True Notebooks

by Mark Salzman

  13 / Played

  That Saturday as I waited for Mr. Granillo to open the door, I heard pounding on the windows. I could see boys in silhouette through the tinted glass waving at me and giving me the thumbs-up sign, but I could not make out the faces. I waved back; I was no longer the writing teacher guy, I was now the guy who’d played the Song About Mom. The heavy lock on the door turned and the door swung partly open. I greeted Mr. Granillo as usual and he said, “Sills wants to see you in his office before you start your class.”

  I crossed the dayroom and stood in the doorway to the office. Mr. Sills was sitting in his chair in the center of the room, snacking from a plate of corn chips with melted cheese on them. He looked at me, but his face offered no clue as to what he was thinking.

  “These kids don’t accept much,” he said. “But they liked what you did yesterday.”

  “I think tripping over the platform helped.”

  “Lots of people trip over things around here, it doesn’t mean they can hold the kids’ attention for half an hour. It was the way you talked to them that made the difference. I just thought you should know. The kids liked it.”

  “Thanks.”

  He straightened a pile of manila envelopes on the desk in front of him. “I want to know what’s the emphasis in your class? Are you improving their skills?”

  “I try to correct the obvious problems, but that’s not the main thing. I’m trying to build their confidence by giving them topics they want to write about.”

  “Like what?”

  Remembering that I had an extra copy of Kevin’s “Trip to the Museum” in my bag, I took it out and handed it to Mr. Sills. He read it slowly. When he finished, he looked behind me toward the hallway.

  “Granillo!”

  “Yeah, Sills?”

  “Get Jackson in here.”

  A few moments later Kevin appeared in the doorway to the office.

  “Come over here,” Mr. Sills ordered.

  Kevin walked to the side of the desk. Mr. Sills held the essay up so Kevin could see it. “Did you write this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “By yourself? This is in your own words?”

  Kevin nodded.

  Mr. Sills put it back down on his desk, looked it over one more time, then turned in his chair to face Kevin with his whole body.

  “This is a fine piece of writing right here,” he said, stabbing the page with his index finger.

  Kevin looked toward his feet.

  “I’m serious. Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy.”

  Kevin obeyed. With their eyes locked, Mr. Sills said, “You always know you had this kind of talent?”

  “No sir.”

  “Well, now you know. You stick with this, you understand?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Is the table in the library set up for your class?”

  “Not yet.”

  Mr. Sills threw his hands up in mock exasperation. “Well, don’t just stand there, Jackson—move your ass over there and get it set up.”

  Kevin smiled. “Yes sir.”

  Kevin left and Mr. Sills handed the essay back to me. “Well, don’t you just stand there either,” he said, waving me out of the office. “You got kids waitin’ on you.”

  When I entered the library, Francisco greeted me by thumping his chest with his fist, then extended it toward me so we could knock knuckles. “That was tight the other day, Mark! You were the bomb!”

  Patrick nodded. “Everybody was saying you were even better than Miss California.”

  “Miss California was here?”

  “Oh yeah,” Patrick said, feigning casualness. “She was cool and all, but kinda superficial.”

  Nathaniel laughed. “You’re just sore ’cause you didn’t get to touch her ass.”

  “No, but I did get to touch the singer’s ass. I was helping with the equipment and I made like I was moving the microphone and I managed to brush against it.”

  “What’d it feel like, homes?”

  “Kinda bony. I was disappointed, to be honest.”

  “Never mind about her bony ass, we’re talkin’ about Mark here. You were funny. Did you really piss your pants during a cello lesson?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Damn, that musta sucked! Why didn’t you just tell the teacher you needed to go?”

  “I was afraid of grown-ups when I was a kid. Weren’t you?”

  “Hell no! I used to laugh when teachers would yell at me.”

  “Weren’t you afraid of being punished?”

  “Naw, ’cause I knew they couldn’t touch me. Only my old man could make me scared.”

  “Was he strict?”

