Chapter 11: Kenya Is Black and Kenya is beautiful

I opened my algebra book, hiding my smile as Mr. Bryant taught us formulas that I used in my everyday life as an accountant. But I wasn't an asshole about it. I didn't raise my hand like some know-it-all. I answered the questions in my head, mouthing them silently as I quickly jotted down the answers to equations.

The bell rang before I had expected it. "Kenya, can I see you please?" Mr. Bryant was watching me while sitting on the edge of his desk. I peered up at him. I am not going to say that he looked like the Netflix version of Luke Cage because that is just stupid. He looked better.

I stood before his desk, waiting for him to speak and trying not to stare too hard.

"You missed your homework assignment yesterday but I still want you to do it. You need some help with our two-step equations."

I made a soft sound of amusement.

Mr. Bryant's eyebrows quirked upward. "You don't think you do?"

"Um…I guess I do," I replied quickly.

He wrote down the assignment and gave me until Friday to complete it. I didn't mind him giving me the added homework because I knew that I could finish both by tomorrow. And besides, Mr. Bryant smelled really good up close.

I was so happy that lunch was next, but I didn't understand why it was the shortest bell of them all. I was hungry because I had skipped breakfast, and my diet over the last twenty-four hours of just cold cereal, coffee, and pork and beans and wieners was not enough to sustain me.

But then my eyes settled on the food waiting to be served by three lunch ladies wearing white hairnets.

There was breaded fish or maybe it was chicken, a bun, shredded lettuce with a pickle on top, mandarin orange salad, and tater tots with an option of a carton of milk or orange drink.

It looked like prison food. I've watched prison shows where the food looked more appetizing.

As I walked down the line with my tray, I spotted the a la carte menu and a smile spread across my face. There was a chef salad, hamburger deluxe, and a bowl of chili with crackers. I reached for the salad, and the lunch lady nearly shrieked at me not to touch it.

"But—" I tried to say.

"That's for teachers only!"

"But why?" I asked.

"Why? Because those are the rules." She glowered at me.

I shook my head in disbelief. "Money is money, right? My money is just as good as theirs. I want that chef salad, and I'm prepared to pay for it."

"Listen," the lunch lady said. She had no nametag so lunch lady was her only name. "Don't give me grief or you can walk yourself right down to the principal's office. Do you hear me?"

Silently I held out my tray to receive my prison meal.

I remembered that I sat at the same table with my friends and my feet automatically walked me in that direction.

Ivy, Bernice, Jade, and another girl by the name of Shasta were sitting there. They were talking about a boy they all had the hots for. He was on the track team, someone had seen him in shorts, and that had evidently been akin to porn. They were staring at him from across the room and giggling.

Thankfully, he did absolutely nothing for me. I am in my fifties, after all, and he was just a kid. But I pretended that I thought he was cute. I picked up my sandwich after loading on the bits of shredded lettuce and the one lone pickle slice.

After taking a bite it still took me a few moments to determine if I was eating chicken or fish. Ugh, chicken. I spit it into my napkin. I timidly ate the mandarin orange salad and then took a bite into a tater tot.

My eyes suddenly brightened. Oh wow. Tater tots were good! I popped the other half into my mouth. It was hot and crunchy on the outside and tender on the inside. I only had five, but I popped them one at a time into my mouth, savoring the memory of the delicious processed potato product.

When I was done, I eyed the trays of my friends hoping to barter for their tater tots, but they had already eaten theirs. My stomach grumbled, and I stared up at the food line, which had thinned down to the last few stragglers. I still had money. I needed more tater tots, but then I caught sight of the lunch lady, I decided that I had better keep my head down.

After lunch I had one more class and a study hall and then I could go home and be done with this hellacious experience. Apparently I had an elective for this bell, and Thursdays was art. Nice…until some boys began cracking jokes about "Kenya's so black…" Evidently I was so black that I got marked absent at night school. I was growing tired of this. I turned to the boys.

"I'm so black that my blood type is burnt," I whispered. "If I sit in a Jacuzzi, the water turns to coffee. I leave fingerprints on charcoal." My voice rose and the teacher looked up from across the room. "I'm so black I got a tattoo done in chalk. When I was born they had to look for me with a torch-"

"Kenya," Mr. Ellerby said.

But I just kept going until the boys that had been taunting me looked nervous. "I am so black I put night out of business. Oh, little boys I got a million of them. You gotta do better than—"

"Kenya," Mr. Ellerby—white, embarrassed Mr. Ellerby, was standing by my table. I looked up at him with defiance burning in my eyes. His cheeks were red because he wanted to be anywhere but here, listening to me speak words that embarrassed any right thinking person.

"Is everything okay?" he asked.

I looked at the boys who were now focusing on their work. "Kenya is black and Kenya is beautiful." I turned back to my work but not before a dark-skinned boy grinned at me.