All Day

by Liza Jessie Peterson

  Another officer comes into my room and shouts like it’s boot camp. “Everybody line up, no talking at all! If I hear your voice, it’s gonna be problems! And right about now, you don’t want it to be any more problems, ’cause it ain’t gonna be pretty. So line the fuck up and shut the fuck up!”

  One of the boys sucks his teeth. The grisly officer prowls the line, stopping in front of Tyrone, who’s at the end. I silently hail Mary. He turns away from Tyrone and spits acid at no one in particular: “Did I fucking hear something? Somebody got a goddamn problem? Whoever wants to be the big guy, speak now or, like I said, shut the fuck up!” He’s daring them, baiting a wise guy. Nobody squeaks or peeps. Church mice.

  The kids file out in height order, hands clasped behind their backs; they already know the drill without having to be told. I collapse into my chair, sitting at my desk, dumbfounded and in a daze. My solar plexus is throbbing. I witnessed pure savagery, bloody pandemonium, and mayhem. I work in a jungle. I’m in shock and too shook to cry. I remember my first funeral when I was seventeen years old—it was my mother’s. I stood in front of the open casket and froze. I didn’t cry, I didn’t move, I didn’t breathe. I was a petrified tree. Paralyzed like I am now. I probably need smelling salts like they gave me then.

  Killa walks by my room with his noisy cart and pokes his head in. “You okay, sis?”

  I shake my head “no” and whimper, “What. Happened?”

  Killa steps in and whispers the scoop. “I was teaching in the room right next door to the altercation. You know whose room it was, don’t you?”

  “No, who?”

  “Your friend, Little Miss Muffet,” he says as he tilts his head, looking at me sideways. I can’t even muster a reply; I just shake my head in pain and disgust. He goes on. “She can’t control her class and the guys don’t respect her. So she apparently told the principal, because he comes to her class to lecture the guys about respecting her—”

  I cut him off. “The principal? Why the fuck she call the principal? Isn’t that what the officers are here for? The fuck can the principal do?”

  “I know, sis, who you telling? But she doesn’t talk to nobody, not even the officers, so I guess she figured she’d go to Mr. White Man who hired her. She didn’t want to deal with the officers.”

  Rage is boiling inside me. “Yeah, but you have to deal with the officers. And you better develop some type of rapport with the COs, ’cause this is their house. Oooh, now I really wanna fight her. I told you I ain’t like that bitch!”

  “I feel you, sis. So the principal is lecturing the kids in her class about respecting her and one of the guys pops off at the mouth, disrespecting Phil. So King, who happened to be in the class, goes to pull the kid out of class and the kid swings on King, talking ’bout, ‘Don’t fucking touch me.’ He just went off on King for no reason. It was so strange, so out of character.”

  Just then, an officer we know walks by and tells Killa he can’t keep his cart in the hallway. Even though there aren’t any kids on the school floor at this point, everybody is on edge. Killa obliges; he bounces out of my room with the quickness. “I’ll talk to you later, Ms. P. Hold your head and try not to let this place get to you. You’re an artist first, remember that.”

  As I hear his cart squeak down the hall, I lean back in my seat, taking deep breaths in through my nose, out through my mouth, to slow my heart rate and try not to cry. I fight it but the salt water wins, spilling out against my will, and a stream of hot tears races down my face.

  CHAPTER NINE

  This Is Some Bullshit

  Thought for the Day: What you focus on expands. Your thoughts become things, so choose the good ones. In order to achieve it, you first have to see it. Again, what you focus on expands, so focus on your dreams!

  —AUTHOR UNKNOWN

  I pray myself out of bed, again. “Mother Father God, Infinite Great Spirit NTR, and guardian angels of Light, show me what to teach, show me how to reach these children today. Protect my boys. Open the way for the divine design of my life to reveal itself to me. I’m ready for change. I need a breakthrough. Show me what I need to do. Thank you for abundant blessings and for my divine perfect health. Tua NTR, Amen.” This too-early-in-the-goddamn-morning work schedule is wearing me down like a pencil with no more point, burning me out, sucking the creative marrow from my bones, draining my spirit dry, slurping the corners to get every drop of creative juice, leaving nothing but an empty cup. My tank is on E. It’s only been two months, Halloween is just around the bend, but I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

  When I arrive on the dismal school floor, there is an eerie quiet that hovers over it. All of the teachers are walking with their noses buried in what appears to be some memo. No conversations, no morning chitchat, nobody’s talking. I feel a vibe. Something’s up, but I’m too absorbed in my own schleprock-funky cloud of rain that’s following me to give a rat’s ass or be interested in any bureaucratic drama.

