She had always wanted to be a famous actress and a singer but her voice was not strong enough to get people’s attention. In fact, she was invisible. The more I dressed up, the more she began to dress down. Her clothes became mine; I cut them to shreds until they fit.

Don’t I look pretty, I said. Momma replied and said I should not be out in the sun and then she said it was a privilege to be able to move out of Detroit. She said that a lot. She also said that I looked like the man that left her and not to make her too angry by talking too damn much. I am quiet after that. Real quiet sometimes. I am a good girl.   

I took a bath next. The water surrounding my body rippled like waves of dry ice that find me missing. I was still flat chested but that doesn’t mean that I was in a hurry to escape from my strange and foreign body that longed for comfort. As my body slinked beneath the water, I held my breath and waited. I pulled back up and looked at my hands. They floated on top of the water but there was not enough space for me to do the same. I was still the same. Water was not

magic; nothing changed.  

I put my clothes back on, and grabbed my knapsack with the only belongings I was allowed to take out of the house: a diary with a lock, a pair of keys, and the map of the city neatly tucked inside. I whispered goodbye to the silky voice Momma fell asleep to; the silky voice that felt tired like heavy stones

on my ears. I whispered to the old record player, “I’m going to be famous someday too.”  

On my way down the stairs from the two-story apartment, I passed a classmate

from school. We were the only ones alike for miles around. Only, she had an easier time in the sun because her hair was the color of gold silk, which paled next to my black hair. There was not a trace of Detroit and all its secrets in her. I thought she was just one of them. Even her name, Billie, sounded like something different from what I expect. Billie and I got darker than everyone else last summer but Billie swore she was part-Italian, that Billie was a nickname and no one but me could see the real her.