My Smile

Discrimination isn't a kind subject, no matter how hard you try to sugarcoat it.

My Smile
By: G. A. Montero

As an African American, I believed strongly in equality. The ability to walk in a park and drink from the same fountain as those white folk. The Freedom to buy groceries in a typical store without the scornful looks of the other buyers. I knew what they were thinking, of course. “She has the money to buy stuff like us? She has the nerve to step into this store?” I ignored it, naturally. It was hard, but that was to be expected. However, I had one thing I was proud of, and that was my smile. My friends had told me I had such a confident smile. It said “Look at me! Segregate me! I really don’t care, because we are all people, and you are wrong.” I loved it as well. It felt like it was my shield, When stupid white folk looked at me with eyes full of hate, all I did was smile. They never smiled back, of course, but they did look away. It was my power. My super power. Eventually, I became the ‘Black that Smiled’. A title I earned in school. My school was one of those rare, black and white schools. It was for the poor white folk , who couldn’t afford their own discriminated school. There were cliques in my school, as there is in any school. The main one was this small group of girls. They were the school’s most glorified…and they completely despised me. Every day, they glared. Every day, I smiled back at them. Until one day, they returned my smiles with a sickening one of their own. During break, they pulled me aside to behind the school and spoke to me with obviously fake. ‘sympathetic’ voices. They complimented my clothing style, my hair, and the way I smiled. I was suspicious, of course. Wary, suspicious, and honestly terrified. Suddenly, their hands were holding onto my arms, pressing my back against the school wall. The main girl stared at me blankly as I struggled. One of the girls pressed their hand against my throat harshly, until all I could create were desperate wheezing sounds, my vision starting to swim. The clique leader pulled out a box cutter, and reached out with her free hand, gripping my face with an iron hold, squeezing and lifting my chin up. She looked down at me with a maniacal smile and spoke. I still remember the words to this day. In fact, who would? “You like to smile a lot, don’t you? You stupid black b***h. Here, why don’t we make it easier for you? You can smile all the time.” She spoke with death in her voice as the knife started to slice into the sides of my mouth. I screamed in pain, but her other friends muffled my mouth with their hands, watching in fascination as the blade cut through flesh. Blood spilled and fell down my face, coating by black skin red. The cutter reached all the way to my cheek bone, before she moved onto the next cheek. For some reason, I couldn’t pass out, and I stayed awake, feeling the excruciating pain slice through my face as they created a permanent smile upon my mouth. They left me there, sobbing and bleeding, and when the police found me, I was unconscious. My parents were horrified. I looked like a monster. Stitches ran up the length of my face and whenever I look in the mirror and see the gash marks that still pulse red, I am disgusted. Because I used to love my smile.