And Mr. Rivera looked like he was about to have an aneurysm.
Finally, the principal’s voice boomed over the PA system. He ordered us to report to our homerooms. Immediately. And immediately everyone paused—students and teachers. Then, like we’d all been trained, everyone, reluctantly, started filing out of the auditorium. The principal told us to remain in our homerooms until the final bell. Then he canceled all after-school sports and clubs. I already knew that a bunch of resident students would tell their parents that the METCO kids had started all of this, which would be a lie. Still, if our presentation was supposed to have turned down the dial on racism at Westburg, I would say it was an epic fail. Like, 100 percent.
32
Numb. That’s how I felt. The weather turned lousy, gray, sleeting, matching the entire day. On the way home I watched as the suburbs morphed into the packed concrete and the traffic of the city. My city. As we approached Forest Hills, I watched another pocket of Boston trickle by—even the snowbanks looked different here. In Westburg they looked clean and were piled up in neat little mountains, whereas here they looked like blobs of concrete midpour. A scrawny-looking older man scurried into the intersection at a stoplight to beg for change. His tattered cardboard sign read: haven’t eaten for two days. god bless you. A Black driver (female) argued with a white biker (male) about who was in the wrong lane. Finally the biker gave the lady the finger and rode away.
At my stop, instead of walking home, I shivered all the way to the park. It was empty except for one lone dude on a skateboard. An empty Fritos bag skittered past my feet. I didn’t feel like going home, even though, while it had stopped sleeting, the cold was beginning to creep into my bones in that way that takes forever to get rid of. Still, I sat down on a bench all tagged with graffiti and pulled out my purple notebook. Come to think of it, Dad’s the one who’d bought me the notebook, at Walgreens. It hadn’t even been on sale.
Where was he? At this exact moment. Thinking about me? My brothers? Mom? What if… What if he never saw us again? I thought about how he might never see these streets again. How who we are on paper apparently matters just as much as—no, who am I kidding? more than—who we are in person. And, as much as the presentation was a bomb with a capital B, we did it. We did it because we know we matter. So there was that, right? We did something. We tried.
And all of a sudden I was crying and writing, and my parents were always trying and would never give up, and I was crying and writing even when a couple more dudes on skateboards showed up. They started bumping their boards down the concrete steps, doing tricks and flips. The temperature seemed to drop minute by minute. My hands tingled with cold—I couldn’t write anymore. The dudes lasted awhile, but eventually even they left. The bench across from me was tagged up big-time, but for once I actually started reading it. Boston Strong and Mas Poesía, Menos Policía. Cool play on words, that last one. More poetry, less police. I liked it. It was like its own line of poetry, about poetry. Dad would have pointed that out—he always noticed things like that. Deep down I knew what he would say about the situation at school, as messed up as it was. He’d say, Try to make it better. Try harder.
* * *
Back at home, I couldn’t focus on my homework, so I started final-final touches for Sylvia’s Salon, which I’d put aside for a minute. I got kind of obsessed cutting little paper flowers and gluing them onto toothpicks, then sticking them into pots I’d made from shampoo caps. I wanted to finish the flowerpots before Mom came home with the boys. I should have been prepping dinner. But I couldn’t help it. I had to finish. And I did. Yes! Then my phone buzzed. Jade, asking me to come over.
* * *
“Dang, girl. This is dope,” I said, gazing around her bedroom.
The mural she had started weeks before was now complete. It was. She had painted an underwater scene, but it was also a city. Like, fish were swimming around skyscrapers, and seaweed spiraled around bus stop signs. How did her brain work like that?
“Thanks, Liliana.”
“No. Really. This is…”
Jade sat on her bed and hugged a pillow, a big grin on her face. Yeah, my girl had skills. “Anyway, what’s good with you?”
“Nothing. It’s just that this is so great. You are so talented, you know? But, well, things at school have gone to shit.”
“How?”
“Well, remember that assembly we went to the library for? We had it, today, and it started off okay, but then went south like, real quick. People throwing books and saying racist shit like ‘Build the wall’ and shit. It was bad.”
Jade gaped at me. “For real?”
“It was just so freaking frustrating. And I think the whole school is in trouble. I just wish there was something else I could do, you know?”
Jade didn’t respond, just stared at her mural, the strangest look in her eyes.
“I know that look,” I said. “What are you thinking?”
“Hold up. Gimme a second. What you just said. Liliana, I have an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, so, you should actually build one.”
Okay, Jade had lost it. “Uh, wanna run that by me one more time?”
“Just hear me out.…”
I did. And before I knew it, my mom was blowing up my phone asking where I was and if I had eaten. I begged her to let me stay at Jade’s until nine. She agreed. We spent the next couple of hours planning out the details. I guess when you’re at the bottom of the ocean, the only way to go is up.
33
In the morning I almost missed the bus. It was trash day and I forgot to bring the bins out last night, so I had to lug them out. My fingers ached from the cold; I think I dropped my gloves in the park. Ugh.
