Miss Helene had been right. Not about Hind because that no longer mattered anyway, but about me and the ocean. A soul smothered by bloodstained dirt has nowhere to go. Rolling through effervescence, tumbling through tides, 360-degree turns over and over and over again, life reincarnated and swallowing itself whole, her impulse had given me a new chance to be born.

THREE

IN THE CRACKED glass mirror of my building’s elevator, I checked my face and found it to be in the same condition it was that morning: ugly. My small afternoon triumph had not been powerful enough to correct that. I saw nothing of the slim, precise, glamorous features of the video girls and stars everybody at school admired: Janet Jackson, Tracy Spencer, Vanessa Williams. I wished my features weren’t so puffy, bloated, and dull. As soon as I was old enough to realize what the rest of the world thought was pretty, I started longing for the surprise of green or hazel eyes, a freckled nose, wavy hair flecked with bronze and gold, and red rosy cheeks on a Black girl. My biggest disappointment was a boring complexion: a medium, pecan-pie brown I shared with too many others. I wished I was half-breed light like the girls who were up for homecoming and prom queens every year, but instead I had to settle for a common, muddy tone. I wasn’t even colored enough to be called Shaka Zulu, or for the well-meaning Big Mamas to declare me “pretty, to be so dark.” I wouldn’t have cared about the insults or the compliment sliced in half. Some attention was better than none.