot of rustling as people decide where to sit, and I’m realizing I’ve already screwed up. I thought almost everyone would be new here, like me. But there are little groups of girls talking to each other. Two boys are working on a very involved high five. There are only a few other kids sitting by themselves.

  I need something to do with myself, so I grab my backpack and open it.

  Shoot. SHOOT. How did a Makeda lunch box end up in my backpack? Brianna will FREAK OUT if she opens her backpack and finds my nothing-like-Makeda polka-dot lunch box. But she won’t find out until lunch. Oh, no. Do they have morning snack in kindergarten?

  I take a deep breath and walk up to the teacher. “Hi, excuse me,” I say. I don’t even know her name yet and I’m already asking to leave the room. “I just noticed that I somehow have my sister’s lunch box. She’s in kindergarten, and I was wondering if I could just run downstairs real quick and give it to her and get mine?”

  “Of course,” she says. “But what’s your name so I can mark you present?”

  “I’m Naomi E.” I say. “Kindergarten’s on the first floor?”

  She nods. “There are four, though. Do you know which one she’s in?” My brain’s completely blank, but then I flash to Brianna singing, “Ms. Helen, Ms. HELEN, MS. HELEN!!!!” when the teacher letter arrived.

  “Is there a Ms. Helen?”

  The teacher smiles. “Yes. Her room’s directly across from the office. Come right back!”

  I grab the Makeda lunch box, hoping very, very hard that nobody notices (Makeda! Way to rock middle school!) and walk to the stairs. I speed-walk, knowing I’m in a race against Brianna discovering her missing lunch box.

  Across from the office there’s a room with a rainbow on the door that says, in different-colored letters, STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY. Chisholm School is very into its theme! The door is closed. I don’t know if I should knock or what, but I do and open the door at th
e same time. I’m flooded with . . . feeling, with love for kindergarten, how easy everything was when I was little. The teacher is singing to them, and some kids are joining in: “The more we get together, the happier we’ll be.”

  Brianna spots me, and even though she definitely knows better, she jumps up and races over to me, wrapping her arms around my stomach. “NAOMI E.!! NAOMI E.!!!” And I’m surprised by how good it feels.

  “Hey,” I say, giving her a quick hug back. “I ended up with your lunch box! So here you go.” The teacher is looking at me. I smile and shrug. “Sorry to interrupt. I ended up with my sister’s lunch box and—”

  “You’re Brianna’s sister?” the teacher asks.

  I nod, thinking, Yes, I know she’s black and I’m not. I feel a weird smile starting when I imagine what Ms. Helen would have said if Brianna had hugged me and screamed, “White Naomi! White Naomi!” “Is it okay for her to grab my lunch box for me? It should be in her backpack. I wanted to get it straightened out before morning snack.”

  As though I unleashed a swarm of bees or something, the kids are all buzzing, “Morning snack?” “I brought grapes!” “I wanted peanut butter.” It’s still going on when I take my lunch box from Brianna, wave to the teacher, and head back upstairs.

  “Thank you for being so quick, Naomi,” the teacher says. “All you missed was my introduction. I’m Gwendolyn, your Advisory teacher and science teacher. Please, take a seat.”

  I walk back to the beanbag, but a smirky boy’s sitting there. I look around and nearly faint with full-body relief when a girl with glasses and messy hair points to the empty seat next to her.

  Gwendolyn tells us to interview the person next to us. The boy on my left is drawing spiderwebs on his arm in blue Sharpie, and so I am especially grateful that this girl is on my right.

  “I’m Naomi E.,” I say.

  She’s been taking off her sweatshirt but now turns to look at me. “What’s the E for?”