New Orleans Noir

nightclothes?” the maid says.
    “They’re from Japan,” I say like a white person, and I suddenly don’t feel so bad.
    Louise is the one making the calls. They are calling Negro cab companies and sending taxis to Carolyn’s house. “How you doin’?” she says, trying to sound colored. I think she sounds fifteen and stupid, but everyone else thinks it’s hysterical and is laughing into a pillow. “Yeah, I just got off work, you could pick me up?” She rifles through the school directory. This is why she’s flunking math. She can’t even hold Carolyn’s address in her head for two minutes. When she hangs up, they all start screeching with laughter.
    “I thought you liked Negroes,” I whisper. Though right now I hate her maid.
    Louise looks around to see whether she does or not. She draws blank stares. We all took Civics last year and Mr. Ralph taught us to love President Kennedy, and now all the girls except me have giant hair rollers on their heads so they can look like Mrs. Kennedy in the morning. That is supposed to mean we like Negroes. I explain that to Louise, and she agrees. She has a picture of him in her room. Rena has one in her kitchen, but I’ve never told Louise that. President Kennedy is very good-looking, she says, but why am I asking about Negroes?
    Because it’s their cabs.
    Oh, says Linda B., they’re out anyway. We’ll make Carolyn crazy. Remember Teal? I remember Teal. They called her all night every night until she was driven to public school in sixth grade.
    And I think, I have a feeling you are going to be sitting in public school when Carolyn is up there in Trigonometry at
    Newman. I’m having a good time. I’m inside my own head, but I like being in their company.
    Linda B. is the one who makes the calls to Carolyn’s house. She thinks she can do a voice deep enough to be a boy our age, and she asks for Carolyn. “Oh God, she used the F word and all kinds of Jewish words,” Linda says, covering the receiver. “What’s a shwotzer?”
    “It’s schvartze,” I say, “and it’s a derogatory word for Negroes.” Then I realize they are going to think I’m Jewish the way Carolyn and Shira are, so I have to explain really fast that if they paid attention to the way words are derived they’d notice that there are people at school named Schwartz, and that means “black,” so it’s just a form of a German word. I don’t mention that my father is from Germany, and that he’s been secretly teaching me German since I was three years old. Well, talking to me in German. You don’t teach a child. My mother doesn’t know.
    All the girls trip all over themselves telling me how smart I am. I think this is different from my pajamas. This is not something they are going to talk about differently when I leave the room. I am smart, and that fact is unassailably good, and in their presence I am better than they are no matter what subject comes up, as long as it isn’t fashion.
    When it seems that Carolyn has been tormented as close to going back to public school as is possible for one night, Linda R. says we need to play Secrets. Louise dims the lights, and we sit in a circle, and we drink Coke. There are eight of us, and we’re going clockwise, and since we started with Meryl, I have three people ahead of me before I have to think up something to tell. I figure I’ll decide on the basis of what they tell. My father likes to have what he calls private jokes with himself. I want to think up a private joke with myself. If I can think of a secret that they think is something they can hold against me, but really is something I can use against them, it’ll be a lot of fun.
    Of course, Meryl has a crush on our English teacher and she had a dream last week that she went down to his French Quarter apartment and had sex with him. This is a complete lie. People don’t have night dreams that everyone in the room has daydreams about, especially when nobody really wants to do anything more with that man than kiss him. I pick this apart in my head. It’s a secret about her , and it’s one people can use in the halls. Louise tells that Becca in her fourth period French class came right out in the girls’ bathroom and said that her parents got a divorce because her mother was having an affair, not her father, even though it’s always the father who fucks around. Becca is an atheist, and she doesn’t care if she has any friends, but boys call her up anyway because she has huge