By the third grade, led by the tiny tyrant L’Tisha Simmons, the kids were calling her an African bootyscratcher and chanting to a conga line rhythm: You don’t get no pre-sents! You don’t get no pre-sents! In fact, she did get presents on the last morning of Kwanzaa, seven days after Christmas. By the fourth grade Kenya was down to one friend. It wasn’t just the Kwanzaa problem. And anyway, she could have lied about Kwanzaa like she suspected Fatima McCullers did—Fatima, whose dad had dreadlocks and who always said “Christmas” and “Santa Claus” with a wavering inflection. It was also that she couldn’t eat any pork, including the bologna sandwiches that were the everyday fare of the lunchroom—something to do with her father muttering that white people forced slaves to eat hog guts—though as far as Kenya could see, white people loved bologna enough to give it both a first and a second name. It was that she wasn’t allowed to watch Gimme a Break!, Good Times, or Diff’rent Strokes because, according to her mother, watching black people on TV acting the fool was worse than not watching any at all.