  Francisco gave a hollow laugh. “Strict is when you set rules and shit, right? Naw, my old man wasn’t strict or nothin’. He didn’t care what we did so long as we were around when he felt like kickin’ the shit out of somebody.” He looked over my shoulder and made a waving gesture to someone, summoning him to approach. I turned around and saw a heavyset Latino boy with severe acne shaking his head, not wanting to approach.

  “Hey Mark, I got a favor to ask,” Francisco said. “See that fool over there? His name is Martinez. He wants to join the class, but he’s kinda shy about asking. Can he join?”

  “Sure. Tell him to come on over.”

  “Hey fool,” Francisco yelled, “he said to get over here.”

  Martinez winced but stepped toward us. He had an awkward gait—poor kid, there was nothing graceful about him. I offered him my hand and he shook it. His hand was meaty and warm, almost feverish. “What’s your first name?” I asked.

  “Victor.”

  “Welcome to the class, Victor. Do you know how it works?”

  “You write what you feel, and you don’t gotta worry about spelling an’ shit?”

  “That’s right,” Francisco said. “In this class, you write from the heart. And you gotta work, homes. No fuckin’ around. But it’s cool, it ain’t like school, we could talk if we want to.”

  “Sounds good,” Victor said, sitting down next to Francisco.

  No sooner had I given him a pad of paper and a pencil than Jimmy Wu tapped me on the shoulder. “Somebody else told me he’s interested, too. Could I ask Sills to bring him out?”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Benny Wong.”

  “All right, but I think that’s as many as we can take.”

  “That’s cool.”

  Jimmy went over to the office and presented his request. Mr. Sills looked at me through the glass; I nodded to signal that it was all right by me. Mr. Sills seemed to consider it for a while, then said something to Mr. Granillo, who went to fetch my new student from his cell.

  He brought back the youngest-looking person I had ever seen in K/L unit—fifteen years old was my guess. Benny Wong had perfect skin, owlish wire-rimmed glasses, and a heartbreakingly studious expression. If not for the orange high-risk offender suit, I would have taken him for a tenth-grade science whiz.

  “You wanted Wong?” Mr. Granillo asked me.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Wong’s all right, sir, you won’t have any problems with him. I wish I could say the same for Martinez. I don’t know how he slipped in here.”

  Victor tried to look as inconspicuous as possible.

  “I’m gonna be watching you, Martinez. If I see you clowning around in here instead of working, I’ll yank your ass out.”

  As soon as Mr. Granillo had returned to the staff room, Victor grumbled, “Man, why’s he always riding me like that?”

  “ ’Cause you piss him off, homes.”

  “What’d I do? I didn’t do nothin’ to him.”

  Francisco laughed. “He seen you the other day, imitating the way that new staff walks. Remember?”

  Victor smiled, but his face reddened. “He saw that?”

  “Yeah, homes. You’re busted!” Francisco laughed again, then turned to me. “Martinez here is a clown. He can imitate anybody, he can crac
k you up all day.”

  “It’s not that I’m, like, tryin’a be cruel,” he said. “It’s just that there are some people who, as soon as I hear ’em talk or see ’em walk, I just know I can imitate ’em. And then I have to.”

  “Do the staff guy now,” Francisco suggested. Victor leapt up from his chair, but when I reminded him that Mr. Granillo was only thirty feet away, and was at that moment staring right at us, Victor blushed again and returned to his seat.

  “That’s why you’re always getting busted,” Benny Wong advised. “You don’t think before you act.”

  Victor glared at Benny and the other boys hooted.

  “Wooooong!”

  “Wong is always wight!”

  “Martinez, you gonna let Wong dis you like that?”

  “Excuse me, guys,” I said, already beginning to regret having admitted new members to the group. “Benny, do you know how the class works?”

  “I think so. It’s creative writing, right?”

  “Right. If there’s something you’d like to write about, feel free to do that. Otherwise I’ll suggest topics. The main point is to write about things that really interest you.”

  “Can we use the dictionary?”

  “Of course.”

