All Day

by Liza Jessie Peterson

  “And it sure would be nice to come home to some loving arms, but no, what do I have? I have my cat meowing, begging me for food. Maybe I should get a sugar daddy?” I’m whining and getting on my own nerves. Sun is patient.

  “Girl, if it was that easy, you would have already done it. Five minutes with one of those rich nig-nuts and you’d be cussing them out or yawning in their face. You can’t fake it. I know you. Relax. Just breathe. You’re on the right path. You’re doing important work. Trust the Creator has your back.”

  Sun always has a way of unruffling my feathers. She’s right. Compromising myself for money was never a consideration or option. I’m just working myself up into a tizzy talking crazy talk. Frustration and anger will do that. I’m angry that summer is over and I have to go back to grown-up world and work a full-time non-artist job. While I was initially grateful for the opportunity of steady, secure income, the rigid schedule I am now forced to face is making me a bit anxious and resentful. But as Sun rightfully reminded me, at least I am employed and rent will get paid. Sometimes I get so fixated on what I don’t have and what I want that I miss the small blessings right in front of my face.

  In order to get a good night’s sleep, I calculate that I have to be in bed by at least 9:00 p.m., because I have to be dressed and out of the house by 5:30 a.m. to be at Rikers Island by 7:30, ready for class at 7:50. This is such an adjustment. What in cockamamie hell have I signed up for? I lie wide awake in bed at 9:15 p.m., not the least bit tired or ready for sleep. Thoughts about my being able to pay my rent and the solitude of living without a roommate help reinforce the idea of this being an opportunity. Perspective is everything. I try to play Jedi mind tricks with myself to quell the overwhelming resistance to this absurd schedule and to calm my artist’s instinctual urge to act out, to run and not show up.

  I wake up starting my morning off with a prayer that will become my daily mantra: “Mother Father God, Infinite Great Spirit, NTR, show me what to teach, show me how to reach these children today, guide my words, use me as a tool to uplift and inspire. May your Light shine through me and as me.”

  School buses are not even on the road by the time I leave the house, and it’s still dark. The moon has slipped away, but night still hugs the sky. It’s so early that even the sun hasn’t begun to yawn and the birds aren’t singing. And it’s still too early to see kids trotting back to school with new book bags full of school supplies, donning new outfits and fresh hairdos. The kids I’m about to see are likely wearing the same underwear and clothes they were arrested in, wrinkled and musty.

  Facing this god-awful early morning schedule feels like I’m diving underwater, submerged in a world so far removed from my art that it’s beginning to threaten my self-esteem. This isn’t a three-week gig, sweetie. Naw, baby, you’re in it for the long haul, the entire school year. The three-week summer substitute stint was a measly warm-up, a light jog, in comparison to what I am about to face—a long-distance marathon. I was able to skate by and fluff with just my poetry and creative writing lessons over the summer, but now, today, next week, next month and all year, it’s the real deal, yo. I’ll be expected to teach a full-fledged pre-GED curriculum in all subjects. I begin to feel small. I signed up to do something I’m not sure I can even do and truly don’t want to do, but I’ve got crazy bills spilling out of my mailbox like an overstuffed mouth, with angry notices bulging, threatening to cut off this or that service. I don’t even open it, but I slap the box each time I walk by, hoping the bills will get swallowed up. I can run but can’t hide. My rent and past-due bills demand I be an adult and face the music: My art isn’t making the cut financially. That is a hard pill to swallow. Becoming a schoolteacher, at this stage in the game, means I have failed as an artist. Despite my hard work and sacrifice, my dream has eluded me. The unicorn tricked me; the dream was just a mirage.

  When Phil offered me the position I leaped because guaranteed income in a city where the rent is too damn high beats tenuous teaching-artist gigs that haven’t even been secured yet; secure known money trumps dice-roll money. Dammit, I’m an artist. I don’t want to teach full-time because it’s a commitment I fear will significantly reduce (and maybe even annihilate) my creative energy. But I also don’t want to fail the kids. I know that since I signed up for this I need to be the best teacher I can be and give the kids the best that I can offer. I take teaching our children seriously. Black and Latino kids need educators who care, particularly in a society where their lives are marginalized, criminalized, and rendered disposable. I feel a sense of obligation to show up in a way that will significantly empower them, even if my artist withers somewhat in the process. I suppose it’s the activist in me.

