1
She used to read books about portals. Vehicles of spectacle, wonder, shock, and ohhhh shhh in films. The unlikely band of nerds would unexpectedly be transported to a place that was beautiful and better, and—after a series of character-building trials and challenges, revealing strengths no one, not even they, had known they had—they would be better too. Portals were doors and mirrors and wardrobes, places of possibility, even if the possibilities were of danger. Portals were not school bathrooms. School bathrooms were centers of humiliation. The story always went that way. But still, she held her breath every time she pushed open a school bathroom door, and not just because she was anticipating the smell. School bathrooms could surprise you, with a crying girl or a kissing couple, or a glance in the mirror that told you you looked good that day.
Or something much, much worse.
It had only been a month since she’d transferred to this school, but Harriet already knew that the bathroom on the third floor had a stall with a working lock. If she was lucky (haha), it would be empty. She sprinted up the stairs, holding a couple of textbooks to her chest.
She pushed the heavy door open and scanned the floor under each of the stall doors. It was empty. Deserted feeling, really. Harriet, who never felt alone these days but was always lonely, let out a long breath. Not much had gotten better here; after Tunde, she’d finished out the year “surrounded by friends and family,” as Reverend Samuel had said, not taking into account the fact that she hadn’t had any friends at her old school; not even being The Girl Whose Brother Died had changed that. A month into the new school year, her mother had worked out the transfer without telling Harriet; Nikka had just shown up one morning, apparently ready to skip to school arm-in-arm as though they could have fun together. Harriet had closed the door in her cousin’s face and spent the day figuring out her own route to her new school, which turned out to be closer to the pool than her old one. Reverend Samuel would have called that undeserved grace. And she would have called him a fraud, in her head, just because.
She dropped her books on the sink ledge and locked herself in the last stall, the one where the portal jokes landed and stuck. She’d heard some kids talking about it on her first day; they called it the Troll Tunnel and stuffed all manner of contraband inside, from chewed gum to lighters to love notes. It led, they said, to a school of magic with more funding and no homework. Airy, freshly painted, and bright; the kind filled with cushioned seating and white kids who went on vacations to Black places.
Faint laughter and shouts floated in from the hallway as people rushed to class, to lunch, to the normal, thick places where she didn’t belong. She tugged at her jeans; she’d known the faded yellow one-piece would be trouble; it was probably more than a size too small at this point, which meant that it worked its way up her butt every hour or so. (Her cousin Nikka, who liked to ask Harriet what she had up her butt all the time, would enjoy this.) But Harriet had woken up that morning gripping a wet pillow, and she’d continued to cry silently in the shower, where her tears could disappear into the water. That doesn’t count as crying. She’d known that she would need the security blanket of her favorite swimsuit under her clothes all day.
Harriet leaned forward, away from the toilet and the ever-widening hole in the wall behind it. She gave the suit another quick tug and was rebuttoning her jeans just as the second bell rang. She started to leave the stall—then heard the bathroom door open. She locked herself back in.
“Oh my God, did you see the way he was looking at me?” Harriet didn’t recognize the voice. She wondered if she should just make a quick exit now, but … should she flush? If she didn’t, would they think she was gross?
This was awkward.
Better to stay hidden and be late for class. She slowly squatted on top of the toilet seat so that her legs wouldn’t give her away.
“But … you don’t think he’s cute, right?” said another unfamiliar voice.
“Oh, yeah, of course, I know. I’m just saying … Ew, it smells gross in here, hurry up. Your hair looks fine. We’re gonna be late.”
“Let me borrow
your lip gloss, then we can leave … I don’t even know how people can go at school. I just hold it until I get home. It’s always so nasty in here.”
It’s the clientele, thought Harriet. Then she grimaced. Oh wait, I’m in here too. She turned and noticed a crumpled piece of paper sticking out of the Troll Tunnel. It was silver, like slick wrapping paper, and she could make out something like a diagram or a map on one side, like fancy physics homework.
“This shirt makes me look ginormous. I can’t believe I wore it. Look at me.”
“Um, no. Everyone looks at you, I don’t have to join in. Did you hear about The Ratings?”
“I want to know where they put me. As long as I’m not at the bottom of the list or something, I’m OK.”