At school, the principal had taken away privileges like the frozen yogurt station in the cafeteria, and he stopped allowing hall passes. Oh, and he canceled the winter pep rally. But then he retracted the cancellation; apparently a parent stormed in and said it was “unacceptable” to cancel a positive school spirit event. But then he retracted that and said we’d reschedule it for early January.
Teachers were on edge, students barely made eye contact with one another, and the principal made an announcement that anyone caught “misbehaving” would be immediately suspended. Oh, and the administrators visited classrooms like every five seconds. I was washing my hands between classes when the vice principal came in and said, “Just checking.” Um… just checking what? Besides, it was a girls’ bathroom and he was not a girl. Whatever. Truth—every time I passed a white kid in a hall, I looked away. And I avoided Steve and Dustin like poison ivy. But at the same time, I was jazzed up—kind of thrumming. I’d been that way since I’d left Jade’s last night.
In study hall I asked Mrs. Davila if I could have a strip of blue bulletin board paper, long enough to cover the entire length of the wall by the cafeteria—like eight regular bulletin boards long.
“What’s it for?” she asked. She was unpacking a box of acrylic paints, sorting tubes by color.
I gave her my most angelic smile. “Can you just trust me on this one?”
She gave me an appraising look, like, How much trouble is a girl who makes miniatures going to cause, then nodded. “Yeah, I can. Here. Let me help you.”
On my way out I realized I’d forgotten a few key items. “Oh, can I also borrow some black markers? Oh, and some string and tape? And colored pencils?” I smiled the hundred-watt smile again. “Thank you so much!”
Next, I sent a group text to Genesis and Brianna and Holly, asking them to meet me after third period by the sneaker. The thrum dialed up when I saw them. “Guys! Listen. Okay, I have this idea. We’re going to flip this whole idea of a wall on its head. Like, let’s make an actual wall. We can have three sections, you know, with the three questions from the assembly thingy, and we can leave markers out and stuff, and this way everyone, or anyone who wants to, can participate. But I need your help.” I paused for a breath. They were all staring at me.
>
But I was on a mission, folks.
“So—who’s in?” I asked.
Holly actually teared up. “Me!”
I looked from Genesis to Brianna. Genesis said, “Man, I thought I talked fast! Yes, girl. I’m in.”
“Bri?” I asked.
“Hand me that tape!”
* * *
We met again at lunch. Holly and Genesis held the stream of paper, while Brianna and I taped it up then secured it down with more tape on the corners. I think it was the first time the three of them had actually hung out together all at once. Kinda crazy, given that they’d been in the same schools since like first grade. With the colored pencils, we drew in outlines of bricks around the edges so it would look like an actual wall. Holly came up with the idea of using different colors for the bricks. Done with that, we stepped back to take a look. Bri had added some shading to give it a more three-dimensional look. So we all did the same. Genesis took it up a notch with multicolor shading. Cool! Then I divided the wall into three sections. Across the top of each I wrote one of the following questions:
What is it that you want us to know about you?
What is it that you never want to hear again?
What can we do here at Westburg to help?
Bri announced that we had, yikes, only five minutes before the bell. We quickly tied string to the markers and taped them to the wall, the first bell ringing just as we finished. Holly reached for a marker.
“We’re good, Holly. Let’s go!” I said. Standing there when everyone flooded past on the way to their next class was not part of the plan.
“Hello,” Holly said with her signature sass. “I might have something to write, you know.”
“Oh. Right!” So I left her to it, starting down the hall with Genesis and Brianna.
But then Brianna stopped short. “Wait,” she said. “I have something to add too.”
“Fine. But hurry up!”
Brianna paused in front of the first question, then snatched up the marker and began scrawling. When she was done, she brushed at the corners of her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Nada,” Brianna said. “Vámonos.”
I glanced at what she had written.
I’m a girl and I like girls.
I looked at Holly and Genesis, then back at Brianna.
Genesis broke the ice. “Girl, tell us something we don’t know.”
And we all cracked up, even Brianna.
Then Genesis had her phone out, snapping pictures—close-ups of what had been written on the wall, then a panoramic of the wall itself. Two minutes later they were up on Instagram.
* * *
So I gotta admit, I was worried. What if no one took the wall seriously? What if they only wrote a bunch of racist crud and then it was in permanent marker? Or what if no one wrote anything at all? Which, as I thought about it, was just as bad. What if the principal flipped out over our making the wall in the first place?
I was going crazy, so after geometry, I took the long route to my next class and intentionally passed the wall. A cluster of girls stood in front of it, each with a marker in hand. A tall guy hovered behind them, as if in line for movie tickets or something. I inched closer, and my heart gave a little leap: The wall was already filling up! I started to read the bricks, bracing myself. I mean, there were going to be a few nasty ones, obvs. Right?
Right. There was one that read WTF. I am the victim of reverse-racism, and another said, I don’t see color, honestly, so I don’t know what the big deal is about race. I scanned the wall for more obnoxious comments. But—that was it.
Calmer now, I slowed down, took it all in.
What is it that you want us to know about you?
I am half-Colombian but no one knows that.
