Sweetness in the Skin: A Novel

by Ishi Robinson

I noted how she always, always corrected me if I spoke anything less than the Queen’s English. When I started at St Agatha’s, I heard those uptown girls switch from English to patois and back again and I asked Sophie why they could do it and I could not. She’d said their pedigree was beyond reproach so they could do what they wanted, but we, coming from where we did, did not have that luxury.

‘We will always have to prove we belong, Pumkin, because in truth, we do not. We’re just passing. We need to pass.’

Miss Smith was chewing the French up in her mouth, grinding it down with her molars and expelling the powdered dust of its remains.

Our house is too small for secrets: she knows I know.

I know my mother will not let me leave this place, not to go anywhere with her sister, not to go on to a better life with the one person she hates more than anything in this world, maybe even more than she hates me.

But the truth is, I know what my mother meant but could not say, because I have also felt that way about her. Isn’t it time for you to love me, Mama?

So small, so sad, so left behind. She’s not so different from me, I think.

At Aggie’s they tell us to find an adult when we need help. But my adults don’t help me. So it looks like I’ll need to help myself. I just wish I knew how.

If my mother saw me wasting food like this she’d kill me but, as usual, she isn’t here.

Even now that my grandmother and Sophie are gone, my mother’s anger takes up so much space, there isn’t room for anyone else.

I feel the tiniest little stab somewhere in my side at the idea that my poverty is an adventure for her, but eventually I smile back.