Losing My Faculties

by Brendan Halpin

  “I really don’t understand,” Tashina says. “You did your job. You have them here for a period of time, and you do what you’re supposed to do. Why do you care what happens to them when they leave here?”

  This is a serious question. Tashina, who works for the Boston Public Schools, doesn’t understand why I care about what happens to my students. She really doesn’t understand.

  “If you don’t understand that,” I say, “we really have nothing to talk about.”

  She looks at me quizzically, gives up, and walks away.

  36

  Once our first class is gone, most of the air goes out of our tires. We get a new crop of kids, but since I saw what happened with the first group, it’s difficult for me to work up much enthusiasm for designing anything even as interesting and fun as the mock-legislature assignment or the stinky-milk lab. I come in every day and teach, but I have to admit I’m not doing my best work here. It’s the same feeling I had only a few months ago at Northton High, the feeling that let me know it was time to get out. What, exactly, is the point of doing a good job? Nobody cares if anything good happens here. Maybe the kids care, but most of them do a great job of disguising it. Devon frequently has to go and pick up Maria, who lives across the street. Sometimes he will sit in the van outside her apartment and see her peeking out the windows and not coming.

  Then again, sometimes she does show up. Who knows why? Only one student shows up regularly on her own with no need for Devon to “track” her. Her name is Kalia, and for the first few weeks I cannot understand what she’s doing here. She is small and quiet, she works hard, and she seems to know a great deal. Why on earth hasn’t she been going to school?

  Well, one day it becomes clear when Peter, another of our students who is generally quiet, hits Kalia with a sort of randomly aimed squirt gun. (I know, I know—why does he have a squirt gun? Why is he shooting it in school, even if his school is this crummy basement? Very good questions. I have no answers.) Kalia’s entire face tightens up. She walks up to Peter and says, “Fuck you, nigger.” She doesn’t yell it or anything, she says it in this really flat, really cold way that kind of scares me. Then she spits in his face. Though she is obviously flying off the handle, she doesn’t appear to be flying off the handle, and that makes it scarier.

  A few weeks later we have to pull her off of some kid in the park across the street who is twice her size and who, in my opinion, wouldn’t have stood a chance if we hadn’t intervened. Otherwise, though, Kalia is sweet, quiet, and really very innocent. One day she comes up to me and Sandra and asks us what an “O.G. party” is. We look at each other blankly as I picture something possibly involving Ice-T, which is horrifying enough, but then Kalia elaborates: “Peter was on the party line last night, and he heard Lourdes saying that all the boys should come over her house for an O.G. party.”

  We eventually discover that this means that Lourdes, on a 976-numbered teen chat line, invited every teenaged boy who happened to be on the line that night to come to her house for an orgy the next day. Peter says after Lourdes got off the chat line he heard some guys talking about “running a train” on her. So I spend the day having them write something autobiographical on the computers while everybody else makes phone calls to parents and police and tries to prevent Lourdes from being gang-raped this afternoon.

  It’s clear that these kids need a lot of help, but at least they are here and getting referrals to help, or getting some help, or something … right? Well, not really. Mariette has given up all pretense of working. She arrives between nine and ten and then disappears at noon for lunch with Tashina. Sometimes she comes back after a couple of hours, and sometimes she doesn’t. I guess maybe the reports that need to get filed for these kids get filed, but it’s clear that our full-time social worker is not really doing a hell of a lot of social work these days. Unless socializing with Tashina while they’re both being paid to work counts.

  There’s not much happening in terms of parent contact. Except for Drew’s mom, who seems to be in here every day flirting madly with Devon. We all tease him and get a laugh out of it. Eventually he drops some very strong hints that she should back off, and she immediately calls Edward and complains that Devon was sexually harassing her. “He told me I should drop the zero and get with a hero,” she says. I know Devon well enough after just four months to know that he is just simply not the kind of guy to drop that cheesy of a line on anybody. We stop teasing Devon because it’s unclear how nuts this woman is and how far she will push her false accusation. (It ends up being pretty far—dissatisfied with the response she gets from Edward, she tries calling the Boston Public Schools, but she is effectively stymied by voice mail and many layers of bureaucracy that I suspect may have been set up for the express purpose of stymieing any parent complaint and eventually gives up.)

