“Fact is,” she would say, flicking her cigarette’s ash off our dorm’s tenth-story balcony, “I might have to show some tits to get this degree.   That is my reality.”

I was justifiably nervous, therefore, when I visited Laura’s home the following summer.  Would her family own a couch on which I could sleep?  Would we dine on donated Spam?  What if they didn’t have cable?  I prepped for the visit as one might prep for an extended stay in an African refugee camp, adding a few pounds of reserve weight and stocking up on bug spray.

My fears were assuaged when I pulled into Laura’s cobblestone driveway, the marble fountain in her yard nicely accenting the home’s three stories.  If this was poverty, I needed some of these food stamps.

I ultimately enjoyed my pampered stay, but Laura’s lies gnawed at me; if she had lied about her family’s wealth, could the cum in her hair have been a farce as well?  This doubt bore our friendship’s slow distancing, to the point during senior year when I spotted her at a concert and avoided eye contact by never looking down.

My first semi-colon moment occurred when I was seven.  Growing up in a rural Southern town, my friendships were akin to arranged marriages, except the lack of options, not parents, was the joining force.  I could befriend the slim few other boys with average intelligence or try to make it work with the cows.  I wanted to trade POGs and discuss the nuances of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so the other boys it was.

Thad was my second grade best friend.  I remember two things about Thad.  First, he scarred his eyebrow one afternoon when he fell on a bookshelf en route to recess.  Second, Thad loved to rollerskate.  Luckily for Thad, he lived in a bona fide neighborhood with the modern amenity of pavement, unlike me, who lived on a gravel road further from town.  I had no opportunity to rollerskate and likewise did not share Thad’s passion.

I was predictably unenthused when Thad announced his birthday party would be rollerskating-themed.  Nevertheless, I accepted his invitation and piled into his family’s minivan with Thad one Saturday morning.

“Alright, boys, we’re headed over the mountain, so buckle up and get ready for a long ride,” Thad’s mother, Ann, chirped as we found our seats.  Our destination was another result of rural living:  fun necessitated crossing a mountain.

“No are-we-there-yet-whining fellas,” Thad’s father, Tim, added as he started the engine.  I liked Ann and Tim.  They were both upbeat and younger than my parents.  Ann had a severe bowl cut and twinkling eyes while Tim was tall and deep-voiced.  They were obsessed with their poodle, Miffy, who was surely 30, hairless and blind.  Miffy had one tiny hairless paw in the grave, but Ann and Tim were relentless in keeping her alive. I admired their doggedness.

As we backed out of the luxuriously paved driveway, Tim chucked a pack of Little Debbie Strawberry Shortcakes at us.  These were my favorite and my spirits rose.  Maybe this party wouldn’t be so bad after all.  I bit into the cake, my tastebuds delighting in the artificial strawberry sweetness.

My optimism was short lived. “I think we need some Jesus!” Ann said as we exited the neighborhood, her dainty hands loading a cassette into the tape player.

Thad’s face lit up.  “Play Our God Is An Awesome God!  I don’t think Alex has heard it.”  Thad looked at me with a raised scarred eyebrow. I knew Thad’s family was church-going, but was surprised they wanted to Jesus-talk outside of church, let alone during a so-called party.  I had a shortcake to appreciate.  Surely Jesus could wait?

I should note both my parents were raised Christian, but deliberately did not force God upon their children. They are like Switzerland when it comes to religion – neutral and uninvolved.  At seven, I personally mirrored my parent’s neutrality, but respected others that were more passionate.  This was not the norm in my conservative hometown, and it was suddenly apparent to me, as the shortcake’s sponginess slid down my throat, that my heathen ways were not only noticed, but unappreciated.

“We can teach him the words!” Thad continued as his request played over the speakers.  “There is thunder in His footsteps/And lightning in His fist,” Thad sang along while Ann provided a shrill harmony.

“The chorus is coming up, Alex,” Ann said, turning in her seat to face me, then mouthing along:

Our God is an awesome God

He reigns from heaven above

With wisdom power and love

Our God is an awesome God

By the second chorus, Tim joined the indoctrination, encouraging me to “sing louder” and “with more passion.”  I did my best to appease them, hoping the issue of my faith being resolved, they would move on to more interesting and secular topics, like penguins or our recently pregnant gym teacher.

Alas, the family’s zeal for my learning the choruses of Christian songs lasted long after Our God Is An Awesome God’s final climatic note.  Indeed, it wasn’t until we got over the mountain that the music ended.

“Prayer time!” Tim said, abruptly pulling the van to the side of the highway.  He parked suddenly, cars whizzing by us on our left, as Ann stopped the tape.  The family bowed their heads.

“Dear Lord, we thank you for this birthday party, for our Lord-loving son, Thad, and his dear friend, Alex, who is learning your ways on this very car ride.”  Tim’s voice filled the van.  “We pray that you grant us safe passage to the skating rink, and that you protect Miffy, our sweet poodle, as she waits for us at home.  Amen.”  Ann and Thad echoed “amen,” and I repeated them.

As the van started again, Ann played a new song, a delightful ditty titled I Believe In Jesus, How About You? which involved each person in the family literally pointing to themselves during the title’s first half and then pointing at me during the title’s question.  I felt so immoral and oddly hunted that I almost hurled my shortcake.

When we reached our destination, rollerskating was a welcome relief.  I quickly laced up my skates and charged onto the rink, eager to get escape the zealots.  As made circles again and again, I reconsidered bovine friendships.  A cow’s only religion is cud and I could handle that.  The monotony of skating soothed me and I easily accepted my short life’s very first friendship death; while I was (for the short-term) moving in a circle, the disastrous car ride had sent my friendship with Thad irrevocably downhill.

1

My first Pen Pal was both black and white, weighed near a ton and loved shrimp.  Our relationship was one-sided.  I never wrote her; but, for fifteen bucks a year, she sent updates to my family’s rusted mailbox detailing her travels through the Atlantic Ocean.  One year, she was spotted by a fishing boat off the Novia Scotian coast.  Another, she had whale watchers convinced she was swimming with a calf.  Her name was Shred, in deference to the damaged condition of her fluke.  My annual contribution – tax deductable, nonetheless, though this was irrelevant as a middle-schooler –  contributed to research that supported the preservation of whales.  Whatever that meant.

In October of my first year in teaching, I decided my students needed Pen Pals, too, though theirs would be human.  This project had educational and selfish motivation.  First, letter writing is a frequent and lengthy activity.  If my students wrote letters merely monthly, I would have 40 minutes less of direct instruction to prepare. Secondly, and more altruistically, Pen Pals could provide my students access to new worlds, their current world view being wholly comprised of rap videos, an endless stream of rotund asses backing up into cameras, men standing in front of souped-up cars, money floating in the air.  Third, and most importantly, my students needed to learn how to write.

The essay prompts required by my county curriculum – talk about time you had a conflict with a friend or write a letter to your principal proposing a community service program being actual examples – weren’t working.  These prompts were met with ridiculous responses I feared wouldn’t score well in the spring’s state writing test.  Case in point:  Tre’von’s conflict-with-a-friend-essay featured a gun fight with his ex-best friend over their dueling membership in the Crips and Bloods.  To his credit, he used a great deal of onomatopoeia:

“Bam!  My gun went bam!  Pop pop his gun went.  POP POP BAM.”

Tre’von’s essays, sadly, weren’t the worst of the bunch – they were imaginative and though rambling, usually contained more than five sentences.  The other students had writer’s block, or more accurately, laziness; they hardly mustered three sentences before writing “The End” and using the paper as pillow for a nap.  I hoped writing a “real” person might inspire more, and genuine, interest.

But who would serve as Pen Pals?  Internet searches for “Pen Pal” drummed up plenty of opportunities to correspond with inmates, which was enticing, but also inappropriate.  Ultimately, I called upon members of my alma mater’s student ambassadors program.  Writing to my students seemed aligned with their mission to connect “past, present and future Tar Heels,” even if it was a stretch to imagine Tre’von or Dominique setting foot on campus someday.

My students were initially disgusted when I told them they’d be writing college students.

“Why would I write someone in college?” Dominique retorted.  “I don’t write letters.”  This was true.  Dominique’s letter-to-his-principal essay had been an expletive filled tirade concerning his most recent suspension, lacking the required salutation, date, or pesky periods.

As usual, I struggled for an answer.  I remembered Dominique had spent most of the year proclaiming his sexual prowess.  “Oh, really Dominique, you wouldn’t like to write a good looking college girl?”  I asked.  His face lit up.

“Aw yeah, I’m gonna smash a college girl,” he said, exciting the others.  I didn’t want Dominique smashing anybody ever, but I turned a blind ear to this comment so as not to suppress the positive momentum.

Suddenly, the boys were talking with each other, jumping out of their seats as they described the illicit acts they planned with their college girls.  Many of the fantasies include cars, which surprised me.  Though all old for seventh grade, none of the kids were of legal driving age.

“Will they come to see us?” Tre’von questioned hopefully.

“Well, I don’t’ know.”  This is my chance. “I guess it depends how well you impress them in your letter.”  I moved to my blue desk and retrieved the brief biographies I had compiled of each college student.  I dramatically passed each of my own students the Pen Pal biography I had selected for them.

“Ashley?  I don’t want no white girl,” Tre’von said, his usual look of disgust now returned to his face.

“What…Lindsey?  I’ve got a white girl, too.  Gross!”  Ah-Lonzo joined.  Ah-Lonzo was my star student, both respectful and hardworking.  I was dismayed even he found it acceptable to be blatantly racist, in front of his white teacher nonetheless.  I shot him my teacher stare.  “Didn’t mean no offense, Freeman, it’s just…”  Ah-Lonzo whimpered, realizing his error, though unable to find a suitable explanation.

Anthony summoned me over.  As I arrived at his desk, I hoped he’d whisper encouragement to ignore his racist classmates.  “What’s this name?” he asked, instead, pointing to his paper.

“Olivia,” I answered, pronouncing the name “Oh-leave-e-uh” in an effort to make the name seem ethnic.

My attempt was in vain.  “Man, I have a white girl too?” Anthony responded, dismayed.

Tequanda started to scream on the other side of the room.  “Jessica?  Jessica?  Hell no!  I ain’t no dyke.  I don’t want no girl, Mr. Freeman.”  She let out her trademark guttural sigh, as anger coursed through my veins.

“Well, Tequanda, Jessica can be your friend.  These are just Pen Pals, not who you are going to spend the rest of your life with.”  I briefly imagined Tequanda as a lesbian and suppressed a laugh.

“Well, I ain’t writing her.”  Tequanda threw her paper onto the floor.  “I said, I ain’t no dyke.”

“You are writing her, Tequanda, and watch your language,” I said, picking up the paper and returning it to her desk.  “That term hurts a lot of people.”

“It only hurts dykes.  Are you a dyke, Mr. Freeman?”  Tequanda asked.  Her comments always had some twisted logic; she was difficult to argue with in the moment.
“No.”  I answered.  Wasn’t that obvious?

“Well, don’t worry then.  But, I still ain’t writing her.  That would be sick.”  She smacked her lips in triumph, swiveling her head and looking me in the eye.

I returned to the front of the class, disgusted.  What had originally seemed like a full-proof plan had, yet again, gone awry, and so quickly.  Why did I think this would work?  This Pen Pal thing is like everything else in this classroom:  shit.

“Look,” I began, forcing my voice into the deep and authoritative tone I had begun to perfect for these moments, “these are very nice college students, and they have agreed to talk with you.  That’s very giving of them.  The least you can do is write them a letter and see how things go.  Who cares if they are white?”

They all look at me, searing their eyes into my skin, as if to say, “We care, you big cracker, that they are white.”  I realized having them write white people was just like having them write a cheesy essay:  another hoop to jump through, another foray into a world in which they presumed they didn’t belong.

“Well, you’re going to write these letters whether you like it not.”  Tequanda’s exhaled her guttural sigh again.  I continued over it.  “This first one is easy.  I just want you to tell them who you are – your age, what you like to do, what you think of this class, that kind of thing.  You have 20 minutes.”  I put the “Scholar Speak” arrow in “Six Inch Voices.”  Amazingly, perhaps in debt to overtly offending my race, they earnestly wrote their letters for five minutes.  No cuss words, no hitting each other behind my back:  working.  Real, actual, work.

Tre’von was the first to finish, announcing his completion by powering up his GameBoy.  Grabbing his GameBoy with my left and his letter with my right hand, I read:

Ashley.  My name is Tre’von.  I am from Ohio.  Can I have your picture?

“Tre’von, don’t you want to tell Ashley more?  She’s not going to be very impressed by this letter.  It doesn’t say much.”

“No.”  He reached for his Gameboy.

“Three more sentences.  Anything.  Tell her about how you like football.  Or how I drive you crazy.  Or what you loved so much about Ohio.  Anything, Tre’von, really, anything.”

“No.”  He reached for his Gameboy again, this time with more vehemence.

“Three more sentences or it’s a zero.”  I put the Gameboy in my pocket.  Tre’von whispered something under his breath about me being a “fucking stealer,” which, like so many things on this particular day, I chose to ignore.

Fifteen minutes later, I collected the letters.  Most were eerily similar to Tre’von’s:  they requested a picture and stated only the absolute essentials of name and age.  Tequanda did at least mention that she wanted Jessica to know that she “liked boys a lot.”  Even Ah-Lonzo’s letter was brief and apathetic.  I made a point to visibly grimace in exagerrated pain as I collect the letters.

Justin’s letter was the lone aberration, as his detailed his love of the Food Network and suggested he would like to “ride around town” with his Pen Pal.  His letter was incoherent, but I appreciated the effort, and rewarded him loudly.

“Well, Justin, this looks like an ‘A’ to me!” I announced as I put his letter at the back of the stack.  “I think she is really going to like this.  She’s really going to see that you put some effort into this.  You know what?”  I paused, making sure I had the class’ attention.  “I bet your Pen Pal writes you a nice long…”

Tre’von interrupted me.  “Can I have my GameBoy back?”

2

As pathetic as my student’s letters were, you never would have known it with the enthusiastic, long-winded and sweet tomes I received from the college kids.  Each student – Olivia, Emily and Ashley included – wrote a lovely letter to their respective middle school Pen Pal.  I knew this because I read each letter in detail after removing them from their original envelopes.  I needed to know what kind of reaction my students would give.  I think they will really like these, I thought, even Tequanda will be inspired to write back.

I presented the letters – sealed in new envelopes – excitedly to my class.

“I have a huge surprise for you!” I said as the bell rang.

“We’re going outside today?” Anthony responded.

“No.  Even better.  Your Pen Pals letters are here.”  They were not amused and I was mad at Anthony for proposing a much better surprise.

I passed the letters out with flair, plunking them onto the students’ desks with a loud thud and smile.  Teaching, sometimes above anything else, is about selling the moment.

The students opened their letters hurriedly, clearly excited, though making attempts to mute their oh-so-embarrassing enthusiasm.  As I watched, I was amused; it was obvious many of the students had never opened a letter before.  Dominique and Tre’von had no trouble – they had considerable practice in the form of suspension letters sent home from the assistant principal detailing their infractions.  Signatures lined the back flap of these letters, intending to deter the boys from opening them.  Dominique and Tre’von always ignored this, naturally, and often opened them in my sight.  They likely (and, if so, correctly) figured that respective to whatever they had done to deserve the suspension, their letter opening would pale in comparison.

Eventually, all of the students mastered the physical opening of the letter and  made attempts to read.

Anthony, as usual, summoned me over to read his.

“I can’t read this, Mr. Freeman,” he said, ashamed.

“Oh, Anthony, it’s ok…it’s in cursive, that makes it harder,” I responded, lying.  The letter was written in immaculate print.

I proceeded to read his letter to him.

Dear Anthony,

I’m so pleased to be writing you!  My name is Olivia.  I’m a freshman at the University of North Carolina, which your teacher, Mr. Freeman, just graduated from.  I grew up on Lake Norman, which is just a couple miles North of where you live in Charlotte.  In my spare time, I like to sing in the choir, go to church and volunteer at a local animal shelter here in Chapel Hill.   I can’t wait to hear more about you – what do you like to do for fun?

Love,

Olivia

Anthony’s eyes perked up when I read the word “love.”  He laughed a bashful laugh.

“Mine told me she loves me,” Anthony said, turning to Dominique.  “Bet yours didn’t say that.”

Dominique’s eyes scanned his letter.  “Nah, she didn’t say that.  Just means I got to try harder.”  Dominique paused.  “She gonna love this.”  He gyrated in his chair, extending his right arm out in front of his desk, thrusting his pelvis, suggesting a degrading and completely inappropriate sexual act.  I threw up a little in my mouth, caught it, and moved on.  As I made my rounds about the classroom, I had a sudden realization of the teacher I had become – so ineffective in motivating my middle school students to read or write for academic, self-improvement or grading purposes that I had to motivate them with sex.  Great.

The second round of writing went better than the first.  The students did their best to respond to direct questions from their respective Pen Pals.  Tequanda listed the many boys that she liked, and why she liked them, ever adamant to her Pen Pal that she was, in fact, not a lesbian.  Justin wrote about his love of Cheeto’s, the spicy kind preferably, and his sustained desire for his Pen Pal to come to Charlotte so that they could “drive around Beatties Ford Road together all day long.”  Anthony wrote ten words, each of them spelled incorrectly, but ten words nonetheless.

“Do you think she will be able to read this?” he asked as I collected his letter.

I scanned the paper, his handwriting so cautious and right-slanted that it resembled the emerging writing of a first-grader.  Anthony’s lack of reading and writing skills broke my heart daily, but today, I was especially devastated.  It had taken me months to understand Anthony’s writing, the mix up between “d” and “b” and his near total lack of vowels.  I had, of course, worked with him to the best of my ability (which wasn’t much) to improve his reading and writing – but, alas – no, Olivia would most certainly not be able to understand his letter.  I debated lying and informing Olivia that Anthony was, in fact, a German foreign exchange student with a physical handicap.

“Oh, yes, Anthony,” I said, lying yet again, hoping he wouldn’t be able to detect it the worry in my voice.  “I think she will just love this.”

3

Olivia, sadly, didn’t love Anthony’s letter.  As my students’ letters were mailed in December, I was shocked to find a few of the college kids were studying abroad when I received the return letters from Chapel Hill in January.

“Sorry, some of the kids won’t be getting Pen Pals this semester,” the student ambassador president wrote.  “Would they like new ones?”  She then continued to detail the exotic destinations the old Pen Pals could be found.