  Getting to the classroom is the challenge, but once I’m in, I commit. The kids keep me authentic; they bring out the nurturer in me. But what if I fall short and fail as a teacher, too? And what if the kids rebel, and what if I don’t reach them or make an impact? Then that makes me a double failure. Teacher failure. Artist failure. The ANTs—automatic negative thoughts—are beginning to run amok. There’s a lot of self-doubting chatter going on in this head of mine. I feel like curling up in my bed to cry and float in my river of self-pity, but I have to dash out of the house to be on time.

  Crazy butterflies dance in my stomach as I ride the subway to Queens Plaza, where I catch the Q100 express bus to Rikers. I see Mr. Davis, a fellow teacher on the island, who takes a seat next to me on the bus, temporarily diverting my anxiety as he gives me a warm Black nationalist greeting.

  “Hotep and good morning, my Black Nubian queen. Good to see you, sister!”

  I’m relieved to see a familiar face. Mr. Davis’s smile is warm and comforting. His caramel-colored face is heavily decorated with freckles and crowned by a short, sandy brown, almost red afro with a matching mustache. He’s a tall, slender man in his fifties with a potbelly camouflaged by his green-and-gold embroidered African dashiki. The way he talks and carries himself reminds me of my father and uncles whom I grew up with who fought against white supremacy in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. They were proud, strong men who experienced tsunamis of injustice, oppression, and racism and to this day refuse to be silent about it. Just like my father, Mr. Davis’s rage is palpable and justified, earned from history. My dad was a decorated World War II veteran who risked his life to serve this country and “protect our freedoms” only to return home and be spit upon and denied those very same “freedoms.”

  When GIs returned to the States from fighting in the South Pacific, the Red Cross welcomed them with coffee and donuts. When my father reached for a cup of coffee and a donut, the white Red Cross nurse snatched her tray away and said the coffee and donuts were for the white GIs, not niggers. After that sledgehammer, upper-cut punch in the face, my dad vowed he would never give blood to the Red Cross, even if his own mother’s life depended on it.

  “How was your summer?” I ask Mr. Davis.

  “My summer was too damn short! And I am certainly not enthused about waking up to come to this modern-day plantation where they have our brothers and sisters packed in here like slaves.” Mr. Davis keeps his fire stoked. “But while I am here, my Nubian sister, it is my duty and assignment to make sure I teach these young brothers in my class everything they need to know about who they really are. I teach them the true history of the Black man and not those European lies that have our people lost and downright ignorant.”

  “I know that’s right,” I reply.

  It’s too early for visiting hours, so the only people on this express bus to Rikers are other Board of Education and Department of Corrections employees. Mr. Davis takes pleasure in talking loud about Black history and the “miseducation of the Negro,” while signifying ’bout whitey. It certainly doesn’t take much to get Mr. Davis riled up, especially if he has an audience of white folks, the target of his ammunition.

  As soon as he notices a white employee glance toward him and shift uncomfortably, he gets a little louder. “You see, my sist
er, I teach the brothers the truth about who they really are. You know how the kids say ‘real recognize real’… Well, I keeps it real, sister. Can you imagine if I stood in class and taught our young brothers that Christopher Columbus discovered America? That’s ancestral blasphemy! Some of these teachers can’t teach because they were lied to their damn selves, so how can they teach our children when they don’t even know the truth of our history? We are the only people who let the sons and daughters of our former slave masters teach our babies. Now that’s something to think about.”

  The fire’s ablaze and he’s on a roll, despite it being 7:05 a.m. “Christopher Columbus was the original gangster. He was a true terrorist who killed thousands of Native Americans, brought over syphilis, and renamed the Caribbean Islands the West Indies because he thought he was in India! And these wicked people have a holiday for this stupid, diabolical man? Only thing good about Christopher Columbus is we get a day off the plantation for his ignorant ass. See, my sister, I teach our young brothers the truth, and they respect me for it.”