  So we can no longer tease Devon about that, but he did grow up in Indiana, so as a native Cincinnatian I can still tease him about that. Actually the nicest thing about working here these days is the relationship I’ve built with Devon and Sandra. The three of us make fun of Mariette for not working, and of Edward just because he’s ridiculous (particularly one day after a prolonged lunchtime shopping expedition, he literally struts in wearing an African-print pillbox hat and looking completely stupid). We talk about how fucked up this program is and our worry about the kids. Many days after community meeting when the kids have said things that make us all cringe, Sandra and I will sit there as Devon drives them home and just shake our heads. “I really worry,” she says. “What’s going to happen to our children? How can I bring a child into this world?” (Sandra is engaged, and thinking about procreation.) I think much the same thing—I have a small child who shares a city with these kids as well as all the kids they hate and are afraid of. The world they describe is one of drugs, hopelessness, and endless violence paying back other violence. It’s enough to make me want to move.

  I have to keep reminding myself (and Sandra) that we are, by definition, dealing with the kids who are not making it, who are falling between the cracks. Indeed, for some of these kids, this half-assed program in this dingy basement is the last stop before falling through the cracks, and we do see a few off into the cracks: Mahogany comes twice, then disappears forever. Katie, who’s pregnant, comes three times and talks about how she and her boyfriend sit in the house and watch Jerry Springer all the time. Then she disappears. But there are, I say, plenty of kids who are full of hope and ambition, kids who are fundamentally more like us than these kids. I’m not talking about race here, as Sandra is black and I’m white—but we share a certain belief in the value of education, in the importance of picking your battles and occasionally walking or even running away from a fight, a hope in the future, that many of our students just don’t have. Despite the fact that I don’t really work very hard here, it makes the work here very hard.

  But if these values—along with a belief in the ability of the majority of these kids to turn it around and do something positive—divide us from the kids, they do bond us to each other. I wondered when I walked in here on the first day if being the only white person would be an issue. It turns out not to be. I mean, yes, I have to leave the conversation about corporal punishment of one’s offspring, because there’s just too great a cultural gap there, and when the issue of fraternities and sororities (of which Devon and Sandra are both members, brothers and sisters, alumni, or whatever people who belong to those organizations call each other when they’re no longer in college) comes up, I know better than to even enter the discussion, but otherwise I find that it’s not really much of an issue—I really feel more at home with Devon and Sandra than I did at Northton High, where everybody was white.

  I definitely don’t feel at home in this program, though. One of the reasons that Devon and Sandra and I get along so well is that we all hate the same stupid things about it. I like them, but it’s pretty clear already that our work life together can’t last.

  37

  So t
he air has been out of our tires for a few weeks when we officially become a joke. Clinton, the program’s executive director, brings in a new student, Tania, and announces that she will be joining us for a few days while they wait for her paperwork to go through at her new school. She is a friend of somebody and was not referred through the Boston Public Schools so is not officially part of the population we are supposed to serve. But we have a seat and a friend of Clinton’s needed a favor, so we are now in the babysitting business.

  She does okay for a few days—she’s been going to school more or less regularly and is slightly older than the other kids—and I don’t mind having her in class even though she’s not supposed to be here. She goes off to her new school, gets suspended or possibly expelled on the first day for fighting, and then is back in class. Only now we have another new student, Karima, and the combination is very, very bad. For instance, one day we are taking a field trip to the library for some kind of research thing I’m having them do, and as we cross the street I say something pretty innocuous to Karima, like could she please not yell at the top of her lungs at people in passing cars or something, and right there in the middle of the street she turns and yells in my face, “Shut the fuck up! You’re not my fucking father, you don’t get to tell me shit, so just shut the fuck up!” Ahhhh. Delightful.