As I read, a horror filled my body.  Middle school students operate on a faulty ethics system:  they each want to be able to exclusively and independently break all rules without consequence, but do not want anything to ever be unequal should it mean they miss out on rewards.  In short, individual liberty rules, but equality is non-negotiable.  My friend Caroline, a fellow teacher, best described this approach to life as the “Convenient for Me Theory,” in that one should at all times adopt philosophies that are personally advantageous in the moment.  Unwanted pregnancy?  Jump on the Pro-Life train.  Got a boyfriend you want to marry in a shotgun wedding?  Get knocked up and keep that precious human life God gave you.  The ethics change; the intent is constant.

The prospect of handing out Pen Pal letters to a majority – but not all – of the students was not possible.  Thus, for the few students whose Pen Pals were now cavorting in the running of the bulls or living in a tribe in Africa, I gleefully forged letters.  As I learned to do throughout my brief teaching career, I capitalized on this dishonesty to push my agenda.

My trusty red wine at my side, I began with Anthony’s Pen Pal, Olivia.  I labored to keep Olivia’s voice consistent with her previous letter and even put little hearts over the dots in her “i’s” to disguise my handwriting:

“Dear Anthony,

It was great to hear from you.  You remind me a lot of myself when I was your age!  Man, middle school was a crazy time.  One thing I always did was stay after school with my teachers to get extra help whenever I could.  That was how I learned how to read and write as well as I can today.  Now look at me – a college student!  You seem like a really sweet boy.  Stay that way.

Love,

Olivia”

I had more fun with Jessica’s letter to Tequanda:

“Dear Tequanda,

Hold up, girl!  Don’t get too crazy with the boys.  It’s ok to like boys, but they can be trouble.  I had a boyfriend when I was your age who ended up in juvenile detention.  That’s when I realized I had to focus on myself and not let anyone else drag me down.  I’m not a nun or anything – just saying – you’re too young to let boys control your life.

Your friend,

Jessica”

I had to write Justin’s letter twice, as a few drops of red wine got spilled onto the first draft.  Nonetheless, I gave Justin’s letter the special attention he himself had given:

“Dear Justin,

Of course I’m a fan of Cheeto’s!  I also try to eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables so that my whole diet isn’t comprised of junk food.  With your interest in food, you should think about being a chef.  But, make sure you keep your grades up and learn how to read really well.  Recipes are full of writing, you know!  As far as riding around Beatties Ford Road together, I don’t think I’ll be able to do that soon, but that does sound fun.  I’m really busy this semester with my classes.  They can be hard, but college is so amazing and so fun.

Your Pen Pal,

Desiree

PS – Not to nag you like Mr. Freeman does or anything, but, you should really work on your punctuation.  You write so much and you have such a personality, but sometimes it’s hard to read your letters because they don’t have periods or commas.  I know you’re learning – and it’s not a big deal – just a friendly suggestion from your Pen Pal, sweetheart!”

The next morning, I brought the Pen Pal letters to the front of the room without saying a word, fanning them in front of my face with drama.  As the white envelopes obscured my view of the class, I pictured what I was sure were my students’ joyful smiles behind them.

“Again?” Ah-Lonzo sighed.  “I already wrote that woman two times.”  Tequanda followed Ah-Lonzo’s statement with her trademark room-shaking sigh.

“Oh, mine be writing me back ‘cos she hooked on this,” Dominique interjected.  I brought the envelopes below my face; my vision was immediately permanently scarred by the image of Dominique pointing to his crotch while licking his lips.

“Once she go black, she ain’t ever gonna go back,” Tre’von chimed, high fiving Dominique across the desks.  Preemptively swallowing the vomit that was making its way up my trachea, I determinedly walked through the room, flinging the envelopes onto their respective desks.

As they opened the letters, I noted the students had all mastered one skill, that of opening the envelopes.  What had once been a novel act, they now were able to do with ease.  Private victories, Alex, private victories I repeated in my head.

“Uh, Mr. Freeman,” Anthony whispered, beckoning me to his side.  “This handwriting looks like yours all a sudden.”  I purposely froze my face so as not to show a reaction.  Are you telling me you can’t read or write, Anthony, but you are suddenly an expert in handwriting analysis?

“Oh, don’t be silly, Anthony,” I began, grabbing the letter from him and squinting my eyes to read as if the handwriting was so alien that even I, a college-educated adult, had trouble deciphering the scrawl.  “I would never put hearts over my ‘i’s.’”

“I don’t know Freeman, mine kinda looks like your handwriting, too.” Justin offered from the other side of the room.

“He been faking it the whole time!  These cats ain’t even real!” Tre’von flung his letter to the ceiling.  It made a lovely flight pattern as it slowly sifted to the linoleum.  I picked Tre’von’s letter from the ground and dashed to the front of the room.

“If you all think I have time to sit and home and write fake letters, you all must be,” completely and sadly correct I thought, “crazy.”  I took a deep breath.  It didn’t help.  Then, I did go crazy.  “Plus, if I were making this up, don’t you think I would have done some things to make this whole project go a little bit easier?”  I sighed and threw my hands up in the air in desperation.  “Don’t you think I would have done some things to at least make this work?”

“Like what?” Ah-Lonzo asked.

“Well, for one,” I walked over to Tequanda.  “If I had been making all this up, I would have given Tequanda a male Pen Pal, seeing as to she’s so concerned that she is a lesbian – ”

“Dyke,”  Tequanda interjected, as if correcting me.

I walked over to Ah-Lonzo.  “And, you, Ah-Lonzo, I would have given you a black Pen Pal seeing as to you are so concerned about writing a white person.”

“Cracker,” Tre’von interrupting, continuing the routine.

“And, you, Dominique, I would have…well, I don’t even know, as you seem to think this Pen Pal is your new girlfriend despite the fact that you are thirteen and she is twenty-one.”

Dominique failed to see the illogic in my statement.  “Ain’t a crime as long she ok with it.”

I shook my head in disgust.  “Just write your letters.  Ten sentences or it’s a zero.  You have thirty minutes.  I’m going to sit at my desk and I don’t want to be bothered.”  I shrugged back to my blue oasis and pretended to grade papers, only occasionally glancing up to monitor their progress.  Only half the class – Tre’von, surprisingly, included – bothered to write a letter.  Tequanda spent the work time writing a note to a girl friend, laboriously detailing just why she thought Dominique was the cutest boy in the whole school:  he had a good line up, hot baggy pants, thug eyes and she had heard his junk was “fo realz.”  This, especially, seemed an injustice to me:  she could write a note, but not a letter?  Save for the junk, Fake Jessica surely would have appreciated this list.

As I sat, I stewed.  My valiant efforts had, once again, spectacularly failed.  I’d done everything right – considered the student’s interest, provided real life inspiration, even manipulated reality – to no avail.  Not only were their letters subpar, but they were no closer to realizing that college was the only way out for them.  Plus, I had enlisted volunteers to read completely embarrassingly short and grammatically incorrect letters.  Surely it was obvious to them, too, that I was a complete failure.

Then, I conjured Shred, my own middle school Pen Pal and the impetus behind this endeavor.  I pictured her damaged fin poking out of the salty ocean water, its glossy sheen catching the sunlight.  Next, I went somewhere dark and blue with her, diving deeper into an ocean where no one, no “Convenient Theory for Me,” no state writing test, no heart dotted ‘i’s’, no dykes, no crackers, no bullshit could touch me.

It was Ah-Lonzo who roused me from my daydream.

“Mr. Freeman, the thirty minutes are up.”

1

“Come meat our new dancers! Now hiring!” the sign read.  Driving to report to the first workday of my second (and final) year of teaching, my heart twitched as I passed this sign and the male strip club, Chasers, behind it.  It’s not too late, I thought. You can begin your stripping career today.  Screw the kids.  Screw education.  Screw your resume.  Get money from creeps who want to screw you.

I had been consumed for weeks by my potential stripping career.  I’d never stripped before, but I figured my pool-tanned body would be better suited gyrating under neon lights than breaking up fights.   I had practiced, alone in my bedroom, writhing to Jackson Five’s “ABC,” the song being a key element of my hot-for-teacher theme.  My costume’s outer layer would be a suit, showcasing a nametag with “Mr. F” written in red marker.  Hidden underneath?  Apple patterned briefs.  A wooden ruler would be my prop, and, if my fans got handsy, a weapon.

In between practices, I vainly called my principal.  “Mr. Carr, this is Mr. Freeman.  I’m excited about the school year,” my messages would begin with a lie, “and I’m wondering what I’m teaching this year.  Call me back.  Please.”  The messages grew increasingly fraught; his silence convinced me I would have the worst possible assignment:  ‘teaching’ In-School Suspension.

This potential disaster caused my body to physical shudder as my view of Chasers faded in the rearview mirror.  I made a pact with myself.  Should Mr. Carr assign me an unfavorable position, I would give my two weeks notice and audition that day.  I reminded myself of this pact as I drove, parked and immediately strode to Mr. Carr’s office.

He looked up from his computer as I stepped inside.  The heavy under-eye bags so present the year before were now smaller.  He appeared a much healthier, improved version of the frazzled Mr. Carr I knew.  I was softened by this change.

“Mr. Freeman, it’s good to see you.  Have a seat.”  He motioned to the chair across from where he sat.

“I’ve been calling you.”

“Yes, sorry about that.  Been meaning to get back to you, but it’s been busy and,” he began, tilting his head toward me, “I figured I’d just see you here today.”  Well, maybe not for long. “How was your summer?”

Are you buttering me up? “It was great.  Went to a couple weddings, hung out with friends by the pool,” drinking, drinking, drinking, “spent time with family,” contemplated becoming a stripper.  The usual.

“That’s just great.  I could tell you were worn down last year.  It’s good to hear you enjoyed yourself.”

Let’s cut to the chase.  Exactly what am I going to be teaching the hellions? “About my messages…”

He leaned back and opened his arms to his side, as if he was hugging the space around himself.  Here we go. He’s really going to do this.  I am going to be the In-

Effing–School Suspension teacher.  Well, you know what Mr. Carr, you can take your In-School Suspension and… “I have a great assignment for you.”  Just say it. “You’re teaching sixth grade Language Arts – two blocks of inclusion with a wonderful new teacher, Amber Mahar, and one block of resource all by yourself.”  I was stunned.  There was still potential for disaster – this Mahar character could be Grape Nuts – but this assignment was one of the best I could have hoped for.

“Well, thank you, Mr. Carr, that sounds” like I could possible survive “pretty good.”

He smiled, resting his hands on his paunch.  “Go meet her, Freeman.  Room 213.”

When I entered what would be our room, I found this Mahar character struggling to move the heavy student desks.  Even as her face twisted in effort, she was beautiful: petite, her black immaculate hair cut into a bob that framed thick, luxurious eyelashes.  I immediately knew the students would like Mahar more than they liked me.  This didn’t bother me; at least they would like someone.

“Knock, knock” I said, annoyingly, while entering the room.  “I’m Freeman,” I continued, extending my hand toward her.

She rushed toward me, a genuine smile on her face, her dark eyes catching a shine in the fluorescent lights.  “Oh, Freeman, I am so glad to meet you,” she said, taking my hand to her own.  “I have heard so much about you from everyone.  They say you are just the best.”  Well, I don’t know who you have talked to woman, but someone is not to be trusted.  Either you’re lying or you’ve been fooled.

As we chitchatted, seated atop the student desks, I kept her on official crazy watch.  Surely she can’t be sane, I contemplated. Who would take a job at Ransom willingly? Try as I might to detect otherwise, everything appeared legit:  raised in Ohio by her grandparents, she had moved to Charlotte over the summer; she was licensed, but, like many beginning teachers in Ohio, couldn’t find a job due to the state’s decreasing student population; she picked Ransom because of “its diversity;” she was genuinely looking forward to her first year.  She’s naïve and slightly desperate.  A lot like me when I came to Ransom, I realized.   She was so hopeful; I hid my fear of the year to come.

My memory of Mahar the next two workdays is slight.  It was the last days of summer, after all, and I held onto its sweet irresponsibility with a fierce grasp.  I spent those mornings nursing adorable baby hangovers and those afternoons playing one of my favorite mental games I call “Kitchen Sink Cocktail,” obsessing over what mix drink I could make that evening with only the available ingredients in my fridge.    Plus, as much as I liked her, my mind was likely still rehearsing my stripper routine should her true crazy colors be revealed.  I was waiting for her announce she’d like to put a little Jesus in the curriculum or ask if I thought nipple rings were inappropriate for school. Ultimately, we must have done what all co-teachers do, laying the foundation for our classroom by starting on the first weeks’ lessons plans, agreeing on rules and consequences and decorating the classroom.

My first vivid memory arrives on our third day, when I returned from my car with mix CDs in hand.  “We need something to pep us up while we decorate,” I offered, putting a random CD into the player.

Britney Spears’ “Gimme Me More” announced itself as the Mix CD’s first track.  I was embarrassed, but needlessly so.  Brit-Brit hardly purred “It’s Britney, bitch” before Mahar’s small waist began to move in circles, her fists pumping in the air, an exuberant smile showing her delight.

“Love, love, love this song,” she shouted as her waist started to move more dramatically with the beat.  I joined, putting my recently acquired writhing skills to good use.

2

“Co-teaching is like marriage,” the instructor said to begin our mandatory inclusion training on our fourth teacher workday.  Inclusion, she continued to explain, is the concept of two teachers joining forces in a shared classroom to simultaneously teach Special Education (in our case, me) and Regular Education (Mahar) students. “There will be ups,” she emphasized, drawing a large up arrow on the white board, “there will be downs,” she insisted, drawing a down arrow for those of us who didn’t quite get this whole ‘up-down’ concept, “but, in the end, you will – you must – always be there for each other.”

Most of the advice from mandatory trainings was complete bullshit (Group work!  Movement!  Sure, if Tre’von and Tyshawn conspiring to throw a chair at Julius qualifies as group work and movement), but this nugget proved true, as Mahar and I settled into marital bliss within weeks of school’s beginning.  We completed each other’s sentences; we slept with others; I stopped driving by the strip club.  Like most successful marriages, ours was defined by routine, comfort and subtle displays of devotion, each day woven into the next:

8:10:  I arrive, and like the luckiest of husbands, am greeted with a freshly brewed pot of coffee.  Mahar has been at school for thirty minutes, preparing for the day.  Sipping my coffee, I am happy to see her face, optimistic and determined, each morning.

8:15:  Mr. Carr announces over the loudspeaker. “All teachers need to report to their morning duty.”  The bags under his eyes have reappeared; I picture them as Mahar and I trudge out of our classroom to the cafeteria.  En route, we talk about anything but the approaching day.

8:20:  Our children arrive.  Somehow, the kids are not aware that it is eight-fucking-twenty; they are abuzz with hormones:  running through the doors to get their breakfasts; running to their seats to shove breakfast down starving mouths; slyly hurling their breakfasts at each other; up, down, up, down out of their seats; is this what she meant by the arrows; trading gossip; finishing their breakfasts; mouths now unoccupied, spouting expletives.

8:21:  I point to the clock.  “8:21,” I say, as if I’m a doctor announcing a patient’s time of death.  The day is dead, yet again.  Call it.

8:35:  For some reason, our Assistant Principal, Ms. Mitchell, unfailingly motions for Mahar and I to leave first; we’re jealous of other teachers that get to stay in the cafeteria for a few more minutes (the cafeteria blows, but not as much as the classroom) as we line our students up at the cafeteria’s doors.

8:40:  After hunting down stray students, we march up the steps and down the hall, finally arriving at the classroom.  Mahar leads the procession, I take the rear.  I consider walking to my car.

8:45:  Official start of class.

8:46:  13 students need to use the restroom.  Now.

8:47:  15 students forgot to bring a pencil and would like Mahar or me to provide one so they can complete the “Do Now” grammar assignment.  Mechanical pencils, preferably.

8:48:  Approximately 11 students are violently ill and would like a pass to the office to call their mothers.  Now.

8:49:  The 15 students who did bring pencils to class are upset because their pencils lack erasers.  They would like erasers.  Now.

8:50:  Monique, a particularly vocal student, needs to use the restroom because she is having some form of female trouble.  Today, her “breast tissue is uneven” and she needs to “go to the bathroom to fix it.”

8:50:  I catch Mahar’s face:  less optimistic, more determined.  I am still happy she’s there.  I brew more coffee.

9:00:  Students already on “Time Out” from other teachers begin arriving in our classroom.  What started as a class of 30 swells to 35.

9:10:  I start to take the students to the bathroom in groups of five.  I bring coffee with me.  In the hallway, the “ill” students are suddenly cured, racing to the bathroom despite my insistence otherwise. 

9:45:  Done with the bathroom, I join the lesson.

9:55:  Five students are paying attention.

9:57:  Three students are paying attention.

9:59:  One student is paying attention.

10:00:  No one gives a fuck about the lesson.

10:45:  New class.

11:00:  No one gives a fuck about the lesson.

11:30:  Lunch.  Back to the cafeteria.  Cruelly forced to watch the children as they eat, Mahar and I demand the children stay five feet away from us at all times.  Lunch with the children is scarily animalistic as they devour food and pick at each other.  Mahar takes part, her jaw clenched and lower teeth exposed, nearly growling, when the children come near.  I laugh; they cringe.  Mahar and I talk about anything other than the fact we are teachers.  Her grandfather is ill, so is my aunt.  She’s headed to the pool this weekend, so am I.  We debate whether or not Ms. Mitchell was a straight-up man at one point.

11:50:  Lunch is over.  We bark at the children to pick up their trash.

11:51:  Everyone – all 35 students – need to go to the bathroom.

12:10:  Done with the bathroom, the class rejoins our lesson.

12:22:  No one gives a fuck about the lesson.

12:33:  I catch Mahar’s face:  less optimistic, less determined.  I’m still happy, even more happy than the morning, she’s there.

12:45:  New class.  I leave to teach my Special Education students only class.  I’m happy to deal with fewer students, but I miss Mahar.

1:50:  Third Block over, I meet Mahar back at our room.

1:51:  We close the door and ignore the students pounding on it, begging for entrance.

“Let us in!  I don’t want to go to gym!  They make us move and shit!” they scream.

“Did you hear that?” I loudly ask.

“Nope I still need to get my hearing checked out,” Mahar shouts back, making sure the students hear.  “I can’t even hear you, Freeman.  Can’t hear a thing but these voices in my head.”  She knocks her palm against her temple as if those voices will rocket out of her ear.  Later,

2:00:  Once the students trudge to gym, we venture to the Teacher’s Lounge.  We split pizza flavored chips (don’t judge) and a Diet Mountain Dew.  I also eat and drink more than my equal half, she never says anything.

2:01:  We laugh about Monique and her uneven breast tissue.  I tell her she should consider work in the Soap Opera industry for her dramatic acting skills when the students wanted in our room rather than gym.  As we laugh, I catch Mahar’s face:  more optimistic than I, more determined.

