by Sapphire
I bust out the room into the dim hall, the lightbulb dangling like it’s gonna drop grabs me for a second. Then I breathe in the last of this funky hole and break out. Out the front door and down the hall. It seems like by the time I exhale I’m on the street. Running! I’m fucking flying! On my way to school! I strike out down St Nicholas and don’t stop for air until I hit 135th Street. I turn on 135th Street, run past the old elementary school, the Jehovah’s Witness Church, the police station, YMCA. Everything’s a mistake, what was I doing there, wait’ll I tell Jaime and them about the roaches! I zip past the Schomburg, the whole shit there with all that dope shit because one mean old white lady told the wrong Puerto Rican he didn’t have nothing to be proud of. Spic, nigger, whatever he was, spent the rest of his life showing that shit up. That’s what I should have done to Brother Samuel’s ass when he raised his freak-ass eyebrow when I said African dance class. I shoulda said, Yeah, motherfucker, African, like the beginning of the world, motherfucker! But I just reacted childish. That’s probably why they feel they can pin a false rap on me now, like I can be the fall guy for someone else’s shit.
I turn on Fifth Avenue, slow down, look down the street at the bricks, concrete—St Ailanthus. Shit yeah! I ain’t crazy, this is where I’m supposed to be—school. Some kids are coming out the main entrance, firstgraders. Preemies, we call ’em. Brother Bill is the teacher for the little kids. He looks up from the preemies, who look like a bunch of penguins in their black vests and white shirts. He stares at me, glad to see me! All I can think is, where’s my Norton Reader and my loose-leaf binder? I don’t even have a pencil! Mrs Washington told me once, “How dare you come to my class without a pencil, talking about you serious about learning and you don’t even have a pencil!” I brush past the preemie penguins make me laugh to call them that, and Brother Bill, who turns and runs in the opposite direction from me. What’s up with him? I turn and run up the stairs, Room 206, 8B English Select! I sit down in my seat. Mrs Washington is looking at me stupid, but she’s not stupid. She’s a doctor, Brother John told me once, but not a medical doctor—an academic doctor. Her dissertation was on some of Shakespeare’s shit. We lucky to have her. She could be at some big university instead of here with us. Mrs Washington is standing in front the blackboard, which is green. She has on a gray skirt and a white blouse. In the front of the room in one corner is an American flag and opposite it in the other corner, white with a gold cross in the center, the St Ailanthus flag. Jaime turns and looks at me, his eyes scared. He mouths, Papi, without making no noise. I get open. Bobby Jackson is looking at me stupid, I stare him down. He turns around.
On the board is our work for the day:
1. Pre-class writing to be done in your notebook; take ten minutes to write . . .
2. Review your notes and prepare for a short quiz on . . .
3. Today is the last day to hand in the topic for your term paper.
Brother Bill, Brother John, and Brother Samuel are at the door just standing there like long white shadows in black robes, perfectly still, not moving even one little bit. More light than I ever seen is coming in through the window; light like paint spilling over everything, everyone—Mrs Washington, the boys, spilled over with light. It’s a circle of white light rising up all around us. I feel warm and good like I do when I’m dreaming.
Maybe I am dreaming, ’cause just above my head I think I see Hamlet, he looks like Kurt Cobain. He’s so beautiful. But his voice sounds like, just like my mother’s. He’s telling me something important, very important. But I can’t hear it because of stupid shit. J.J.! J.J.! LEAVE THE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY! What premises? That ain’t Hamlet. COME ON! NOW! UP AND OUT! What kinda shit is this? You’re really doing great stuff in English. AAAAHHHHHH! You’re HURTING ME! Hurting me! STOP twisting my arm! You hurting me! Brother John! Help me! Don’t! Don’t! Don’t let them! It’s an animal screaming, not me, ’cause only animals or girls scream that loud. AAHHH! My arm! Oh, oh God, my shoulder my fucking shoulder. Now a flash of red in front my eyes, then black, black. Falling. Everything black.
“WHERE AM I?”
“You’re in the emergency room at Harlem Hospital.” That’s Brother Samuel’s voice. It sounds flat like it’s cut out of paper and each word is floating through the air. A white square. Blank. I feel high.