  Since we really have no rules or procedures, and indeed, since we are not a real program at all these days, I don’t do anything about this. I just kind of take it (well, I am very very busy biting my tongue, because I have these verbal-combat instincts that it is my professional responsibility to keep in check when dealing with students, even ones who are telling me to shut the fuck up right in the middle of Dudley Square, so I don’t end up saying that she is correct, I am not her father, because unlike her father, I have to see her every day, which is what I really want to say because I want very badly to hit back, but I don’t, which is what passes for a professional victory these days).

  So this is the way Karima is, and now Tania kind of gets that way too. They seem to have decided that torturing me in real time is much more fun than watching people torture each other on Jerry Springer. Sometimes it’s not confrontational—like the day when they are screaming at the top of their lungs some Foxy Brown or Lil’ Kim song about her pussy and the various things she expects her men to do to it—but more often it is. For the first time since I had Jimmy in Northton five years ago, I just can’t stand one of my students. (I can still stand Tania, because without Karima she reverts immediately to her old self.)

  One day I’m driving the van for our field trip to the beach in order to give Devon a break from driving, and I mess with the radio for a joke, and Karima and Tania respond with a torrent of verbal abuse that is very effective. I get very angry, pout, and refuse to drive. Once we get to the beach, I feel guilty and amazed that I allowed their admittedly venomous abuse to get to me. I buy a scallion pancake at a Chinese restaurant across the street and offer to share it as a peace gesture. Tania takes some, Karima doesn’t. That about sums up my relationship with these two.

  The beach is an amazing scene. It’s a Friday in June, and although school is still in session, you’d never know it from looking at the beach. The entire population of the Boston Public Schools seems to be here—hanging out, laughing, throwing each other into the surf, and generally having a good time.

  Sitting in a group of kids in one of the pavilions we find Jorge. I guess we knew Jorge wasn’t really going to be going to school after he left us, but to see him here is really depressing. He tells us that he went back to school for about two weeks after he left us and hasn’t returned since. He looks like he’s gained at least twenty pounds.

  Eventually we move on down the beach, and about an hour later we all pile back into the van and drive away. I look back and see Jorge, still sitting where we left him.

  38

  The time when this class is supposed to leave—twenty-one days—comes and goes. Tashina disappears into the bowels of the BPS administrative offices and never reappears to tell us in person, but eventually the news filters back to us that this group is never being sent back to their regular schools. So while with the previous group the deadline was so important that the kids had to be removed from the basement and unceremoniously dumped back into their schools with no notice at all, this time it seems that nobody cares.

  We keep getting reminded that our program is a joke. One day we are sitting waiting for Devon to come with our lunch when this ridiculous Mr. Showbiz guy kind of oozes in. He’s wearing sunglasses (in the basement), a shiny suit, and a fedora (!). “Hello,” he says to us in an FM-deejay-smooth voice. “I am looking for Clinton.” We tell him that Clinton’s not here today, and he explains, “Well, see, I’m a producer and manager, actually I’ve produced records for the Blue Hill Boyz and several other well-known groups”—later I will confirm that it’s not just me, nobody in the room has ever heard of the Blue Hill Boyz—“and in fact I wrote Famous Athlete’s theme song, he likes to play it when he’s working out, it goes something like this, ‘I’m a Famous Athlete believerrrrrrrr … yeah, I’ve got the feverrrrrrrr …’”

  He goes on and on with this smooth, self-promotional patter, but there’s just something a little off about it—besides his crappy singing. He is just so obviously a loser in an expensive suit who thinks we think he’s big pimpin’. After about five minutes, he hands us all business cards, asks if anybody sings. Tania says that she does, and he says, “Well, let me hear you then!” She shoots him down with, “Uh-unh. You’re gonna have to pay to hear me sing.”

