No Laughter Here Read online

  I was about sixteen screens away from my first search. Somehow, from menstruation to menses to lunar calendar, I had landed on the moon.

  I understood about the lunar calendar: how it takes a little over twenty-eight days for the arrival of a full moon, and that a period is supposed to come every twenty-eight days. Then there are blue moons, two full moons in one month. Did that mean you could get your period twice in a month? Yikes.

  Instead of clicking back, I went forward and plunged deeper into stuff about how full moons can affect the number of babies being born. And that the moon causes tidal waves. And the Apollo astronauts walked on the moon. And people were auctioning off pieces of the moon. And there are more songs written about the moon than the sun. It was all driving me crazy. From sanitary napkins to the dark side of the moon. I was confused. My eyes were tired from jumping from stupid article to stupid article. None of this information was helping me.

  I logged off and got into bed. I lay on my back, looking up at the moon through the venetian blind slats. A full moon hung outside my window. I yawned, closed my eyes, and fell into that heavy sleep, then POW! The clue I’d been searching for hit me, and I sprang right up.

  The moonbeams. The moonbeams through my blinds. They were aimed right at me. Not just at me, but at my belly, where everything was.

  I rolled away from the moonbeams.

  It was no accident that I had landed on the moon. The clues were all there. The moon creates a tidal wave. A deep gravitational pull. If the moon could rock a tidal wave and cause more births, couldn’t it pull down a period? Weren’t periods based on the comings and goings of the moon? Didn’t an Internet article say girls can get their period twice a month when there are two moons?

  All this time I was bringing down my own period, sleeping directly under the moon, helping it pull, pull, pull on me.

  I jumped out of bed and ran into a corner and balled up. I banged my elbow against the wall, but that was the least of my problems. I was away from the moonbeams. Now what?

  Dad came into the room. He put his arms around me. “Bad dream, puddin’?”

  “No, Daddy. I just can’t stand all this moonlight.”

  “Moonlight?”

  I nodded like the big baby I was.

  “Hey, where’s my Girl Warrior?”

  Girl Warrior. I was nobody’s super-shero. I buried my face in my father’s chest.

  “Daddy, can you move the dresser, then move my bed?”

  “Why not just close the blinds?” he asked.

  Mom had come into the room.

  “Nightmare,” he told her. “I got this.”

  Mom shook her head and went back to their room.

  Paths to Discovery

  “I had a close call,” I whispered to Victoria, then glanced around. I didn’t want to be overheard. “If I didn’t move my bed from the gravitational pull of the moon, I’d be menstruating right now.”

  Victoria gave me her famous Queen Victoria look. The one that went with “Akilah, that is utterly ridiculous.” She said nothing.

  I took out my taunting essay. “Can you believe this? I couldn’t even write free style. Mom said I had to stick to the facts.” I would have said “empirical facts,” but we hadn’t done the word of the day since our last letter. It didn’t make sense saying empirical if Victoria didn’t spin it around with spherical.

  “Oh! And then my mom handed me a gift. One she’s been saving for the right moment. You’ll never guess what.”

  Victoria whatted me with her eyes. Good enough.

  “Kotex. Kotex. Can you believe that?”

  Victoria hmmed.

  “You couldn’t have had a worse day in your life than I had yesterday. The only way things could have gotten worse was if…if…,” but I stopped myself because I was launching into a joke and I wasn’t supposed to do that. Make Victoria laugh.

  I whipped out my permission slip and pointed to my mother’s extra-large and extra-sharp signature. “Can’t miss that. Geez.” I put it back inside the folder. “Where’s yours?”

  She opened her notebook and showed me the yellow sheet. Nothing had been checked off or signed.

  “Victoria! They’re going to make you go to library science.”

  “Oh,” she said, which was more than the hmm and the shrug.

  I took out my pen and in my grownest Mrs. Ojike, I gave Victoria permission to participate in Paths to Discovery.

