I looked at the items she’d laid out, then back at her, confused.
“They’re for you to wash up,” she explained. “I’m going to step outside and give you a little privacy. While I’m gone, I want you to use the washrag and clean your face and neck and under your arms, and put on the deodorant. When you’re finished, you can change into these.” She reached back into her gym bag and pulled out a bright yellow and white striped T-shirt and a brand-new pair of jeans. I’d secretly been hoping that Miss Troup was going to give me a pair of knee-high leather boots and a big curly wig. But a pair of stiff new jeans from Woolworth and a fresh top were almost as good.
“I’ll be right outside,” she said, giving me a little pat on the shoulder before she turned to leave, the door swinging closed behind her.
Alone in the girls’ room, I let the hot water run over my hands and lathered up the soap. I washed my face and neck and under my arms, just like she told me. I brushed my teeth until my mouth felt minty fresh. Then I pulled on my brand-new clothes and stepped into the hallway where Miss Troup was waiting on me.
“Don’t you look right cute!” she exclaimed “Just like a doll,”
I smoothed my hands down the front of my T-shirt. In my whole life I’d never felt as good in an outfit as I did that day. “Thank you,” I said, giving Miss Troup a smile so wide I felt like my face was gonna crack in two.
I started washing up at school every morning after that. Sometimes Miss Troup would bring me new clothes I’d never seen before, and sometimes she’d bring back my funky-smelling Goodwill clothes, only they’d be clean and pressed, like she was running a little laundry service at night. She even did my hair, combing out all the naps and braiding four neat plaits that she finished off with plastic barrettes in colors to match my outfit.
One afternoon, Porsha and Mercedes and a bunch of their friends ran up on me and Sweetie as we were walking home. “Look at this nappy-headed ho,” said Mercedes, smacking Sweetie in the back of her head so hard it knocked my sister to the ground. “You a nasty bitch! I’ma whoop your ass for being so nasty.” There were so many of them, there was nothing I could do but watch helplessly as Mercedes kicked the shit out of Sweetie while the other girls laughed.
Porsha turned to me, taking in my outfit. “Huh,” she said, eyeballing the dark blue skirt and crisp white T-shirt Miss Troup had given me that morning. “Patricia don’t look so raggedy today. Just her raggedy-ass sister who needs to get beat.”
I don’t think Miss Troup had any idea of the ass-whoopings she saved me from, or that I loved everything about her. I loved the way she smiled and her soapy smell. I even grew to like the tap tap tap sound of her shiny red nails hitting the page while she taught me to read. Miss Troup was badass and beautiful. She was like an angel to me.
In the girls’ bathroom one morning, I studied her reflection while she fixed my hair. Her hands felt warm against my scalp as she smoothed down my edges with Blue Magic. Whenever Mama did my hair, which wasn’t often, she was rough and impatient and it hurt like hell. If I dared cry out from the pain, she’d smack me in the side of my head with her wood-handled brush.
Miss Troup looked up and caught my gaze in the mirror. She flashed me a smile, then her face turned serious. “Patricia,” she said, “I want to tell you something.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I want you to know I believe in you.”
“Okay.”
“You’re a bright girl with a lot of potential.”
“Potential?”
“It means if you work hard, you can do anything. If you study, and really apply yourself, you can finish school, go to college, and grow up to be anything you want: a teacher, a doctor, a nurse. Anything. You can be somebody. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. But I wasn’t so sure. No one in my family did any of the things Miss Troup was talking about. I couldn’t name a single relative who’d finished high school. And I sure never saw any of them with a career, or even a legal job for that matter. My uncle was an expert at picking locks, and Aunt Vanessa made money selling food stamps for fifty cents on the dollar. I was pretty sure that’s not what Miss Troup was talking about when she said I had potential.
“This world is filled with possibilities,” she continued, resting her hands on my shoulders and staring into my eyes. “You can do anything you put your mind to. Anything at all. All you have to do is dream. Promise me you’ll remember that, Patricia. Promise me you’ll dream.”
Nobody had ever talked to me like this before: not Granddaddy, not any of my regular teachers, and definitely not Mama. In my family, we all moved in the same direction, hustling and scheming and getting nowhere. That was the path laid out in front of me. But now here was Miss Troup—in all her leather-boot and red-fingernail finery—telling me I could go another way. I took a deep breath and gazed at my reflection. You can do anything and be anything, I thought, trying it on for size. But I wasn’t totally convinced I had a place in Miss Troup’s world of “possibilities” and “potential.”
“Promise me you’ll dream,” she said again.
“I promise?” I said, looking up at her uncertainly.
“C’mon now, Patricia. I know you can do better than that.” She gave me a little squeeze.
“Okay,” I said, starting to giggle. “I promise!”
Chapter 5
Devil in Disguise
Mama had a lot of ideas that made sense only to her. Like the time she decided to cook dinner out in the yard. I was ten years old and we’d moved to a run-down duplex at the bottom of a hill in a shitty part of town known as The Bluff. We didn’t have any gas in the house because it got cut off from Mama not paying the bill. So she went out and bought herself a charcoal barbecue grill, which she set up on the screened-in porch, right outside our front door.
The only problem was that grill wasn’t made for frying up a skillet full of catfish, like Mama used it for. One evening while she was cooking dinner, the whole porch filled up with thick black smoke. It was so bad that Mr. Willie, who lived in the other half of the duplex, came outside and started hollering.
“Mildred!” he yelled. “Bitch, you tryna kill me?”
“Mind your gotdamn business, you high-yella muthafucka!” Mama yelled back.
They kept up hollering at each other until Mr. Willie decided there was no reasoning with Mama, and called the fire department instead.