  I clock in and check my mailbox. In my thin stack of papers are unimportant memos, random notices, and my daily roster, which informs me of any new students added to my class. There’s also a small photocopy of a New York Daily News article, no longer than two paragraphs, with a headline that reads: TEEN FOUND DEAD IN RIKERS CELL. My heart jumps, then sinks. A lump drops in my gut. I begin speed-reading to search for the student’s name. Please, God, not one of my boys. And if it is, God, I quit. I will resign today ’cause it’s only but so much that my little heart can take.

  The article finally reveals a name I don’t recognize. It’s no consolation: Body found face up, bruised and bloody, beat to death in his cell. Was it a CO taking revenge for Officer King’s attack last week? I wonder. Or was it at the hands of several adolescent inmates who jumped him in his cell, settling some beef, and it went too far? The article didn’t say. The only definite news is that a child is dead! Jesus. I imagine his mother’s pain. Womb amputated, throbbing, and numb. But I don’t know. How could I know what his mother feels? I’m a woman who is acquainted with pain, but not that pain. I think of the boy, his fear, him wanting to go home, his loved ones flashing in his mind, his final thoughts—his final cry as his last breath exhales with his spirit leaving his eighteen-year-old lifeless body lying limp on a green plastic mattress in a dingy cell with water bugs and mice. Dear God. I look up at the ceiling and take a deep breath in through my nose for five counts, then release it out through my mouth. Repeat. In through my nose five counts, then out through the mouth. I really have tumbled down the rabbit hole into a bizarre warped world of altered reality… and I signed up for it. Repeat.

  I need today to go smoothly. I run through the morning agenda in my head to momentarily take my mind off the murder. Murder. Shake it. I give my head a sharp, quick shake to fling away the thought. I try to stuff it down. Okay, first I’ll get my students ready for next Monday’s vocabulary quiz. After the review, I’ll do another lesson on the Middle Passage. We’ll read the chapter together from their African-American history book and then they can work individually and answer the questions I’ve prepared on a separate handout. The boy is dead. Murdered. Shake it. Fling the thought. After they finish that, I’ll play two tracks from Nas’s album Nigger and have a group discussion about the lyrics and the iconic album cover that shows Nas’s bullwhipped and keloid-covered back. I’ll have them compare it to the source photo, a historical image of a nineteenth-century slave’s scarred back, which inspired Nas’s cover. It’s important that my boys are informed of their history. It amazes me how much they don’t know, how much they haven’t been taught, how disconnected they are from the truth, and how culturally malnourished they are. I try to feed them as much as I can, whenever I can. I just plant the seeds and pray they take root and sprout. A tree without roots can’t grow. My boys have to grow. Someone dropped the ball on their cultural education and spiritual development but dammit someone’s got to pick it up because they matter.

  I don’t know how I’m going to
make it through the day with murder hovering over my spirit and in the air but I know I have to find a way to connect them back to their humanity. I have to get them to see their value and understand they come from a powerful, meaningful, worthy people. They matter. We need them. They have to know that. They have to know how valuable they are so death won’t be a goal and murder won’t come so easily. They aren’t disposable. They have to see that. There is a reason why Black and Brown people are in the condition that we are today. God didn’t create niggers, America did. It was a systematic process. They have to see the bigger picture. Savage is not who we are. I want to scream. There is so much I want to shove into their teenage minds. My heart is pounding, my intentions are righteous but far-reaching. I’m all over the place. Thinking of that dead boy, murdered, has my mind racing. How can I fix this? Where do I begin? I remember the saying, “How do you eat an elephant?… One bite at a time.” Nas’s music will be their bite-sized lesson and definitely my balm. Music has always been medicine for me. We need a healing today. Come on, Nas, help me out.

