The Battle for Room 314

by Ed Boland

  “I wouldn’t give that kid credit for knowing how to operate a pencil, much less a pellet gun,” said Trey.

  “Was he one of the kids they caught pissing on the rolls of toilet paper in the stalls in the boys’ room?” asked Mark, the phys ed teacher.

  It was true that he wasn’t a likely suspect. I’d gotten to know him pretty well through our time in the advisory group. Because of a cluster of unhappy family events in the rural Dominican Republic involving death and divorce, he had recently emigrated to live with a step-somebody and lots of half siblings in the nearby Baruch housing projects. Mateo didn’t know them very well. They had all been here for a long time and were fully assimilated. One of them, a younger half brother in the middle school whom I often called on to translate, mostly just seemed embarrassed to be related to this “fresh off the boat” relative. I really felt for Mateo.

  On the social radar of his grade, he was virtually nonexistent. He was chubby, pockmarked, and his clothes gave him away as an immigrant. His face bore a look of perennial shock. His English was the worst of anyone in the entire grade. The first day of school I had to repress a mix of laughter, pity, and shock when he, a fifteen-year-old, asked, “I make a pee-pee now?”

  In class, when my poor Spanish proved useless in helping him, I employed native speakers to try to help him translate lessons, but they soon grew frustrated, and he sat there clueless. Next, I gave him some picture books about ancient Egypt that were targeted for first and second graders, a Spanish–English dictionary, and a watered-down work sheet asking the most basic questions. I got nothing.

  I finally put Manfred, a native Spanish speaker, on the case, relegating the two of them alone to the back of the room. Manfred was not only the third-smartest kid in the ninth grade, after Byron and Lucas, but eager to please because, as rumor had it, he had the meanest father of anybody and would do anything to avoid a call to home from a teacher.

  But after two classes, Manfred gave up and delivered his unvarnished opinion: “That fat kid you want me to help, his problem isn’t English. He’s just stupid—in any language. Oh, and he’s lazy.” Manfred handed the work sheet on ancient Egypt back to me, on which Mateo had written one thing: “I no want thees bebe book.” I didn’t blame him. What fifteen-year-old wants to be seen carrying around a book for first graders where Pharaoh is portrayed as a Smurf? But what was the alternative?

  Even Marie, the ESL teacher, didn’t have much more insight than I did. “It happens a lot in the third-world countries without mandatory schooling. You get sixteen-year-olds from rural areas who have had little consistent education. Sometimes, they hardly know the alphabet. Who knows what that kid knows?”

  Mateo was sentenced to the same suspension school in the Bronx as Kameron, but he would be exiled there for the entire remainder of the school year. On his last afternoon at Union Street, I unlocked the coat closet where my advisees kept their things. He seemed somewhere between stunned and oblivious as I helped him put his few possessions into a crinkled red plastic bag I’d found.

  “Buena suerte. At your new school, a tu nuevo escuela, sea bien,” I stammered, continuing to mix and mangle the Spanish.

  He looked at me and said matter-of-factly, “I’m not bad.”

  “I know that, Mateo, es verdad, yo se eso.”

  Although what he did was serious, I still had compassion for him. I, too, had entered a hostile new world and made some naive decisions, but I had immeasurably more to fall back on than he did. How could I judge him?

  Mateo was soon gone, but questions remained. It didn’t add up. He was too innocent to think it all up on his own. He was also remarkably impressionable. Somebody had put him up to it.

  I scanned the faces of his classmates, the students in my second-period class. There was no shortage of possible culprits.

  During a lunch period the following week, I came across two of my freshmen, Jaylisa and Philippa, hiding in a stairwell. They were taking turns applying an overpowering perfume that smelled like a freshly opened box of Fruity Pebbles. Students were forbidden from wandering the halls during lunch unless they had permission from a teacher to be upstairs for extra help. I was about to send them packing with my usual barking when I had an idea. After all, I wanted information, and I had two of the best gossips in the grade over a barrel. In small ways, I was starting to see the opportunities between all the rules.

