(S)Kin

by Ibi Zoboi

If I don’t let her return to her skin, I can just start my own life, live my own dreams, chart my own path in the night sky, and become my own constellation

Didn't You try that before?

“I’ve seen him come in with one of those girls. You deserve better.”

*side eye*

Rena told me. Trish warned me. Micah is a cheater and I didn’t think; I didn’t think he would ever cheat on me— Why would he? So when he comes back to the counter, I whisper, “You know them?”

And magic folk can always sniff how the air bends around us just so—

I don’t want to be incomprehensible. Would it be so bad to just be Black, girl, immigrant?

This hunger feels brand-new and it’s like a hole is widening inside of me and it wants the world—

Jaden is not nearly as cute as Micah, but I bet he would treat me better. I bet he would treat other people better.

He's A Literally Demon.

and I know for sure, I know in my core that anger is a very dangerous thing for monsters like me. But is this the right anger, though? I’m mad ’cause Micah is talking to some pretty girls? Still, I can’t suppress this fire—

I already feel sorry for those girls.

The men who come to the resorts slip a few American dollars into our hand and think they own us.

We have names for girls like her on the islands. Princess. Supermodel. Red gyal. Browning. Grimelle. Mulatresse.

Ugly ugly ugly ugly ugly ugly is a word I have heard all my life; is how I feel when the world holds up its princesses as if they are the stars that make up constellations;

Micah’s jokes are never funny, especially not when he’s making fun of my sister like that— I don’t tell him that’s who she is, of course, but I don’t ignore Marisol, neither.

Them seeing me happy is the sweetest revenge for all the hate they’ve been throwing my way—

I shoot Marisol a look, and even though we’re still getting to know each other, I hope she can understand sister code. Like, just go along with it until I can explain—

Sometimes the myth is better than reality.

The Black girls in my dance class wanted each of us to choreograph an homage to Black women pioneers and they have left me out—

Probably becuase your mean.

Kate sent an email and Dad spoke to the head of the dance department and now I have my solo for the Black History Month performance.

*privilege*

A contemporary piece to Beyoncé’s “Pretty Hurts,” and maybe this was when things started getting weird with Rena and Trish—

Here, they do not even trust their students— They seem to think that kids my age are a threat to humanity itself.

She is a mirror for us— So I round out the corners of my sentences and this classroom feels like home. “Because dialect is like a second skin and it’s the magic we wield in our words,”

And, maybe, my American dream is to peel away the layers of our magic one beautiful metaphor at a time—

And those girls don’t know, they don’t know that dancing for the ancestors is where magic is born— Even humans can harness their invisible magic with just their bodies; with just their voices.

They tell the stories of these women with their entire bodies, their entire souls, and I wish so badly that I could do the same for all the soucouyant and lougarou women who were born out of war; out of pain; out of slavery.

Lourdes never told me that human emotions can still take up space in my soul. How do monsters conquer fear? How do monsters conquer insecurity? How do monsters dance like the world is on fire and all they want to do is kiss the sun?

Mummy has taught me to name what I feel. Mummy has taught me to let my fire burn so it can launch me across the sky.

To be able to have an audience full of people cheer and applaud me as if I am creating the universe over and over again with just my soul; with just my skin—

I want to be comprehended. I need to be understood.

Truth.

I want to stay in school. I have not even taken my first exam to prove my intelligence; to prove that I am comprehensible— And now, I am once again in service to a princess.

I surrendered to her tears. I surrendered to her tight grip on my hand

And I want to feel sorry for her. I want to feel something other than envy.

She will know soon enough what kind of monster she really is—

That is what happens to us when we shift. Our skins become our enemy, and she will have to learn this on her own.

Your firesoul has a mind of its own. And it wants to get out. It is hungry and it will have to feed itself.”

“Our dark skin is both a shield and a source of power—

How could she be when she is half tormentor and half tormented?

My security blanket has always been the night sky, but it’s still the middle of the day and Marisol is up on this roof with me with a glass of ice, a towel, and a Bible, and she says that Micah hasn’t been kind to me, but what does she know about me and Micah?

“Mummy prays through it.” “Like, to God?” “Yes, who else do you think? She is not going to pray to the devil.”

We are not the kind of monsters that seek power for power’s sake—”

soucouyant are daughters of the night, kissed by the sun.

“What did it feel like?” she asks. “Like I was dying. Like I could eat the world. Pain and hunger and rage all at the same time,”

I don’t tell her that after the first shifting, she will return to her skin feeling like she can inhale the universe and that sort of power, that sort of freedom is inexplicable—

This isn’t what I thought my first shifting would be—alone with my half sister. No community of girls and women welcoming me into a coven. No long line of shape-shifters welcoming me into a world of magic and power. Not even my father is here to study me and take notes and write papers and books about his own daughter—

“You had your father,” I say. “My mother took mine from me. He hurt her. So she swallowed him.”

So here we are, two half sisters comparing our lives as if we ever had a choice between day and night; war and peace; lightness and darkness.

There are stories of soucouyant who shift inside closed houses; who shift behind locked doors and sealed windows and that is how they accuse us of burning down places, homes, and one time, an entire resort. We are guilty when the only thing left standing is a wooden mortar unscathed and forged by our own fire.

Don’t you see that this will be the perfect home for us? We can easily get to the open sky. So many mortars to choose from. Or did you want your sister to burn our home, just like you wanted me trapped in the night sky?”

Theres rules!

And she pulls Genevieve out of the tub with the strength of all the soucouyant who came before her, and carries her other daughter out of the bathroom

Favoritism.

Feed the pain so that it can fuel your rage and launch you even higher to kiss the sun. And do not ever turn to see your reflection in a mirror.”

A soul is a force that propels us towards our purpose— A soul is an energy that guides us home wherever we may be in the cosmos or on this planet and that is how I see her— I see her and I’ve dreamt of this.