Harriet had pretended not to care when Nikka told her about the school’s elaborate ratings system, but she hoped that even with Weird New Girl status, she’d been ranked higher than Corey “Yeti” Hayne.
“It’s so sexist. We should do one for the guys, though.”
“Wouldn’t that be like reverse sexism or something?”
“Nah, it would be feminist. Completely different. I mean, I’m not a feminist, but …”
Harriet held back a snort.
“You know that weird new girl’s got to be at the bottom of the list. She is so creepy. I heard she’s Nikka Soy—whatever’s cousin, but I don’t believe it. Nikka is normal, even though she thinks she’s all that.”
“You’d be weird too if you had all that drama.”
“That is so sad … Wasn’t she like right there or something?”
Harriet wanted to tear off her ears, but she had to hear this. Later she’d replay it in her mind, over and over, like a penitential prayer.
“Supposedly. The whole school was there … I heard it happened in the lunch room. Just like one of those messed-up stories on the news. My mom joined one of those ‘moms against guns’ groups right after, like that’s going to do anything.”
“All I know is, New Girl gets side-eye from me, I don’t care how tragic she is. You have to watch out for the weird ones … what if she goes all wacked out here and starts popping people off for revenge or something?”
“True … she’s so obviously damaged.”
“And she is not cute … I’d be mad too if I looked like that and my brother got shot.” Snickering.
Harriet gasped.
She wondered if she’d given herself away, but they continued.
“You’re stupid.” Laughter. “Anyway, everyone here is normal. Freaks can’t survive. Come on, we are so late. That was the last bell.”
“Somebody left their books here.”
“Not my problem. Let’s go, Charisse. I do not want another detention.”
“OK, OK, calm down …” The voices faded.
Harriet heard the door close. Silence. As she pulled the stall door open, she stumbled back and the crumpled paper fell out of the Tunnel. She pushed it forward with her foot, and a trick of light from the tiny bathroom window made it shimmer. She didn’t want to touch it, but since she couldn’t just leave it on the floor, she pulled a length of toilet paper and wrapped it around her hand to pick it up.
It was smooth and almost fabric-like, like an express mail envelope. She looked at it; a delicate line drawing of a subway car floating across waves. It was an exquisite piece of art, forgotten in a bathroom stall. Oh well. She gently pushed it back into the hole in the wall. As she finally left the stall, it dislodged and fell into the toilet. Of course. She sighed, and walked to the sinks. After she washed her hands, Harriet stood in front of the sink for a minute, listening to her own breathing. When she looked in the mirror, she was surprised to see that she was shaking. She gripped the sink for a few seconds and then picked up her books.
She heard a toilet flush from a stall behind her and the fleeting memory that she was sure she’d been alone in the bathroom shoved her out as though it had hands.
The bathing suit continued to bother her all day, but she didn’t go back to the bathroom. She decided to let it be a reminder that she’d be in the water soon. Her real breathing—not just the shallow necessary-for-survival breaths—began as soon as she got to the pool.
Nikka’s click-clacking platform heels broadcasted her arrival a full minute before she actually appeared at Harriet’s locker. Harriet looked from her work boots to her cousin’s feet and wondered how Nikka managed to wear shoes like that and still look so perky at the end of the school day.
Harriet looked up; “What,” she said, declaring the word and turning back to her locker. “What can I do to make you feel superior today?”
“I don’t need any help, ha, you know I’m all that,” Nikka said. But her giggle trailed off quickly. “Are you going to swim? I have yoga, I can walk with you.”
“Yes, I’m swimming, and yes, I guess that even in those shoes you’re capable of walking there with me. Congratulations.” Harriet started toward the school exit; Nikka stood at the locker for a moment, then sighed and followed, shoes clicking determinedly.
“Wait up … you don’t have to walk so fast.”
Harriet stopped and waited for Nikka to get alongside her. “I do, actually,” she said. “This is like my warm-up.” Her body needed to hit the water.
“My shoes,” Nikka whined.
Harriet slowed; she wondered if Nikka was waiting for an opening. She remained
silent as they walked up Amsterdam Avenue, past the busloads of tourists gathering their cameras for tours of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and the hospital, where a woman in a hopeful red coat sobbed loudly next to a hot-dog cart.
