CHAPTER SIXTEEN

For her whole life, Nicole had been playing a part in a story shaped by everyone from her mother to her friends, even to her beloved auntie. But now, she was ready to make up her own story, even if she was less than sure how that worked. And so, armed with a sharp stick in one hand, a knife in the other, and a bag of shiny hair accessories and jewelry tied to her rope belt, Nicole set off to explore the island. She decided to go left, toward a part of the jungle she had yet to see, promising herself that if it got too frightening, she would turn back. On her way, she passed Miss Montana and Miss Ohio, who were lying on their backs in the warm sand. They’d positioned scraps of silvery metal from the plane’s wing at chest level and were using them to reflect the sun.

“What are you doing?” Nicole asked.

“Working on our tans,” Miss Montana said. She had placed coconut shell quarters over her eyes. They looked like hairy brown sunglasses.

“I usually go for a fake-n-bake every week during pageant season,” Miss Ohio said. “Otherwise you look like Gothzilla. The judges like a tan.”

Nicole bit her tongue. The judges only like artificially darkened skin, she wanted to say. “Don’t you know anything about SPF? Skin cancer?”

Miss Montana eased herself up on her elbows and removed the small coconut shells from her eyes. “Are you always this much of a bummer?”

Fine, Nicole thought. She needed to be about her adventure, anyway. The knife hacked at the thicket surrounding her. Below her feet was a tangle of vines and roots, and she had to be careful where she stepped if she wanted to avoid a turned ankle or wrenched knee. High above her, a flock of colorful birds perched on a limb, their aqua-and-orange tails trailing down like the fishtail hem on an evening gown. Nicole wiped away the mist that collected on her skin. As she walked, she affixed shiny doodads from her bag to the trees to mark her passage. Once, she thought she heard someone behind her, but when she turned, there was nothing but thicket. The vegetation grew less dense, and finally she came to a clearing where the land looked ruined, burned.

“What happened here?” she said. Totems still guarded the top of a hill, ghosts of an older civilization. It gave Nicole a funny feeling, as if she were trespassing, and she found herself thinking of the restless spirits who inhabited the forest in stories she’d heard from Auntie Abeo. “I hope I’m not intruding,” she said. “I don’t mean any harm.”

The wind was still, and so Nicole sensed that she was welcome. She set about looking for a piece of wood she could turn into an ekwe³⁰. At last, she found a suitable piece and sat down with her knife to carve the slits that would make it a good drum. Her head itched. In the island humidity, Nicole’s hair had gone rogue; the new growth was tight. Her mother would have an absolute fit if she saw it. For years, Nicole had submitted to the relaxers and her mother’s big tub of Icon Pass Hair Grease. “This’ll set you right,” her mother had said, dipping fast, sure fingers into the grease and working it through Nicole’s stubborn curl, pulling so tight, her eyes watered. Nicole focused on the tub’s label, where a smiling black woman in pearls touched a hand to her shiny-straight coiffure. “Smooth and controlled,” the label promised. But to Nicole, the woman’s hair seemed girdled and anxious, like it was just waiting for the right moment to stage a coup.

Her mother was always on her about one thing or another — hair, skin, nails, figure. “Well. I guess you got your father’s color,” her mother would say. Her tone, aggrieved, aggravated, made it clear that this was simply one more cross the universe had asked her to bear.

Nicole’s mom had been a Laker Girl. She’d enjoyed being in the spotlight, and when her own ambitions hadn’t worked out, she’d turned her attentions to making Nicole a star. “Because my baby is special,” she’d say. My baby is going to nationals in ice-skating. My baby is going to be a Grammy winner. My baby will be an actress. My baby is going to be a star. And when her baby could barely stand in skates, couldn’t sing on pitch, and mangled her lines in the school play, her mother only became more determined.

“Those people are just stupid,” she’d say, tugging on Nicole’s hand as they left agent after agent’s office. “There is no way my baby is average. We’ll show them. I’m going to get you an audition with Sweet Sixteen Gone Wrong³¹.

