The Edification of Sonya Crane

When Sonya Crane transferred to predominantly black Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School (PLD) in Atlanta, she hadn't planned on passing as biracial. But being one of only a few white students in the school, she finds that hiding her identity makes it easier for her to fit in and gives her the kind of recognition and clique of friends she never had before. That is, until someone threatens to reveal her secret.

For Tandy Herman, the most popular girl at PLD, fitting in was never a problem. She hides her good grades, rock-music tastes and upper middle-class black status by maintaining a ghetto girl facade. But when Sonya finds out, she threatens to reveal Tandy's secret even though it may expose her own.

Hi, man,

Sonya hated Tuesdays. She hated doing what she had to do.

As usual, she heard her mother as she clacked through the hallway in her stiletto heels and crisp black business suit. Her mother would straighten things that are already straight and hum her anxious Tuesday hum.Today the sunlight streamed through the bare fifteen-foot windows,the harsh light cutting across the glossy cement floors. Sonya sat on the couch with her arms folded across her chest, staring straight ahead—staring at nothing. Sonya's mother shuffled across the room awkwardly in her high heels and sat next to Sonya. Her mother scratched her arm and smiled tightly, looking up at Sonya pleading like a puppy.

"Damnit! What?" Sonya said without turning to look at Doris Crane. She bit off the t in "what" making the sound scissor sharp. The shelf that held the crystal vase was now empty. Each week Sonya came home to find something missing, something sold or, more likely, traded by her mother. Last week it was the plasma television.The week before, it was the painting above the living room mantel. "I'm, I'm, " Her mother reaches to stroke Sonya's hair, but she pulled away.

"Doris,stop,"Sonya barked."And don't apologize.I'm sick of this." Her mother's voice became thin and plaintive. "I thought we agreed you wouldn't call me that?"

"It's your name isn't it?" Sonya said."Let's get this over with." She threw her book bag over her shoulder and marched toward the door. The tartan skirt of her Crestman School uniform gathered under her bag. Doris stays seated.

"Mother!" Sonya eyes blazed hate."Aren't you coming?"

"I have a meeting." Doris sucked her teeth and scrunched her face into an apologetic grimace.

"You'll have to, " her mother began.

"Take the fucking train again," Sonya said. "Whatever, Doris. Whatever."

The previous year, Sonya's teachers at Crestman agreed she needed therapy."Despondent," her progress reports read."Aloof." "Barely speaks above a whisper in class." A week or so after this second round of freshman progress reports, Doris found Sonya in tepid bathwater with her wrists gurgling blood. Doris rushed Sonya to Northside Medical where a friend of Doris's patched her up and agreed to keep Sonya's suicide attempt under wraps.

Doris asked her friend to recommend a therapist. She wanted someone discreet,someone far away from Buckhead,someone her clients would never run into.As one of the top realtors in Atlanta, selling million-dollar homes to neurologists and rock stars alike, Doris had an image to maintain. She chose Dr. Hillman mostly because his office was located in East Atlanta,in an all-black neigh-borhood. Surely, Doris thought, it was a place none of her clients frequented.

When Doris announced Sonya'sTuesday appointments with Dr. Hillman,Sonya shrugged her shoulders and kneaded the bandages on her wrists."Whatever Doris," she said."What-the-fuck-ever."

In the beginning,Dr.Hillman attempted to do his job.He asked Sonya questions he thought would draw her out. Sonya sat in the oversized leather chair and stared at Hillman with the same blank look she reserved for Doris.

Dr.Hillman pointed to Sonya's wrists."How did that happen?" "I clapped too hard," Sonya said."How the fuck do you think? I slit my wrists."

"Why?" Dr. Hillman's eyes grew wide with concern.

Sonya smiled a quick, mean smile."I don't know. Love for life."

"Sonya," Hillman sighed, "I'm here to help you. But I can only work with what you give me. And, right now, you're not giving me much."