Nikka tried out a few heavy sighs, and then: “You should come to yoga. People think they can’t lose weight doing yoga, but that’s a myth. You should totally try it.”
Harriet stopped. You don’t want to say something you’ll regret, Harriet. Also, Nikka’s mom, Harriet’s Auntie Marguerite, who taught an under-enrolled undergraduate course at the university, was the reason Harriet had access to the pool. So she needed to watch her step before she lost the only thing that loved her back.
“Oh, of course I didn’t mean it like that … Anyway, Charisse Clark was bragging about how she does vinyasa yoga all the time, which I know can’t possibly be true because—”
“Charisse?” Harriet stopped abruptly.
“Yeah, do you know her? She’s in my grade, but just barely. She should have been left back at least twice.”
“I don’t know her.” Harriet started walking again.
“Um, OK … So anyway, what an idiot. She thinks she’s popular, but she has no idea. I have nothing to do with that trash.”
Nikka droned on like an evil stepsister, as they walked. The small Teachers College campus slid from stately into shabby more quickly than its rich cousin, Columbia University, a few blocks away. Harriet made a quick right and stopped in front of Trell Hall. There was a strip of CAUTION tape across one of the doors, covering an ugly crack.
“Was that it?” she asked Nikka, who was dropping a gold dollar coin into a man’s cup. “I need to go downstairs. And I seriously can’t believe you still have one of those coins.”
Nikka smiled. “You know I save stuff like that. Remember our sticker collection?” She sighed again. “No, actually. I … wanted to know if you … Do you want to hang out with me and my girls this weekend?”
“My mom or your mom?” Harriet asked, rolling her eyes.
“Huh?”
“Who put you up to this? My mom or yours?” Their mothers were sisters who fussed at each other regularly, but always managed to tag-team when it came to their daughters. Harriet pushed open the working heavy door. Nikka slipped in behind her, smiling at the security guard walking out. He smiled back, then gave Harriet a short nod. She lifted a hand in recognition.
“Oh … they both suggested it but—”
“Tell them … oh, forget it. Thanks for the offer, Nik, but don’t worry, I won’t accept
You and your racist money and your girls are safe from me.”
Nikka smirked. “Being difficult doesn’t make you better, cuz. It just makes you difficult.”
Harriet closed her eyes and wondered if clicking her heels three times might transport Nikka away.
Her cousin continued: “Being better makes you better. Take it from someone who knows.”
Harriet clicked her sneakers lightly and opened her eyes.
Nikka was still there. No dice.
“Ooh, you should have a podcast,” Harriet said slowly, sighing out the words. “I bet tens of people want to hear the pearls you’re dropping. Why are you bothering me, Nikka? What’s so urgent now?”
After that first day, Nikka came to the door a few more times, then she’d stopped. They’d been binary stars, orbiting each other for nine months.
It was better that way.
Nikka didn’t reply. Harriet waited for her cousin to leave for the fitness center upstairs, but Nikka continued to follow her down to the basement.
Harriet pushed her way into the locker room, which was empty. As the faint sounds of splashing wafted toward them, Harriet panicked; no way was she changing in front of her cousin.
“What time does yoga start?” she asked, as Nikka began to change.
“Now. I have to hurry, so let’s meet up later.” Nikka pulled her thick twists up and clipped them into a high bun. The clip was shaped like a small crown, dotted with rhinestones. Harriet noted with satisfaction that a few of the stones were missing. “I’m supposed to pick up some bodega candles, you can come with me before we go home.”
When Harriet’s Auntie Marguerite and (real African!) Uncle Jidé had moved with their daughter into an apartment just down the block from her own, her mother had rolled her eyes and grumbled repeatedly before toting a six-year-old Harriet and a Dutch oven filled with baked chicken, tangy yellow rice dotted with a rainbow of vegetables, and sweet plantains over to welcome them. “She can’t stop copying me, even now,” muttered her mother as she pressed down the tops of the Tupperware that she later made Harriet retrieve. “I got here first.” Harriet had wondered if her mother really had been the first person in all of New York City; it wasn’t a difficult thing to imagine. “They call plantains ‘dodo’ where your uncle’s from, in Nigeria,” her mother had said, and that had made Harriet giggle more than the way her mother started pronouncing it “planTAYNS” did.