  The following Monday Ida, Zuhair, Nahda, Sadia, and two other classmates whose parents checked the No box went to the library. If I hadn’t signed Victoria’s slip, she would have marched off with them. Ms. Saunders had Darryl roll the big TV out to the front of the room. She said, “I expect you to behave like the young ladies and gentlemen I know you are.” Then she turned the lights off and pressed the Play button on the VCR.

  Debra Wells had already told Victoria and me about it. First they show girls getting their period, then they show how boys’ voices change and how their “thing” grows. They spend a lot of time on diseases, and they save the woman having a baby for last. They actually show it. The baby’s head coming out and everything. Not that it’s a big mystery. All you have to do is watch cable TV to see that. The only difference is, all through the video the narrator constantly says “you.” Like those are your breasts budding and your hair growing in unmentionable places, only they mention it, and show it up on the screen. And you feel like they’re pointing at you.

  The music started before a picture appeared. It was nature music, all friendly and peaceful. The kind that plays while rivers flow and flowers bloom. Then the words Paths to Discovery popped up on the screen, and everyone was all eyes, leaning forward, waiting for something to happen. Something so shocking that six of our classmates couldn’t watch it. Sure enough, the music got all high tech. Red and yellow molecules turned into a tad-pole that turned into a fetus growing inside a woman’s belly. Then, without warning, they showed a naked baby boy with his little dingdong, and all the girls laughed. I did too. I looked over at Victoria, but she didn’t react. Next they showed a fat, pink baby girl with her legs open and you could see everything. The boys started to laugh.

  Victoria got up while the naked baby girl was still on the TV screen. Just like that she was out the door. I stood, but Ms. Saunders told me to stay seated and went after her.

  While Victoria and Ms. Saunders were gone, the baby girl and boy had stood up and transformed like teenage Autobots, sprouting hair under their arms and around their privates. The boy’s “thing” and his “other stuff” grew big and just sort of hung there, and the girl needed a bra.

  The class was going wild. Everyone was laughing like they had never seen anything like it. All you needed was for one object to be thrown and before you knew it, there was a full-scale paper war in Ms. Saunders’s class. Crumpled snowballs flew left and right.

  Ms. Saunders entered the room without Victoria and turned off the video. She flicked on the lights, snap, and told the class to put their heads down on their desks.

  Victoria spent the rest of the afternoon in the library. At the end of the day, I wrote the homework assignment in Victoria’s notebook and collected her books. I was trying to rush out, but Ms. Saunders stopped me.

  She said, “When I learned that I would have both you and Victoria in my class, I was delighted. But now I am concerned.”

  I had to speak up for Victoria. I said, “I know Victoria’s not working up to her full potential, but she really does belong in this class.”

  Ms. Saunders held up the yellow permission slip that I had signed. “Right now, Akilah, I am concerned about your potential.”

  I was in deep trouble. Tell-my-parents, call-the-principal type of trouble. My heart pounded like mad. You know, your life really does flash before your eyes at a moment like this. I saw myself cutting out paper dollies in the first grade and having a wee-wee accident in Pre-K.

  “Frankly, Akilah, after speaking to Mrs. Ojike, I was surprised to receive a signed
permission slip.”

  My brain was stuck. I didn’t know where to begin. All I could come up with was “I didn’t want Victoria to go to library science.”

  “That is not an excuse, Akilah. What you did was quite serious.”

  When I took that sheet and signed it, I felt 100 percent right. Girl Warrior right. Why didn’t anyone get it? I couldn’t be separated from Victoria. Not again.

  “Akilah. You’re one of my brightest students. You and your classmates are growing up. That’s why we’re embarking on this new discovery,” she said. “Your bodies are maturing, but your minds must always be ahead, and thinking positively. Now, young lady, I don’t want you to continue in this way, so we will start anew, as if it’s the first day of school and we are meeting for the first time. From this point on, you will be the person I know you are.”

  Vow

  Victoria wasn’t in the library. She was sitting out by the hopscotches like she did during recess.