I can come back tomorrow as long as she’s there.

3

Like all good love stories, our marriage became a triangle.  Even more scandalous, the third party was 13 years our junior.  To his credit, he loved Mahar with a passion that belied his age.  A student in Mahar’s third block class, his name was Derail[1].

Mahar loved Derail too.  Not in the Mary-Kay-Letourneau fashion, of course, but in the best kind of sense.  All teachers have favorite students; all students should be lucky enough to have a teacher like Mahar was to Derail.

Mahar was Derail’s angel when everyone else – myself included – thought he was the devil.  He was ridiculously lazy and considered simple rules to be below him.  He struggled to focus on anything, and when he did, it was usually the intricate graffiti he was writing on the desk.  When egged to complete an assignment, Derail would become more resolved to stair at the wall or rip tiny little shreds on the side of his paper instead.

Yet, there was no exception Mahar wouldn’t make for Derail.  She frequently let him stay after school so they could complete his assignments together.  She unfailingly welcomed him into our classroom when other teachers had tired of his constant interruptions.  She encouraged him– reminding him, yet again, that he needed to complete this assignment or make-up that test – when others were ready to give up.

Why did she like him so?  To this day, I’m unsure.  What draws anyone to someone else?  Perhaps it was his sly smile, or the angularity of this thin body.  Perhaps it was the precision with which he wrote, his letters square and thin.  He didn’t write much, but when he was bothered to write, sometimes only his name on the paper, his handwriting was distinctive, labored and meticulous.  Perhaps it was the fact that he seemed to grow at least one inch every month, transforming before our eyes from a gawky child into an even gawkier teenager.  Whatever it was, Mahar was determined Derail would succeed.

As obvious as Mahar’s favoritism was, no one – myself, other teachers, the other students – minded.  Derail had won the lottery.  Unlikely to win again, we let him reap his winnings for as long as he could, as Derail needed this ‘lottery win’ desperately.  Bluntly:  Derail was not smart.  Officially:  Derail was “developmentally delayed,” the system’s optimistic term to describe students whose academic skills were yet to arrive, as if they were trains slowly churning down the tracks.  By my estimation, Derail’s intelligence wasn’t behind schedule, it simply wasn’t there.  Mahar thought otherwise.

I hope she was right.

They, too, had a routine.  Every time Mahar would make Derail do something he didn’t want to do – write a sentence, put his spelling words on flashcards, read a paragraph – Derail would mutter “Aw, come on man,” slumping his wiry body lower into the chair, as if he had much better things to do.

Mahar’s response?  “Derail, you know I’m not a man.  Do your work.”  Derail most certainly knew Mahar was all woman; his gaze was frequently and obviously fixed to her curves when she wasn’t looking.  Mahar must have felt the burn of his desire; must have been accepting that her body was the impetus for Derail’s hard work.

4

“So, you and Ms. Mahar are totally smashing, right?” Jake asked one afternoon as we circled the track.  There were five minutes left in my two student resource class.  I liked to reward those students, Jake and Michael, with outside time for successfully completing all of their required work

“Smashing?” I asked, unfamiliar with this slang.

“You know, eff-you-see-kay.”  Josh answered, laughter in his voice.  I noted he should, in theory, ace a spelling test that included “puck, “suck” or “luck.”  Michael snickered.

“That’s enough, Jake,” I said in my most serious man-voice.  No, we are most certainly not fucking, Jake.  I’m gay and she hasn’t gotten any in three months, a fact Mahar and I discussed at length yesterday. “First, that’s inappropriate.  I never want you to ask a teacher about their sex life again.”  Michael snickered again, clearly tickled by the s-word.  “Secondly, just because a man and a woman get along doesn’t mean that…”

“They be eff-you-see-kaying?” Jake interrupted.  Michael nearly yelped.

“Well, if you want to put it that way.  I think ‘making love’ would be more appropriate, but, whatever.”  I was disgusted; the thought of making love, let alone eff-you-see-kaying Mahar was quite unpleasant.  “Either way, no, Ms. Mahar and I are just coworkers and friends.”

“Well, everyone be saying that you two are doing it.”  Michael said, entering the conversation while suppressing laughter.

“Yeah, Montana say she seen you look into her eyes during class like you was in love,” Jake reported.  “And, y’all spend all your time together.”

This was true.

“Well, as I said, gentlemen, we’re friends.  Just friends.”  I felt odd.  I thought a great deal about my students and their personal lives, imagining what their homes were like, what happened to them before they showed up in my classroom, what they thought of each other.  Until this point, it had never dawned on me that my students did the same:  my 70 plus students had 70 vastly different, some surely quite disturbing, visions of after-school Mr. Freeman.

“Well, whatever man, I think you lying,” Jake said, finishing the conversation as the bell rang.  We made our way inside.  I dropped Michael and Jake off at their respective classes and then went quickly to Room 213.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I said walking through the door, pizza chips and Diet Mountain Dew on my mind.  “Jake is convinced we’re sleeping together.”

“Ew, I know,” Mahar said, looking up from the papers she was collecting while crinkling her nose and smiling. “Aaliyah asked me yesterday if she could be the flower-girl at our wedding.  I told her, one, she was way too old to be a flower-girl.  Two, no one getting a D in my class would get an honor like that and, three, you and I weren’t getting married.”  This comment was the distillation of Mahar’s perfect mixture of sassy and sweet personality.  She had the ability to coexist in roles so necessary to handle middle schoolers, that of Pop Star and Grandmother – attractive and relevant enough to idolize, stern enough to seem old-fashioned when buttons were pushed.

“You’ve known about this?”  I felt a ting of resentment – what else did Mahar keep from me?

“Oh my God, Freeman, it’s all the girls want to talk about.  They all have their different theories.  Most think that we’re keeping our torrid love affair a secret.  Some think that you’re madly in love with me, but I’ve rejected you because, as Ellezay put it, I’m ‘too fabulous’ for you.”  What?  Too fabulous for me?  Really? Surprised by the strength of my emotions, I noted to grade Ellezay’s next five-paragraph essay with more scrutiny.  “Some think we’ve already broken up because the kids stress us out too much.  Anyway, I guess it’s a girl thing, but, yeah, this rumor has been going on for a while.  We are quite the item.”

Later that afternoon, searching the Dollar Store in search of tonic for my mandatory evening cocktail, a ring caught my eye.  The stone was oversized and purple and the band was yellow plastic.  I couldn’t wait to show it to Mahar the next morning.

“Amber Mahar,” I began as I knelt on one knee and brought the Ring Pop from behind my back, “will you be my April Fool’s Day wife?”

She smiled and pushed her hair behind her right ear.  “Oh, Freeman, of course!”  She took the ring from my hands and began to remove it from its plastic wrapping.

“Not so fast,” I said, taking the ring from her grasp.  “April Fool’s Day isn’t until next week.  We both know if you take it out of the plastic, it’ll get eaten before then.”  She nodded in acknowledgment.  “Plus, I don’t want the kids to think I’m cheap and picked up some unwrapped shit off the ground for your wedding ring.  I want them to know I paid a whole dollar for this.”

She handed back the ring, plastic wrapping intact.  “So, we’re proposing in front of them?”

“Yup, right at the end of the period.  We both know they won’t recover from the shock.”  She nodded again, her hair escaping from behind her ear.  It was a plan.

5

The morning of April Fools’ Day, I had no trouble driving to school.  As I caught the Chasers sign in my rearview mirror, my stripping career seemed a distant memory.  I was going to be a kept man soon, if only in jest, if only for one class period.  Imagining the kids’ shock made the approaching day seem bearable, as did the Britney Spears I blasted in deference to my first dance with Mahar.

I hid the Ring Pop in my pocket as I walked, practically skipped, from the car to our classroom. When I came to our door, I looked through the door’s window.  Empty.  Dark.  Mahar must have slept in today, I thought.  Odd. I went inside:  no coffee, no materials ready for the day, no Mahar smiling at the desk.  \

I raced to make my own coffee, expecting her to walk through the door as I poured the water, filled the filter and pressed the “on” button.  I frantically gathered the day’s materials and began to put them on the students’ desks.  I gathered our stash of sharpened pencils, erasers intact, and wrote the day’s agenda on the whiteboard.  With each task, I glanced to the open door.  No Mahar.

The morning continued to proceed like all others, but as if my right side had been removed.

8:15:  “All teachers need to report to their morning duty,” Mr. Carr announced over the loudspeaker.  At this late point in the school year, the bags under his eyes were practically eating his face.  I pictured them as I heard the noticeable fatigue in his voice.   I trudged, alone, out of our classroom.  I nervously sipped my coffee.

8:20:  The children arrived.  Somehow, the kids were still not aware that it was eight-fucking-twenty:  running; shoving; hurling; up, down, up, down; finishing; spouting expletives.

8:21:  I glanced at the clock.  “8:21,” I said to no one.  Call it.  The day was officially dead.

8:35:  “Where is Mahar?” Ms. Mitchell inquired, her deep voice rousing me from that space I had learned to go to in the mornings, that space where the sound of the world was just a faint whisper and my vision was as if I was underwater.  “Mr. Freeman.  I said, where is Ms. Mahar?”  The stubbly hair on her chin moved with Ms. Mitchell’s words.  “I have no idea,” I responded.  I lined the kids up to exit.

8:40:  “Where is Ms. Mahar?” the kids pleaded.  “I have no idea,” I responded.  Perhaps she was in a wreck.  Perhaps she quit.  Perhaps this is all her own April Fool’s joke and she’s somehow maneuvered that tiny little body into the supply cabinet in the classroom. We trudged upstairs.  As we entered the classroom, I considered walking to my car.  I opened the door, half expecting her to jump out of the supply closet.  How am I going to do this without you?  This isn’t funny.

8:45:  Official start of class.

8:46 – 9:00:  I was so busy dealing with pencils, bathroom conversations, trips to the office requests, small fires of arguments that I was unaware of the passage of time.  Is time moving?  Backwards?  Forwards?

9:01:  Derail entered.

9:02:  “Where is Ms. Mahar?” he asked.

9:03:  “I don’t know, Derail, I honestly don’t know,” I answered, my voice obviously dripping with desperation.  We shared a look, acknowledging we both missed her.  We wished her face – determined, optimistic – was there.

9:04:  The classroom phone rang.  Derail got up out of his seat to answer it, moving with more speed than I had ever seen him move before.  We were both hoping the phone would bring news of Mahar.  “Sit down,” I growled, using my body to block Derail from the phone.  I put the receiver to my ear.

“Mr. Freeman?”  Judy.  The secretary.

“Yes?” I motioned the 30 children in the room to keep their voices down so I could hear Judy.  “Have you heard from Mahar?”

“That’s what I was calling about, actually,” Judy started.  Please tell me she’s ok.  Please tell me that she’s on her way. Please tell me.  Derail, despite his recent growth, was on his tip-toes, positioning his wide ears as close to the phone as he could. “I have bad news.”  Oh no, please no. “Mahar just called.  Her grandfather died this morning.  She’s on her way to Ohio to be with her family.”

Judy was loud and I’m convinced Derail heard, as genuine emotion – sadness – spread over his youthful face.  I contemplated taking him with me on the drive to Chasers, giving him a five and letting him walk to the McDonald’s down the street as I auditioned.  We both deserved a day of mourning, right?  Were the apple patterned briefs in my dresser’s third or second drawer?

I thanked Judy and put the phone back on the receiver, the Ring Pop pressing against my pant pocket.  I might as well eat it in front of the class, I thought, as our proposal will never happen.  Visions like this – me slowly eating a Ring Pop in front of the classroom as they perplexedly watched – sustained me throughout my teaching career.  But, this frivolity was crushed as the day flashed through my mind.  Chaos. Scrambling to deal with the mass quantities of adolescents.  Trips to the bathroom with the whole class.  Lunch alone.  No one with whom to split pizza chips and a Diet Mountain Dew.

I honestly feared I would not make it without her, there was potential the day could go so poorly that I could have a breakdown.  A legit you’ll-like-this-fun-restricting-jacket-think-of-it-as-a-tight-Snuggie breakdown.  It wasn’t likely, but it could happen.  There were too many of them and not enough of me.

I didn’t care.  I was filled first with sorrow and then gratitude.  I was thankful, given this information, that Mahar was in a car bound for Ohio rather than with me in Room 213.  Our marriage would never happen, I would never get to propose and I might lose it, but this was all actually perfectly acceptable.  Knowing Mahar’s love for her grandfather, I was genuinely more concerned about her day than mine.  Co-teaching is like a marriage, I thought back to that inclusion training.  Looking out at the expectant sea of faces, Derail’s concerned eyes meeting mine, I smiled. Co-teaching is like a marriage.  Mahar and I had something more:  love.

“Maybe not for personal pleasure, Tre’von, but how ‘bout for school?  A favorite book you’ve read in school?” I followed.  It was late September; I was still naïve.  Surely Tre’von had read one enjoyable book in seven years of schooling.

“Never read a book,” Tre’von responded.  He lied a great deal, most notably regarding his whereabouts the first ten minutes of class and relation to Michael Vick, but I instinctually knew Tre’von was not lying at this moment.

The next day,  I asked Ah-Lonzo, the brightest, the same question after he completed a quiz (aced as usual) minutes before the rest.

“I don’t know.  I don’t remember none,” he flippantly answered.

As each student completed their quiz, I repeated the question.  Each student had a similar answer:  they didn’t have a favorite book and had never read one in school save for those of the “See Spot Run” variety.

In coming to Ransom, I expected dramatic educational ineptness, but this fact still stunned me.  That night, lamenting their quizzes over a glass of wine, I determined my students would read – cover to cover – a bonafide book:  chapters, character development, three-plus syllable words.  This goal, surprisingly, went against the county’s curriculum, which required I teach exclusively from a textbook featuring only outdated short stories.  Fortunately, my administration operated on a hear-no-see-no- speak-no-evil policy, entering my classroom only to collect the attendance sheet once each morning. Were I to stray from the curriculum and incorporate, of all things, an honest-to-God book, only I (and my students) would be the wiser.

After some internet research, I chose The Outsiders.  Authored by 16-year-old S.E. Hinton, the novel chronicles two rival groups, the poor Greasers and the rich Socials, in 1960s Tulsa.  The story begins with an aborted knifing and continues with a church fire, a gun exchange, and a gang fight, ultimately climaxing with a (spoiler alert) killing at the hands of the police.  Any book we read would have to compete with my students’ reality for their attention; The Outsiders had a fighting chance.

“Today we are going to start reading a novel.  It’s called The Outsiders,” I began one morning the next week, holding the school library’s sole copy of the book in my hands.  There was an audible groan from the class.  “Oh, groan now, fine, but you’re going to love it,” I continued. “Today, all you have to do is listen while I read out loud.  You just pay attention.”  The class perked up; they were fine with this reading thing as long as it didn’t involve actual reading on their part.

Knowing their opinion of the book would be determined within the first thirty seconds of reading, I skipped the book’s opening paragraphs (scene setting be damned) and started with the knifing:

“I could feel my palms getting clammy and the perspiration running down my back.  I get like that when I’m real scared.  I glanced around for a soda bottle or a stick or something, but instead, I stood there like a bump on a log while they surrounded me.” Serendipitously surprised by my read-aloud skills, I paused to look up and was shocked to find each student’s gaze squarely on my mouth.  Self-conscious but intoxicated by their attention, I continued. “They walked around me, slowly, silently, smiling.”

“This cat ‘bout to get jumped!” Tre’von joyfully shouted.  I let his comment go unconsequated (the Talking Stick designated as “Mr. Freeman Only”), amazed his shouting was, for once, germane to my instruction.

I raced through the rest of the chapter, detailing the rift between the Greasers and the Socials, and finished with two minutes left in class.  I was astonished how reading about fighting could transfix my students so profoundly as to effectively prevent actual fighting in the classroom.  They were quiet and calm, even genuinely disappointed when I dramatically closed the book and announced, “That’s all for the day.”

This (me reading, them listening) worked for one week as we breezed through the first three chapters.  They showed considerable comprehension skills when the material was present orally.  When the main character, Ponyboy, a Greaser, was rescued by his brothers from the Socials’ knifing, Dominique shared that, he too, had once had his brothers intervene during a fight with some neighborhood kids.  The result?  Dominique had then “beaten them up real good;” them being his brothers, not the neighborhood kids.  When, Darry, an elder Greaser, lent Ponyboy his gun, Tre’von showed real compassion, hoping “it was at least a semi-automatic.”  When Ponyboy’s sidekick, Johnny, went into a burning church to save stranded children, Tequanda suggested he “grab the wine too.”

My kids weren’t as behind as their test scores showed.  Their insights demonstrated an nuanced understanding of the story, but these insights could only be attained when they heard – not read – the book.  Just as I’ll never be able to identify the main idea of a story written in Chinese characters unless I hear the story read aloud (in English, please), my students would never be able to demonstrate comprehension of text written above their decoding skills.

I was seriously tempted to simply continue in this manner – my reading the book aloud, the children offering their two cents – but knew this method would ultimately be of little educational benefit.  The students needed to read the book themselves; we desperately had to increase their decoding abilities so they could demonstrate their comprehension.  Problem was, I held the only copy.

The next weekend, I typed the entirety of The Outsiders on my laptop.  I worked in two hour shifts, pausing to sip on glass after glass of white wine.  The task took nearly twelve hours and several cycles through Ace of Base’s complete catalogue despite my advanced typing skills.  My new Teach for America friends called incessantly.  Would I like to join them at the pool?  For a shopping excursion?  For an evening spent bar hopping in Charlotte’s Downtown?  Each time I declined, for once acting instead of playing the part of the responsible educator I aspired to be.  Albeit, sans the binge drinking.

Fueled by my wine buzz, I took some liberties with Hinton’s dated text.  Knowing the difficulty of sustaining my audience’s attention, I transported Ponyboy and crew to the present (no longer obsessed with Paul Newman, but, instead, Will Smith).  I changed new characters’ names to miraculously correspond with the names of my students:  Ponyboy had a cousin named Anthony and a track teammate named Dominique; the most-evil Social was surprisingly named the very un-1960s-Tulsa-like Tre’von.

Once I had transcribed and heavily edited the entirety of the text, I broke the story down into smaller passages.  Under each passage, I constructed multiple choice questions with question-stems similar to the all important state mandated End-of-Grade test[1].

The following Monday morning, I felt like an actual teacher as I placed a copy of the day’s passage on the students’ desks.  I’d determined that each day in class, we would read two passages, the students taking turns to read aloud as the others read along with their own copy, before independently completing the multiple choice questions.

When the bell rang and the students begrudgingly filed in, each met the presence of the copy on their desks with predictably differing reactions.