  I want the boys to be exposed to bold artists and intellectuals who are unafraid to speak about the rich legacy of Black culture in a creative, informative way. I believe it can stir the dormant warrior inside them and activate their higher potential for enlightenment. Exposure to righteous information and creative inspiration can wake a sleeping giant when you least expect it. But our children are fed so much poison in the music that when they hear something healthy and uplifting, they think it’s bad, corny, and irrelevant. Even popular mainstream artists trying to make a difference are quickly drowned out by the overwhelming loud pollution of toxic ignorance being peddled and marketed for profit. Poisoning the music is like drinking contaminated water. It’s by design. Keep the masses dumbed down in order to keep them easily controlled and operating on the lowest frequency possible: no critical thinking, no positive inspiration, no forward movement. Reward the lowest of who we are and celebrate mediocrity, denigration, destruction, and murder. Package it and sell it to our children, play it all day on rotation like a mantra of death, and watch them imitate the diamond-studded, stacks-of-money-flashing, material-driven, gun-toting, misogynistic pied-piper minstrels. Our babies are suffocating from false images and dying from layers of lies. America has been feeding off and been propped up by Black folks for five hundred years. Our blood is in the soil. Slavery is the rotten root, foundation, and engine of America. Prison is the remix, and music is one tool to fuel it. Infect the psyche of our children with poison on a funky beat until it becomes a meditation and mantra. It’s like a death sentence for our future that we dance to. I believe in certain conspiracies. These are strange times and dangerous times.

  The rug rats shuffle and grumble into class, some of them sucking their teeth at the assignment I’ve written on the board. They suck their teeth at everything I write on the board, like cranky old men who just like to complain about everything.

  “You nasty, stinking-ass nigga!” one of the boys blurts out. “Yo! That’s fucking disrespectful, nigga!”

  I spin around from writing on the board. “Watch that—oh my God!” I am immediately smacked in the face with pure funk, concentrated stink, garbage vapors. It’s beyond obnoxious; it’s downright abusive.

  “See, Ms. P, throw that stinking-ass nigga out. Shit is like police brutality!” Malik yells.

  “Watch that word,” I say, while covering my mouth with my hand. It’s a smell I can taste. Sweet baby Jesus! I need a mint. I run to my locker and grab my Altoids and the air freshener. I hate when they fart in class. Dookey boys letting loose in the room is always brutal. And right now, it’s fucking lethal. Oh my God! I can’t.

  “Thank you, Ms. P! Get the spray and hose his nasty ass down,” Mekhai yells, hiding half his face underneath his shirt.

  “My bad, yo,” Peanut embarrassingly admits to the rank-stank, funky offense.

  “Yo, my dude, farting and letting some disgusting-ass shit seep out your ass like that need to be a felony, my nigga!” Raheim makes the class laugh.

  Peanut moves to stand by the window. “Oh, no! No, no, no. Peanut, if you’re still farting, step outside,” I snap while spraying the room down with a wintergreen scent. “Don’t do that in class, please. Those little windows won’t hardly help.”

  “Naw, I’m good, Ms. P, I’m just standing over here to air out. I’m sorry. I ain’t mean it. It won’t happen again.”

  “Better not or I’mma have my son, Africa, wash you up,” Mekhai says as he kisses his fingers to the sky to emphasize his fake threat.

  “I ain’t touching farty boy. Fuck that. I got my limits, my dude,” Tyquan says, laughing at his buddy, Peanut, who’s a good sport. As usual, he just waves his pals off. They seem to be in a good mood. Regular shenanigans. Nothing to indicate the dead boy and his murder. They gossip about everything so it’s strange that no one has mentioned it at all. Maybe they’re keeping it hush for a reason; maybe they’re avoiding it like me. I’m relieved they’re not talking about it. I’ll get the scoop from Killa later.

  Finally the boys settle down and I finish writing the vocabulary words on the board: belligerent, cliché, colossal, obsolete, tremendous, plethora, obstacle, excruciating, liberation, toil.

