All Day

by Liza Jessie Peterson

  Ms. Collins assures me that Shahteik won’t be a problem and will listen from here on out. I give him a mean, hard eye roll and let the bad penny back into my class. Her plea trumps my Poof. It’s smart to keep in good graces with the officers because you never know when you might need one. Battlefield politics.

  Christopher is a light-skinned kid with pink zits blooming on his cheeks like cherry blossoms. The acne snitches on his youth, holding space for a beard that’s not quite ready to grow. If it weren’t for the missing bottom tooth in the front of his grill, he’d have a Colgate smile with perfectly straight, milky white teeth. He’s built like a gladiator, tall and muscular, with broad grown-man shoulders and arms chiseled for the Gods… jailhouse guns. He walks with a body builder swagger and an arrogance that takes up too much space. This boy irks me. He never does work and talks all day, much like Shahteik. Barely moving his lips, he makes this strange guttural noise with his throat that sounds like a mangled swamp frog. It’s a stupid, aggravating game he likes to play with his voice. A fucking weirdo, this kid.

  “Christopher, please, stop making that noise. It’s very annoying,” I sternly demand.

  “I got you, miss,” he responds, and three minutes later, I hear him making that ugly sound just to grate my nerves and defy me.

  Nasty girl taught me all the lingo / While mama play bingo, she ride Mandingo… All of the kids are singing LL Cool J’s new song and keep repeating the word Mandingo, proud that they have learned a new word for dick and getting a kick out of saying it in front of me, thinking I have no idea what it means. About the third time I hear it, I have to let them know I know what it means and ask them to stop saying that word in front of me, out of respect. Telling them not to do something is, of course, registering in their rug rat brains to do it. Christopher keeps saying “Mandingo” over and over again in that weirdo frog voice, while pleading with the guys to tell him what Mandingo actually means. The Bosses get a kick out of him saying a word he doesn’t know the meaning of and making me mad for saying it.

  “Miss, what’s that word mean? Why you tripping over that word?” Christopher innocently asks.

  I hand him a dictionary and have him look it up.

  “Oh, that word’s in the dictionary? I thought it was slang,” he says, quickly flipping through the dictionary to relieve his suspense. The guys are cracking up as he spells the word aloud as he searches the dictionary.

  “Man, m-a-n… dingo” he says, sounding it out.

  “Miss, how you spell dingo?”

  The Bosses are on the floor, tears rolling down their face from laughing.

  “All right, all right, it’s not that funny, guys. He asked a legitimate question and that’s how you learn,” I say in my very Ms. Crabtree, teacherlike voice. I have to be extra clinical with this slippery slope of dick jokes.

  I continue, “That word has a historical literal meaning and a metaphorical meaning. So, once Christopher finds the literal meaning, then I’mma tell you the slang meaning.”

  I have Christopher read aloud the dictionary definition for Mandingo: a member of any of a number of peoples forming an extensive linguistic group in western Africa, inhabiting a large area of the upper Niger River valley.

  Then I tell him how it’s used as slang to imply a man’s large-sized reproductive anatomy.

  I may as well have said “dick,” the way they are snickering and carrying on as if they’re ten years old.

  “So, now that you know what it means and how it’s being used, please don’t use that word around me again.”

  “Okay, I got you, Ms. P,” Christopher says, leaning back in his desk, nodding his head in agreement just to get me out of his face. Two seconds later, when I turn my back, I hear “Mandingo” in that frog voice I hate, again! He’s testing me to see what I’ll do. He’s challenging me to a duel. He’s calling thug mama out for a fair one. He’s rubbing the genie in my lamp. I feel her stirring.

  I draw a line in the sand. “Christopher, I asked you not to say that. Do not use that word around me—it’s vulgar and disrespectful! Stop it right now. And stop doing that thing with your voice. It’s creepy!”

  He shakes his head in a dismissive chin-up nod that reads like, “Fuck you, miss,” making me want to slap him. My chest rises and falls slowly with the long, measured breath I take to keep my pressure from spiking. I turn my back to write on the board, and I hear “Mandingo.”