“What’s this?” Tre’von asked, holding the paper up in contempt and looking as if it was an eviction notice.  “We gotta look at the book now?” he snarled.

Ah-Lonzo, my overachiever, sat down and immediately began reading the passage, going so far as to circle (correctly, natch) his answers for the multiple choice questions before class got started.

Anthony, the lowest in terms of decoding ability, sat silently and looked at the paper.  “What is this about, Mr. Freeman,” he asked, his sleepy eyes pleading.  I realized he couldn’t even recognize “Ponyboy” or “Darry.”  He truly had no idea what the paper said.

Once everyone settled down, I explained the new procedure.  They groaned when I said that everyone (and that truly meant everyone) had to read aloud each (and that meant each) day.  I explained that I’d ask for volunteers to start us off, and that I’d let each student know when they’d read enough.  “Sometimes, you might just have to read a couple words,” I said reassuringly, looking at Anthony’s horrified face.  “And, I’ll always be here to help you when you get tripped up.”

“Me!  Me!  I want to start,” Ah-Lonzo said, raising his hand eagerly, bouncing up and down in his seat with exhilaration.  He reminded me of myself at a younger age; I’d always loved to show off my intellect in class.  I now realized how annoying I must have been.

“Ok, great, thank you, Ah—“

Before I could finish, Ah-Lonzo was off, reading the passage with ease and enthusiasm.  His reading lacked the inflection I would have been able to add, but his decoding was spot on.  He raced through the text.

I had to interrupt him.  “Ok, thank you Ah-Lonzo.  Who would like to read for us next?”  My question was met with blank stares.  Bueller?  Bueller?  Bueller? More blank stares.

“Tequanda, how ‘bout you?”  Her eyes shot darts.  Heaving loudly, she set into the text.  She labored, spitting out each word as if it drew her once step closer to her own grave.  Ponyboy’s touching recollection of his deceased mother took on a sinister tone with Tequanda’s dramatic flourishes.  After two sentences, I relieved the class of her vitriol and asked Justin to read.  He struggled through several sentences, but gave an honest effort.

Thus we progressed, each student laboring over the text.  As each read aloud, some of the others looked at their copies, genuinely trying to connect the words being spoken aloud with the shapes on their page.  Others – most noticeably Tre’von – scanned the room and looked out the window longingly.

At the last passage’s last paragraph, only Anthony had not read.

“Anthony, how ‘bout you give a couple sentences a try.”  Out of the corner of my vision, I saw Tre’von’s eyes considerably roll.

Anthony took a breath.  “P…Po…”

“Ponyboy, it’s Ponyboy, Ant,” Ah-Lonzo said, trying to help but again, annoyingly so.

“Ah-Lonzo, let’s let Anthony read,” I said.

Anthony started again “Ponyboy, I…” he paused again.  I moved closer to Anthony.  He froze.  His eyes, so ddark and large and now slightly misty met mine.

“Ok, great, good job Anthony,” I said, uncomfortable for him.  Uncomfortable for all of us.  “You can read more tomorrow, Ant, I’ll finish up.”  I quickly dove into the text, reading the last few sentences with an exaggerated voice that I hoped would distract from Anthony’s failure.  How could this boy get to seventh grade and not be able to read hardly a word, I asked myself.  And how can I ask him to prove this fact each day to his peers in class?

Indeed, reading The Outsiders aloud in class proved difficult and each day was a slight permutation of the first:  Ah-Lonzo almost always got us started; Tequanda always acted as if it was a personal attack when I asked her to read; Anthony struggled with even the most basic of words.  Further, despite the persistent drama of the book, the class veered toward dysfunction at times.  Ponyboy got in fights; so did Don’terrio and Tre’von.  Ponyboy smoked cigarettes; Dominique preached his belief that smoking marijuana helped him in track.  But, as difficult as the act of reading was, at the end of the day, each student not only read, but also critically thought about, a real live book.

Tre’von lingered at his desk long after the bell rang the class period our novel reached its bullet-filled conclusion.  Is he waiting until I go into the hallway so he can steal something, I pondered.

“Can I help you, Tre’von?” I inquired, putting the typed copies of The Outsiders onto the desks in preparation for the next class.

“I just need a minute,” he replied, looking out the window.  “I never though Darry would die like that,” he continued, referencing Darry’s dramatic killing at the hands of the police.  “I mean, that shit just wasn’t right.”

Now I was the one who needed a minute; did Tre’von have actual feelings?  Let alone feelings for a fictitious character in a book? I debated how to respond.  Should I offer a comment to drive home the whole “don’t-run-from-the-police-with-gun-in-hand” lesson the book so eloquently demonstrated?  Perhaps it was time to remind Tre’von, he of the “I don’t read books” statement, that he had read a book and actually enjoyed it?  Perhaps I could capitalize on his emotional vulnerability and somehow grow closer to him by offering my comfort?  I was confused by these divergent possibilities and my conflicting intentions.

Tre’von interrupted my pause.  “I bet those cops were white.  Fucking assholes.”

The next morning, I surprised the class by pressing play on the outdated VCR in our classroom.  I had procured a videocassette copy of The Outsiders through Ebay; its viewing was to be a reward for our diligent work.  In truth, I hadn’t pre-viewed the movie and was just as excited as the students were to see Francis Ford Coppola’s 1980’s interpretation of our beloved novel.

“Hold on, Mr. Freeman,” Dominique loudly cut in as the first scene began, “you never said they was white.”

“Yeah, I thought Ponyboy was black,” Anthony said, yet a look of confusion spreading over his face.  I was shocked; I figured the descriptions of the Greasers’ long, straight and sometimes red hair and placement in Oklahoma were clues enough concerning their racial identity.

“What do you mean by that, Anthony?” I asked, talking over the movie.

“Mr. Freeman, those kids liked to smoke, they be in gangs and they get in fights.  They had to be black,” Tre’von interrupted.  “Plus, that nig…” I furrowed my eyebrows, showing my contempt for this word before Tre’von could complete it.  “Plus, his name,” Tre’von began again, for once adhering to my rules, “is Ponyboy.  I mean, come on, what white dude is named Ponyboy?”

As I had been overwhelmed so many times before, a litany of possible responses raced through my mind.  Ultimately, the English teacher in me won; they could independently make their own conclusions concerning their assumptions.

“That’s why I always say you have to read every word carefully, guys.  You could miss something very important and well, you might end up…”

“Thinking these crackers was black?” Tequanda completed my thought.

I nodded.  “Yes, you might make a mistake like that.”

After this initial shock, we settled into the movie.   Despite their egregious error concerning the characters’ race, I was pleased how well they remembered the finer details of the book: they pointed out obvious chronology differences and subtle characterization distinctions between the book and the movie.  I was also pleased by the amount of time the characters spent cavorting around shirtless, but kept this detail to myself.

Most of all though, they enjoyed the fight scene, and as the credits rolled, the students demanded I rewind the movie so as to rewatch it in all its glory.  We spent the next twenty minutes and the first fifteen minutes at the beginning of the next day’s class doing just thus:  me laboriously rewinding and stopping the video, its mouse-like squeak filling the room during which their bodies twitched at the edge of their seats in anticipation; finally, all of us watching in silence with peeled eyes to indisputably determine who landed the first punch.

Tre’von provided sound effects – onomatopoeia, I reminded them – and Anthony and Don’terrio even renacted the whole scene one pause during rewinding.  For all their hard work – reading aloud in front of their peers, answering multiple-choice questions each day, let alone reading a somewhat arcane novel about white kids in Oklahom in the 1960s – I was happy to let them have these moments.

They deserved it.

We deserved it.

Hell, I deserved it.

As I ejected the cassette from the VCR, another action met with groans, I shouted at them to return to their seats, knowing full well that I would never gain full control over the class for the rest of the period.

“So, see guys, can’t reading a book be fun?” I asked, indulging myself, hoping for the kind of moment I had envisioned when I set out to become a teacher.

“Oh, yeah, I loved The Outsiders,” Justin said, catapulting his small body into the seat.

“One of the best movies I ever seen,” Anthony added, his once misty eyes now wide and confident.

“The Outsiders was ai’ght, Mr. Freeman.  I mean, those nigs – “ Tre’von started.  I again furrowed my brow.  He paused, collecting himself, smiling.  “I mean, those crackers sure can fight.”

What should be the first chapter of the Schooled novel…

1

Everyone told me one thing:  be mean.

“Bop ‘em that first day” my father instructed.  His mental capacities damaged by years of teaching high school, nonsensical syllables became verbs in his middle age. “Bop” was favorite; “planted tomatoes today and, boy, did I bop ‘em with some mulch” and “I’m going to bop to the grocery store; need anything?” an example of the word’s many usages.

His advice reemerged in new permutations. A woman, now a nameless and faint memory, grabbed me in the dim hallway the first workday.

“I’m not staying here.  I put in my two weeks notice, so I’ll only be here ten days,” she said quietly, her eyes meeting mine with a crazed look, “but you seem nice, so I had to tell you.  Don’t smile.  They will think it’s a sign of weakness.”  She locked her eyes onto mine, making sure I understood.  “Don’t smile,” she repeated, even more adamantly. “Remember that.”

I nodded my head in affirmation, avoiding a smile, and darted to my empty classroom.  So that’s why this school is underperforming, I thought, it’s staffed with unsmiling, escaped mental asylum patients.  I resolved to do the opposite of her recommendation.  I am going to kill those kids with kindness, I promised myself. I did not endure years of painful orthodontia for these pearly whites to be hidden.

The mean theme persisted.  Another colleague, Ms. Clardy, who initially seemed the type to revel in car sing-along sessions, broke from character one afternoon.

“This is what I always tell first-year teachers,” she said while pulling me aside in the cafeteria.  “I wait for one of the students to screw up that first day, and then, bam, I really let them have it.  When I see they are scared, like really, really, really scared, I continue on for a couple more minutes.”  She paused to let this sink in.  Her face now angelic, she continued.  “Then everything’s fine for the rest of the year.”  Like the woman before her, Ms. Clardy seemed undeniably deranged, a ticking time bomb of violence waiting to explode.

These pieces of advice are a test, I determined, remnants of old school teaching, the very practices I am here to correct.  I rejected the notion that one can only rule through fear, thinking back to the teachers who had oppressed my own education with cantankerous words, curmudgeon eyes and pointing fingers.  I am not going to be those antiquated educators, I reminded myself, but something far greater, far better, far…nicer.  They deserve better.

“They” were 28 Special Education students in Charlotte, North Carolina to be exact.  28 names I struggled to pronounce.  First Block was dominated by T’s:  Tequanda, Terrion, Trondell and Tre’von.  Third Block was the Shauns:  O’Scheon, D’Shaun and Tyshawn.  Fourth Block was Quanishia and Jhniya.  These were names that confounded standard conventions and punctuation, yet rolled off my Central-white-Virginia rural tongue with inventiveness and energy.

I practiced these names at home at night, struggling to make them commonplace, picturing their faces.  I created back stories for the students, previous lives. I was most consumed, though, with the thoughts of their lives after our class together.  I had visions of our parting moments, the North Carolina sun casting a saintly glow on my face and catching in my blond hair, the children clinging around me like the Pied Piper, their bus drivers impatiently honking the bus’ horns.

“But, I don’t want to leave you for the summer, Mr. Freeman!  I wish you were my brother, or my dad, or my uncle,” one particularly emotional student – perhaps Terrion – might say, “something so I could see you at family reunions.” I would shrug and solemnly smile, as if to express, “You’re not alone, young Terrion, many before you have and many after you will wish to be related to my greatness.”

Other students, unable to express their devastation in words, would surely try to hug me, grab me even, as the bus drivers threatened to leave.  I would recoil from their bodies, encouraging them to be strong and remember what Mr. Freeman told them:  never let go of your dreams, you shining star.

2

I didn’t grow up wanting to be a teacher; I figured I’d be a dolphin trainer or Crayon-color-namer.  But, when college graduation became unavoidable, reality hit.  Hard.  My plan to become famous had not materialized.  Efforts to secure a private benefactor had also failed.  My psychology and studio art degrees left me superbly qualified to psychoanalyze art but few job optoins.  Someone, a more qualified someone, could tend to Flipper or distinguish between goldenrod and yellowed-sun.  Thus, I came to the decision thousands of other lost, over-educated and under-experienced individuals come to each year:  I would be a teacher.  I anticipated my parents, teachers themselves, would be overjoyed.

“Oh, honey.  Are you sure?” my mother asked after my announcement, setting down her wine glass.  “I’ve heard grad school is fun,” she continued, her voice rising over the holiday music.

“Mom, I don’t know what I want to study in grad school,” I countered.  “Plus, I really want to make a difference.”  I loved how these words felt as they leapt from my mouth:

I really want

to make

a difference.

“Well, buddy…” my dad chimed in, looking up from The New Yorker, “just know that your first year of teaching is really one of the most difficult things you can ever do.”  He sighed.  “But, jeesh, if you really want to, I say whoopy-de-do.”

“Yes, Dad, I really want to,” I said, emphatically, annoyed at their doubt concerning my noble calling.  Who are these people to doubt my decision? My father had spent the past two decades calling me “Jalex,” a combination of John, my younger brother’s name, and my own.  Yeah Dad, I bet your first year of teaching was hard, I assured myself, you don’t even know your own sons’ names.  But me, I’m amazing.  I have a college degree!  Two majors in fact.  The worlds needs me.  “I don’t know why you guys are so hesitant about this.  You’re both teachers!”

Silence.

“Well, yes, but when I was growing up that’s what women did, Alex,” my mom said, breaking the silence. “They became secretaries or teachers.  If I could do it all over again, I would go into science.”  Science?  News to me as my mother had, in all seriousness, recently required an explanation of how hens could lay egg sans the presence of roosters.  She’s a teacher and she loves it.  I dismissed my mother’s claim.  Is she being menopausal?

“I wouldn’t say that.  I would choose to teach again,” my dad offered.  “I’m just saying…that first year is really, you know, bam.”

3

In the workdays before school began for the year, I did not focus on how to “bop” my 28 students.  Instead, I focused on decorating my classroom.  I labored with zeal foreign to my 22 years, drawing inspiration from the home-decorating shows I watched on lazy Sunday afternoons.

I started with “curb appeal,” pasting a sheet of blue construction paper on the front door.  “Room 402 – Mr. Freeman’s Scholars” it stated in purple letters.  I continued this color scheme inside.  A unified palatte makes a space larger, I thought while covering the unsightly black metal of my desk with bright blue paper and matching bulletin borders.

I stapled a sign reading Shoutouts! (the exclamation point slanted and hopeful) on one of the bulletin boards.  Here, I imagined, the class would post encouragement.  Things like:  “Shoutout to Tequanda for writing a thrilling essay on the differences between the written and movie versions of A Christmas Carol” or “Shoutout to Mr. Freeman for being the only teacher who ever cared.  I might have offed myself were it not for you.”

The other bulletin board showcased the “Champion Road,” alluding to the school’s motto, “Ransom Raises Champions.”  I found this motto vague, unsure how champions were raised, or what kind of champion we sought.  All designers must make concessions to their client, I reminded myself.

The Champion Road was a behavioral system.  Each day, the class could collectively earn points for arriving on time, completing work and respecting each other.  Dependent upon how many points they earned, the class could move forward on the “road.”  10 points moved the class forward one space; 20 points, two spaces.  Spots on the road signified rewards:  cookies, homework passes, music, and at the road’s end, a party.  I suppose we’ll be having a lot of parties, I forecasted, these kids are just going to l-o-v-e this.

Above the bulletin boards I placed my “signature piece” – the classroom rules and consequences.  High above the bulletin boards, they looked important and foreboding, though my eyes squinted to accurately read them:  respect yourself; respect others; respect property; respect learning time.  Aretha would be proud.

My students would appreciate these rules as they were fair and simple.  Further, they were different from the insulting rules I saw other teachers posting.  Silly things like “don’t eat,” “sit down and stay down!” and even “don’t get up until the bell rings, ever.”  In my classroom, I thought, we will eat freely (as long as we share) and we will get up freely (as long as it is for an important reason). I would have little use for consequences, but I posted them anyway:

1.  Verbal warning

2.  Written warning

3.  Reflection table

4.  Call home

5.  Removal from class

I was most proud of the Reflection Table.  The name was a misnomer; the Reflection Table resembled more a “Shoddy Desk with Three Legs in the Corner,” however, this name was far too lengthy to fit on my blue paper.  “Reflection Table” it was; an area where a disgruntled student could cool off, calming down before rejoining the class.  Perhaps a student will get too wound up by the social injustice I am highlighting during my lecture, I noted, and will simply need a moment to reflect.  Or, perhaps my rigorous grading will distress a particularly well-intentioned student, warranting a moment of solace.

Behind the Reflection Table were large windows which provided a view of the courtyard.  Like the Reflection Table, “courtyard” was a generous term to describe this space; an expanse of tall grass that harbored a vibrant and visible bee population.

Beside the window, obscured by the blinding light, was “Scholar Speak.”  Five purple terms on blue paper placed over an elongated cracked mirror:

Six-inch voices

Raising hands

Silence

Mr. Freeman Only

Talking stick

Using double stick tape, I rested a yellow arrow on the space for “talking stick.”  The yellow of the arrow provided visual contrast, accenting the blue behind it and serving as the room’s sole warm colored item. It’s like the throw pillow, I noted.  The vividness of the arrow belied its importance.  “Scholar Speak” was my way of demonstrating how we would speak at any given moment.

I found the terms self-explanatory:  “Six-inch voices” for group work when the students could talk amongst themselves, though controlling their volume so as to only be heard by someone six inches way; “Raising hands” for when students were to speak only when they raised their hands; “Silence” for when there was to be absolutely no talking under any circumstances, such as the frequent tests and quizzes I had planned; “Mr. Freeman Only” for when only I was to be speaking, with absolutely no interruptions whatsoever; “Talking Stick’ for when students were to talk only if they were in possession of a literal stick.  I had not yet created said talking stick.  Probably won’t need that one for awhile.

My classroom was striking.  Several teachers, upon review of the room, noted a lack of quotes or kitten posters.  I dismissed their suggestions.  These kids needed fashion, for crying out loud!  In a classroom as well decorated as mine, I would have little need for kitten posters or quotes, little need to be mean.  It was time.  I was ready for the culmination of all decorating shows – the open house – or, in my case, the first day of school.

4

I stood outside the door as the sun streamed in chunks through the hallway.  I smiled, of course.  A cautious smile but a smile nonetheless.  I rocked in my dress shoes, eagerly awaiting my first student, that first lucky soul whose life I would change forever.  Children buzzed through the hallway, hugging each other, screaming at the top of the lungs.  “I missed you all summer!”  “Boo, I ‘bout died without you.”  Their reunions were a forced ebullient.  Few were concerned to get to class.