  “Ladies, you know you aren’t supposed to be up here during lunch.”

  “We know,” they said in sullen unison.

  “But it’s not a problem. Why don’t you come to my room for lunch today?” I said. They looked at each other warily.

  My bribery continued with a bag of off-brand barbecue potato chips that I’d bought at a nearby bodega. “So, I’m sure you’ve been interviewed by the principal like everybody else, but I know you two and I bet you know the real story. Mateo didn’t bring a pellet gun to school, did he?”

  They sang like birds. Jaylisa, renowned for her loud mouth and array of velour tracksuits, started right in: “Well, you’re right there, mister. Mateo didn’t think it up himself. Everybody knows he’s had a crush on Celeste from the first week of school. Hey, at least he was realistic about who he could get with. Who else did he even have a chance with? But she’s so weird, she just totally ignored him.”

  Tiny, bespectacled, and light-skinned, Philippa chimed in between handfuls of chips, “She don’t talk to no one and he can’t speak English. Some couple! Also, don’t he know Dominicans and Haitians don’t mix? He just wanted to get her attention.”

  “So who gave him the gun?” I asked, trying to appear nonchalant. They paused.

  I upped the ante with a packet of sour apple gummy worms. They exchanged “What the hell?” glances and Jaylisa shrugged. “Everybody says it was that bad boy, Sameer. Just doin’ it for kicks. Sameer told Mateo if he wanted to get Celeste’s attention, he should do something to her—cute-like.”

  “Cute-like? With a pellet gun?” I asked.

  “You know, tease her. Didn’t you ever hear that expression, ‘Teasing is a sign of love’? Yeah, it was messed up, but it was just a pellet gun. It’s not like he was gonna kill her with it.”

  “What? You use a pellet gun to tease someone? Shooting as a sign of affection?” They ignored my too-obvious questions. As usual, I was the one being schooled.

  Jacked up on chili powder and sugar, they giggled and bounded out of the room. “So that’s the real deal, mister, but you didn’t hear shit from us. We don’t want no trouble with that Sameer. Nobody does,” Jaylisa said.

  Sameer Gherbe. Why hadn’t I figured it out myself? It made perfect sense. He was one of the first kids I’d met. He and his mother had come in before the start of school to say they were devout Muslims from Morocco and they were worried about him observing Ramadan during September.

  “Do you know Ramadan?” Mrs. Gherbe asked timidly, with a heavy Arabic accent. She had intense dark eyes, a furrowed brow, and seemed older than most of the other mothers.

  “Of course,” I responded. I explained that with its focus on all things intercultural, the school had plans for a “Ramadan Room” for our observant Muslim students who had to do without food or drink from sunrise to sunset. They could rest when necessary and be away from the temptations of the lunchroom.

  “Really?” Mrs. Gherbe gently gathered my hands in hers and stared at me with a gaze so earnest it almost hurt. I started to blush.

  “Wonderful!” she cooed.

  “I am very happy, you be the teacher of my son,” she said. I went on to say I had traveled in their homeland of Morocco.

  She turned to her son, who sat quietly beside her. He was a skinny, handsome kid with a halo of dark curls, olive skin, and an infectious “aw, shucks” smile. “Sameer, this man knows our people. He will help you,” she said. He nodded and smiled.

  In the first weeks of school, it seemed Sameer was spending a lot of time in the Ramadan Room, but who was I to judge the pious? I�
�d never fasted a day in my life. Fish on Fridays during Lent was my only point of reference. After the end of the fast, he started coming to class. Since the year had gotten off to such a bad start, particularly with the boys, I was looking forward to having a male student who was devout and had an involved mother. But like everything else at Union Street, it was a short-lived honeymoon.

  A few days after Sameer returned to class, Jim the janitor came into my room. “Hey, Ed, I hate to tell you this, but the teacher in the elementary school on the first floor is really pissed off and wants to talk to you. Something about books flying out the window,” he told me. Embarrassed for me, he didn’t look up as he methodically swept between the rows of desks.