  “Here you are,” I said as if I had just discovered her. In reality I stood and watched her for a while before I came out into the school yard. “I went to the library looking for you.”

  She didn’t answer me, but I felt her willing me to sit next to her, so I did. We sat for a long time. Two or three minutes. Then she turned to me and said, “I don’t look like that.”

  I didn’t understand what she meant, but I knew she’d explain. As I sat waiting, a happiness ran through me. Like Christmas morning at six A.M. I was finally getting what I wanted. Today Victoria would return to me from wherever she had been.

  Looking at me directly and not staring off, she said, “Akilah. What I am going to tell you is a secret.”

  We were already practically breath to breath, but I managed to move in closer.

  “You cannot tell anyone.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Not okay,” she said. “Okay isn’t good enough. You must take a vow. Repeat after me: If I should tell, I will die.”

  I was stunned.

  “Say it.” She sounded like the real Victoria. I took her seriously.

  “If I should tell, I will die.”

  “I will not tell my mother.”

  “I will not tell my mother.”

  “Even if she beats me.”

  “My mother wouldn’t—”

  “Say it.”

  “Even if she beats me.” I laughed to myself. Auntie Cass wouldn’t hesitate to draw her belt, but my mother would never, ever hit me.

  “I will not tell a soul. Dead or alive.”

  I wanted to giggle when she said “dead.” She raised her eyebrows. I repeated after her, “Dead or alive.”

  “Now show me your hands,” she said. “I don’t want you to cross your fingers.”

  I placed my hands on my lap where she could see them.

  “Say I will not tell God, not even in my prayers.”

  My mother would have said, “God already knows,” but I didn’t dare. I said, “I will not tell God, not even in my prayers.”

  “Or I will die in Victoria’s eyes, for she will no longer be my true friend.”

  I repeated all of it. A few minutes of silence passed before she said, “They showed the picture of the baby girl in class.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I don’t look like that.”

  I didn’t know what she meant. A chubby, white, baby girl with her legs open, showing her privates.

  “Of course you don’t look like her. I don’t either.” In fact, before Victoria left for Africa we compared our soft, fuzzy hair growing down below. Mine was more visible than hers.

  “I don’t have what girls have,” she told me.

  I still didn’t know what she meant.

  “They took it while I was sleeping.”

  “Took it?” She made no sense.

  “My mother. My Auntie Omodara and Auntie Olefemi. My Grandmother Iyapo. They took me to see Doctor Ajala. I thought for more shots or to look at my teeth.

  “First my mother inspected Doctor Ajala’s knife, and then she told him to put me to sleep first. My aunties started yelling at my mother. They said things like, ‘Do you think we will fail to hold her down?’ My grandmother said she could have done it at home without so much fuss. She had done many girls, but my mother was very strong. ‘We are modern,’ she said. Then the doctor told everyone to be quiet. He could lose his license because it was illegal.”

  “Illegal?”

  “Illegal. When he said illegal, my mind imagined the worst. I thought, How could my mother make us do something so horrible the doctor could lose his license? I could not imagine what it was. I was not sick. I did not need to see a doctor.

  “But my aunties and grandmother would not stop yelling at her and at Doctor Ajala.

  “My mother remained strong. She wouldn’t give in to her sisters or her mother. She said things I was not accustomed to hearing her say. Do not ask me to repeat them.”

  She read my mind so well.

  “Then the doctor put me to sleep.”

  “To sleep?”

  “While he operated.”

  “Operated?” Now I sounded like Victoria had when she first returned. Repeating and questioning. My mind raced with horror and curiosity, and yet I made no pictures for what she was telling me. It was as though the picture-making part of my brain had shut down.

  “When I woke up, I thought I was dead inside my body. I could see, but I could not move. Then feeling came back to me slowly, not on the inside, but outside of my body. Like I was a ghost, visiting Grandmother Iyapo’s house. Sound around me did not seem real. I heard music, but it seemed far away, like echoes. I heard laughter and talking, but it didn’t seem real.