“Is this Room 402?” A student’s voice crept through commotion. He was a large boy, tall for a seventh grader, round.  His eyes were cast to the floor.  His skin was dark, almost blue.  He wore a t-shirt that dwarfed his shoulders, falling smoothly down his torso and ending at his knees.  It would fit a person – a giant, perhaps – twice his size.  He looked ridiculous, hardly a fitting component of the modern sleek minimalism of the classroom awaiting him inside.

“Well, yes, this is Room 402.  Home of the Freeman Scholars.  I’m Mr. Freeman,” I said, extending my hand, “and you would be?”

The boy looked at me, slightly amused but mostly horrified.  “Anthony,” he mumbled.

“Well Anthony, I’m glad to have you here, it’s going to be a great year.”  He shook my hand tentatively and moped inside.

A procession of eight other children filtered in after Anthony.  In this odd procession, they all seemed to have a similar reaction to me:  amused, then disturbed.  Their handshakes were slight and weak.  They didn’t smile.  They walked quickly into the room, finding their assigned seats, their names dutifully noted in blue construction paper atop the desks.  As I waited outside, I overhead their comments.

“Dang this room is really blue!” Tequanda said, stretching the word “dang” into several dramatic syllables.

“How we scholars?” Dominique asked.

“Talking stick?  What the eff?”

“Is this a class for retards or something?”

When the bell rang, I quickly moved from my post at the door to front of the class.  I took a deep breath.  Looking out at the sea of expectant faces, I was overcome by confusion and apprehension.  I drowned in this moment, now aware that before me were my actual, real, live, students; their education, their lives, their future now entrusted in my hands.  I suddenly regretted not planning more for this moment:  my first words as a teacher.  Shit, fuck, what am I going to say?  Shit, fuck.  Why are they all staring at me?

“Welcome, my name is Mr. Freeman and this is your Language Arts class,” I began, noticing a slight hesitation in my voice.  “We are going to do two things today.”  I pointed to the agenda written on the board.  “First, we are going to go over the rules.  Then, I have some sheets for you to fill out so I can get to know you and we can have an excellent year.”  I paused.  Silence.  Did I not make sense?  Do they hate me? “Um…before we begin, do you have any questions?”

Tequanda raised her hand.  “Why this room so blue?”  I had anticipated a more germane question concerning the curriculum or expectations of the class, but appreciated her aesthetic concern.

I struggled for an answer.  “Well, Tequanda, I’m glad you asked.  This room is so blue because I went to the University of North Carolina.  Blue is their school color.”  This was a lie – blue was the only color left when I got to the supply room – but I was pleased with my quickness and was similarly excited to already be talking about college.

“Is that off Beatties Ford Road?” Dominique interjected.

“Well, no.  It’s in Chapel Hill.”  Their faces showed confusion.  Though Chapel Hill was only located two hours north of our classroom in Charlotte, their expressions informed me they knew nothing about this town.  I knew one thing they were sure to know.  “It’s where Michael Jordan went to school.”

“He ain’t no Le’Bron.” Tre’von said caustically.

“Ah come on man, that nigga is sick,” Justin retorted.

I winced.  As a white, green-eyed blond from a middle-class family, I had always found this “n word” – even when altered to end with “a” rather than “er” – uncomfortable.  I had decided this infamous word would not be allowed in my classroom.  I hesitated. We’ll have this conversation later.  There are more important things to talk about. “Scholar Speak” for example.  Yes, I’ll talk about Scholar Speak. Brilliant, Alex!  Oh, they will just love that.  I bet Tequanda notices that the arrow is yellow, she’s so into colors. To my surprise, by the time I broke out of my inner thoughts, the class had erupted into a cacophony of disagreement concerning basketball.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but I’m not done.”  Nothing changed.  Their conversation grew more heated, growing, steamrolling, leaving me behind.  “Excuse me,” I repeated, sure that this time, they would grant me the respect I deserved.

They continued on.

Unsure of what to do, I darted to the Scholar Speak corner, dramatically grabbing the yellow arrow off “Raising Hands” and aggressively placing it on “Mr. Freeman Only.”  My desperate actions caught their attention and a majority of the class granted me their attention.

“As you can see,” I started, my voice now whiny and unrecognizable, “we have a way of speaking around here.”  As I spoke, Tre’von continued to speak to Anthony concerning the merits of Le’Bron James.  “This is called the Scholar Speak and, frankly, I hadn’t planned on talking about it today, but…”  I couldn’t focus with Tre’von so noticeably disregarding my moment.  Who is this kid? I seered my eyes into him.

“As I was saying, Tre’von, we have a way of speaking around here so we can be sure to learn as much as possible.”  With the word “learn” a noticeable sigh echoed throughout the room.  “This arrow lets you know how to speak and when to speak.”  I pointed to the arrow.  “As you can see, the arrow is currently on ‘Mr. Freeman Only’ which means that I am the only one whom can speak.”  I paused, letting this fact silence the room

“How come you the only one who can speak?” Tequanda asked, indignant.

I placed a finger over my mouth – the universal symbol for hush.  “Tequanda, while I appreciate your question, I really do, the thing about ‘Mr. Freeman Only’ is that I am, truly, the only person who can speak.  So, while your question was good…”

“I said, how come you the only one who can speak?” Tequanda repeated, as if I hadn’t understood the question initially.

I was flustered.  In my preparation of the classroom, I had failed to consider students would actually question the rules, consequences and procedures.  They were mine to make and theirs to follow.  If we were to achieve my ambitious goals of content mastery and subsequent world peace, it was imperative that this natural order was in place.  What was Tequanda’s question again?

“Yeah, how come you the only who can speak?  I’mma speak when I wanna,” Tre’von reminded me.

“Well, Tre’von – and Tequanda – the reason I’m the only person who can speak when this arrow is on ‘Mr. Freeman Only’ is so that we can learn.  There might be times I want to give instructions and not have any questions until the end.  There might be times I need to speak for a long time and don’t want to be interrupted.  It’ll help us all learn.”

“It’s just an arrow,” Tequanda chided, unimpressed, an obvious aggression in her voice.  She knew how to be mean – did I?

“Where’s the talking stick?” Tre’von asked.

There was no talking stick.  I grabbed a dry erase marker.

“This, um, marker, is going to be the talking stick today.”  I moved the arrow to “Talking Stick.”  “So, whoever has this marker, they are the ones who can speak.”  Their expressions were vacant.  Unimpressed.  “Let’s try.”

I placed the marker on Anthony’s desk.  His large dark eyes looked up at me, confused.  I mouthed the words “you can talk.”  More confusion.  I pointed to him and mouthed “you can talk,” again, slower this time.  Nothing.

“Why you acting like a mime?” Tequanda asked.  Ever inquisitive.

I grabbed the marker off Anthony’s desk.  “Tequanda.  You didn’t have the talking stick.”  I paused and gave her my best glare.  I took a deep breath.  I tried to smile.  I wanted them to like me but, I could tell they already didn’t.  “Because I didn’t have the talking stick either, I was trying to silently tell Anthony here that I wanted him – and only him –  to talk because he was the one with the talking stick.”

“So, you was trying to get me to talk?  I couldn’t tell what you were trying to say.”  Anthony, once silent, now spoke.

“Anthony – you don’t have the stick!  Wait until you have the stick!”  I plunked the marker on his desk.  He remained silent.  I grabbed the stick off his desk.  I’m supposed to teach this kid reading comprehension and he can’t figure out how to master the talking stick? “Ok, let’s practice this.”  I scanned the room.  Tre’von was rifling through his backpack, searching for something.  “Tre’von, you can help me practice.”  I walked over to him as he pulled out a cell phone.  “First off, put that phone back.  It’s not time for that now.”  He obliged.  A small victory.  “Now, when I hand you the stick – and only when I hand you the stick – say something.  Anything.”  Not the n word, preferably.

I handed him the stick.

“This ain’t no stick.  It’s a marker.”  He stared right at me.

“He right.”  Tequanda chimed in.

“Shut up!  I’ve got the stick.  You can’t talk, trick.” Tre’von squiggled in his chair to face Tequanda.  His expression was pure rage:  his brow was furrowed, his lower lip jutted out, his eyes were possessed by an intensity that belied his age.

“I will talk when I want, son.” Tequanda spit back, her body threatening to vault from the chair into Tre’von’s direction.  All eyes were on Tequanda now.  The class was ecstatic, a palpable energy coursed through the room.  Shit, shit, shit.  Who the hell are these kids?

I raced to the Scholar Speak board.  Frantically, I placed the arrow on “Silent.”

Miraculously, the classroom was silent for a moment, though the floor decidedly decidedly Tre’von and Tequanda’s.  The silence had less to do with my actions and more to do with the captive audience focused on Tequanda and Tre’von’s tift.  Time slowed as they growled in their chairs.

I looked around the classroom, noting the perfectly coordinated blue accents, the lines of desks aligned to the floor’s tiles, the pencils culled into a coffee mug on my desk.  As long as I averted my eyes from my students, the classroom appeared charming, inspirational even.  In this moment, I realized the error of my ways:  in my meticulous planning of the things of the classroom, I had failed to plan for the actual students of the classroom.  Harkening back to my decorating shows, I had a beautiful home, but an ugly family.

They were ready to bop each other.

One

Quinten, the bulge in his boxers growing, hurriedly removed his shirt. “Let’s not waste any more time, boys,” he said, his broad smile revealing his uber white stock-trader-salary-treated teeth.  He flung the shirt to the hotel room’s corner.  “We all knew this was going to happen,” he continued as he moved onto the foot of the bed, crouching in front of Daniel and Tom, his stomach’s slight flab hanging below.

Daniel’s mind jolted to years before – college – when Quinten’s stomach was defined and taut, not the doughy flesh now pressed against Tom’s torso.

“Are you sure you guys are okay with this?” Tom asked before Quinten went to kiss.

“Oh, honey, yes.  We do this all the time,” Daniel answered, moving closer to them both and running his hand along Quinten’s spine.  Daniel was amused – no, perturbed – by Tom’s question.  Are you sure you guys are okay with this? As if it mattered who was okay with what.  By Daniel’s estimation, Tom had spent the weekend consumed with bedding Quinten, exiting the shower wearing only a perilously loose towel and offering Quinten a spoonful – Tom’s spoonful – of Crème Brulee at the restaurant the night before.  Among other obvious advances.

“Daniel and I aren’t married or anything,” Quinten, now fully atop Tom, breathlessly whispered.  “This is just fun.”  Quinten and Tom began to kiss.  Daniel, pressed beside them, watched:  hurried kisses, like fearful teenagers.

Daniel removed his shirt.  His mind again jolted to years before – college – when his stomach was exactly the same as it was now:  hairless, not fit, not fat.  There.

Daniel pressed closer to them still.  Quinten was now moving his lips along Tom’s neck, his hands adroitly unbuckling Tom’s belt.  Daniel assisted by tugging Tom’s jeans, squeezing them downward along the sheets.

No underwear.  The contrast between Tom’s tan torso and white crotch revealed that Tom was most definitely not wearing underwear.  Are you sure you guys are okay with this? As if this threesome had just been flung onto him, a present left at his doorstep.  Oh, I guess, sure, yeah, okay.  I could threesome.  But only if you’re, you know, sure about it and all.

“You know what guys,” Daniel began, rolling away from them, “I have a headache.”

“What?” Quinten lifted his head from Tom’s sternum.

“Yeah, seriously.  It’s been here all day, but now, it’s just…worse.”  Daniel moved to the corner of the room and put on Quinten’s shirt.  This felt right somehow.

“Well, I don’t want to…” Quinten moved off the bed and toward Daniel, his head titled, eyes sympathetic.  The bulge was larger.

“Babe, it’s okay.  You guys have your fun.”  Daniel paused.  Searching.  “I’m going to Starbuck’s to finish reading my book.”

Tom took this opportunity to fully remove his jeans.

“Are you sure?”  Quinten tilted his head the other way.

Daniel glanced down at Quinten’s boxers.  “I’m sure, yes, really.  No big deal.”

The coffee was bitter; Starbuck’s always is.  Daniel didn’t read his book, opting to call his mother instead.  Yes, San Francisco was as beautiful as the postcards; no, sharing the room with Tom wasn’t awkward, they were all friends, after all; yes, he would be home for Christmas.  So, when are you two going to finally tie the knot? she asked.  I’m ready to plan a wedding, even if it is a gay one.

“I don’t know, Mother, I’m not too worried about marriage,” Daniel answered, “what Quinten and I have, it just feels right somehow.  The way it is.”

Two

Patricia had three males in her life:  Pierre, whose hair had always been gray; Gordon, whose hair had turned gray eight years ago; Daniel, whose hair was brown and would probably turn white, like hers, but not for many years.  She was on the subway, seated beside a young mother holding a napping infant, when she realized she loved all three males, but to vastly varying degrees.

Daniel, her son, came first.  Her only child and the lasting remnant of her second marriage, Daniel was nothing like she had imagined.

Daniel was gay.

Daniel was materialistic.

Daniel was short.

He was also bitingly smart, and he addressed Patricia as “Mother,” despite her insistence otherwise.  She had suggested Mommy, Ma, Mom, even; signed his birthday cards thus; he was unrelenting.  She loved him for “Mother” and because she had grown him in her womb, for the knowledge he would be successful and would speak well of her long after her death.

Gordon, her third and (she was sure of it this time) final husband, came last.  Gordon was everything she had imagined her husband at 65-years-old would be:

Gordon was going deaf.

Gordon didn’t pressure her for sex, even when she wanted it.

Gordon like red wine.

He addressed Patricia as “Patty,” per her insistence.  “Patty” made her feel young and aspiring, as if one day she would be old enough for the solemn “Patricia,” but not today.  She did love Gordon, had loved him for twenty years, hoped to love him for at least ten more (that’s as much time as she gave his life), had travelled with him to France and felt warm when he wore that blue shirt that made his eyes, wrinkled as they were, sparkle.  But, she had not grown Gordon in her womb and he couldn’t hear her when she, drunk on red wine, embarrassingly whispered, “Let’s make love tonight.”

Pierre was dying.  He came second.  Patricia had just dropped him off at the vet.  “He has Hepatic neoplasia,” his vet (who was annoyingly named Kitty) had announced three weeks before when Patricia had taken him to address Pierre’ vomiting.  Patricia, like any sane woman, had responded, “What the hell would that would be, Kitty?”

Liver tumor.

Operable, but likely only six more months, maybe nine.

$2,000.

It was a small price to pay for her second-loved-male.  As Patricia sat in her subway seat, the infant beside her slowly waking up, she pictured Pierre, his stomach shaved, sliced, stitched.  She was terrified.  More terrified, exponentially so in fact, than she had been two years before during Gordon’s heart surgery.  Her terror was then replaced by repulsion.  Who loves their cat more than their husband, In-Head Patricia asked.  A freak, that’s who, In-Head Patricia answered.

Patricia cried.  An ugly cry – slowly released, her features twisted, her foundation splotched.  She removed a Kleenex from her purse, dried her eyes, and got off at the next stop, even though it was four more stops until her home.

Three

Rosa had three thoughts as the crying lady exited the train:

1. I don’t want her to see crying yet.  She’s only three weeks.
2. Do tears have germs?  That bitch better not get my baby sick.
3. I’m a mother now; I can’t think things like bitch.

Rosa looked at her baby, a round face framed by a mint-green fleece blanket and a clover-green cone-shaped cap, as the subway doors closed.  Eva was the name on the birth certificate.  Peapod was the name In-Head Rosa used.

“The green will be muy bonita, with that orange hair of hers,” Rosa’s mother had curtly said when presenting the handmade cap, her Dominican accent spiking the English.  Indeed, Peapod’s orange (Rosa preferred “auburn”) hair had shocked Rosa’s family and they had reacted as they had been pranked by God Himself.

“Maybe Conan will claim paternity,” Eric, Rosa’s oldest brother, had joked.

“Drinking Guiness while pregnant, I’m disappointed in you hermanna!”  Julio, the youngest, had chided.

“Cabeza de fuego,” Rosa’s father had shrieked in the delivery room, his index finger pointing and mouth agape, as he watched the nurses towel Peapod.

Peapod’s hair had also surprised Rosa, though, for her, the orange was less God’s prank and more God’s message.  For the eight months of her pregnancy, Rosa had convinced herself the baby growing in her womb was solely her descendent.  Not an immaculate conception – Rosa wasn’t that naïve (and there was The Truth) – but, instead, a miraculous rejection of competing genetics.

Rosa likened her three week relationship with Peapod’s father to a two-liter Coke left in the fridge for the same amount of time:  bubbly sweet first taste; quickly fizzling; disappointingly stale; undrinkable; finally, trashed.  Problem was, Rosa had already trashed Peapod’s father once she finally realized she was pregnant; hence, the convenient trashing of his genetics.

Peapod’s hair – His message – made obvious what Rosa had denied:  Peapod was made of two people and she needed both of them in her life.

Rosa moved the blanket up, loosely covering Peapod’s mouth.  No baby of mine is gonna get sick from tear germs, she thought.  Five stops later, Rosa carefully exited, holding Peapod close on the escalator and the brief walk to his building.  When she arrived, Rosa scanned the apartment listings for his last name – O’Malley – even though she knew he lived in Apartment 15.  He buzzed her in without asking her identity.

As Rosa made her way up the drafty stairwell, Peapod’s clover-green cap slipped, falling to the concrete below.  Peapod began to cry.  Again, His message.

Despite Peapod’s wail, Rosa could hear the violent hum of a video game when she knocked on his door.  Then, an electronic-clink-pause followed by slow footsteps.  Rosa brushed her hand over Peapod’s head, smacking Peapod’s auburn hair onto Peapod’s ivory scalp.

He – Kevin O’Malley – opened the door, wearing the gray sweats he’d worn their last morning.  Rosa watched his eyes meet hers and then travel to Peapod.

“Will you marry me?”

Four

Tom was annoyed to hear a crying baby in the stairwell as he tried on his Seersucker suit.  Fucking breeders, he thought; then, damn, this girl can sure turn it out, as he admired his reflection.  He knew Seersucker was ridiculous, but, so was the wedding he was dressing for.  He contemplated the gray suit last worn to his Uncle’s funeral, but he decided he’d rather leave when the baby’s cries grew louder.  Quickly.  Seersucker it was.

Tom filled the forty minute drive with three cigarettes and Dolly Parton.  The last ten minutes, he felt the fabric’s puckered texture begin to make impressions on his ass, strike-that, bottom (he considered himself a lady, after all).  Tom wasn’t wearing underwear; he never did; he knew it was inappropriate; he didn’t give two shits.