  “How about the thesaurus?”

  More hooting. “Wooooong!”

  “Can we use the dictionary? How about spell check?”

  “What if I need a sharper pencil?”

  It didn’t take me long to figure out where Benny Wong stood in the juvenile hall pecking order. Being physically small and having delicate features was bad enough, but being a smarty-pants really doomed him. It was painful to watch him set himself up for hazing. Victor, on the other hand, must have suffered terribly because of his acne and blocky physique—he looked like a Latino version of Fred Flintstone— but he compensated for it by being a classic troublemaker/ clown.

  “Can I ask a question?” Victor asked. “Is your job being a musician or being a writer?”

  “I’m a writer by profession. Music is my hobby.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “So is writing easy for you?”

  It was the first time that any of the boys had asked about my life outside of juvenile hall. Delighted by the opportunity to talk about myself, I told him that writing was agony for me most of the time. All of the boys seemed interested by this confession; how could I do something every day that wasn’t enjoyable?

  “It’s enjoyable at the end, when I finish a book,” I said.

  “How long does it take to finish one?”

  “Well, I’ve been working on the one I’m writing now for three years.”

  Francisco looked horrified. “Three years? But you’re almost finished, right?”

  “No. I’m completely stuck.”

  “Wha’chu mean, stuck?” Kevin asked. “Like as in, you can’t think of nothin’ to write on?”

  “I know what I want to write, but it comes out all wrong. Or I can’t concentrate—my mind goes everywhere except where I want it to go.”

  “I know that feeling. I’m like that every day.”

  “Me too. Especially in school.”

  “Whaddya do when you can’t concentrate, Mark?”

  I shared my latest strategy with them: I had taken to wrapping a bathroom towel around my head and wearing stereo headphones over that to block out all unwanted sound.

  “Damn!”

  “That’s not all. I have two cats at home, and they like to sit on my lap when I work. That distracts me, too. I read somewhere that cats don’t like tinfoil, so I made a tinfoil skirt that I wear along with the towel and headphones.”

  “Oh shit!”

  “Damn. Do you ever feel like giving up?”

  I confessed to them what I had avoided telling even Duane: that for the past two years I had felt like giving up every day. Writing the book about the nun had turned into the worst experience of my life, and I saw no end in sight. I thought the boys would appreciate hearing that even someone like me—a published author, a married man, a free man—could feel discouraged, but it seemed to upset them, Francisco most of all. His eyebrow bunched up, his face darkened, and he said, “You’re gonna finish it. You gotta believe that.”

  “I said I feel like giving up, Francisco. But don’t worry, I won’t.”

  “You’re gonna finish it,” he repeated.

  “Yes,” I said, realizing my mistake. The boys wanted encouraging messages from me, not discouraging ones. “I will. And it will be worth all of the effort.”

  “OK, then,” he said, relaxing his expression.

  Kevin asked me what the topic was for the day. I suggested they write about Halloween.

  Patrick cursed. “Fuck Halloween! It was bullshit.”

  “Yeah. Just because some stupid motherfuckers got in a fight at school, they canceled the haunted house contest. We just sat in our rooms like always. Fuck the staff, man.”

  “I gotta suggestion for a topic,” Nathaniel said.

  Patrick rolled his eyes. “Let me guess: ‘I Am The Greatest—The Nathaniel Hall Story.’ ”

  “Actually, what I was thinking was: ‘I Am a Squinty Motherfucker,’ by Patrick Chumnikai.”

  I felt my stomach tighten. I did not want to lose control of the class on the very day Mr. Sills had finally paid me a compliment. “Enough, guys. What’s your idea, Nathaniel?”

  He reached into my bag and helped himself to a pencil and pad of paper, a clear challenge to my authority.

  “We need to write about life on the street,” he said. “The way it really is—the hard-core life that got us all here. I’m callin’ mine ‘That Life I Live. ’ ”

  Francisco shook his head. “I don’t live that life no more. I don’t got nothin’ to write on.”