“What’s wrong with me?” I whisper.
“That is just what I was going to ask you.”
GUY IS DRIVING SLOW. It’s gonna be dark soon. My shoulder is numb frozen, but whatever they pumped into me is starting to wear off already. I’m gonna be hurting soon. I haven’t even enjoyed the good feeling of riding in a car, which is something I almost never do, ’cause I know where I’m gonna end up. I’m thinking exactly that as the car pulls up in front the same dark heap of bricks I was at this morning. Shit! I don’t want to go back in there. I feel deep down sick. Deep. I see the nasty little white braids on her head like crawling insect larvae, the swollen dragging leg, greasy dress, and all I can think is, what is going on here, what the fuck is going on? I should be home, we’d be through with rec period, eating dinner, then homework. TV till 9:00 p.m., then bingo—bed! But I’m here.
I’m waiting on the driver to get out and come open the door for me. My shoulder is starting to get a tingling feeling like lots of ants is walking around in it, running up and down my arm, stingie stingie. Try to make’em disappear by closing my eyes, and the green and black linoleum appears swimming in my head and turns to a mass of teeny little green and black spiders teeming inside the paisley shapes. I’m still waiting for the driver to open the door, so I won’t get out. I won’t move. I will just sit here with these spiders and ants crawling over me. But the driver doesn’t move. He just sits there. I’m so tired, and the stuff they gave me for my arm—
I’m drifting off when the driver says, “You know what time it is?”
Huh? I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I know that voice, it’s Mr Lee! Janitor at St Ailanthus.
“You know what time it is?” he say again.
“Huh?” I say.
“You know which way is up, boy!”
He’s almost shouting, what’s with this gray head? He must be bugging, I don’t know what to say.
“Answer me, boy!”
Boy. Excuse me—
“Answer me!”
“I . . . I don’t know, Mr Lee. I don’t know whatchu mean.”
“You done did bad.” Done did bad. Mr Lee another nigger from the slave movies—yes sir, no sir. He even call the brothers at St Ailanthus “sir.” Yes sir, Brother John, sir.
“I ain’t did nothing!” I holler at his stupid ass. Then I remember him not looking at me like I’m shit when they call him to mop up the piss, urine—whatever on the floor after Brother Samuel attacked me.
“Don’t make no difference,” he says. “They say you did, and that’s how the bricks fell! Ain’ nothin’ you can do about it now. You kicked outta school. All the way out. You almost brought the police down on the place whether you did or not! So you back to your peoples—”
“What peoples! My people dead, man!”
“Well,” he said in his stupid country-sounding voice, “you tell me, sonny.”
“My name ain’t Sonny!”
Fed up with me, Mr Lee leans over the backseat to open the door. I say fast to stop him from putting me out, “My mother died when I was nine and my father when I was real little. I don’t know who my father was. I just know he’s dead. I’m an orphan,” I say to him, you know like duh, “that’s why I’m at St Ailanthus.”
“Was at St Ailanthus.”
What’s he talking about? He gotta know all this shit is some kinda joke or one of their weird behavior-changing modules or some shit. I know they gonna let me back in St Ailanthus. They probably just want me to say I’m sorry or some shit. Any minute Brother John’ll be here with his big ass talking about it’s all a mistake or I hope you learned your lesson this time, dude! and take me back.
“You may be an orphan, boy, but you got people! I don’t know why you was put in St Ailanthus. Maybe didn’t no one come forward when your mama died. But you got family, according to this, this here say you going to kin—grandma, sister, great-grand. Anyway, you here. So gone and git on wit’ it.”
Grand? What kind of shit is this fossil trying to run on me, and why? He don’t even know me, nothing about me. He oughta stop talking shit. I oughta . . . oughta . . . I don’t know what.
“Nobody never told you you had people?” It feels like there’s no oxygen or something in the car. I’m getting tireder and tireder! I wish Mr Lee would shut up and leave me alone. But I don’t want to be left alone. I want to go back home. I must have thought aloud, ’cause Mr Lee says, “You is home, sonny. You may not like it, but this is it, for the time being at least.”
My arm is really tingling now, feels like all these little ants have thorns on their feet. Feels like when this shit wears off it’s gonna hurt, hurt like fuck.