  I ran to the window and looked down in horror to see two copies of Our Global World, the new $110 textbook, stewing in a puddle on the blacktop roof several stories below. A Hammond World Atlas, its colorful pages flapping wildly in the breeze, had been tossed in for good measure.

  Based on the seating chart and my quick grilling of a few students, it became clear that Sameer had thrown our textbooks out the third-story window, and had enlisted two other classmates in his quest. The next morning, Mrs. Gherbe arrived at the principal’s office, weepy and despondent. “Sameer is a very good boy” was her sole defense.

  Mei delivered swift justice: Sameer and the others would have to pay for the books and faced in-school suspension for three days. “If that book had gone five feet farther, it could have injured or killed some second grader on the sidewalk. How would you feel then?” Mei asked gravely. As Sameer walked out of her office, he looked sufficiently chastened. I was relieved that the incident was being handled with such seriousness.

  On my way to lunch the following day, I peered through the tiny window in the principal’s office door to see how Sameer was getting along. He was alone, lying on her comfy couch, tossing his head about while listening to his iPod and mouthing lyrics. As an almost absurd extension of the global theme of our school, Mei always had a big maroon bowl of international candies on her desk. They were bizarre-looking and weird-tasting things, shitty-smelling durian-flavored chews from the Philippines and some kind of tamarind taffy from Mexico with a picture of a turkey on it. Judging from the pile of wrappers at his feet, Sameer had apparently made his way halfway around the world. Some punishment. I stormed down the hall and fumed as I told my colleagues about the terms of his “suspension.”

  Marquis, the tenth-grade history teacher, laughed. “Welcome to Union Street. That’s how we roll around here.”

  During the second day of his suspension, Sameer was busted for smoking pot in a small bathroom near Mei’s office. “But it was just a roach!” he protested.

  Another quick trial saw him looking impatient while his mother wailed softly in Arabic. This earned him a real suspension for three months, which meant sitting all day with other guilty parties in the now-famous trailer in the Bronx parking lot.

  When Sameer returned from the suspension ninety days later, he was angrier and seemingly even more skilled in wreaking havoc. He constantly shadowboxed with unseen enemies; the punches were angry and real, and yet, he still wore that little-boy smile. The other kids were gripped by his stories from his time in suspension, including one about his being stabbed. Swooning girls took turns running their fingers across the red welt on his neck left by the knife.

  Sameer had been involved in some minor troubles since his return, but the incident with the pellet gun was serious. So, right after my snack session with Jaylisa and Philippa, I went to Mei and Gretchen with my tip, eager to show them I was more plugged-in than I appeared. They were exhausted by the whole affair and didn’t seem eager to discuss it any further.

  Gretchen gave a long, exasperated sigh. “Yes, we have heard that version of events secondhand, but we can’t get any of them to say Sameer gave Mateo the gun.”

  “We think he got to all the witnesses before we did and threatened them,” Mei said, sounding defeated.

  “What can I tell you? That kid is just…sinister,” Gretchen added.

  That night, I recounted everything to Sam over bowls of leftover ratatouille. I had a mountain of schoolwork to correct, but I couldn’t stop fixating on Sameer and the gun incident. I must have sounded like some kind of rabid crank on bad talk radio.

  I pounded on the dinner table. “It’s killing me that the system failed to get the real bad guy.”

  “But there’s nothing new about that,” Sam said. “What is it about this one? It really seems to be getting to you.”

  As always, he knew me better than I knew myself. I thought about it as I sucked down a third glass of wine. I was drinking a lot those days. It soothed me in the moment, but it messed with my already terrible sleep.

  “Until now, I was comforted that there was this kind of unspoken code of honor, a hierarchy, that the thugs didn’t mess with the innocents. But now even that is eroding.”

  He touched the side of my face and looked at me like I was losing it. I was.

  “When the monster kids fight each other or even when they beat up on me, it’s terrible, but…but watching Celeste and even Mateo really suffer, just for his entertainment…I can’t stand that.”

  Sam talked me through every piece of the story, propping me up, giving me hope, and making me laugh at its absurdities. He pushed aside the piles of work and literally tucked me into bed.

