400 Days of Oppression

XVIII

Catching a taxi was my first difficulty. I walked to the nearest convenience store, eyes from passing pedestrians followed me. Children giggled and pointed. An old white lady in a red motorized scooter sneered at me in disgust and shook her head. I felt thoroughly wretched. This was worse than the box in the basement.

The teenaged convenience store clerk looked up from his computer gamer magazine long enough to glare at me, smirk, tsk, and shake his head, before immediately reaching for his smartphone, presumably to text his buddies about the tattooed freak who’d just walked into his store. Ironic and a bit hypocritical of him considering the sleeve of dragons, zombies, and sexy devil chicks that ran up his left arm. But, of course, there were fathoms between the sort of antisocial behavior that led one to tattoo a devil in a black bikini riding a Chinese dragon on their arm and the type of insanity that led a woman to allow a man to tattoo insults all over her face.

“Hi...uh...do you know the best place around here to catch a cab?”

“Cool tattoo.”

I blushed and looked away, not certain if he was fucking with me or not.

“Uh...thanks...um...”

“Taxi, right? They drive by occasionally, but you’d have better luck calling one. I’ll call one for you.”

He took out his smartphone, removed a yellow business card from somewhere behind the counter, and quickly dialed the number. I looked around the store at the rows of unhealthy snacks: chips, candies, packaged cupcakes and cookies, so-called energy and “nutrition” bars, all packed with enough preservatives to ensure they’d endure a generation. Juxtaposed with stationary, paper goods, toiletries, a few odd supermarket items like bread, cake mix, pet food, soup, beans, ravioli and other canned goods. Another aisle contained automotive supplies, aspirin, allergy and sinus medications and various other pharmaceuticals. It had never occurred to me before how weird convenience stores were.

“They said they’ll be here in twenty minutes,” the kid behind the counter said.

“Thanks.”

Twenty minutes. That meant I’d be stuck here with nothing to do but wander the aisles and wait for the next person to come in and gawk at me. It didn’t take long for the first customers to arrive. A group of Filipino teenagers with their pants sagging down below their waists so their multicolored boxers were visible, wearing 49ers jerseys, walked in. They wore practiced sneers of contempt that became genuine only when they looked at me. One of them laughed. I was mortified.

“Check out the tattooed chick,” one of them whispered.

“That’s crazy, yo!”

I left the store snatching a free weekly newspaper off a stand by the front door on my way out. This time I shielded my face as I walked. My embarrassment was etched into my skin deeper than the tattoo ink. I walked to the corner and sat down on a bench, trying to read the classified ads through a veil of tears.

There were ads for teachers, tutors, nannies, all jobs I would have been qualified for, but imagining myself walking into an interview with “Slut,” “Thief,” “Addict,” and “Drug Dealer” tattooed on my face made me skip those jobs. As I circled a cocktail waitress job and prepared to call, I wondered if black people did the same thing, skipping jobs they were qualified for out of fear of rejection. Then I reconsidered. I picked the highest paying job listed, an English teacher at a private girls’ school, and used my smartphone to email them my resume. I sent it to seven other places, including a couple in Berkeley advertising for a live-in nanny. That would’ve solved both of my most immediate problems: money and shelter. I decided to give them a call. I took a deep breath, wiped the last remnants of tears from my eyes, and dialed the number.

“Hello?” said a woman with a raspy voice as if she’d been smoking a pack-a-day since birth and chasing it with moonshine.

“Hi, My name is Natasha Talusa. I’m calling about your ad for a live-in nanny. Is the position still available?”

“Yes. Yes. We are conducting interviews today. What time can you come by?”

“I’ll be coming on BART so it will take me at least an hour.”

“Okay. That’s fine. I don’t have any other appointments today. Hopefully you’ll be the fit we’re looking for. Do you have any experience?”

“I taught seventh grade English for five years, and I have a degree in childhood education.”

“Sounds good. I can’t wait to meet you.”

I allowed myself to be hopeful as I rode the BART across the bay into Oakland and all the way to Berkeley. I ignored the stares and snickers and instead concentrated on what I would say to my prospective employer. I’d have to be damned charming to make up for my appearance.