“You musta knowed your mama had a mama?”
“No,” I finally answer when I see that the question is not going to disappear but swirls in the air in a green and black paisley-patterned question mark teeming with teeny-weeny spiders.
TWO
I get out the car. It ’s almost dark. Streetlamps glowing like white pumpkins. Walking through broken glass, that ’s how I feel—shattered, fucking shattered. This ain’t spozed to be happening to me. It ’s not. I’m a good kid. This feels like a long time ago on 125th Street after my mother’s funeral and some stupid lady is telling me, You’re going to a foster home. When? In the morning. It was like the movies or cartoons, where the guy is standing and the trapdoor opens and he falls out from under his own feet screaming down to hell or someplace where he gets drowned. I don’t get life until I get to St Ailanthus. Now I’m standing here falling screaming through the world again.
“Come on, J.J.”
My arm feels weird, my stomach too. I ain’t going back in that foul house. I wanna run, but where, where I’m going? Kill myself? Jump in front a bus or some shit? Then it’s like I’m back in the cartoon again, but I’m through falling. The water’s in me. It’s over, I’m drowned. So what difference does it make?
“J.J.!”
OK, OK, get off my back. “I’m coming!”
“Well, come on. I’m goin’ up there witchu. Lord knows I don’t want to see you get in no more trouble.”
Feel like I’m disappearing with every step I take, like my bones radioactive, like in cartoons, glowing. A light is pouring out from inside me, like God. God! God or . . . or Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse riding, killing, kill Custard or Custer whatever that motherfucker’s name was. Ahhh! Shoot a arrow through your heart! Ahhh! Tomahawk your ass!
Whew! That shit’s crazy, man, I know it. Mad crazy! But I’m glad to get mad. Mad, I can feel my feet on the concrete. Mad, I remember a little boy thought he was a Indian, got hurt by other boys. I didn’t like that and I don’t like this. I don’t like being kicked out of school behind no motherfucking lying-ass kid! And the brothers? Liars! LIARS! Anybody ever know the shit they do! What Brother John and Brother Samuel did! Please! I’m just a kid, a boy!
I look at Mr Lee walking beside me, shuffle, shuffle. I’m glad I’m not old. What’s the use? Easier to kill old people. Old people so fucking mean. All they care about is theyself. Kids wouldn’t be so fucked up if it wasn’t for them. How could this be happening to me!
Mr Lee stops when we get in front the lady’s door. “Go on, now.” Like I’m spozed to knock. Hell no, I ain’t knocking on shit! Why should I? I hang my head down. I’m staring at the dirty floor. This is a big building, it looks like the blue-snot—turquoise, I guess you call it—painted hallway goes on almost to the next block.
“Must be nice to meet up with your folks after all this time. I seen it happen before. A kid be around a year or two, then they peoples get it together and come git ’em. Lucky thing to have happen.”
Lucky my butt! Draw a timeline of world events during Shakespeare’s lifetime, 1564–1616. What was happening in the Songhai in 1591 (hint: see, Africa in History by Basil Davidson), Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. What was the first Chinese dynasty to leave behind written records? Reread Gertrude’s account to the king of the killing of Polonius. Does it square with the facts? Compare what happened with her story. What for? Who gives a fuck? Creep is a slow imperceptible downslope movement of soil. Less than 25 precent of the earth’s surface can be used to grow crops.
Mr Lee knocks on the door. “I hopes they ain’ gone to bed.”
I’m looking at the splashes of turquoise paint the sloppy painter left on the floor, almost the same color as the swimming pool at City-Rec. Marijuana smoke coming from somewhere and around five feet away a puddle of strong-smelling piss.
“What time is it?”
“When you gonna learn how to say please, boy?”
“Please.” You know please, please, please. What does he want from me? Mr Lee knocks again.
Same old lady as before opens the door. Now what?
“Boy! Whar you was at?”
Whar you was at? I just stare at her. “Who are you?” Who does this bitch think she is calling me “boy”?
“Shit, you don’ know who I am, you don’ know who you is.”
Mr Lee shifts his weight from one big dirty work boot to the other, clears his throat. “Well, guess we’ll come in.”