Nicole had wanted to please her mother, but she knew she didn’t really have any talent for being famous. What she wanted to be was a doctor. Instead, she sat through countless DVR’d episodes of teen shows where the only girls of color were the sassy best friend, the Girl with Attitude who came in to swivel her head, snap out a one-liner, and fall back like a background singer. They had one thing in common, though — they were all light-skinned.

One day, Nicole’s mother came home with a new jar of something called Pale & Pretty, which promised to “brighten the skin.”

“Bleaching cream,” her Auntie Abeo clucked, and Nicole could hear her mother and auntie arguing in the kitchen.

“She needs to do something with herself,” her mother said at last.

“Fine. She can come help me out in the office.” Her auntie stuck her head into the living room. “Come with me, Ne-Ne.”

When they were alone together in her aunt’s office at the clinic with her take-apart anatomical models of the uterus and copious medical books, Auntie Abeo held Nicole’s chin firmly but lovingly in her soft hand. “Don’t you ever use that cream, do you hear me? What it takes from you, you can’t get back. And I’m not just talking about pigment. Here, got you your own copy of Gray’s Anatomy. A book doesn’t care what color you are. Bleaching cream, my foot.”

Nicole took comfort in the clinical book. When you peeled back the skin, you were dealing with bone and muscle, blood and nerve endings. It was all the same. She liked the beautiful logic of the circulatory system, the elegance of the neurological, and the fierce warrior spirit of the heart. The body had rules and it had quirks. Nicole respected that. Nicole’s mother couldn’t. She couldn’t revel in the way synapses fired and blood cells defended against foreign invaders. She could only see her body’s failings.

“Look at these stretch marks, girl. It’s like a road map to ugly. I better cut out the fried clams if I don’t want to look like your grandmother and have to wear nothing but size twenty-four housedresses the rest of my life.”

Nicole worked the knife over the softened bark, cutting long, rectangular slits in the log’s flanks. With her hem, she wiped away the wood filings, then made slightly wider cuts, curving away layers of casing to deepen the drum’s sound. As she carved, she thought about her mother’s crazy diets: Juice fasts. Cayenne pepper and lemon. Low-carb. No-carb. Grapefruit and steak. Nicole had suffered through them all. “We’re getting rid of all the refined sugar in this house,” her mother would announce out of the blue, carrying in bags from Whole Foods, eco-friendly tubes of rice cakes and no-salt-no-sugar-no-wheat-no-taste cereal, food as punishment. The next month, it would be something else.

Sometimes, her mother would come up behind her while Nicole sat at the kitchen table studying and wrap her arms around her daughter, kiss the top of her head, and for a fleeting moment, Nicole didn’t want to be separate from her. But then her mother would inevitably say something — “How come your skin’s so ashy? Aren’t you using that cream I gave you?” “I don’t think I like what you’ve got on.” “I swear, my baby’s just like me” — and the affection would be undone.

“I’m not you; I’m me!” Nicole wanted to scream.

Instead, she would speak in chewed fingernails and mauled cuticles, nervous scratching and upset stomachs, habits that frustrated and angered her mother, but in the anger, there was space. There was separation.

It was while watching an episode of Vampire Prom³² that Nicole saw the commercial for Miss Teen Dream and figured out the perfect solution to her problem: pageants. They offered something Nicole actually wanted — scholarship money — and it satisfied her mother’s craving for the spotlight. So Nicole learned traditional Nigerian drumming, which she didn’t totally rock at but it wasn’t like the judges knew anything about Nigerian drumming anyway. She let her mother relax her hair and oil up her skin with cocoa butter. Over afternoon teas, she made nice with the alumnae of Delta Sigma Theta so they’d sponsor her for regionals. She even let her mother pick her platform: Beautifying America, because there was nothing controversial about cleaning up litter, nothing that would make the country uncomfortable.

Now, out in the jungle by herself — by herself! — she felt at peace. In fact, she was giddy. She hummed an old Boyz Will B Boyz tune as she tested the drum. Not bad. A sharp cracking sound reminded Nicole that there were other dangers out here. She crouched and held her stick ready. The sound came from her right. Someone or something was definitely there. Nicole ducked behind a tree and held her breath. The cracking sound came closer. And closer. She’d heard once that the best defense was a good offense. She grabbed the stick in one hand and her knife in the other. With a loud “Keee-yaaaaah!” she leapt out.