Quinten called.

“Can’t talk,” Tom answered while parking. “At my sister’s wedding.”

“Julie’s getting married?”  Quinten screeched, a fake optimistic disbelief in his voice.  Tom knew what Quinten was hiding behind this tone:  ‘tards get married these days? “How come you didn’t say anything?”

“Well, it’s not a big deal.  I’m not sure it’s even official.”  Tom was annoyed by Quentin’s question; they’d fucked, yes, but that didn’t obligate Tom to update Quinten on his family life.

The wedding, hosted by the Emmanuel House (which supported Julie and other adults with Downs Syndrome) was, in fact, official, as noted in the program a seated and obese black woman handed Tom as he entered.

“Name and relation, please,” she asked, her marker poised above a name tag.

“Tom,” he replied.  “Julie’s brother.”

“The twin!” the woman exclaimed, writing “Tom Twin” in bold capitals.  Tom grimaced.  He defined twins as two-bodies-one-soul:  unexplained pain when the other got hurt; sharing of ends of sentences; unintentional synchronization of life’s milestones (marriage, children, death).  Tom had never experienced this with Julie, though she was five minutes his senior sibling and by definition, his twin.

The Seersucker continued to claw during the ceremony; it took restraint to not inappropriately exit for a bathroom respite.  Tom’s mother, serious and seated to his right, would have killed Tom if he had done so (which, Tom observed, would cement the non-twin relationship:  Julie getting married the day Tom died).

When the Justice of Peace announced the husband and wife, Tom’s mother rose from her chair, shouting “Bravo Julie!  Bravo Matt!”  As if this is a play, Tom thought.

When newlyweds advanced down the aisle Tom stood, the Seersucker thankfully relinquishing its grip, joining in the applause.  The obese black woman, hidden in a corner, pressed play on a CD player.  “Walking on Sunshine” blasted throughout the room and the guests – staff, disabled adults, Tom and his mother – followed Julie and Matt into the reception room.

For the duration of the song, the crowd danced with abandon.  Tom caught Julie’s eye.  And don’t it feel good? He felt her joy.  I’ll say it again now. They waved to each other.  And don’t it feel good.

1

My eyes scanned ahead, following the line of mourners leading to the white casket.

“I didn’t know we were going to see the body,” I whispered solemnly to Ms. Wood as she stood beside me.  This was true; in my 24 years I had never seen a dead body before, let alone the dead body of my own student.

“Oh, Freeman, I should have told you,” Ms. Wood replied, her voice rising above the organ music.  “There’s always a viewing at these kind of funerals.”  It seemed odd that just yesterday Ms. Wood and I had been discussing our efforts to collectively finish grading our student’s papers.  Now, this hallway conversation seemed frivolous.  I wasn’t sure how she could have slipped in the prepare-yourself-for-a-dead-body detail, but, as we stood in line at the church, I wished she had.

Then, another voice, this one behind me, louder than Ms. Wood’s:  “Seen a news crew outside – I’m hoping I’m on TV.”  My stomach turned.

“You gonna be okay?” Ms. Wood said quickly to distract us.

I nodded my head, my lips pursed.  I wasn’t sure of this fact, but the truth didn’t seem appropriate:  No, no Ms. Wood, I might not be okay.  Am I supposed to be okay?  I was okay – relatively so – until this whole body thing.  Now, I might not be okay. Instead:  “I’ll be okay.”

“Alright, well, hold it together,” she replied.  I interpreted this as her request that I keep the waterworks to a minimum, lest I embarrass her.  Lest I embarrass myself.

Ms. Woods seemed nonchalant as we stood in silence.  I contemplated if this nonchalance was a front or genuine steeliness.  We had been teaching together for only six months; I couldn’t decide.  I did know that my stomach was a wreck and my eyes were a worrisome wet.  Distractions, Alex, distractions.  Hold it together. I looked down at the floor, counting the squares in the carpet, the steps from where we joined the line to the casket.  I do not want to see his body, I do not want to see his body, I do not want to see his dead, dead, dead body. With each step we inched closer to the reality I thought I had accepted, but was now questioning:  we shouldn’t be here; I shouldn’t be here; he shouldn’t be here.  A sixth grader:

In

a

casket.

When we came upon the body, I repeated to myself:  no tears. The only white person in the church, I didn’t want to draw more attention to myself.  Further, with my sixth-grade students scattered amongst the pews, I didn’t want to create unnecessary drama; class would resume on Monday as it did each Monday.  It seems silly now, but in this moment, no tears was utterly crucial.

His skin was darker than I remembered.  Without life, it appeared as if his whole face was in shadow.  It looked remarkably dark next to the bright red of his XXL t-shirt, the vibrant cotton resting on his still body from his neck down to his knees.  Then, white-white pants – the kind of white that has never seen grass or dust or sitting or standing.  The white a corpse wears.  His hands rested in his lap, like black doves, gently curved, sleeping, peaceful.

His eyes were shut.  Ms. Wood screamed.

“They killed my student!” Her voice, once nonchalant, was now shrill and fierce, piercing through the chatter, through the organ.  She repeated herself, drawing her hand to her mouth, tears exploding out of her eyes.  It had been a front.  My eyes remained dry.  I was selfishly happy my attention was now transferred from his body to her pain.

I offered my hand.

Ms. Woods collected herself, the violence of her outburst contrasted with the speed in which the outburst was over.  We made our way to through the aisle and sat in the nearest available seats.

I reminded myself no tears as we waited for the service to begin.  I studied my shoes:  five holes on each side, a scuff on the left side of the left shoe, dully black against the grey patterned carpet.  Looking up, I scanned again, this time for Dani, his girlfriend.  Where was she?  Was she crying?

Rakieyah, a student in my first period class, sat beside me, her hair meticulously straightened, her slightly chubby sixth-grade body squeezed into a hand-me-down black dress.  We said nothing to each other.  I’m sorry Rakieyah, I thought and truly meant to say, but just as I began to speak, I realized I could not do so without tears.  No words, no tears.  A trade I was willing to make.

I was relieved when the service began, as it provided something new to focus on.   The preacher spoke for a long time and with the requisite passion.  Spoke about not seeking revenge.  Spoke about children listening to their parents.  Spoke about God needing more angels.  Things preachers say.

The crowd squirmed in their seats, let out hallelujahs and got up to go to the bathroom at inopportune moments.

2

I first met Jake Jackson on paper after Ms. Thompson, the other sixth grade Special Education teacher, entered my office during one of the teacher workdays preceding the start of the school year.

“I saw you have Jake Jackson on your caseload this year,” she began, her lisp pronounced.  The name was familiar.  Not only was he on my caseload, but also on the roll for my resource language arts class as well.    I would be Jake’s teacher, and as his Special Education case manger, his advocate.  “He was on my caseload last year.  We started the process to get him labeled Behaviorally and Emotionally Disabled, but we never finished it.”  She dramatically placed a thick manila folder on my desk.  “This is all the paperwork I got started on.  I was hoping you could finish it.”  She smiled at me, aware of the ridiculousness of this request, but also aware I had no option but to oblige.

I despised Ms. Thompson, I did, but it was the beginning of the year, so I did my best to keep this feeling hidden.  I nodded, cheerfully agreed and breathed easier as she left.  I was not pleased.  Getting a child placed as Behaviorally and Emotionally Disabled (in education lingo, known as BED) within the Special Education program was well known to be an arduous task, as it involves keeping copious records of at least twenty consecutive days of severely disordered behavior.  Students can get in fights for nineteen days straight and then be an angel on the twentieth day, starting the process over again.  Babies are adopted from third world countries in less time and with more ease than children are placed into the BED program.

Jake’s folder was detailed and similar to a police record. The previous year, he’d been suspended over ten times for a variety of reasons:  he’d cussed-out the assistant principal; gotten into fights; skipped class; roamed the halls; smoked cigarettes.  The records also showed that Ms. Thompson had been similarly delinquent, failing to hold meetings at the legally required times; thus, Jake remained categorized as Learning Disabled rather than BED.  I also noted the files remarked that “due to his excessive absences and poor scores on the state’s end-of-grade tests, Jacob will repeat sixth grade.”

This fact was astounding – retention was nearly unheard of at my school.  With so many students with so many behavioral and academic problems, there was an unwritten rule that students were to be passed along to the next grade without fail, saving the school the trouble of educating them for four rather than three years.  Dogs on life support could pass sixth grade at the school, maybe even earn honors.  Jake must have really pissed someone off to meet such a vengeful fate.

I put the folder aside, hoping the summer had been a period of miraculous reflection and maturing for Jake.  I imagined him to be on par with the greatest sociopaths of our time.  I prepared for the new Charles Manson, a modern day Attila the Hun.  I braced for the worst.

3

Jake walked into the classroom the first day with a swagger.  He was immaculately manicured from head to toe:  his short hair decorated with shaved curlicue designs, his thirteen-year-old body drowning in a large red cotton t-shirt.  His smile was undeniably magnetic, the whites of his teeth made whiter in contrast with his dark black skin.  He said hello to me as he entered the classroom, found his seat and sat attentively.

Could this be Jake Jackson?

That first day I kept waiting for his true self to reveal, for the Jake from the papers to appear suddenly, like the springing surprise of a Jack-in-the-Box.  As the class – hardly a class, actually, with only two students – worked on my required “About Me” worksheets I braced myself.

Jake turned his worksheet in quickly, though his answers reflected genuine effort. As I scanned the sheet, I noted his answers were surprisingly, almost alarmingly – normal.  He liked football and girls.  He hoped someday to play football in the NFL.  He hoped to pass the sixth grade this year.  This was clearly a guise.  I had assumed his interests included arson and fighting, his year’s goal to try new drugs.  Was he tricking me?

That first day, I told the class (comprised of Jake obviously, and a rambunctious boy named Michael) that we were going to learn the same material and complete the same lessons as my other – non-solely-Special Education – language arts classes.  I told Jake and Michel they had learning disabilities, yes, but by definition that meant they had typical intelligence.  Demonstrating this intelligence may be difficult, I admitted, but that did not change my expectations.  Plus, I added, I wouldn’t make them do more work:  when we were done with the lesson (which included the homework I gave in my “regular” class), we were done.  If they listened to me and worked efficiently, they’d have copious free time.

In other words:  listen dudes, we’ve got it good here.  There’s only two of you and it’s the last class of the day.  Let’s get the same amount of work done as those other classes, work to the same level, and do it quickly.  Once we’ve done that, we can sit back and relax.

I hoped the lure of free time would motivate them to occasionally work.  In my limited experience in teaching, I had learned free time was the superior incentive.  It beat candy, praise, good grades, positive calls home, everything.  Free time was king, for sure, but it had its drawbacks, as free time motivated students to think only sparingly.

They, Jake especially, seemed motivated by my proposition.

“So, if I do all my work quickly, we’ll get free time and I’ll pass sixth grade?” Jake asked, an innocence in his voice.

“Yes,” I promised.

4

Two months into the school year we had, on average, fifteen minutes of free time each ninety-minute class.  We were incredibly efficient, but Jake and Michael also genuinely worked and even, at times, thought.  They listened to my instruction, internalized it, and completed independent assignments diligently.  Contrasted with the dysfunction of the rest of my day, these ninety-minutes were remarkable, and each day I looked forward to third block to restore my faith in education.

Even more than the actual learning though, I looked forward to our free time.  In many ways, it was as much as reward for them as it was for me.  Most days, the assignments turned in, graded and filed and my supplies put away, we opted to head to the track, Mike and Jake trugging their backpacks with them and setting them along the chain-link fence. We walked laps, and from the outside it must have looked odd:  a twenty-something white man walking laps with two pre-adolescent black boys.  To us, it was different.  On the track, we were friends – racial, age and authority barriers broken down by our common appreciation of these quieter, relaxing moments in the school day.

“Jake, what are you doing this weekend?” I’d ask.

“Football.”

“Gonna win?”

“Of course!  I’m on the team, man.”

Not exactly poignant, but conversations like this were typical of Jake’s endearingly cocky personality.  Despite his obvious academic troubles, he had an inflated confidence about his abilities.  According to Jake, he scored the most touchdowns, got the most girls, wrote the sickest raps, wore the best clothes and had the best family.  When his team lost, it wasn’t his fault.  When a girl broke up with him, he hadn’t really liked her anyway.  Plus, he’d already started dating a new girl, he’d say, almost always subsequently asking me to how to spell her name.  He was so assured in his boasting it was impossible not to believe him.

During these laps, I came to know Jake’s trademark laugh.  It was loud and childish, surprisingly immature even, similar to the sound of a much younger child delighting in Saturday morning cartoons.  While laughing, his mouth was a wide smile, his eyes rolling.  His laugh was joyous and pure, the one time when Jake wasn’t trying to be something, but just was.  His laugh would stick with me after the bell rang and we scurried back into the building.  Jake, my presumed sociopath had turned out to be one of my favorites, a friend even. 

5

The smell of gizzards fills a room quickly.

The smell entered into the classroom with Jake one afternoon as he walked – confidently, as always – with a Styrofoam plate loaded with fried, squishy bird stomachs in one hand and his hallway pass in the other.  I’d written him this pass a good ten minutes earlier.  Lately, he’d been taking too long on these bathroom breaks, choosing alternate routes, visiting bathrooms in other parts of the building, roaming the halls.

“Find those in the bathroom?” I asked, my eyes fixed on the plate of gizzards, trying to be mad but failing.

“Nah.  I saw my sister in the hall and she had them but said she couldn’t bring them back to class because her teacher would go off. So, she let me have them, because I knew you’d be cool.”  He popped one of the fried bits into his mouth and then closed his eyes to show his obvious ecstasy.  “We are cool, right?”

“As long as you eat them all,” I replied.

6

“You hear me?”

I probably heard the phrase a million of times. 

It was his catch phrase.  He always said it the same way: confident, an inflection in his voice that made the phrase both a question and an affirmation.  He said it in the halls as he greeted his friends.  He said it when he answered a question correctly during class.  He said it on our walks at the track.  He said it after finishing the Soulja Boy dance.

“You hear me?” didn’t require an answer, it wasn’t about that.

It would have been ridiculous to answer.

“Why, yes, Jake, I do, in fact, hear you.”

It wasn’t even about hearing, actually.  I was about noticing.  It was Jake’s way of making sure you took note of his greatness:

“I’m going to a party tonight – you hear me?”

“I won MVP this weekend – you hear me?”

“I’m going to the dance and I’m gonna dance with Dani because she’s my girl. You hear me?”

Followed by his childish laugh, the phrase didn’t make literal sense; it was a routine, a logo.

“You hear me?”  We did, we all did.

7

Around December, after a series of short romances, the details of which Jake proudly shared with me, Jake got serious with a girl named Dani.  It was inevitable they would start dating.  Jake, at thirteen, was the oldest sixth grader, a distinction he greeted with pride, with no regard to his retention.  Dani was only eleven, a typical age for a sixth-grader, but little else was typical about her.

Dani saddened me, as had I not been privy to her birthdate on my roll, I would have mistaken her for a hardened, grown woman. She was nearly six feet tall, and always cramped her curvaceous body into several sizes too small jeans.  They were so tight; they failed to even function as jeans, resembling tights instead.  The tightness continued to her torso, where she paraded her chest in brightly colored tank tops. Her face fit her body, as her skin was bumpy and her features looked hardened by decades of hard knocks.  Fake braids spouted from her head like shriveled snakes.  Her voice completed the package:  low and manly.  If I’d heard her voice without the visual of her face, I would have assumed she was a gas attendant with a nasty Pall Mall habit.

She have could easily been served at a bar and it was rumored she was easy.

Besides their physical maturity, Jake and Dani shared a similar outlook on life:  do what you want when you want.  Save for Jake’s slight acquiescence to the work in my class, they both treated school like a year-long playground, wandering the halls at will, walking in and out of classes, completing work only when necessary.  They weren’t rude or outwardly disobedient.  They were wild.

Where other students’ relationships constituted a quick hug in between classes or short phone calls after school, Jake and Dani bypassed the typical sixth grader relationship awkwardness and strode about school confidently.  When together, they seemed blissfully happy, silly, yet calm.  It was if they had a secret.

Dani figured Jake and herself married, I guess, as she wrote “Dani Jackson” on all her papers, carefully accenting the dot of her “i” with a heart.  There were stories from other kids about the things they did behind closed doors – each week a new base, until all the kids accepted as truth that they had sex daily.  Jake and Dani neither confirmed nor denied these rumors.  There was power in the mystery.

When another student chanted that Dani was a “nasty girl” in the hallway, Dani smiled, dancing to the chant, clapping her hands, raising her smile to the ceiling.  Oddly, this is the moment I chose to define their relationship:  joy amongst adversity – haters, as they would say – a world too quickly closing in on them.

I hope it was as close to love as sixth graders can get.

8

He followed my rubric to a “t:”  3 paragraphs, 3 – 5 sentences each, a hook at the beginning, a thesis statement and a question at the end.

Do you have a hero?  I do.  My hero is my mom.  My mom is my hero for these three reasons.  She looks after me, if she didn’t who else would and she supports me.

The first reason my mom is my hero is she looks after me.  She buys me clothes and when those get old or not fresh, she buys me new clothes.  She cooks me food like hot dogs.

The second reason my mom is my hero is if she didn’t look after me, who else would?  My dad left.  If she didn’t look after me, I wouldn’t have nobody.

The final reason my mom is my hero is she supports me.  She goes to my football games.  She talks to me.  She is a good mom.

These are the three reasons my mom is my hero.  She means a lot to me.  Do you have a hero?

9

I got the call as I drove alone in my car on the way back to Charlotte from a Virginia wedding.  I recognized the number immediately as my school, and on account of it being Sunday, answered with trepidation.  I figured my sloppy paperwork had finally caught up to me and I was being fired.

“Hello?”

“Yes, Mr. Freeman, this is Mr. Carr.”  My principal.  He paused, the silence heavy and somber, even over the phone.  “I’m calling with bad news.  One of your students was shot last night at a party.   Jacob Jackson.  He died.  I wanted to let you know because there’s going to be a lot of media coverage.”

I thanked him, then winced (it was odd to thank him for such news) and turned off the music.  I drove in silence through the Blue Ridge Mountains, over bridges, through bypasses, onto exits, off exits, making my way south.  The car wheels cycled on the pavement like our feet had on the track’s asphalt.  In the silence, Jake’s laugh echoed.

10

He died in the back of a car, on his friend’s lap, blood draining from the left side of his head.  He died Dani’s boyfriend, thirteen, scared, waiting for an ambulance to come.

He died, according to rumors, repeating:  “Help me!  I don’t want to die.”

He died while the boy who shot him ran away amidst a crowd of hundreds in a parking lot.  Angry about something, this boy shot Jake.