Just because I’m white doesn’t mean I am a white supremacist.
I’m too embarrassed to share.
I wish Black kids were more… approachable. Sometimes I just don’t know what to say to them.
My parents forbid me to date Black guys.
My dad is a recovering alcoholic.
My dad isn’t my “real” dad.
I don’t know what to do to help. What can I do? Like, just me?
I am Jewish and sometimes that’s hard in this town that has like, 10 Jews.
Some people had even put up Post-its. Maybe they hadn’t wanted anyone to see what they were writing? But, still, props.
I am Chinese and I suck at math.
I am gay.
I am gay too.
I wish there were more Muslims at this school.
What is it that you never want to hear again?
You’re gay.
You’ll only get into Harvard because your dad teaches there.
You must be rich.
Where are you from?
If a girl has sex, she’s a slut. I’m not a slut!!!
Bitch.
Loser.
What are you?
Where are you really from?
You must have gotten a perfect score on the SAT. (I actually had an anxiety attack the night before and never took it.)
Spic.
White boy.
Can I borrow some money?
And finally,
What can we do here at Westburg to help?
Actually have conversations about race, like in class and stuff and not just at random assemblies.
Hire more teachers of color.
Maybe have a student-led Diversity Day conference like with speakers? My old school had one and it was cool.
Field trips to inner-city Boston.
Grow the METCO program.
Add a work-study program? For all kids who might need it.
Definitely bring in guest speakers (like Beyoncé)!
Okay, so some of these ideas weren’t totally realistic, but still.
* * *
Eventually Mr. Rivera heard who had put up the wall. (Bet Mrs. Davila had something to do with that.) He congratulated us and said he was going to let the principal know about what we’d done. But we actually asked him not to—we wanted the whole thing to remain anonymous. For the rest of the day, kids continued adding stuff. I could tell that teachers added stuff too, because I doubted teenagers would come up with Seek out professional development opportunities to raise cultural competency. It was cool, actually, that everyone was participating. Look, I’m not saying that after this project everything went smoothly and that Westburg became a national model for diversity or whatever, but… it was something.
* * *
Later, in Creative Writing, when Mrs. Grew wrote in a blue Expo marker on the board, Write about a neighbor from your childhood, I just couldn’t hold back. I was going to write about people from my neighborhood, and I was going to share. No joke. Maybe I’d write about Jorge, the forty-year-old dude who lived with his mom in B-3 in my apartment building. Or maybe I’d write about Señora Luz, who gave every kid on the street school supplies in September. Markers and everything. Crayola markers, not the cheap kind from the Dollar Store. (Those markers ran out after coloring like two pictures.) Anyway, maybe I’d write about my dentist on Centre Street, and share his stories about working in the Dominican Republic, how one time he had to rip a loose tooth from a baby who’d been born with a full set of teeth, or the time a notorious army general came to see him about a throbbing, stinking rotten tooth, and the dentist pulled it without anesthesia. I was getting amped just thinking about all the possibilities.
So I wrote. And I wrote and wrote and wrote. When Mrs. Grew asked for volunteers to share, I raised my hand high. First hand up, thank you very much. Participation! Even Rayshawn stared. And stop the presses, Mrs. Grew called on me. So I read. I read about the people in my Boston neighborhood, and how no, not all of them were drug addicts or in a gang. In fact, most of them weren’t. In fact, only one was a drug addict, and she was mad funny. I mean, sometimes we teased her because she’d wear snow boots in the summer and sandals i
n the winter. So after I shared, my classmates clapped and Mrs. Grew wrote something down on her clipboard.
After class I pulled out my rewrite of the trip essay and handed it to Mrs. Grew. It’d been in my bag for a minute, and I kept putting off giving it to her because I didn’t want her to tell me it was too late to change the grade. But that day, right then, I didn’t care. Mrs. Grew’s face—one-third shock, one-third pleased, and one-third curious—was lit. Then Paula came up to me to say she really liked what I’d read. And Jeremy D. tapped me on the back—a little too hard, but I let that slide. On the bus ride home I was so psyched that I took a picture of what I’d written and posted it on Instagram. And no lie, by the time I got to Jamaica Plain, I had seventy-three notifications, including twelve reposts! My first thought: Dad would be proud. My second thought: Rayshawn is one of those who “liked” me! Truth—okay, maybe my first and second thoughts were in a different order. MAY-be. Still, I couldn’t stop refreshing the page. So much so that, boom—my phone went dead. And yeah, you know that the minute I got home, I was going to charge my phone and check the page again.
34
Walking up to our building, I saw neon Christmas lights blinking on and off in the apartment window above ours—someone must have just put them up. I also noticed that the trash bins had already been returned to their spot in the side yard. No way my brothers would have done this. Their chores amounted to putting their clean clothes away or stripping the sheets off their beds.
I swore I could hear Mom upstairs, all loud. Wait—was she… laughing? She must have been on the phone. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard her laugh in a minute. In fact… not since… Dad!
Don't Ask Me Where I'm From Page 22