The Girl Who Smiled Beads

The night before she starts school in the United States, Clemantine lies awake rehearsing what she’ll say to everyone. Clemantine and Claire have just moved into a one-bedroom apartment in north Chicago. Clemantine shares the daybed in the living room with Mariette, but she feels like it’s all hers. She wakes up at five a.m. and is ready by seven, when Claire walks her down to the school. Her teacher pronounces her name correctly, but she feels like she has no idea what’s happening.

On Sundays, Clemantine is tutored in English by a girl from the church. Clemantine colors in the pictures on the vocabulary notecards. People ask Clemantine if she’s happy, but she doesn’t know what that means. She feels like jumping off the roof and floating away. She and Claire spend Thanksgiving and Christmas at the Beckers’, where they are appalled by the excess food. Clemantine is used to becoming someone she’s not in order to survive, so she tries to be grateful and behave like an American teenager. But she feels like a person without parents.

Mrs. Becker decides Clemantine needs to go to a better school. A year after Clemantine arrives in the United States, Mrs. Becker and Mrs. Beasley enroll her in the Christian Heritage Academy and arrange for her to stay with Mrs. Thomas, whom Clemantine eventually calls her American mother. Clemantine packs a small backpack, and Mrs. Thomas and her daughter Caulay pick her up. This is the first time she’s ever moved without Claire.

On the way, Mrs. Thomas points out landmarks in Chicago. When they arrive at Mrs. Thomas’s green house, Caulay shows Clemantine to her new bedroom. It has two beds, a desk, books, and its own bathroom. Clemantine can’t believe it’s all hers. She also can’t believe that the Thomases treat their two dogs like people; in Rwanda, she feared dogs because they ate the dead bodies. Clemantine imitates what Caulay does; she wants to be a good boarder so that she’ll be allowed to stay all year. This is a skill she learned as a refugee: if she became whatever people wanted her to be, they would give her more resources.

Mrs. Beasley has the idea that Clemantine should go by Tina at school because it is easier to pronounce. Mrs. Thomas picks Clemantine up in the same spot every day, seeming to understand her fear of being forgotten. On the weekends, Clemantine goes back to Claire’s. She always jumps out of the car before Mrs. Thomas can hug her. Clemantine’s life at the Thomases is peaceful, but Claire’s life is still chaotic; her marriage is falling apart, and she works two jobs while raising her three kids. Clemantine helps her clean and take care of the kids, and she doesn’t mention the pretty soaps in Mrs. Thomas’s house.

One day at school, everyone is panicking. The principal dismisses school early. At Mrs. Thomas’s, Clemantine watches the Twin Towers fall on TV. Mrs. Thomas anxiously calls her son who lives in New York. Clemantine feels nothing. She tells Mrs. Thomas scornfully that this happens to people everywhere. Mrs. Thomas is shocked. Then, Clemantine dreams that she’s trapped in a room with terrified people. She wonders why no one is fleeing. She looks at obituaries in the paper, contemptuous that these dead people get mentions.

Everyone pities Clemantine and wants to pamper her. Clemantine is contemptuous because she knows they only want to make themselves feel better. There are only two other Black students at her school, and everyone stares at her. One day, Mrs. Kline—a friend of Mrs. Thomas—takes Clemantine shopping at a mall. Mrs. Kline is an expert at shopping and navigates the overwhelming space confidently. As a refugee, Clemantine was always navigating complicated places this way. She still asks calculating questions whenever she enters a new place. Mrs. Kline has Clemantine try on lots of clothes and gives her opinion on everything. Clemantine is used to protecting her body and views it as a vulnerability; Mrs. Kline can see that she needs help loving herself.

Clemantine tries to look down on Mrs. Kline’s vanity, but she actually aspires to her confidence. Claire never talked to Clemantine about her body. Clemantine watched girls in refugee camps get their periods, so she knows how her body works, but not how to love it. In Rwanda, women are seen as valuable only if they are virgins when married. If a woman is konona—raped—then she is “ruined” permanently: the evil that is done to her becomes part of her being. Clemantine works hard to forget this “language of ruin.” Although her body has been “ruined,” it is still sacred. 

Mrs. Kline buys Clemantine her eighth grade graduation dress. Clemantine loves that Mrs. Kline sees beyond her to something beautiful. The dress is black satin with blue panels on the side. Clemantine thinks her narrow feet are ugly and weak; she remembers when bugs lived in them. But when she wears the sandals Mrs. Kline picks out for her, she decides they look good.

In order to fit in and not be expelled, Clemantine hides the fierce side of herself. One day, however, a popular girl named Susan invites everyone to her pool party except Jane, a quiet girl from Eastern Europe. Later, Clemantine follows Susan into the bathroom and locks the door behind her. She watches Susan put on her lipstick then greets her in an aggressive, protective voice. She tells Susan not to be mean to Jane again or she’ll pay for it. She enjoys watching Susan struggle frantically with the locked door. Then Clemantine unlatches it and walks out.

Clemantine joins the cheerleading squad. She thinks that learning to smile for no reason is a good skill to have in the United States. The physical challenge takes her out of her body and her bad thoughts. The other cheerleaders invite her everywhere, but Clemantine doesn’t want to bond. She feels that all relationships, even if they start out cute and loving, end with the person trying to kill her.