11

I was fine, as fine as I could be, as the preacher spoke, able to look up and focus on his animated face.  But when the preacher called the family up to the front of the church to say a few words, as I watched his brother make his way to the microphone, his face shadowed under his baseball cap, the price tag still dangling in front of his right eye, I had to refocus on my shoes.

“I remember just days before, before all this,” his brother began, his mouth too close to the microphone, “when we were slap-boxing in the kitchen and Mama came in and told us to quit…”  The brother’s voice trailed off.  “I wish he was here now.”

Short.  Sweet.  What was there to say?

After these words, a choir sang “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” and I rose from my seat to sway along to the music, flanked by Ms. Wood and Rakieyah, closing my eyes and letting the sound envelop me.

Why should I feel discouraged?

Why should the shadows come?

Why should my heart feel lonely?

And long for heaven and home?

We sat.

His mother’s scream pierced through this moment.  The scream was high, then low, guttural, animalistic; the sound of millions of mothers who have buried their sons trapped in a mason jar and then released, history amplified into one horrifying pierce.  My loss was nothing compared to hers.

I sing because I’m happy
I sing because I’m free
His eye is on the sparrow
And I know He watches me

Really? Tell me how exactly He is watching over me, my sacrilegious thoughts raced, tell me how He watched over Jake.  Last I checked, someone doesn’t get shot when God is watching over them.  Tell me because I disagree.  I should have watched over Jake more because He most certainly did not.

Just when I thought the ceremony was about to be over, just when I was about to hurriedly walk to the car and finally let out the tears that were painfully resting behind my eyes, the preacher invited everyone for a final viewing.

“Come now, see Jake.  See Jake once more, once final time.  Come to the front, again,” the preacher said, his arms beckoning us forward.

“Unusual,” Ms. Wood remarked, as the crowd lazily got up and formed a new line.  Ms. Wood stood to join them.  She turned to me.  You coming? she said with her expression.

I refused to see the body twice.

The line made its way in time with the organ slowly through the church again, swaying and rocking, again, and then ultimately spitting kids out at the casket when they reached the front, again.  This time, they pulled their cell phones from deep within their pockets and snapped their final pictures.

12

Jake was dead, but he was everywhere.  In the weeks after Jake’s death and funeral,  the students wrote RIP Jake on every imaginable surface:  the desks, the walls, the bathroom stalls, their papers, the floor even. Where his name wasn’t, our sorrow was:  in my fingers as I tried to write on the board to begin class, in the slow dirge of adolescent feet tromping to the lunchroom, in the misted bottom lids of eyes.  In a sad twist of fate, the free newspaper subscriptions we had fought for delivered his image on the front page each day into our classrooms.  The headlines told the story with succinct accuracy:

“Thirteen-Year-Old Shot At Party”

“Mother of Murdered Teenager Asks Community for Information”

“Police Say Party Goers Know Identity of Killer”

“Killer Still Unknown”

How does one cope?  How does one teach sixth graders to cope?  I didn’t have the answers then and I don’t have the answers now.  That week and beyond, we coped in different ways:

“I’m mad at God because He could have taken anyone, but not Jake.  Someone else, please,” my student Montana said.  A part of me agreed.

“Sometimes, I just pretend that he’s sleeping, sleeping forever,” another student Stephanie added, clearly repeating some Lifetime special she’d recently viewed.  When she said this, I snapped at her and reminded her that, no, Jake was dead, which was different than sleeping, which we all knew.  I was snippy often.

We made cards to send to his family, full of platitudes, those words that you say because you think you’re supposed to.  We talked about our feelings, the lessons to be learned.  Clearly there was a silver lining.

I coped by drinking red wine at night and allowing myself the tears I fought during the day.  A part of me felt like a failure; it’s a teacher’s duty to protect his students, to teach them the ways of the world, to guide them from danger and hurt and, most certainly, death.  I had failed at this most basic responsibility.  I regretted the assumptions I made about Jake when I met him on paper.  I regretted not knowing what I never could have.

I wanted him back, wanted to see the curlicues in his hair, wanted to sign a bathroom pass with his name on it.  I was all I could bear to go through class each day, his empty seat a statue, a monument, a reminder that he, once more, would not pass sixth grade.

I coped by pretending, erasing the image of his black skin in the casket from my memory.   Then, one day, Dani approached me with a smirk on her face.

“Mr. Freeman, I have something to show you.”

“Ok.”  She pulled out her cell phone, perilously pulling it from the pockets of her too-tight jeans.  She pushed a few buttons and shoved it in my face, her eyes studying my face for reaction.

It was Jake, as I had only seen him once before.

Without words, I pushed the phone from my view, making it clear I was disgusted.  Dani, don’t you get it? I thought. Don’t you know?  I can’t see him like that.  I can’t see him like that because I’m holding on to something else.  I’m holding onto the idea of again, the idea that I signed him out to go to the bathroom way too long ago.  It’s getting really ridiculous actually, but he’s roaming those halls, those halls he roamed with you, smiling that smile, laughing that laugh.  Gizzards in hand, I can hear him chanting “You hear me?”

There are two types of people.  When asked to list their three Genie-granted wishes, the first type of person unfailingly responds, “Well, I know this sounds corny, but…world peace, definitely.”  The second kind of person, when proposed this same scenario, answers with something more interesting.  I, of course, count myself within this second type.  My answer?  I desperately want to change history to award Michelle Kwan a gold medal.

Michelle (or Shelly as I like to call her when I picture us gabbing on my couch in pajamas, Ben and Jerry’s in hand, watching Friends) burst onto the ice skating scene in 1994 when she qualified for the Olympics at the tender age of 13.  Her gold medal chase was deferred, however, as she was forced to give up her spot for Nancy “Why Me” Kerrigan, who had suffered a collapsible baton attack to her knee, a plot masterminded by fellow skater Tonya Harding.  Michelle handled the situation with a grace and poise; I, fully under Michelle’s spell, was outraged.  What I wouldn’t give for Harding’s henchmen to have given that knee one more good whack, I thought.

The real injustice, however, occurred in the 1998 Olympics.  Both Michelle and her main rival, fellow American Tara Lipinski, skated technically strong programs, completing triple jumps with ease and abundance.  Where Michelle differentiated herself, though, was in her artistry; Michelle’s movements were poetry on ice.  Lipinski’s so-called “artistry” was lost on me; however, as she resembled a clumsy toddler on faulty rollerskates.  A clear indication of Lipinski having made a deal with the devil, the judges award Kwan the silver, anointing Lipinski the new princess of skating.  Michelle handled the controversy with her characteristic grace.  I lost faith in humanity.

I was sure the 2002 Olympics would be Michelle’s greatest moment.  So sure was I that invited my two best friends, fellow Kwaniacs, to join me at my home to watch the big event.  As Michelle’s performance neared, we dined on egg rolls while listening to instrumental Asian music to honor Michelle’s heritage.  During her performance, we held tight to our homemade cardboard signs of encouragement (mine read “You Kwan Do It,” naturally), which ultimately dropped to the floor when Michelle fell on one of her jumps.  This fall – which was quite graceful, might I add – left just enough room for an unknown, American Sarah Hughes, to claim the gold.  Like Lipinski, Hughes’ artistry was akin to an overweight seal drunkenly rolling itself onto the beach.  I almost threw-up my eggroll as the “Star Spangled Banner” played for Hughes, with Michelle standing lower on the podium, a bronze medal hanging over her heart.  At this point, not only was my faith in humanity shot, my belief in justice was destroyed.

The final straw was 2006.  Michelle, an elder stateswoman at 26, was once again scheduled to compete.  Even to me, her biggest fan, her skating wasn’t what it once had been.  But, I held out the hope that the fluke mishaps of the previous three Olympics would somehow be righted.  Alas, Michelle suffered a groin injury, of all things, during her first practice at the Olympics.  She exited the competition, stating that she “respected the Olympics too much to compete.”  This was a dark time for me, characterized by binge drinking and long, anguished journal entries.  Why God, why have you done this to Michelle, I asked.  I would have gladly suffered the groin injury instead.

Why did this matter so dearly to me, you ask?  In my worldview, a country’s worth is judged by a simple criterion – their ability to compete in the Olympics, specifically the Women’s All-Around Gymnastics and Women’s Figure Skating competitions.  How I envy China with their government run gymnastics and figure skating camps, their power to drag unsuspecting young girls from their family homes, and force them into ten-hour daily practice sessions.  Viva Communism, I say, if it means more gold hanging around the necks of these chosen prepubescent girls.

But, you might wonder, didn’t Michelle’s losses nonetheless result in victories for other Americans?  Yes, they did – but not the right Americans.  It’s not enough to just win gold, the winner also needs to be the most beautiful, virtuous and graceful competitor.  Michelle is, was, will always be, this person.  I’ve even entertained the idea that foreign judges awarded Lipinski and Hughes the gold in order to broadcast slightly homely images of America to the world.  It’s a controversial theory, but one that I think needs to be investigated.

Hope remains.  Internet stalking/research, suggests Michelle is now continuing her graduate studies at Tufts University, which means she is, at most, 10 miles from my home in Cambridge.  I’ve entertained the thought of roaming Tufts’ campus, homemade gold medal in pocket, to bestow on Michelle.  Perhaps this is Michelle’s Genie-granted wish, too.  Most likely though?  I bet Michelle would wish I could let it go.

1.  Dominique

Lots of people be saying he’s a homo.  One day I flat out asked him.

“Is you gay?” I said.

He said no, but man, you could tell he was probably lying.  Can’t blame him though – I know some cats who would jump him in the hallway if they heard he was gay.  Or maybe wait out in the parking lot after school, in those woods where we go to smoke up, and jump him right before he got in his car.  Bam, bam, bam.  That would be it.  Bust his nose, leave him on the pavement, crying like a bitch.  Man:

That

would

be

something.

Sometimes, I think he’s looking at, you know, my junk.  Always telling me to pull my pants up  But yesterday I could have sworn I seen him looking at Dequanda’s boobs.  The way I know is that I was looking at them too, and then I looked up for a second ‘cause I was getting all hot and I seen that his eyes were looking at the same thing.  I’m like, no way – Mr. Freeman looking at ‘Quanda’s boobs!

Wonder if he seen how the right one is just a little bit bigger than the left.  They lopsided.

2.  Crump

I like to jump on Mr. Freeman.  It’s the best when he’s down the hall a ways and I can run and then – bam – wrap my arms around his shoulders.  He pretends like it isn’t ok, but he likes it.

Just like when we go outside in the afternoons and yell at all the kids and tell ‘em to get on the bus.  One time, I stole the loud-machine from him and yelled:  “Get on the bus you evil children!”  He stole it back from me real quick – he’s the quickest of all the teachers here – but he was smiling when he did it.  He said only teachers, not sixth graders, get to yell in the loud-machine.  But, I know he thinks those kids are evil too, but he can’t say it ‘cause he’s a teacher.

Just like when I told him ‘bout how I got in a fight with Ryan.

That

fat

bastard.

He said, “Crump, it’s not nice to call Ryan fat or that other word.”

I said, “But, he is fat – you’ve got to admit that.”

He didn’t say anything after that.

Mr. Freeman likes me even when I refuse to take my pills.  I don’t like how they make me feel and when I beg my mom not to take them she’ll tell me that it’s ok.  Ms. Sanders, my teacher, always says that she’d like my mom to have to teach me when I don’t take my pill, but we all know that’s silly.  My isn’t a teacher.

But, yeah, Mr. Freeman doesn’t seem to mind when I’m all wild and pulling branches off the trees on the bus lot and jumping on him and grabbing the loud-machine.  One day when I was ‘specially wild, he told me I needed to guard the fire hydrant.  So that’s what I did.  Sat right on top of it and told everyone that came near it to get away.

“Get away you evil children,” I said.  “This is my fire hydrant!”

They laughed.  So did Mr. Freeman.  It was funny.

I’m his favorite, I know it.

3.  Dequanda, Part One

At first, I thought I was his favorite.  He wouldn’t say that, but I knew he was thinking that in the back of his brain.  It’s like, I can just tell.  What do they call it?  A sick sense?  Like when I could tell that Dominique was crushing on me when – well, when I started getting my curves.

I remember the first day I stepped up in his classroom.  Thought, oh hell no, I’m in one of those retard classes.  Tre’von, Anthony, Michael, they was all there and ev’rybody knows they is stupid.  Olympia was there too; she’s not stupid, she just ain’t got no sense.  There’s a difference.

So anyway, I’m looking around and I’m not too happy that I’m in a retard class.  I got mostly D’s in sixth grade, but that’s because the teachers were mean.  I was not expecting this.  So I asked him:

“Is this one of those retard classes?”

You know what he did?  He looked me in the eye and he said no, this was a class for students who needed to be in a small class so they didn’t get distracted.  You know how he is, all proper like he’s in church or something.  Anyway, he said it like he meant it and I believed him that day.

For the first few months, we was cool.  What I liked about him – it’s weird saying this – he wouldn’t let me just, you know, slack or whatever.  All my other teachers, they just yell and roll they eyes when I tell them I forgot my homework or I don’t know how to do the work.  No, not Mr. Freeman.  He would tell me he knew I could do better, that he wanted me to do better, that it was important that I do better.  It was annoying a lot of the times, but I could tell he thought of me something special.

I wasn’t no retard to him.

4.  Michael

Mr. Freeman’s alright.  Lately, on Thursdays, he’s been letting me and Anthony stay with him after school.  He makes us practice reading words – hard words, long words like “thought” and “might” – the kind of words I be too embarrassed to even try in class ‘cause those fools would laugh at me.

Talking trash about how I’m a kindergartner or something.

Reading ain’t my thing even though I’m in seventh grade.  I’m good at basketball though; my mom says I’m gonna get my growth spurt any minute.  Says that by the end of eighth grade, I’mma be bigger than her.

Anyway, after school with Mr. Freeman on Thursdays, it’s just me and Ant, none of them other chaps, so I don’t mind trying hard words.  Mr. Freeman makes us read and we take breaks and we help him clean the room up a bit too.

Mostly, though, we just eat.  He’s got a stash of cookies – got ‘em from the Dollar Store, I can tell – that he keep in his desk.  He tells me and Ant that for every 30 minutes we practice reading, we can have two cookies.  But he doesn’t mean it.  When I beg, he’ll give me as many cookies as I want.  One time, I ate ten.  Went home and threw up.

Last Thursday, we were all done and my mom forgot to pick me up and wasn’t picking up her phone.  We waited for a bit but then Mr. Freeman said he could drive me home.  He’s got a silver car, and I wouldn’t say that it’s tight, but it ain’t broke either.  Anyway, we were driving along and my mind was drifting off – the medicine always starts to wear off right before dinner – and I kept thinking about my mom and my stepdad’s fight from the night ‘fore.

See, he was real angry and neither of them would tell me why.  Had me worried he was goin’ back to jail or my mom was pregnant again.  When I was in bed, I could hear them yellin’.  My mom kept saying she didn’t know where the pound went and he kept saying the pound was worth $300 and they had better motherfu – well, you know – find it.

My mom got me this pocket dictionary for my birthday because I can’t spell words, so that next morning I looked up pound. First thing come up was this:

pound

n.

1. Abbr. lb.

a. A unit of weight equal to 16 ounces (453.592 grams).

Now, I was thinking there was no way they would be mad if my mom lost a pound, you know, of her body  – she’s no thin woman, ‘specially since she had Ray – so, this couldn’t be the right definition.  Then, I was thinking that a pound is a place where they put dogs who don’t have homes, but my mom couldn’t have lost a dog pound.  We don’t even have a dog.  Been wanting a rottweiler.

Sitting in the car, I was thinking Mr. Freeman is a smart man and he would know what they were fighting about.

“What’s a pound?”  I said.

He did that thing where he scrunched his eyebrows and his dorky glasses – sorry, they is dorky – moved up and then down his nose.  “A pound, as in, weight?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t know.  See, my mom and stepdad were fighting last night, and they kept talking about how she lost some pound, and how it was worth $300.  They were really worried like this pound was real important.”

“Hmm…I don’t know Michael, that’s weird,” he said.  But, thing is – I know he was lying.  That’s the thing, Mr. Freeman lies sometimes, not ‘bout big stuff, but he’s a real bad liar.  I can’t really explain why, but you can just tell when the man is lying.

You can tell he ain’t ever been in the streets.

“Aw, come on, Mr. Freeman…tell me,” I said.  I figured if I begged him like I do for the cookies, he would tell me – he always caves.

“You should look it up in your pocket dictionary,” he said.  He loves that thing.

I told him I already had, told him my thoughts ‘bout the dog pound, all that.  I begged him to tell me, even told him that I knew that he knew.  Begged him real hard.  You know what?  He never did tell me.  Weird.

5. Dequanda, Part Two

Don’t think he ever figured out where all the Kleenex went.

See, middle of the year I started getting my curves.  Real fast.  But, problem was, one of them was a little bit bigger than the other.  I asked my mom about that, thinking I needed to get some implants or something and she said it was normal, but I don’t give a fuck about normal when I be looking like that.

I heard people were talking ‘bout my curves, too, and usually I like them to keep my name out their mouth, but I figured if it was my curves they were gonna talk about, that was ok.  But, then I got worried that someone would notice, you know, the difference, and I started freaking out.

I could  not

be the girl

with the lopsided boobs.

Believe that.  Anyway, most mornings before school, I would remember to stuff my bra with Kleenex from home, get them looking all right, but sometimes I would forget.  I am not right in the morning, I tell you that.

So, sometimes I would show up at school and I would be like, damn, I forgot.  So, when Mr. Freeman was in the boy’s bathroom yelling at them boys to get to class, I would grab ‘bout five or six Kleenex from his desk real quick and head to the bathroom.  Correct  myself.

He’d always real mad at me when I came back in ‘cause it would usually take a couple minutes.  He’d always say something about how it was important to get to class on time, that he’d seen me in the hallway, shit like that.  It kind of hurt that he was mad at me, but I didn’t have no choice.  Not like I could tell him what I was doing and not like I could just sit through class looking the way I was.

6. Him

One of these days I am just going to go off.  Ma says I can’t be hitting no teachers, but I don’t care.  Would love to see my fist hit his nose.  I think about that a lot during class, just shut off his yabbering and put that picture in my mind.

His nose.

My fist.

Blood.

The thing I can’t stand ‘bout Mr. Freeman is he pretends he cares one day and then backstabs you the next.  I remember at the beginning of the year when I was acting a fool and he called my Ma and told her he thought I was real smart, but I wouldn’t do well if I couldn’t get control of my behavior in class.

Control my behavior. Like my behavior is something I want to control.  I’m the baddest kid at Ransom and everybody knows that.  I’m not the baddest because I can’t help myself, I’m the baddest because that’s how I want to be.

