A Deeper Love Inside by Sister Souljah Page B

bored we’d plot on how to get at each other using the art supplies, but everything was guarded or nailed down.
    The college girl been here a month and now she got girls competing on the low, not for some real prize or points, but just to see her smile or look surprised. First prize would be her bragging to everyone in the class about one of our works and then posting it up in the front. The art teacher seemed glad to let the university girl, named Niecey, who swore she was from Brooklyn but living up here at her college, take over. I knew the teacher was sitting and counting the seconds and minutes and hours until she collected her paycheck and got the fuck up out of here and away from us. She must of thought Niecey was stupid for volunteering to be here working with us.
    Even though there was only one pair of scissors for twenty-two of us to use, even though the one pair of scissors was on an extra-shortchain bolted to our teacher’s desk and had to be used standing up in the front of the class after asking for and receiving permission to use them while supervised, I liked going to art class once a week and making things with my hands.
    I had an idea for my dancers’ outfits for the festival performance. I expected my idea to be rejected by the authorities. However, I had learned from my father, as well as from my circumstances and from the Diamond Needles, to look at everything as an opportunity. So I was making the dress on the low, believing that once everyone saw how dope it was, they would let my girls rock it on stage for their six-minute performance. After they awed ’em and pulled first place, they could be right back in their jumpers.
    Up until now, I wasn’t worried about any of the other girls in the festival competition finding out what I was working on and copying or sampling my style. Some shit is so well made that it can’t be copied, at least not without a long delay and study of the technique. Only Siri and me knew. Everybody else was about to see.
    I got the idea for my project while thinking of Poppa. It was based on one of the gifts he once gave me. I was 100 percent sure that nobody that was living in here by force or by choice had ever received the kind of gifts that Poppa gave us. Nope, Poppa’s gifts were personal to each of his daughters. From his gift choices he showed us that he knew the difference between each of us. When I asked him for my diamond earrings and necklace, he told me, “Not now. It’s not time yet. Ask me for something that you want, not for something that you saw your sister receive. That would be better.” Something about poppa made any anger I ever felt inside disappear, after he came to my room, sat on the chair beside my bed, and spoke and listened for a few moments, only to me.
    Over the past two weeks in art class, I had already made nineteen paper birds out of black construction paper. I kept them in my cubby drawer.
    The paper birds were the spaghetti straps to a paper dress made of black and gold Nefertiti heads.
    As I stood up front with my back to the girls and facing my teacher, Niecey walked up to my side.
    “Porsche.” She said my real name nicely. We was used to the authorities calling us by our lockdown number, or last names. “Ms. Santiaga,” I would hear some authority say with angry curled-up lips.
    “Are you cutting out snowflakes in the springtime?” Niecey asked me.
    “No, I’m using the scissors the same way that you use them to cut out snowflakes, but I’m making something else,” I told her while I kept my fingers moving and the scissors cutting out the details of my dress design.
    “Should I guess or is it a secret?” she asked me, smiling.
    “It’s not really a secret, but a good designer doesn’t show her design before it’s finished.” I kept my eyes down on what I was doing.
    “Well, it looks nice so far. I like the black and gold color combination,” Niecey said as she began to move away.
    “You’re hogging it,” one