Water says, “Wait, why we not letting the girls talk?”

What Water doesn’t get is that the four girls in the basement have been stockpiling the guys’ words, melting them down, pouring them into the mold, and turning them into bullets. In other words, the girls have armed themselves. The first to take aim is Fire’s girlfriend.

“Boy, did you just say dating a Black girl is limiting? So what, Black girls aren’t good enough for you?”

Shots fired, in rapid succession.

—“You saying Black girls aren’t good enough for you? You have a problem with us?”

—“Y’all only have issues with Black girls when y’all start making bank. Then y’all try and ‘upgrade’ to a white girl. All of you boys in here, steady drinking that ‘white folks are better’ Kool-Aid.”

—“Don’t trip, boo, we don’t need you. You want to be with Becky, go! But don’t even think about saying anything when you see us with white dudes. You know how y’all get.”

—“The only reason y’all want a white girl is because they put up with shit you all know we won’t!”

What strikes me isn’t the growing crescendo of protest from the girls. It’s the soft, pained melody underneath it. It whispers, “Why are we not enough?” It’s a question I’m not sure they even know they are asking. But it’s there. And it breaks my heart to hear it.

In that moment, something strikes me about the girls who are here, something I missed before: they have the exact hair and complexion of the women in one of my favorite Nina Simone songs, “Four Women.” It starts playing in my head. It’s an old song, with a haunting melody that describes the pain and turmoil of four different Black women. The song pairs their skin tones and their struggles.

The girl across the room from me has ink-black skin. In the song, people assume she can take on endless amounts of pain because the darker the skin, the more it can withstand. It’s not true. But no one knows, so they heap on hurt after hurt. In the song, they call her Aunt Sarah.

The second girl, the one sitting near the basement window with her boyfriend, Air, could easily be the second verse of the song. She’s mixed and has pale, almost yellowish skin. She’s too Black for the whites and too white for us. She lurks between two worlds, never belonging anywhere. Her name in the song is Saffronia.

The third girl sits near Devonte and me. Her tan-colored skin and fine hair leave people to believe she’s soft and fragile, easy to mess with. She thinks she belongs to whoever is willing to pay, never realizing just how priceless she is. You can find her in the third verse; they call her Sweet Thing.