Anyway, that night Mr. Freeman called, Ma told me she thought he sounded like a nice man; he might actually want to help me.  My Ma went to Ransom too and she know that place is a fucking hell hole.  I swear I could learn more if I just stayed home, smoked some dope and watched Springer and Maury.  Eat some cheeto’s.

So, the next day I go to class thinking he’s on my side; I’m sitting in my seat all nice and he tells us we’re learning about memory.  Goes on about how we’re all going to call each other by nicknames to prove some shit about how if you say something enough, you will remember it.  He tells us that we get to choose our own nicknames.  Everyone says their nickname – stupid shit like Tre Money and King – and finally it gets to me.

“Purple Haze,” I say.

You should have seen his face.  He’s so easy to get mad.  Man gets mad over the littlest thing.  One time, I swear he ‘bout had a heart attack when I took a pencil from the drawer in his desk.  Talking some shit about how that’s theft.  I told him if I was going to steal anything, it would be his wallet, which I knew was brown leather and he kept in his file cabinet, second drawer from the top.  Just needed to borrow a pencil to do some of the damn work he wanted.

Anyway, I say “Purple Haze” and then he goes on about how he knows what that means and how I need to pick another name.  I’m thinking it’s funny that he knows what weed is; man looks like he’s never even had a sip of alcohol in his life.

“What does ‘Purple Haze’ mean?” I say, smiling, acting all innocent.

He gets real red.  “It isn’t appropriate for this classroom,” he says.  He’s always using words like “appropriate,” breaking them up all choppy.

A

pro

pri

it

“I don’t know what it means,” I say.  “And, you told us we got to pick our names.  Now you’re telling me we don’t?  You a liar.”  At this point, all the guys are with me; they calling him a liar too.  He’s getting real red.  I know I’m white too, but I never get that red.  It’s so funny, for real.

Then, he comes over, puts his hand on my desk and leans over, giving me that “I’m serious face.”  Well, that’s when I went off.  Don’t like no man getting all close to me like that ‘cause of those things that happened with my dad, so I get up out of the chair and head to the door.

“If you walk out, I’m writing you up,” he says as I open the door.  Like I give a fuck ‘bout being written up.  I been suspended so many times from this place, I done lost count.  Vacation I call it.

Don’t really remember what I said next, but you can bet there were some cuss words.  Might have called him a cracker fag, something like that.  I hope it was good.  Anyway, the point is, I seen the referral he wrote, and he wrote “Student verbally threatened teacher.”  Now, that shit is a damn lie.  I may think about punching him all the time, but you better believe I never said I would do it.  Well, not that day at least.

Yup, that’s the thing I can’t stand about Mr. Freeman.  Calling home one night saying to my Ma that I’m all smart and shit; lying on me the next.

7. Anthony

Everyone else think I dumb.

I told Mr. Freeman when I am in the NFL I’mma do two things.

1. Buy my mom a house.
2. Buy him a house.

He told me I had to pass high school first.  I guess that why he say I can stay late on Thursdays.  Get my reading up so I can pass high school, go to the NFL, buy him a house.

His house won’t be big as hers.  She my mom and all.  He should get a nice one though.  At least a two car garage or something.

8. Quanique

Fuck yeah, I threw that pencil at him.  I don’t care what kind of dollars it is; I ain’t paying 7 dollars for no fuckin’ pencil.  7 dollars.  I mean come on.

Anyway, I threw the pencil at him and he’s starts going off, saying “’Nique, the pencil is free.”  Free? How is it free if it’s 7 dollars?  “It’s Freeman Store money,” he says, “fake money that you earn by doing good.  I bought the pencil using real money so that you could use fake money to get it and use it during class because you never bring a pencil to class.”  He’s saying this real uppity-like, like he offended I won’t buy his pencil.

“Well, I still ain’t paying 7 dollars,” I say.  My mama didn’t raise no fool.  He crazy if he bought that pencil for 7 dollars.

And that was that.

9.  Dequanda, Part Three

I was his favorite, and then I was his not-favorite.

The last day of school it was real, real, real hot.  The heat was broke.  Now, I don’t know ‘bout you, but I am a bitch when it is hot.  Like my mind can’t get a hold of itself or something.  But this day, I was a bitch and I was happy – summer was starting – so it was this weird feeling.  Hot and happy.

Anyway, ‘cause it was so hot and they was all worried about fights hap’ning we had to stay in our first block class all day – Mr. Freeman.  I was not happy ‘bout that ‘cause that was my class with all those retards, and Dominique too, and we had broken up that week.

For the

third

time.

So, I’ll admit, I was being a bit – how would Mr. Freeman put it – difficult. Was telling him he needed to do something ‘bout the heat.  Got a little mad when everyone voted for the movie I didn’t want to see.  When we was walking to lunch in our line, I just walked real fast and ‘head of ev’rybody, which Mr. Freeman just hates.  During lunch, I may have said a few F words, but he shouldn’t have been listening.

Anyway, on the way home from lunch he told me that he was going to send me home if I broke anymore rules.

I said, “You can’t send me home; it’s the last day.”  How he gon’ send me home?  Yeah right.  I thought he was joking.  I got up in his face a little bit, I’ll admit that, but, you’ve got to remember, it was hot.

He gets this calm look on his face.  He says, “Dequanda, I can surely send you home.”  All serious like and mean.  Please, I’m thinking, Mr. Freeman ain’t gonna send me home on the last day of school. That’s when I walked away and just waited at the door for ev’ryone to come back from lunch.

When they got back, he told me to pack up.  Told me he had called my mom on his cell phone and told her that I couldn’t handle myself and that someone needed to come pick me up.

I started to cry.  Don’t know why.  Probably because it was hot, but also maybe, well maybe just a little, because I was thinking ‘bout in the beginning of the year how I had thought I had been his favorite – someone’s favorite – and how much had changed.  But, mostly because I was hot.

“If you send me home, I’m not going to come visit you next year,” I said to him.  “I’m never going to talk to you again.”

You know what he said?

“And this would be a punishment how?”

It hurt then, but I laughed about it the next week.  It was the first time I’d ever heard Mr. Freeman tell it like it is, dish it.  Maybe he learned something from us too.

10. Malik

Sometimes, I wonder what his house is like.  Figure it has to be real nice since he’s so particular ‘bout how the classroom is.  He’s funny like that.  Doesn’t like anything to be on the floor, hates it when people write their names on the desk.  Says it’s vandalism.

Still don’t know what that means.

Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to live with him.  He says he’s a vege-something; don’t eat no meat.  Now, I don’t know how he stay alive, but I guess I could give that a try.  I bet his house is real quiet and peaceful like.  If I lived with him, he could help me with my homework every night.  But then people would say that my grades aren’t fair and all, seeing as how I’m living with the teacher.  I guess we could work all that out.

One time, when I was sleepy and a little teary in class, he told me I could talk to him ‘bout everything.  I almost told him.  Almost told him everything.  Said to myself that I was going to tell him everything – that stuff ‘bout my Dad being home after being locked-up and how things haven’t changed between him and my mom, that stuff ‘bout how I hear her crying at night – yup, I was going to tell him everything right after class.

Was gonna go up to him and say, “Mr. Freeman, I need to talk you.”  He would tell me to go to his office in the back of the class and then I would:

Tell

him

everything.

But, the bell rang and he was too busy telling Cleonna he was gonna call her mama that night ‘cause she didn’t do no work – didn’t even write her name – on the quiz.  So I didn’t tell him.

Bet his house is real nice, even if it don’t got no meat.

I’d rate CC a solid six on the cuteness scale – adorable, but not overwhelmingly so.  To CC’s credit, I’ve only seen her in internet images.  In these pictures, CC is six weeks old, her patches of white and grey striped fur a contrast against the solid brownish grey of her mother.  CC’s face has a square quality; her mother’s is triangular.  How can this be, the pictures begs.  Genetics allow for variances, even amongst immediate family – but this, this is too much – they don’t look like they could be cousins, let alone mother and daughter.

CC (short for Carbon Copy) is the world’s first cloned cat, born December 22, 2001.  Her creation was the work of Genetic Savings & Clone, a company that hoped to extend the revolutionary cloning technology previously reserved for barnyard mammals to pet owners willing to pay large sums to duplicate their favorite pet.

CC’s birth – and subsequent threat of widespread pet cloning –  was met with anger.  Why produce clones with so many animals in shelters?  Why the hefty price (upwards of $50,000) when that money could be used elsewhere?

The birth of Dolly, the sheep cloned in 1996, had already raised ethical qualms.  But, in Dolly’s defense, the cloning of farm animals could, at least, serve a practical purpose.  Cats serve no practical purpose, as much as pet lovers may argue a warm lap while watching a movie is useful.

I was amongst the naysayers when I learned of CC’s birth.  Cat cloning seemed a ludicrous, and indulgent endeavor.  Plus, couldn’t they have at least cloned a cat who was an undeniable 10 on the cuteness scale?

2

We weren’t looking for a cat.  Rather, my boyfriend Jaso, and I were looking for clothes at our favorite mall, as we were apt to do on weekdays when other students attended to pesky  “class” and “studying.”  In between stops at Filene’s Basement and the food court, a pet store distracted us.  Lined along the store’s window was a playpen in which orange kittens frolicked.  I love few things more than kittens; Jason is the same.  We wordlessly delayed lunch and entered.

“Are you looking to adopt or foster a pet?” a chunky cat-like woman inquired as we bee-lined to the kittens.

“No, I’m not…I’m about to graduate, actually,” I responded.  “Can I pet them anyway?”

I didn’t wait for her response as I flung myself to the playpen.  The kittens were cute – sevens by my estimation – but ordinary.  Probably eight weeks old, they ran to me as I poked my fingers through the wire, their oversized blue eyes meeting mine.

“Look at you, you cute kitties,” I cooed as I ran my fingertips along the fragile tops of their heads.  “Well, aren’t you just the sweetest things?  Yes, you are!” I give the evil-eye to parents who speak in baby-talk, but I can not contain myself when it comes to infant animals.

“You mentioned fostering,” Jason asked the cat-woman, cutting through my squeals.  “How does that work?”

“Well, I work for Palisades Animal Rescue,” the cat-woman began.  “The cats here are rescued from shelters when they are about to be euthanized.  .  We take them to our smaller shelter and bide them some time.  We’re always looking for foster parents until we can find them forever homes.”  She paused.  I have a theory that women who love cats were cats in past lives; this woman did little to refute this belief.   The cadence of her words can best be described as soft, furry and slightly anti-social:  catlike.

“I would just love to have this one for a couple weeks,” I offered while rubbing the belly of the largest kitten.  “Can we J, can we?” I said, turning to Jason, only to find him lingering at another cage behind me.

“No, we’re going to get this one,” he said, his hand gracing the head of a grey and white cat.  “This is an amazing cat.”  He said this with a finality and emphasis rare for his ADD personality.  I tore myself from my kittens and made my way to him.

“But, don’t you want to see a kitten grow?” I asked, looking at his cat.  She was full grown, but her face still held innocence.  She had a small white patch that looked like a milk drip centered under her mouth and astoundingly large white whiskers.  Her fur was mid-length, a classy dark gray.

“Alex, look at this cat.  She’s so loving!” The cat forcefully rubbed her throat against Jason’s fingers.  “I’m telling you, this is an amazing cat.”

“Well, there’s something I do need to tell you about Miss Smokey here,” the cat-woman said as she pointed to Jason’s cat.  “She has FIV.”

Jason pulled his hand back.  “FIV?”

“Feline AIDS, essentially.  If you have other cats at home, she could infect them.  Otherwise, you should be fine.  FIV is a lot like HIV – as long as the cat stays healthy, you wouldn’t notice it.”  The cat-lady explained the intricacies of FIV and revealed her name to be Anna.  As she spoke, I poked my fingers into Miss Smokey’s cage.  She was loving.  “Her previous shelter picked her up on the streets of Durham – amazing for such a sweet cat,” Anna continued.  Miss Smokey rubbed her throat against my hand.  Upon seeing the obvious bond that was being built, Anna asked,  “Are you sold?”

3

CC’s status as a clone was confirmed by independent DNA tests.  Her genetics are the same as the cat she was cloned from, Rainbow.  But, mysterious differences exist.  An AP article eloquently summarizes just how un-clonelike clones can actually be:

“Rainbow the cat is a typical calico with splotches of brown, tan and gold on white. CC… has a striped gray coat over white.  Rainbow is reserved. CC is curious and playful.
Rainbow is chunky. CC is sleek.”

The differences between Rainbow and CC are the physical manifestation of the endless nature versus nurture debate.  They may have the same DNA, but they don’t have the same life experiences (Rainbow had a typical upbringing; CC was raised in a sterile environment, without other cats and with limited human contact), thus, they are not – can not –  be the same cat.   As explained by Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president of the Humane Society “cloning does not lead to duplication.”

4

Within days of bringing Miss Smokey home, Jason and I did two things:

1. Changed her name to Kitty (this being Jason’s choice; his family dogs are named “Big Dog” and “Little Bit.”).
2. Decided we could not foster her.

Anna was thrilled when we let her know we wanted to adopt.

“Oh, I am so glad Miss Smokey has someplace to live forever,” she said over the phone.  “Can  you come to the mall again and fill out paperwork?”

I did just that – I had clothes to return as well, naturally – and as I signed papers stating I would never declaw Miss Smokey/Kitty or give her to a shelter, Anna slipped some secrets.  Notably, Palisade’s so-called-“shelter” was actually Anna’s home, and the “we” that rescued the cats was, in fact, just Anna.  Further, as much as Anna loved cats, she admitted all cats are not created equal.  She noted that Miss Smokey was “truly exceptional” while the orange kittens that had originally drawn me in were “stupid.”

5

CC found a forever home as well.  After several years in the laboratory, CC went home with Duane Kramer, the professor who helped clone her.  Because CC was raised in a sterile environment, Kramer had to be gradually introduce CC to her domestic environment, exposing her first to people and then to other cats.

Kramer’s efforts worked.  On December 13, 2006, Kramer announced CC had given birth to three healthy kittens.  Two resembled CC in both looks and temperament.  The third was the spitting image of Smokey, CC’s kitten-daddy.  They had given birth the natural way.

6

Cats are creatures of habit.  Kitty is no exception.  Each day she is pretty much the same and pretty much amazing:

Kitty wakes us each morning.  Some nights, she’ll sleep in our bed (curling her body so it resembles a perfectly round gray bathmat), but most nights she sleeps in a cardboard box in the guest bedroom.  I wake as I hear the faint pat of paws on the wood floor.  Next, the slow creak of our bedroom door as she slinks in.  At this point she always, always meows – loud, urgent and expressive.  Get up, she is saying, I miss you.

She launches herself onto the bed, running over Jason’s nearer body first, a traveler over mountain tops, then reaching my chest.  She pushes her forehead to my lips, demanding a kiss.  If I want to sleep more, she’ll rest on my chest, situating her body close to my neck, the hum of her engine-like hum reverberating over my chest.  If I’m ready to wake, she’ll follow me as I exit the bed and move to the living room, her tiny feet retracing my steps.

At this point, Kitty subtly demands food.  I dutifully feed her.  She never eats at this point.  Instead, she looks at the food, evaluates, and saves it for later.  Kitty is remarkably thin, in spite of the wet food we feed her twice daily and the bountiful amount of dry food we keep available at all times.

The rest of the morning, Kitty is my shadow, as she continues to follow me through my routine:  she is behind me as I make coffee; follows me to the closet as I pick my clothes;  greets me as I exit the shower.  As I leave, she perches on the couch near the front door, her raising her forehead for a goodbye kiss.  She is like a dog in her constant companionship – but smaller, less demanding and not requiring of walks or bathroom breaks.  Before Kitty, I was a steadfast “dog person,” but now I am convert.

When I return, Kitty is usually on the same spot on the couch.  Like me in the morning, the clank of shoes on the steps alerts her I am home.  As I open the door, she zones her bright green eyes to meet mine.  You’re home, they say, finally.

In the evenings, Kitty has one initiative:  lap time.  She is zealous in her quest, stalking me until I rest on the couch, my lap exposed as I extend my feet onto the ottoman.  Even Jason will admit that she prefers my lap – he claims it’s “warmer” for some reason – but I like to believe it’s because she loves me more.  On my lap, Kitty is content and asleep within minutes.

7

Around the time CC gave birth, Genetic Savings & Clone folded. Ultimately, the company was only successful in selling two kittens, and cited “unpredictable results” and a “weak market” among other reasons for their demise.  There are no other known cat cloning businesses in the Western Hemisphere.

8

To make another Kitty, we would have to replicate her DNA as well as her first year-and-a-half of life.  As proven by CC, the DNA part is possible.  It’s her childhood we will never be able to recreate.

Kitty was rescued from the streets of Durham (primarily known as the site of the infamous Duke lacrosse “rape.”)  During this hard-knock life Kitty presumably acquired FIV – by an attack from a vicious cat, I tell myself, rather than other, more lewd options – as well as her aversion to dogs and cars.  Perhaps this time period explains her obsession with eating live plants, gratitude for a safe bed and interest in empty cardboard boxes.

Her time at Palisades was also unique, as she was quarantined from the FIV negative cats, confined to a small space and with little chance to get Anna’s full attention.  This portion of her life explains her aversion to other cats and craving for constant affection.

As sad as it makes me to think of Kitty’s trials, I am grateful for them, as I recognize the difficulties of her kittyhood made her the amazing cat that she is today.  Without these experiences, I can not guarantee Kitty’s clone would be as loving or quirky.

9

In the wake of Genetic Savings & Close failure, little hope remains for cat owners.  At best, genetic banking exists.  This procedure is the preservation of genes in liquid nitrogren, which can be used at a later date should another cloning business arise.  Some cat owners, unable to pay the hefty price of initial DNA extraction and yearly “upkeep” fees have taken matters into their own hands, freezing clumps of fur, follicles intact, in their home freezers.

Last night, Jason woke me up.

“Quick Alex, look,” he said as I rolled over, “she’s going to jump from the dresser.”  As I opened my sluggish eyes, I saw Kitty hurl her petite body from the top of the nearby coat dresser.  In the air, she pushed her front legs forward as the wind pushed her fluffy fur backwards.  Her green with yellow flint eyes shown even in the dark of the night.  Her nimble feet landed with a soft plunk onto the comforter.

She meowed as if to say, wake up and play boys, I’m lonely.

“Kitty, come here,” I said, lifting my arms from under the sheets and grabbing her at the stomach.  “There we go sweetie,” I continued as I lifted her to me, my lips meeting her forehead.  “There we go.”

I made a mental note to clear some space in the freezer.