  I swing around in slow motion, a Neo-in-The-Matrix, full-body whirl, with my neck being the last thing to snap into alignment. It is a knee-jerk reflex that flings my thug mama genie out the lamp into a full-octave, West Philly, all-up-in-your-face, carazaay woman verbal fury. I am full throttle: extremely loud, intense, and temporarily unhinged. “I am sick and tired of your disrespect. I asked you five times—five times, Christopher—and I am not having this foolishness in my class. You haven’t done any work since you came to my class. You just run your mouth, make annoying noises like Kermit the damn Frog, and now you’re being totally disrespectful. You think you’re slick and you think I’m stupid, but don’t get it twisted, son! I am not stupid and I don’t play games with kids. You got to go—believe that! You gots to get up out of here, son. I am sick of your crap. Poof, poof, poof! Get him out of here now!” As I am screaming like a wild banshee, standing over him like a giant possessed mother, he cowers in his seat, stunned by my beast. He’s the incredible shrinking thug.

  I’m spraying him with electric shocks of Poof like a theatrical magician doing a magic trick, throwing invisible talcum powder from both of my hands with each “Poof” I shout. The CO next door runs into my room to assist, but when he sees me standing over Christopher with the wild look of homicide in my eye, he pauses to momentarily watch me deliver the spank before swiftly removing Christopher out of my class and from the jaws of her. Another CO approaches me. He asks if I need to take a minute, to go to the bathroom and calm down.

  “No, I don’t need to go to the damn bathroom!” I snap. I am still in my crazy thug mama trance. No filter. I stunned him, and the shocked look on his face reels me back into my body as I dial it back, quick.

  “Excuse me for that, officer. I’m good, thank you. Now that he’s out of my class, I’m good. He took it too far and I just snapped. I’m okay now, honest and truly, I’m okay. Thank you.” I’m slightly out of breath but deliver my response honey-toned with steam still seeping out from my nostrils.

  And then, like a scene from Sybil, without skipping a beat, I continue teaching the class like nothing happened. I do a 180-degree change of tone on them and go right into my Ms. Crabtree: “Now open your books to page forty-seven to verb tenses. A verb, as you remember, shows action or a state of being.” I’m speaking just as calmly as can be, but my vibe is layered with hot ice.

  I walk the aisles, making sure everyone is on task. As I walk past Tyquan, I pause, noticing he is not on the correct page. Sternly, I demand through clenched teeth, “Turn to page forty-seven, Tyquan; everyone should be on page forty-seven; let’s get this work in, gentlemen, that’s what we’re here for.” Quickly, Tyquan turns to page 47 as he shakes his head with a perplexed look on his face and says in a whisper, “Ms. P, you went extreme—I ain’t never see you get like that. Your eyes got real big and crazy-looking. You put on a show, Ms. P—that was a sure-nuff show. I ain’t messing with you. You kinda type throwed off.”

  Then Tyquan turns to his buddy, William. “Ms. P said turn to page 47, I’m turning to page 47, nigga, ya heard? Ms. P makes it caliente,* son!” His comment draws some chuckles and a few remarks like, “Word, son, Ms. P is kinda MO.† She turns it up.” Without looking at Tyquan or raising my voice, I address him in a slow, low monotone growl, “There are no niggas in my class, thank you. Maybe some fools, but no niggas.” I am still carrying the thug mama don’t-mess-with-me-today veneer and wielding it as I walk the aisles, demanding work.

  “My bad, Ms. P,” Tyquan says as he sits up straight, overexaggerating his compliance like an o
bedient soldier.

  I laugh to myself because that’s exactly what it was, a show. And that was exactly my point, to go overboard and get crazy in the eyes so they see I’m a little nuts and will flip on their asses. Mission accomplished. Shahteik may have been the first Poof I doled out, albeit unsuccessfully, but even his Poof couldn’t be matched by the one I just served. Today will go down in “The Legend of Ms. P’s Poof.”

  This should last a good few months. God willing, I can ride on this show until the end of the semester and keep thug mama genie tucked away in the lamp.