  Just as I was about to doze off, the pudgy face of Mateo appeared in my mind. I doubted there was anyone showing him the same kindness in the Baruch housing project. I did what this committed atheist never did and asked the Father, the Son, and begrudgingly even the Holy Fucking Spirit to protect poor Mateo Jimenez in that trailer. I added Celeste to the litany, as well as the other innocents: Fatima, the deeply pious Yemenite girl in a head scarf; and Mo’nique, the chubby girl who seemed to wear the same top every single day—a terrible pilled mint-green sweater. And tiny Lu Huang, too. My lids were getting heavy as I mumbled, “And even that fucker Sameer, don’t forget about him, God.”

  Chapter 14

  Point of No Return

  THE SCHOOL YEAR was heaving its way toward the finish line with drained students and teachers in tow. At the start of almost every period, the kids would tell me exactly how many days we had left until summer vacation. I would act indifferent to their count and, like some cheesy life coach, would say, “That’s really unimportant. What matters most is that we stay focused and get a lot done while we are still here. Let’s get to work.” Behind that facade, I had them all beat at their own game. If they were counting the days, I was marking the minutes.

  On the Wednesday of the final week of school, during the last period of the day, I surveyed my classroom. It was hard to see anything but a sad summary of the year before me:

  Chivonne had created a miniature beauty shop on her desk. Colorful combs, pins, and a mirror were carefully placed over an unopened (and certainly almost completely blank) notebook. She made no attempt to conceal the contraband or pretend to do her assignment. As she was working some kind of gloppy perfumed product into her hair, I told her to put it all away. Still massaging her scalp with both hands and with a mouthful of pins, she mumbled with indignation, “I can’t focus on schoolwork if I don’t look good!” She took the pins out of her mouth and got louder: “You always tellin’ me to be on time for class. I coulda hid in the bathroom and done this. But no, here I am, in class and on time, and you still wilin’!” By the end of her tirade, she was nearly screaming. “Stop beastin’ me, mister. You making me tight.” It took another five minutes of back-and-forth for the battle to conclude—yet another entry in a yearlong logbook of wasted time. In room 314, my roles of ineffective cop and feckless social worker always trumped my job as a teacher.

  Two desks away sat doe-eyed and petite Angela, the new girl. While I thought I was approaching the limits of compassion as the school year wore on, Angela managed to arouse new sympathy in me. In May, with less than a month of school left, under thre
at of arrest from a city social worker, Angela’s parents brought her from the nearby Baruch housing project to school for the first time all year. Nine months before, at the age of fourteen, just when she should have been starting school, Angela had a baby. But it wasn’t her parents’ fear of stigma that kept her at home. During her intake interview with Sita, the parents without shame explained in front of their daughter that “school isn’t worth it for her since she is practically retarded.”

  Like Chivonne, she showed a deep focus on an outside project—but this one seemed to involve crayons. I hovered over Angela’s desk as she sketched away energetically on a large sheet of pink construction paper cut into the shape of a heart. She was wearing a tight T-shirt and even tighter jeans that pushed her bare post-baby paunch forward for everyone to see. It was jarring to see this on a fourteen-year-old girl, particularly one still playing with crayons, so I glanced at the floor where her neglected notebook sat. I was sure it had even less in it than Chivonne’s. On the cover was a proud affirmation in bubbly graffiti-like script: “I ♥ Black Boyz with Big Ones!”

  Eager to avoid another public battle, and because I really felt for this kid, I just whispered, “Come on, Angela. This is no time for your art class project or a love letter. You have SO much to do.”

  She didn’t share my interest in keeping the conversation discreet. “Oh don't you worry, mister. This ain’t for no art class. I am making a Mother’s Day card…for myself.” With a wide smile, she held up the card for all to see. She shook her arms for emphasis, revealing that one of her forearms was tattooed with her name in large cursive letters. “I know I’m kinda late for Mother’s Day, but I been real busy with the baby.” Was she sincere or going for the laugh? I didn’t know. My desire to laugh and cry collided in the middle and I just exhaled.