  “So call it, ‘That Life I Lived,’ fool. Weren’t you just saying your old man used to beat the crap out of you? That may be normal for us, but it ain’t suppos’ta be—write on that. The way shit really is, not some Brady Bunch bullshit.”

  “Don’t disrespect the Brady Bunch, homes, I liked that shit. I’d fuck Marcia.”

  “All I’m sayin’ is, keep it real.”

  “I always keep it real, homes.”

  “So write it down, then.”

  With ten minutes left, Francisco and Benny were the only two still writing. As soon as Francisco finished, he slapped his pencil down and announced, “OK, I’m ready. Who reads first?”

  “Wong’s not done yet,” Jimmy said.

  “So the fuck what?”

  “We wait till everybody’s finished before we read. That’s the rule.”

  “We got almost no time left today. Wong can keep writing while we read, it’s no big deal.”

  If I made the group wait for Benny, it would only draw more negative attention to him. But if I allowed someone to read before Benny finished, I would appear to be letting Francisco run the class.

  “It’s OK,” Benny said, saving both himself and me. “I’m just checking for mistakes. You can go ahead and read.”

  “Then I’ll go first,” Francisco said. “I’m calling this one ‘The G-Ride.’ ”

  It was like around 8 p.m. and I was sitting in my house with my girl. All of a sudden my mom pulls up in the driveway, but as she was pulling up the car was making this loud, fucked-up ass noise. I walked to the porch and as I looked to the driveway, I seen my mom’s ’94 Thunderbird with the front end fucked up! The front lights were busted, the hood was dented from the front like it was a mountain, the whole front end was fiberglass so it was all cracked. All that was going on through my head was, “What the fuck is my dad gonna do to her?”

  As she walked towards me, I seen her face with a frown. Her eyes were watery, as if she wanted to cry. She was real shaky. When she got to the porch I asked her if she was OK? Then I asked her what the fuck did she do? It’s ’cause my father had just bought her that car. Luckily my father was working. He starts working at 7 p.m. and doesn’t get home until
7 a.m. So she was lucky, cause if my dad would have been there, he probably would of killed her.

  Well, she replied that she was OK. Then she told me what happened. She said that she was driving down the street and the car in front of her lights didn’t work so when he made a stop my mother didn’t see so by the time she pressed the brakes it was too late. All I was wondering was if my dad was going to believe her story. Then she said, “What are we going to do?” I replied, “What are YOU going to do, not WE.” But I felt bad. Then I told her that it was too late to go buy any parts. But she didn’t want my father to find out so I had to think harder. Then I remembered I had seen a few cars the same color as hers in an enemy neighborhood.

  I told her I would take care of it. She asked me what did I have in mind. I told her, “I’m going to help you so my dad won’t woop your ass.” Then I left and picked up two homies so they could help me. Half an hour later we returned with a brand-new car. We drove it to an alley and stripped it. Then we put my mom’s car together and it looked like new. So when my dad got home he didn’t even notice, so we lived happily ever after.

  Nathaniel scowled. “Happily ever after? What kinda fairy-tale shit is that?”

  “We did live happily ever after for a while. What the fuck do you know, Hall?”

  “You jacked somebody’s car and stripped it! Tell me you weren’t watchin’ your back for weeks after that, wonderin’ if you were gonna get busted. There is no happy ever after! Everything only gets worse! It’s like that thing, they got a word for it . . .” He made a twirling motion with his hand. “What you call that, when a situation goes round and round, like water getting flushed down a toilet?”

  “A vicious cycle,” Benny said.

  “That’s it. Wong—just for that, I won’t jack your lunch today like I was gonna.”

  I asked Francisco if he was ever caught for stealing the car.

  “No, but I confessed to God and I know he forgives me. Everybody makes mistakes.”

  “Mistakes?” Nathaniel blurted. “Who said anything about mistakes? You did the right thing! What you suppos’ta do when you just a boy, and your daddy beats on yo’ momma? You did what you had to do, it was no mistake.”