“Aaaahhhh!” Shanti cried, arms up.

Nicole blinked. “Bollywood? What are you doing?”

“I was following you. And I told you, don’t call me Bollywood. So,” Shanti said. “What are you doing out here?”

Nicole chewed at a fingernail. “Um, I came out here to have an adventure and find myself.” By myself, she thought.

“Great. I’ll come with you. I’d like to have an adventure, too,” Shanti said. “You shouldn’t bite your nails.”

Nicole quickly dropped her hand to her side. She balled her fingers into a fist and released them again.

“Um, no offense, but I kind of wanted to explore on my own for a bit.”

“Why?” Shanti said in that suspicious way that always put Nicole on the defensive.

“I just do, okay?”

“Well, you don’t have to get mad about it,” Shanti said. “Besides, there’s no law that says I can’t be out here, too.”

Nicole started to say, “Fine. Go ahead.” But she was tired of bowing to everyone’s needs but her own. “You know what? I’ll go somewhere else, then.” She grabbed her new drum.

“I knew it. You’re practicing,” Shanti said in triumph. “Trying to get ahead.”

“What? No! I just made this,” Nicole said, and she wondered why she was even explaining herself. “Why are you following me? You don’t even like me.”

“That’s not tr —”

“Please. You have been eyeballing me ever since we met. Don’t lie. It’s just the two of us out here. You can stop with the We’re All One Big Happy World routine.”

Shanti’s smile faded. “Okay. Since we’re being honest. This is a competition. And I am in it to win.”

“Okay. I can get with that. But you don’t give the other girls a hard time.”

“Because they’re not my competition. You are,” Shanti leapt ahead of Nicole on the path. “Come on. You know they’ll never let two brown girls place. And then there are the similarities: You want to be a doctor; I want to be a scientist. You’re doing Nigerian drumming; I’m doing Indian dance. I’ll bet your platform is something nonthreatening like saving animals or teaching kids with cancer to make stuffed animals.”

“Cleaning up litter,” Nicole admitted.

“You see?”

“Hold on. I need this pageant for the scholarship money. So I can go to medical school.”

“And I don’t need the money?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know anything about you. Because you’re like this big mystery. I’m getting to know everybody else. But you, you’re like a window display for an empty store, if you ask me.”

Shanti’s eyes burned. “Maybe I like to keep myself to myself.”

“Fine. Do that. And I’m going for a walk. By myself. Just go on back to camp.”

“I can’t,” Shanti said, wide-eyed.

Nicole put a hand on her hip. She sighed. “Why?”

“I’m stuck.”

“Stuck being unpleasant?”

“No. I mean I am literally stuck. I can’t move my feet.” A hint of panic worked its way into Shanti’s voice. “I think this is quicksand!”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “C’mon. That’s just a desert island trope.”

“Well, right now, it’s the desert island trope that’s sucking me down. Would you help me out of here?”

“For real? Quicksand?”

Shanti screamed as she slipped down another inch. The quicksand was up to her knees. “Ohmigod! I’m, like, totally going under! Would you just freaking help me, please?” Shanti’s careful, vaguely British-inflected Indian accent was gone. In its place was pure California Valley girl.

Nicole’s astonishment gave way to a smirk.” Freaking. Is that Hindi or Tamil or what? Did your grandmother teach you that? Was it part of your family’s Ohmigod-totally-awesome-popadam recipe handed down through the generations?”

Shanti stretched her arm out and wiggled her fingers for a vine. She fell short by an inch. “I am so totally going to kill you when I get out of here. Like, for real.”

Nicole put a hand to her chest in pretend shock. “No way? For real? I’m, like, totally scared!”

“Help me!”

“Why? You never help anybody else.”

“You won’t help a sister out?”

“Oh, no. You did not just play that.” Nicole squatted till she was face-to-face with Shanti, who was in the quicksand up to her thighs. “You are not my sister. You are a total fake and a liar. Tell me why you did it.”