The BART train was crowded, as usual. This allowed me to hide among the crush of humanity. The scowls of disgust were limited to those in my immediate vicinity, but the more the crowd thinned as we headed into Berkeley, the more those scowls multiplied, shaking my nerves and causing me to question my resolve. Perhaps I should have stuck to cocktail waitress jobs or maybe even a truck stop waitress.

“Who would write ‘slut’ or their forehead? That’s what it says isn’t it?” said a college student of mixed heritage. One of those unusual combinations of race that only Berkeley produced; black, Samoan, Filipino, and Irish or something similar. He had cinnamon colored skin, slanted hazel eyes, a wide nose, thick lips, and a thick wooly Afro. His friends, three of whom shared his exotic features, but were probably not related, all snickered. One pointed at me. I moved into the next car with them laughing at my back as I exited. I wiped tears from my eyes. This was probably the most liberal city in America. If I was getting ridiculed here, there was little hope for me.

The next car was practically empty, and I sat alone at the back, waiting for the ride to end. I called two more job listings in the Berkeley area while I was on the train. One was for a daycare provider at the University and the other was for a tutor. Finally, the train pulled to a stop at Berkeley station. I stood and walked out of the car as others rushed on. A woman with close-cropped hair, a black leather motorcycle jacket and “SAN FRANCISCO” tattooed on her neck in large gothic lettering smiled at me and said: “Cool tattoo!” Then an expression of perplexity crossed her face as she continued staring at the designs painted onto my skin, no doubt seeing the words for the first time. I thanked her and hurried past.

I hailed a taxi, gave the man the address and sank into the back seat, hiding my face and trying to avoid eye contact with the driver or do anything else that might encourage conversation. It was a wasted effort.

“What’s that on your face?” the driver said. He was a young Nigerian man with a thick accent. I didn’t look up to read his name badge on the dashboard of his car. I didn’t want to give him a better view of my face.

He was staring at me in the rearview mirror. I looked away.

“Please keep your eyes on the road,” I responded, and we drove the rest of the way in silence.

The house was in the Berkeley Hills, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the Bay Area, comparable to Pacific Heights in San Francisco or “Specific Whites” as Kenyatta called it. The taxi driver dropped me off in front of a huge Victorian with large columns and a front porch the size of my last apartment. I approached the porch on shaky legs.

The doorbell sounded like a gong. All the moisture on my body seemed to have doubled as I waited for someone to answer. The door swung wide and an elegant woman in her forties wearing a Chanel pants suit, stood in the doorway, smiling wide in welcome. Her smile quickly fell from her face and all the joy left her eyes.

“May I help you?”

“Hi, I’m Natasha Talusa. I called about the position.”

I held out my hand and the woman looked at it like it was something that had floated up from a toilet.

“I’m sorry, the position has been filled,” she said and closed the door, leaving me standing on the front porch with my hand still outstretched, the fake smile still on my face. I turned and walked off the porch, sobbing. I had no idea what I was going to do.

I hit the two other jobs with similar results. At the university, the woman conducting the interview started laughing when she saw me.

“You’ve got to be kidding me? Did someone put you up to this?”

“No ma’am I—”

“This is a joke, right? Who put you up to this? One of the girls?”

“No ma’am. I have a degree in childhood education. I have an English degree. I worked for the San Francisco school district for five years—”

“Stop. Let me stop you right there. Sweetie, I cannot hire a woman with tattoos all over her face, no matter how many degrees you have. I’m sorry, but there’s just no way you can teach children with ‘Thief,’ ‘Addict,’ ‘Criminal,’ and…does that say ‘Slut’? There's just no way.”

“I understand. Thank you for your time.”

I walked out feeling lower than I ever had at any other time in the experiment. The obstacle Kenyatta had set before me this time was impossible. I rode the BART train back home in tears. What the hell was I going to do? Kenyatta wanted me out of the house in twenty-four hours.

I made it back to Kenyatta’s home ten hours after I left that morning. Kenyatta was there waiting for me, as was Angela.

“How did it go?”

“This is impossible! No one will hire me like this. I can’t get a job. So how am I supposed to get an apartment?”

Kenyatta leaned forward and stroked my hair then put a hand on my cheek.

“Then do what tens of thousands of freed slaves did before you. Go back to the plantation.”