  After lunch, I don’t have my usual band of rug rats but, instead, there are fifteen new kids sitting in my room. I am clearly confused and I ask the strange group of students, “Excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude, but what are you gentlemen doing in my room?”

  “We ’bout to sign out,” says a Latino kid with frizzy cornrows in desperate need of being rebraided.

  Just then, Captain Blackwell walks in. “Hi, Ms. Peterson. We need to use your classroom to let the kids who don’t want to be here officially sign out of school. So, gentlemen”—she turns to address the small group of too-cool-for-school hooligans—“Ms. Peterson will hand out pencils and a yellow form for you to fill out. I will return to collect them and you will no longer be on the school floor, as you wished.”

  A few grumbles can be heard, prompting Captain Blackwell to bark, “Excuse me? Is there a problem? Because as I recall each one of you made it very clear that you didn’t want to be bothered with this school, either verbally or by your actions, so I should hear no complaints! Do I make myself clear, gentlemen?”

  The room is silent.

  “I asked a question! Do I make myself clear?” Captain Blackwell spikes the volume with agitated authority.

  “Yes, ma’am,” a few kids respond in unison, enough to satisfy the captain.

  Captain Blackwell goes on, “And if Ms. Peterson has to call me for anything, it’s going to be problems; I will make your life miserable, so let’s not play. Out of school is what you want, so out of school is what you get. Now, is there anyone in here who does not want to sign out, who has second thoughts?”

  There’s silence again.

  “Ms. Peterson, after they fill out the forms, can you collect them? I will be back in about twenty minutes to get the forms and take the guys back to their housing area, so the regular scheduled classes can continue.”

  “No problem, Captain Blackwell,” I assure her.

  Out of all the classes to be the “holding pen” for the sign-outs, why my class? Maybe word spread about my major Poof this morning, so my classroom seemed fitting to facilitate the official group Poof. I hand out the forms and sit at my desk as they quietly fill them out. An unfamiliar Latino CO enters my class and decides to address the group. “You guys had an opportunity for an education and you’re throwing your lives away; you’re really stupid for doing that.”

  I cringe because that word stupid makes me uncomfortable. Aside from nigger, stupid is the other word I don’t allow to be used in my class. I yell at my guys all the time, whenever I hear that word being thrown around, saying, “Nobody in here is stupid! You might be lazy but not stupid.” The term is condescending and affirms what they’ve been told for far too long. Deep down beneath the skin of indifference, that word has clipped many a sprouting wing. It’s a hammer to their spirit and debilitating. It’s a crippling mantra that plays on repeat in their subconscious. Too many of them believe it. I try to interrupt that tape as much as possible.

  As strongly as I feel about that word, I choose not to challenge his authority. Learning to pick your battles in this place is essential.

  The frizzy cornrowed Spanish kid passionately blurts out, “I got three felonies! What kind of job can I get? What’s the point of getting my GED when I got three felonies and can’t even get a city job?”

  I jump up out of my seat and leap to my feet like an evangelist catching the Holy Ghost, ready to run to the altar and testify. “That’s not true at all! You can have a full life and obtain employment even with felonies. My homeboy just came home from doing thirteen years upstate and got a good job, with benefits, working full-time supporting his family. And I have a former student of mine who was right here at Rikers as an adolescent just like you, and he did five years upstate for a gun charge in an adult penitentiary. He has a felony and just got hired. I have another friend of mine who just got a job teaching part-time and he has a felony too! So don’t tell me you can’t get a job with a felony when I personally know people who have felonies and are gainfully employed, brother. Don’t you believe that lie.”

  The Spanish CO chimes in, “My brother-in-law has his own cooling and heating business and makes forty-five dollars an hour and his son is eighteen years old working under him, making fifteen dollars an hour and doesn’t have his GED. He learned a trade, has a good business mind, and makes good money, my friend… good money.”