Tunde said more than once that it was weird that Auntie Marguerite was the one
who had actually married a Nigerian when her sister had spent her whole life trying to tether herself to “the Motherland,” but still could only snag a shadow—another kente-clad New Yorker who called other adults of no relation “Brother” and “Sister.”
“Like why is my name even Tunde,” he would say, rolling his eyes. “I can’t even say it right. It’s embarrassing. At least you got a regular name.”
But as Harriet grew older, she wondered why she had been given such an old-timey, non-Nigerian name; her mother’s certainty that her ancestors were Nigerian remained strong even though she’d never made an effort to verify her claims. It was as though the story she told herself, and her children, was proof enough. Auntie Marguerite had suggested African Ancestry, but her mother just sucked her teeth, saying that those things were government scams.
The next time her mother had sent her to the African and Caribbean market on 145th Street to buy black soap, she’d smiled widely at the auntie behind the register, just in case they were related.
On that first visit to Auntie Marguerite and Uncle Jidé’s, the children had been sent off to “play.” Nikka, after explaining that she didn’t play with “babies,” had demanded that Harriet fix her a plate. Tunde threatened to report Harriet’s rudeness if she refused. When she’d gone to ask the adults for help with the plate, she’d gotten in trouble for trying to bring food into the bedroom.
They’d played “royal kingdom” for two hours that day; Harriet had been a guard and a bench. Tunde was the king. Nikka explained that only beautiful girls get to be princesses.
“You can be the witch later,” she’d added, clearly believing she was offering a reward. Tunde had laughed and whispered that Harriet already was a witch-with-a-b, which was something he’d just learned but already said with relish and ease, and Harriet kept quiet, then played her assigned parts with apparent gusto. All the while, she imagined an alternate story in which she, the true princess, knocked Nikka and Tunde over and into a vat of foul-smelling goo.
“What do you need bodega candles for?” Harriet asked.
Nikka shrugged. “There was one of those emergency preparedness block association meetings last night, didn’t your mom tell you? The candles are on the list.”
“Aren’t they religious, though? Seems kind of like blasphemy or something, just using prayer candles in an emergency.”
Nikka shrugged again. “Seems like it would be the perfect time to me, but whatever. Anyway, I’m supposed to get some for your mom too—thank goodness, y’all live in a cave these days. What’s with the mood lighting? Is she just being cheap?”
“Ha, ha,” said Harriet. “I don’t know how long I’ll be here. Can’t we just talk at my house? Bring a flashlight or something if it’s too dark for you.” The water was calling her; she tried not to fidget.
Nikka let out another of her seemingly endless supply of sighs. Harriet almost asked if they were part of some new social media workout
“Swimming makes you flat-chested,” said Nikka, raising her eyebrows.
“Oh yeah?” Harriet looked straight ahead, determined not to glance down at her chest. She thought about the cool water swooshing between her fingers and toes.
Nikka smiled without showing any teeth.
Harriet bared hers. “Good to know. Thanks for the tip.”
Nikka sat down on the wooden bench next to Harriet, ignoring the two women with identical blonde messy buns who jumped up from the bench in an exaggerated huff. “I was just trying to be nice.”
“Keep trying,” muttered Harriet. “You’ll get the hang of it.”
Nikka shrugged. “See you later.” She left the locker room, her slim back straight, not glancing once at the large mirror near the door.
There was a large X of CAUTION tape blocking the open doorway to the pool. Harriet looked left, then right, and quickly slipped under the tape and inside the chlorine-scented room. The lights were out, and the pool itself was empty. The regular magazine-reading lifeguard was nowhere to be found. It was against the rules, but Harriet dropped into the pool anyway. The water welcomed her home. As soon as her fingertips hit the cool counterfeit ocean-blue water, her entire body relaxed, the way it always did. She moved slowly to the bottom. She started swimming, a strong crawl, until she got to the ladder on the other side. She pulled herself up out of the water, and, heavy again, sat at the concrete edge of the pool. She glanced around, then tentatively patted her chest. She tumbled back into the water.
She swam her laps, graceful and weightless, and long; she swam as the true true self she was in the water and her dreams. ...
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