“Whatchu want?” she spits out at Mr Lee.
“I jus’ want to get the boy settled in. I’m Mr Lee, the custodian—”
“Janitor!” She snorts.
“Custodian and night attendant down at the school.”
“I don’ know nothin’ ’bout no school.”
“Well, it’s been a long time, leastwise looking at these papers it’s been. Whatchu say your name was, ma’am?”
“I didn’t say. You go on ’n git outta here.”
“Naw, I ain’ gittin’ nowhere. I came here to drop the boy off wit’ certain people. If you ain’ the people, I’ll take him round to the Bureau of Child Welfare.”
“Oh, fo’ land’s sake, come in! Stretch yo’ eyeballs out yo’ head, see if I care.”
“Your name?”
“Toosie Johnston.”
I follow Mr Lee, who’s walking down the hall behind the lady. I feel grateful to him and shit but don’t know how to say it. She stops in front of the door of the room my stuff is in. Mr Lee pushes the door open, and I follow him in the room. The old lady stays out in the hall.
“Well,” he says, sticking his head out, slow jerking it around like a turtle. “This ain’t too bad. If it was me, I’d take a bucket of water and ammonia to it ’fore I lay my head down. But I done seen worse, this here is alright.”
Then he turns and walks out the room. I hear his footsteps on the creaky hall floor, the door open and close. I feel like running behind him and kicking his old ass down the stairs. But I’m tired beyond being alive. I feel like I died and am my own ghost instead of me. My suitcase is on the bed, I don’t remember leaving it open like that—oh, yeah, to get my brown bomber jacket out. Only I’m back here, no jacket. All this shit is wack! They wouldn’t do this shit to me if I was a girl or a Spanish or white kid. I sit down on the bed shaking my head. My arm is tingling needles and pins. Why they do that shit? Jumping on me twisting my arm like they never seen me before. I’m tired, I want to lay back on the bed, but I don’t let myself, I can’t. I gotta do something. Maybe Jaime gonna break me out, come find me. He’s my friend. Maybe everything gonna be the same. I could still go to dance class. That ain’t gotta change. We useta have so much fun. Like back in the day at my old elementary, we useta have mad fun. The guys always doing crazy shit. Steal stuff from the bodega, the fat Spanish guy be chasing us down the street, stomach going flop-flop. How come I can see the guys’ faces so clear, and I can’t see my mother’s face? My arm is burning now, aches. HURTS. I don’t want to cry. I can’t cry.
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br /> But I do cry, cry my arm burning, my mother dying I want my mommy Brother John I thought you was my friend. How could I be here, be sent here, in a stinky house with a woman if you was my friend? Why is my life happening like this? This like WHAP! Miss Lillie’s house, my ear singing, blood in my throat. Now what’s going on? Where’s my bomber jacket? I never got my black leather jacket back from Miss Lillie’s, none of my stuff. What is this shit! Why me? Why me! My head hurts, my arm hurts. I get up, fuck this shit. FUCK this shit! My head, my arm. I go to the mirror hurting. Look at myself. I see someone big tall dark almost pretty but like a man. Jaime say I look like Denzel Washington. I don’t know. I look like a man ’cept I ain’t got no beard. I got jeans, regular fit, not baggies, we not allowed to wear baggies, white T-shirt that’s dirty, and I’m crying. Tears is coming down my face. I don’t feel myself crying, but I see it. I am hurting. My head my head my mother my mother! You ain’t got no fuckin’ mother! SHUT UP! Your mother is a dope-addict ho died from AIDS! Na na nana naa naa! Batty Boy’s big head is floating in the mirror his long arms sticking out my black leather jacket turn into Brother Samuel pulling the black leather hood over his pink face. EEH EEEHH NO! NO! NOOO! Shut up fucking assholes! I see myself grab the sides of the mirror slam my head as hard as I can into the glass, breaking their faces. You ain’t got no mother. NO! NO! I ram my head into the mirror again so hard I hear the wood frame crack. A big shard of falling glass slices open my cheek before it falls and shatters on the floor, everything is blood and broken glass now but quiet, no voices. I fall down on the pile of broke glass and sob, like people in movies. Moan, like Hamlet.