  I’m happy to bump into Mr. Davis on the bus before my first day as a full-time schoolteacher. He gives me a lightning bolt energy charge, putting a battery in my back, reminding me why it’s important to impart untold history and unpopular truths to urban kids, because they don’t know who they are. They lack knowledge of self, which is essential in shaping self-perception and behavior.

  My parents instilled in me a strong sense of pride and frequently spoke about the genius and superhuman resilience of Black people. They made sure that I grew up with a positive self-image, not only of myself but also of my race. My older cousin ran with the Black Panthers, and our living room was powwow central. I heard a lot. Mr. Davis reminded me of my power-to-the-people cousins. I love talking with old heads well versed in Black history, because they keep Black scholarship alive. If our children knew how great a legacy they come from, maybe the generational tides of self-hatred could begin to turn with them. Mr. Davis was giving me a refresher course on what I needed to bring to my class besides the mechanics of English. I had to bring them history and self-pride.

  Mr. Davis and I worked together, back in 2001, at Friends of Island Academy, a youth development reentry program for previously incarcerated adolescents. He taught the GED classes, and I wore many hats working primarily with the young women. The kids called me Sista Liza, and I was known for holding mini-cyphers * about Black history as I sought to impart wisdom on the young, misdirected, wayward warriors. My desk was full of unconventional history books by Black scholars. I was determined to wake as many sleeping giants as possible.

  Mr. Davis is exactly what I need this morning to temporarily quell my anxiety and reaffirm the warrior spirit in me, who, like him, is putting in work on the Underground Railroad with the youth.

  Mr. Davis continues his rant: “Did you know, in 1921, we had our very own Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the white devils burned our entire community to the ground in three hours? Murdering thousands of Black men, women, and children? Three hundred businesses, homes, schools, banks, and hospitals burned to the ground by treacherous crackers? Talk about terrorism.” He groans. “We know it quite well, my sister!”

  As we cross the bridge over troubled water the stench from the garbage and methane gas seeps from the landfill that Rikers sits on, surrounded by the East River. Sometimes I forget and naively look around at the other passengers on the bus to see if I can detect who farted. It smells like rotten eggs. Awful. There’s also a cluster of power plants to the left of the bridge, about a mile distance away from the island, that emit God only knows what kind of fumes and pollutants.

  The bus pulls up to the Perry Building, where several seagulls sit on top of the dingy blue and dirty white one-story structure. Mr. Davis brushes the cascade of crumbs off his lap from the egg-and-cheese roll he chomped on. He throws me the Black power fist as he speedily strides off into the sea of employees entering through the first security check point and turnstile. I flash my Board of Education ID to the obese, porcelain-faced CO at the control turnstile, who surprisingly offers a morning smile. I remember him from the summer. He’s usually stone-faced. I take the smiling CO’s warm gesture as a sign from the universe: It’s going to be all right.

  Visitors, lawyers, and other volunteers have to wait in line to get a temporary DOC visitor’s ID. They wait while the CO sitting behind the Plexiglas booth rummages through a jumbled folder stuffed with preapproved clearances that have been faxed over from headquarters. Sometimes people get turned away because someone somewhere in the rabbit hole of bureaucracy didn’t submit the paperwork in time or it got lost or the officer simply overlooked it. I zip on by that hassle and extra lucky for me I don’t have to take one of the old blue and orange rickety route buses that take employees to the various ten facilities across the 415-acre island. I can actually walk across the bus depot and parking lot that is conveniently directly across from my facility, RNDC (C-74). It’s always super-windy because of the East River a rock-toss distance away, and the loud roaring engines from the steady stream of airplanes descending and ascending to and from LaGuardia Airport directly to the right of the island is initially jarring but soon becomes like white noise. The barbed wire is both shiny and rusted; the building is two stories, low, wide, and gray. The scent of fresh-cut grass momentarily overpowers the toxic stench as several adult male inmates in bright neon orange jumpsuits are mowing the small strips of lawn outside the facility.