  “I still did not know what had happened to me. I did not remember coming back to Grandmother’s house. I called for my mother. She helped me to the bathroom. I could barely stand. She had to hold me when I squatted. My ghost body fled, and my real body returned. When the pee came out of me, I screamed. I was being burned alive, but there were no flames creeping up my legs. For weeks and weeks I stood in a pot of fire.”

  “Fire?” I slowly began to feel, although I still couldn’t picture anything. Only knife, took, fire.

  She knew this and said, “Have you ever played Touch My Raisin?”

  I nodded.

  “And it felt good and tickly when you touched it?”

  Only to Victoria could I admit this. “Umhm,” I said.

  “So good you didn’t want to stop?”

  I nodded again.

  She pointed between her legs to what I call private place, the Paths to Discovery video calls genitals, and kids on the playground have nasty names for. She said, “When I was sleeping, they took my raisin.”

  My belly flopped. I felt dizzy. I didn’t expect to hear what she told me.

  “Mum said not to cry. All proper Nigerian girls have this done to stop the feeling.”

  “Stop the feeling?”

  She said, “The feeling that comes from touching your raisin. I still cry.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Victoria whispered, “When we returned home, you know, to Queens?”

  I nodded.

  “I locked myself in my room and got my mirror to squat over it and see. Akilah, after they took my raisin, they sewed my skin together to hide what they did.”

  Bam

  I couldn’t stand my father’s voice calling me puddin’ at the dinner table. The sweet stickiness of it turned the butter beans in my mouth sour. It made me sick, then angry, then mad.

  “Can I be excused?”

  I went up to my room, but I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stand the sheets against my skin. The pillowcase touching my head. The coils in the mattress. I couldn’t stand my room. My brown-skinned, big-eyed dolls made me sick. The globe tilting upward made me sick. The books on my bookshelf, starting with Nomusa and the New Magic, made me sick. I read those books. I believed in them. My autographed soccer ball. My math and spelling trophies g
leaming on the bookshelf. My stupid Girl Power flag. All made me sick. Sick. Sick. Sick. Girls don’t have no power.

  First I was angry at my mother for filling my head with stuff about Africa. Then I was angry at Dad for calling me puddin’ and Girl Warrior. Then I was angry at Mrs. Ojike for taking Victoria to that illegal doctor. And angry at Mr. Ojike for doing nothing. I could see his big teeth smiling and hear him speaking politely while Victoria was screaming. But I was really angry at Nelson for telling me Victoria was getting over her illness. Liar. You can’t get over what they did to her. You can’t get over that.

  Then I was mad. Crazy mad. Dizzy mad. Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad.

  Tuesday Victoria and I walked to school together without saying a word. We sat at the hopscotches and stared out past the balls bouncing and the kids running and tagging each other and yelling.

  In class we took our seats but did not volunteer to be class monitors or to bring the attendance sheets to the office. Victoria answered one question in math, one in science, and one in language arts. Not me. I couldn’t raise my hand to call out a quotient, or share my knowledge about sharks, or identify one of the parts of speech. I couldn’t talk about these silly things when anything could happen to a girl against her will. Against her knowledge. Against her body. Instead I did what Victoria did when she first came back. I let all the balls fly and the hands shoot up around us.

  Once she told me, I felt like I was standing in the pot of fire with her. It didn’t matter that her mother made the doctor put a needle in her arm so she would sleep while he cut her. And what if her aunts had held her down while her grandmother cut her body in their home?

  I had to turn off my mind. I couldn’t let my thoughts go flying off. I couldn’t let myself imagine any more.

  Wednesday Victoria and I were sitting by the hopscotches doing what we’d been doing for the past month. Except now we weren’t just sitting in silence. We were making a statement. Depriving everyone of our girlness.

  Jerilyn was looking for extra players for Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. I wasn’t in the hand-clapping, foot-stomping mood, so I shook my head no. Victoria did also. Jerilyn wouldn’t take no for an answer. She had only five players, and she needed at least one more so everyone would have a partner.