At-Risk by Amina Gautier

dresses with spaghetti straps, dresses that were concoctions of lace, dresses that came with gloves, dresses with the back exposed—dresses that all seemed way too formal for an afternoon tea.
    â€œHere, try these on,” she said, pushing me into the fitting room, after narrowing her choices down to three.
    I came out in them one by one, with an ever-growing sinking feeling. Not only were the dresses way too formal for my event, but also they were hard to get into and each dress cost between sixty and one hundred dollars.
    â€œWell? What do you think?” my mother finally asked, once her choices were back on their hangers and lying across her arm. I didn’t know how to tell her I thought she was making a mistake and that I needed a simpler dress.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œWhich do you like the best?”
    None
, I thought.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?”
    â€œThey all seem, well, kind of dressy,” I said.
    â€œOf course,” my mother said.
    â€œJust to drink tea?”
    â€œIt’s much more than just tea, Dorothy,” my mother said. “It’s not like what we do at home.”
    â€œThey cost a lot,” I said.
    â€œYou get what you pay for and quality costs money,” my mother said, choosing one for me when I still couldn’t pick. The winner was a cream-colored dress with a satin bodice and lacy skirt that ended in long points. Once we got to the register and my mother paid, she said, “Anyway, you’re worth it. This is your chance to make an impression on them.”
    For just such a chance my mother had been waiting, each year growing more and more frustrated and disappointed in me as I let golden opportunities to advance myself pass me by. I coveted no plum roles in school plays, won no medals at the annual field day competition in Betsy Head Park, and could not sing well enough ever to get a solo. I made good grades, but there were other students who scored higher. In short, I was adequate, and she had been despairing I would forever stay that way.
    The rest of our Saturday meetings at the school were devoted to preparations for the tea. The Zeta Alpha Deltas were using the tea as a chance to teach us how to put on a social program, and so we spent our three hours learning about hall rentals, going over seating charts, ordering flowers, debating band choices and menu selections. They wanted us involved in every aspect of the planning. The day of the tea, we were supposed to show up two hours early in our workclothes to set up the room. As the tea drew nearer, it was all the other girls could talk about, and images of my own father haunted me.
    Neither my mother nor I had yet to mention what I could do since I didn’t have a father to escort me. When I finally reminded her, she said, “We have more than enough family. I’ll find you a father. No worries.”
    I didn’t want a substitute father. I wanted my own. Or at least enough information about him so that I could re-create him and pretend, but my mother lived in a private world of memories she did not share.
    I know he must have been handsome for my mother to love him. Handsome and big with very black skin. This is as much as my mother has told me, but not as much as I know. I pieced together images of him from what I knew of her. She wouldn’t have liked him at first. It wasn’t her way. She must have met him and loved him against her will. She wanted to love a safe man, preferably an older one that didn’t have many demands. She wanted to bear children, cook meals, keep house, and be left in peace. She wanted something simpler than what she’d grown up with. She didn’t want servants around her or a house that took more than two people to clean it. She wanted comfort, but not luxury. My father must not have been any of these things. She couldn’t know that I often wondered about him. I didn’t even know if he still lived in Jamaica. It seemed