  Tyrone walks in and apologizes for being late. He’s such a gentleman and has an edge of maturity above the rest of the guys. Either he has a close relationship with his father, comes from a stable home, or dates older women. Someone is schooling him in the art of carrying himself like a respectful grown man. It’s a specific kind of swag. “Sorry for coming in late, Ms. P; I was on duty last night and had to talk to one of the officers about something this morning.” Tyrone works in the housing area and is assigned to suicide watch. He has to monitor the cells and make sure no one hangs up and has to talk to guys who are depressed, helping the COs check on them throughout the night, reporting any strange behavior or emotional deterioration. I can always tell when Tyrone has had “watch duty” because he’s visibly tired from staying up so late making the rounds. On those days, I let him put his head down and take a nap in the back row.

  Today he doesn’t go sit in the back like he usually does. Instead, despite his obvious fatigue this morning, Tyrone wants to do work. He takes his regular Boss seat in the front row. It must be the lessons he sees written on the board. Along with Black history, which is his favorite subject, Tyrone likes learning vocabulary because he says it helps him with his “honey-macking skills with the older ladies.” Bless his heart. Not long into the lesson he has slowly slid down in his seat, giving me the classic dope fiend nod: spine curled forward, head landed on the desk, limbs Jell-O, mouth slightly agape, knocked out cold, fast asleep. Before I can wake him up, I notice Marquis out of his seat.

  “Marquis, sit down now!” I say through clenched teeth. He gets on my royal nerves because he does absolutely no work, and I mean no work. He only comes to class to talk to Raheim. I’ve warned him for weeks that he’s on a banana peel with me and half a Pop-Tart away from being Poofed out my class for good.

  Raheim tries to deflect attention away from Marquis by singing loudly and off-key, in a bizarre, Tourette’s-like fit, “I love to love you baby! I-I-I… love-love-love…”

  “Raheim, will you stop that! It’s so annoying, please! Lawrence, turn around. Tyquan, sit down now. Guys, it’s too much talking, way too much talking! Get your feet off the desk. Malik, get your hands out your pants. Mexico, put that Pop-Tart away!” They’ve got me in a tizzy, putting out small fires, and Lil’ Rumbles is steady winking at me. “Shahteik, don’t play with me!”

  And then, in a fit of temporary insanity, Marquis decides to treat the class to a special musical number, using one of the metal file cabinets as a drum, and begins fist-pounding a hip-hop beat, making me shriek, “Marquis, have you lost your damn mind? What in God’s name is wrong with you!”

  At this point Tyrone pops his head up like a jack-in-the-box and growls with grown-man confidence, “Ms. P, w
ill you stop all that damn yelling!” And then, as if his indignation needed a touch of emphasis, he adds, “Dammit!” totally pissed that I have interrupted his peaceful right-to-sleep-in-class in front of my face.

  I work in an insane asylum. My crazy hood-genie in the lamp has been summoned again and whirls out with rattlesnake speed. I spray the entire class with thug mama venom. Everybody’s getting it today, starting with Tyrone.

  My neck swivels back into alignment after having completed a 360-degree snake war-move and I aim right between his big, shiny black forehead. “Get out! Get out of my class right now! How dare you fall asleep, in front of my face, in class, and have the nerve to yell at me because your self-appointed nap time was disturbed? Well, I got news for you, this ain’t kindergarten! And it damn sure isn’t Romper Room! You must think I’m Mr. Rogers, but I’m not, son! Oh, no, no, not in here, not with me, you won’t speak to me like that!”

  I brace myself for his defensive alpha bark, but Tyrone gives me no back talk and just mumbles under his breath to no one in particular, “Yo, I’m out, son,” and stands in the doorway, waving for an officer to come and get him out of class. And within seconds, Tyrone is gone. I continue spanking the crazies with my vocal octave rising to an alarming decibel that has two officers running to my door. Once they realize the boys aren’t fighting and I am not in any danger, they pause, just like the last time, to watch my show… and I give ’em one. ’Cause that’s what I do is perform. I employ my theater training to make my voice boom from the bottom of my diaphragm and hit the back wall in the room, all while flinging my arms with a strong controlled gesture, letting my intense evil eye land on each face gazing back at me.