  Even though talking with Mr. Davis temporarily put me at ease and has me ready to charge into class with confidence, as soon as I enter the building, I feel a heavy lump in the pit of my stomach. Fear is dancing in my belly doing the cha-cha, shaking my colon and giving me gas. I look behind me; the coast is clear so I fart in the stairwell leading to the school floor.

  When I reach the school floor, I am informed that there are no students today because it’s classroom prep day. The day will be spent getting all of our class books in order and our classrooms set up. Nice! I let out an audible sigh of relief. I punch in and retrieve my class schedule from my mailbox. I read it and my stomach sinks again. I am expected to teach language arts, reading, writing, grammar, social studies, and science. I begin to have a mini panic attack, and the air around me suddenly gets thick. My heart feels abnormally heavy, and heat is coming over me. Sentence structure, grammar, social studies, and—oh God!—science. I feel inadequate and unprepared. I am terrified. How can I help these kids learn when I don’t know a thing about science? And social studies? Jesus. I barely remember what I learned back in college. Even though I know how to speak the King’s English and basic grammar rules, I’m not fit to teach the mechanics of it. I am totally out of my league. I am doomed. I haven’t even started and I already suck. I’m gonna fail; I’ll never make it past a week. The students need me in order to learn and advance in life, and I have no idea what the hell I’m doing! What I do know is that I’m drowning. Now I really feel like crying.

  The other teachers are happily and effortlessly loading up their carts with books for their classroom library, moving through the halls with ease. They sit in the morning staff meeting looking uber-relaxed and some even seem a little annoyed because they are clearly all veterans who know the drill and are bored by the monotony of this routine, first-day-back-to-school meeting. But not me. I’m trying to keep my click-it-on-get-the-money poker face, while shitting bricks, in over my head. When the meeting is over, I walk up to Ms. G. I think I might be sweating.

  “Hey, Ms. G,” I pant.

  “Hey, Ms. P!” she says all chippy.

  I let out a deep sigh and shake my head. She notices the gravity in my voice and sees the terror in my eyes. “What’s the matter, girl?”

  “I don’t even know where to begin. This is quite overwhelming. I don’t even know what books to get for my library. And I don’t know a lick about science.”

  I want to fall in her arms and sob, but I can’t.

  “Girl,
go get a cart and meet me in the resource supply room. I’ll show you what books I use. The first day is always daunting. It’s normal. You’ll be fine. Just breathe, girl. You did great over the summer. You got this.”

  I make an uncomfortable “yeah, right!” chuckle. I know she’s trying to help me, but she doesn’t know the degree of my fear.

  As Ms. G. guides me through the rows of semi-organized shelves while pointing out which books are best to have for my class, my shoulders slowly slide back down. She piles reading books, pre-GED textbooks for each subject, pencils, erasers, paper, posters, and a spanking-new CD player onto my cart. As I look with awe at this shiny new boom box, an instrument that could really help soothe my nerves with music therapy, Ms. G says, “Girl, don’t let them touch the radio, ’cause it will start arguments and wind up broke before you know it.”

  Ms. Harris, the gatekeeper of the teacher supply room, chimes in, loud and abrasive, “And you only get one for the year. If it breaks, that’s it. No more. And you best ration out the erasers, because I don’t have an unlimited supply, and since the rotten little criminals like to steal ’em and eat ’em like animals, I suggest you keep your erasers locked up.” She seems mean and needs electrolysis. Animals? I don’t like her for calling them that. She rubbed me the wrong way talking about the kids like they’re garbage.

  Ms. G adds her two cents regarding the classroom supplies, but she doesn’t bark like the grumpy billy-goat troll. “Oh yeah, keep your pens locked up too, and if they ask you to borrow a pen, get their ID card. When they return the pen, they get their ID back. No exceptions. Pens are a valuable commodity around here because they’ll sell ’em, and you only get a limited ration. Oh, and always, and I do mean always, keep your markers in sight. I keep mine in my ID pouch I wear around my neck. If one of those lil’ suckers gets a hold of one and starts tagging up the walls, you could get in deep trouble for that.”