Looking into Dr. Hillman's pale, seventy-year-old face, Sonya shrugged. "I'm ugly and unpopular. My life sucks. I tried to kill myself.The end."

Still, Hillman wanted to know. So Sonya told him about the father she never knew, about her only memory of him: the cuff of a bright shirt rearing back to slap her three-year-old face.Sonya told Hillman about the deceased grandparents.No aunts or uncles, her mother being an only child. Sonya told him about Samantha Klieg, the only person at the Crestman School Sonya could call a friend. How at first, Sami had been cruel, sliding fat jokes under Sonya's locker door and then giggling from a distance with the other pretty girls as they watched Sonya read the notes. Sonya was aware that she wasn't fat, not by a long shot, she told Dr. Hillman. She just wasn't skinny, or pretty, or popular like Samantha Klieg.

She told Hillman how one evening she went back into the gymnasium after school to search for her missing Algebra binder. She spied Sami behind the bleachers sucking off Mr. Stemma, the drama teacher. Mr. Stemma had his back to Sonya, but Samantha saw Sonya.Their eyes met. After that, an unspoken truce sprung between the two. Samantha left no more notes and she stopped the other pretty girls from laughing at Sonya. She even spoke to Sonya in the hallway. In exchange, Sonya told Hillman, she kept Sami's secret about Mr. Stemma. Mr. Stemma quit a week later, no doubt fearing lawsuit and scandal.

Sonya answered Dr. Hillman's questions unwaveringly. Her voice issued from her mouth monotone and indifferent, crisp as paper.She left some things out,of course:her mother's drug habit, Madison's "favors," and the black girls on the train. Sonya left out the way she coiled up the humiliation she suffered during the day and used it, like a whip of spite, to punish her mother.

Dr. Hillman prescribed Vicodin. He also gave her samples of another drug."My private stash," he said with a wink.After each hourly session with Dr. Hillman, Sonya tucked the pills into her pocket and left.

One morning while Sonya was at school, Doris found the pills. There were vials and vials of them, four months' worth, stashed in the back of Sonya's underwear drawer.This was before Doris had begun to sell their possessions away. Things hadn't gotten that bad. Each morning, after Sonya left for school Doris slipped into her room and pilfered Sonya's medication.The pills helped get Doris through the days when she could not score any coke or when she had important meetings and needed a little kick, a little boost. One pill became two, then five and then entire vials until Sonya opened her underwear drawer one day and noticed they were all gone.

Sonya pronounced an end to her visits to Dr. Hillman. "You can't stop going," Doris said."I forbid it." "Forbid it?" Sonya exclaimed."Oh please!"

The standoff lasted two weeks. Doris broke first. "Mommy needs them," she said. "Just to keep me going. Just buying property. I have five houses I need to move."

Doris whined into Sonya's ears. She pouted and frowned. Her voice warbled like a warped record. Listening to her mother talk like this was like looking down at her from the lip of a deep pit. It was like watching a brain-damaged version of her mother,some drooling and helpless woman, braying like a donkey and shitting on herself. It was pitiful. It was sickening.

"Please baby," Doris crooned."Please, for Mommy."

"Alright, alright, alright," Sonya said."Just shut the fuck up." She held herself stiff when her mother kissed her in thanks. Six months later and Sonya continues to visit Dr. Hillman. Dr.

Hillman has given up his probing since Sonya told him to save his psychobabble bullshit for someone who gave a rat's ass.

"Let's face it doc, I'm a loser," Sonya said in one of her sessions. She looked into Dr.Hillman's face and thought she saw something that resembled agreement. "You get paid to give a fuck. Other-wise, you wouldn't be here. Just give me my happy pills and I promise I won't go for my wrists anymore." Dr. Hillman sighed and slid her pills across the table. He may have even smiled.

Nowadays, Hillman sits across from Sonya and doodles in his steno pad while Sonya plays with the ring tones on her Nokia. Sometimes he nods off....