  The kid looks stunned. The room is quiet as the CO and I have their full, focused attention. Still on a roll, I continue, “My dear friend, my homie and mentor, a straight-up OG poet, Abiodun from the legendary Last Poets”—I grab his book from my desk, hold it up, and point to his picture—“this brother right here is a great writer, thinker, and revolutionary. When it comes to telling the raw truth about history, loving Black people, and writing poems about it, it doesn’t get much realer than this man. Years ago, he was sentenced to twelve years in prison for robbing and kidnapping a member of the Ku Klux Klan down South and did a quarter of his sentence. Who in here knows math? If he was sentenced to twelve years and did a quarter of his sentence, how many years did he actually do?”

  I have their minds working.

  A chubby dark-skinned kid with a tailored goatee and immaculate geometric cornrows yells out, “A quarter is four parts, so twelve divided by four is three. He did three years?”

  “You better know your math, son!” I exclaim, boosting his confidence. “Yes, he did three years. So sometimes it doesn’t matter what the judge says or what the lawyer says, because the Creator can change and adjust your life at any moment, if you believe.” I grab a marker and write a new Thought for the Day on the board, something that I am inspired to share in this heightened moment of what feels like church. I read it aloud:

  It’s never too late to become who you dream of becoming. All breakdowns are always followed by a breakthrough.

  “You can decide to change your life any second. Your breakthrough to greatness could happen in the next hour, the next day, the next week, next month, next year. Who knows?”

  I decide to lean on Malcolm again. “Look at Malcolm X. He said, ‘To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace.’ He went to prison an ignorant man. He went in a criminal and his breakthrough happened right in the belly of the beast. He self-educated himself and became a great man of tremendous power and influence. You have no idea what the Creator has in store for you! Malcolm had no idea what the Creator had in store for him when he was locked up. God started working on him when he was in total darkness at his lowest point, just like you. How you know God didn’t put you here for a reason, maybe to save your life, maybe to get you to slow down and get still and think about your future differently? Maybe to put you on a different path, just like what happened to Malcolm. You could be on the verge of your breakthrough right here, right in Rikers Island. God ain’t done with you yet! And my brother, when you do break through into your greatness, you have a responsibility to encourage someone else and to share your story—tell people how you did it, how you made it out of the cave, out of mental slavery!”

  Passionately I’m pointing and perspiring as I walk back and forth in front of the class like a preacher delivering the sermon. The kids are leaning forward with laser-focused attention. Their body language encourages me. I start to feel lightheaded and am suddenly aware of energy moving quickly through my body. It’s an electric sensation. I am catching the spirit. One kid is
leaning so far on the edge of his seat, it’s a wonder he doesn’t slip onto the floor. He has tears in his eyes as he embraces my words, shaking his head affirmatively as I speak. I am in a zone and he is riding the wave with me. He yells out from the congregation, “Nelson Mandela was in prison too. How many years did he do?”

  “He did twenty-seven years… twenty-seven years in prison! And once he was released, he became the president of South Africa, one of the most diabolical, racist countries on the planet next to America! So don’t tell me change can’t happen; don’t you sit up here talking to me about a damn felony when great men and great minds have come out of prison! Read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. That is mandatory reading for each and every one of you brothers sitting in here. That is your assignment from Ms. P, ya hear me?”

  Just then, Captain Blackwell returns and the guys are lined up to be escorted out. This is the last time they’ll be on this school floor. Several of them thank me and say they are going to read the book I assigned. The chubby dark-skinned kid with the fancy cornrows laments, “Damn, miss, I wish you was my teacher.”

  I tell him and the others as they walk out, “Just because you are signing out of school don’t sign off on your education. You don’t have to be sitting in a classroom to educate yourself. Don’t sign off on your life. Educate yourself and get that book.”

  Within a matter of seconds, they are out of my classroom and Poofed off the school floor for good. Captain Blackwell doubles back to say, “Ms. Peterson, I had to hurry up and get those guys out of your class before they changed their mind and demanded to be back in school… you were about to cause a mutiny.”

  We share a laugh. “Maybe they’ll pick up a book in their housing area and appreciate the value of school and not take opportunities for granted. Make ’em think about their actions and their life. That’s good for their asses.”