Mixed by Angela Nissel

Author:Angela Nissel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780307416094
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

“How come you offer ten languages but they are all European languages?” I asked the school’s headmistress.

“What do you want us to offer, Swahili?” she replied.

“Why not?” I responded. She looked at me, wrung her hands, and said she’d look into it.

The Berlin Wall came down and the school decorated the main hall with pictures celebrating its fall. The pictures were still there five months later when Nelson Mandela was freed from prison. No one in administration put up anything for him.

“How come you don’t put up anything for Nelson Mandela?” I asked.

The next day, next to FREEDOM FOR EAST GERMANY! someone had stenciled in AND SOUTH AFRICA! I caught Miss Betty writing Not really, just Nelson next to the new addition.

When Christmas rolled around, I knew I had to figure out how to get myself kicked out of Baldwin. I believed my mother’s and brother’s mental health was on the line.

My brother had begged all fall for a collector’s-edition GI Joe figurine, but because my mother had to save up to buy my school books and spring uniform, she couldn’t afford any expensive toys. Under the tree was her GI Joe substitute, a big grab bag full of green plastic military men, the cheap ones that were frozen forever in war poses. My brother broke down sobbing. “You can’t bend them at the waist like GI Joe!” he yelled.

“I thought these were GI Joes,” my mother lied. There was no way she thought that a bag labeled AMERICAN HEROES! was the toy he wanted.

“I wanted the GI Joe Scuba Set!” my brother cried. “ You can fill it with real water!” My mother went to the kitchen and came back with a bedpan she’d “borrowed” from her job to wash dishes in.

“You can fill this with real water,” my mother said and then fell asleep under the tree. She had to go to work in a few hours.

“It’s all your fault!” my brother whispered to me. “You and your stupid boyfriends and bad grades made Mom poor!”

He was right. I promised him I’d work harder to get kicked out, and if it didn’t happen by next Christmas, I’d rob one of the rich white girls and buy him a GI Joe set myself.

I started the new year by writing up a list of demands for my school. If you’re so committed to diversity, we’d have rappers at our next music series, I wrote, sure that asking for hip-hop would mean my expulsion.

How was I to know that my ceramics teacher’s husband owned a recording studio? At the next music series, a struggling rapper and her backup dancers entertained the upper school. I waited to cause more disruption until I flirted with one of the dancers and secured him as my date to the tenth-grade dance. After the dance, I started up again. “I refuse to go to yet another anorexia and bulimia seminar because studies show black women don’t have eating disorders,” I told the headmistress. She agreed with me and I got a free period, while the other girls learned to love their bodies.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.