“I needed an edge.”

“Being Indian was your edge?” Nicole scoffed.

“Yes. No! I mean, I am Indian, but, like, not — look, they want this: They want the Indian girl whose parents sacrificed everything to give her the American dream. They don’t want some Valley girl whose parents, like, shop at Nordstrom and have a housekeeper named Maria. They want Princess Priya³³. That’s the story they were looking for. That’s the story that makes them feel good. That’s the story that wins every time. So that’s the story I gave them.”

“So who are you, then? For real this time.”

“I don’t know! That’s the freaking problem, okay? I’m not Indian enough for the Indians and I’m not American enough for the white people. I’m always somewhere in between and I can’t seem to make it to either side. It’s like I live in a world of my own. ShantiBetweenLand. I swear, that is the truest thing I can tell you. Now will you please just get me out of here?”

“Don’t go away,” Nicole said as she jumped up.

“Funny! Not!” Shanti yelled. “You better be saving me, Beyoncé, or I swear I will come back like one of those too-much-eyeliner ghosts in a Japanese movie and haunt you forever!”

Nicole searched the area for a branch or a vine, something to hoist Shanti’s sorry ass out of the muck. And as she did, she thought about passing by Shaniqua Payton on the school bus. She could hear Shaniqua behind her, saying, “How come you talk like a white girl? Like your black ass is all that and you too good for us? You with your pageant shit. You can act all high ’n’ mighty, but who you think’s gonna have your back if it comes down to it — me or whitey?”

All the other kids had stared and Nicole had been too embarrassed to do anything but stare straight ahead. Later, she’d told her friend Megan about it and waited for Megan to say something comforting, something that proved she belonged.

“Don’t even pay attention to her,” Megan had said. “You know what? She’s just one of those angry black girls, Nicole. You know how they get.”

Nicole had felt the comment like a crack across her cheek. In that moment, some part of her had known that Shaniqua might have been a jerk, but she had spoken truth. And sometimes the truth did not set you free. Sometimes, it was a hard, lonely prison of a place to be.

Between people. That’s what she and Shanti were.

Nicole ripped a vine off a tree and tested its strength between her hands as Shanti screamed her name. “Keep your weave on, Bollywood.”

“It’s not a weave! It really is an old Indian remedy!” Shanti shouted, and it made Nicole smile. Girl was getting pissed off. Good. Pissed off people stayed alive.

Nicole held the vine away. “I’m going to pull you out. But first, say you’re sorry for being such a liar.”

Only Shanti’s head was visible in the bubbling mud. “I’m s-sorry.”

“Promise you’re going to be yourself from now on and not some lying weasel. Unless who you are is a lying weasel, in which case I am letting the quicksand keep you.”

“Screw you!” Shanti screamed.

Nicole snickered. “That’s better.” With a grunt, she tossed the vine toward Shanti’s one free hand and dug in her heels. “Grab on.” But Shanti was panicked. She tugged sharply. “Hey! Don’t pull too hard! You’ll —”

Nicole lost her balance and toppled into the quicksand. She made a desperate grab for the vine, but it fell in with them. “Nice work, Bollywood.”

“Oh my God. Why didn’t you secure it to the tree first?”

“You’re welcome, Miss Grabby Hands. Aren’t you the science whiz? Don’t you know about forces and equal and opposite reaction and all that?”

“Like, hello? I was being swallowed by quicksand, okay?” Shanti shrieked.

“Well, now we’re both stuck.”

The girls screamed as loudly as they could, but no one heard or no one came. Shanti gave a rueful laugh. “Don’t you know the other trope?”

“What’s that?”

“The brown people die first.”

The girls struggled in the mud, fighting the pull as it sucked them farther down no matter what they did.

Despite being unable to move, both Shanti and Nicole managed to free their hands for one last, sisters-in-non-white-dominant-culture-solidarity hand clasp. It was a very cool hand clasp, the kind white kids across America will try to emulate in about six months, just before an avant-garde white pop starlet turns it into a hit single and makes lots of money.

“You can’t … trust … the man,” Nicole said with her last breath, as she and Shanti sank beneath the quicksand.