  He laughs in an insincere way and asks us to tell Clinton he was here and please tell Famous Athlete that his friend Mr. Dick Weed was here to see him. We all have a very nice moment where we give each other the universal “what the hell was that?” look, and then everybody just starts laughing.

  This kind of thing just doesn’t happen in real schools, or even real alternative programs. Sadly, it also proves to pretty much be our final highlight. As we lurch toward June, fewer kids come. Eventually we complain enough to Edward about Tania being difficult and disruptive, especially for someone who is here as a guest, that he complains to Clinton, who removes her from the program. This seems to take all of the fun out of it for Karima, so she stops coming. In a neglect of his tracking duty that I could just kiss him for, Devon never checks up on her, and it should go without saying that Mariette doesn’t either. So Karima is allowed to disappear.

  So we are left with Kalia who spit, Lourdes who didn’t have an orgy, Maria who lives across the street and has to be picked up, Peter who got spit on, and Drew with the amorous mom. For the final day of the program, we want to have a big field trip, something really special. But nobody really cares enough to plan anything, so we ask the kids what they want to do. They want to go to the mall, so we all get in the van and got to the mall. Devon takes the boys and I take the girls, and we spend hours wandering around the mall and eventually eat lunch at the food court. As we’re leaving, I turn to Kalia, Maria, and Lourdes and say, “Look, guys, I’m really sorry that it’s your last day and we’re doing this lame trip to the mall.” I really do feel bad about the whole thing—it just seems to symbolize everything about this program: we had big ideas, and what we ended up with was this half-assed thing that didn’t really help anybody.

  But maybe the students didn’t see it that way. “What are you talking about?” the students say. “This is great!”

  On the way home, the van goes right near my house, so I say good-bye to everyone and have Devon drop me on the street. I never set foot inside Famous Athlete Youth Programs again.

  39

  I have been applying for jobs for a few months now, having long since decided that I can’t come back to Famous Athlete Youth Programs even if the grant is renewed, which it probably won’t be. One day in May I told Sandra, “I’d rather be a sub than come back here,” and I’m pretty sure I meant it, though it’s pretty easy to say something like that
and incredibly horrible to actually have to work as a sub. Or so I imagine. Let’s just say that when you see them around the halls of schools, they never look too psyched.

  By the time Devon drops me on the corner after the mall trip, I’m feeling pretty good about my job prospects. I landed both the Newcastle and Northton jobs a week before school started, so I know by now that you don’t really panic about not having a teaching job until the last day of August. Also, I’ve had a few nibbles for the fall, and I’ve already landed a summer job at the same Upward Bound program that didn’t hire me five summers ago, so I know I can keep the wolf from the door for at least another seven weeks. That’s not very long, but I am uncharacteristically calm about the whole thing.

  Upward Bound does not start out auspiciously. We go to an orientation meeting that includes “diversity training.” This is a really useless couple of hours where we watch some famous documentary about horrible old stereotypical images of African-Americans (the fat, scarf-wearing mammy; the bug-eyed coward who says, “Feets, do yo duty!”; et cetera). It’s okay as a history lesson, I guess, but it’s stuff I already know and has no bearing on anything I’m about to do. It’s basically “whitey is bad,” which is pretty typical of diversity training in my experience. Weeks later when I have kids from Somalia, Haiti, and Colombia all in the same class, I will not look back on this day and feel like it helped to prepare me for the experience.

  Luckily, the job itself is much better. I’m supposed to team-teach one class with another teacher, which makes me very nervous, but it quickly becomes clear that it’s going to work out—Zach and I have almost identical temperaments and philosophies and even taste in music, and I am still, as much as I’ve tried to purge this remnant of my adolescence, a terrible snob who judges people by the music they listen to. The only big difference between Zach and me is that he’s nicer than I am. Working with him here turns out to be a great experience, one I’ve never really had before in teaching. I’m used to working pretty much in isolation, and so it’s very nice to work with someone who sees the same kids I see every day and thinks pretty much the same things about what we should be doing with them.