Response

by Paul Volponi

  Nearly every black kid there was grinning wide to hear Hendricks eat crow like that, and have him call Bonds “Mister.” Spanky and the kids he hung tight with were either staring at the high ceiling or the wooden boards in the gym floor. But there were plenty of white kids who hated Hendricks—kids he’d nailed with a dodgeball or barked on for not being strong enough to climb the thirty-foot ropes. And they were all enjoying that show, too.

  Hendricks was walking towards the door when he turned back around and said, “And you can all bet that’s the last time I get involved in anything. If you twist an ankle, jam a finger—just go running to some other phys ed instructor, or maybe the school nurse. I got a hands-off policy from now on.”

  At lunch, Bonds told Asa and me, “Yeah, it was pretty much a suck-ass apology. But I loved it anyway. Best day I ever had in school.”

  “I wish for anything I could have seen it,” said Asa, “You gonna sue?”

  “I want to, but my mother says we already got money for iodine and Band-Aids,” Bonds came back. “Noah’s the one about to hit it rich. Start a civil suit for money against Charlie Scat—the way those people did on O.J. Simpson.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “That Scat dude owned nothing but his Land Rover, and I read where he sold that to pay for his lawyer.”

  “So maybe the judge will sentence him to be your butler,” said Asa, cracking up. “He’ll have to pick up after you in the hood. Then you’ll make him bend over on the street corner, and brothers passing by can take turns booting him in the ass.”

  That didn’t sound half bad to me.

  This dime-piece of a shorty named Tiffany came over to our table and gave Bonds a high five for grounding Hendricks.

  “I hate that gym teacher. I hope he gets fired and has to collect cans off the street,” she said. “You got it goin’ on, too, Noah. The way you’re standing up to those Hillsboro thugs.”

  Then she gave me a high five and let her sweet palm sit flat against mine for more than a second.

  “I’m a part of this crew. I don’t get no love?” asked Asa, with his open hand out in front of him.

  Tiffany just left Asa hanging, sitting herself down right next to me.

  My eyes hooked up with hers and I felt a fire spark. Bonds must have picked up on it, because he bounced right away.

  But Asa’s head was hard as wood, and he was still running game at her.

  Then two of Deshawna’s homegirls came walking past. They stopped right in front of us grilling Tiffany, like I was Deshawna’s private property. So I knew that whole scene would get back to Deshawna, who had a different lunch period. Only it was sure to get blown up bigger, with them telling it like Tiffany was sitting in my lap.

  Halloween fell on a Friday, and I worked the late shift that night at Mickey D’s. I left the place around midnight, walking home alone through no-man’s-land with all that Halloween craziness in the streets. Junior high school kids were really feeling it, throwing eggs, chasing each other with cans of shaving cream, and swinging sweat socks filled with flour.

  I guess I looked like an adult to them, because they all just ran right past me, like I was too old to be a target in that game.

  I remembered crossing Decatur on Halloween with my friends when I was that age. We wore masks that covered up our faces, and went trick-or-treating on the first few blocks into Hillsboro. Those were all private houses, and the people who lived there could afford to give out brand-name mini-candy bars—Three Musketeers, Snickers, Almond Joy—the works.

  “Trick or treat,” we’d say, with a high pitch to it.

  We were trying to make our voices sound white, like there really was such a thing. Then we’d take our haul back to East Franklin, wanting to curse out the people from around our way who gave us loose pieces of candy corn or one-penny bubble gums.

  This was my weekend to have Destiny Love, and that next day I took her to the playground with Mom and Grandma.

  “Look at this place,” Mom said, disgusted. “Eggs everywhere.”

  “Don’t these young hooligans know it’s a sin to waste food? What do their families teach them?” asked Grandma. “Noah, did you ever disgrace your own neighborhood like this, growing up?”

  “No, Grandma,” I answered, knowing I’d boosted plenty of eggs from our refrigerator to chuck on Halloween.

  But I was starting to see things different now.

  I sat Destiny Love on my lap and went back and forth slow on the real swings, holding on to her with one hand and the steel chain with the other.

  She let out a squeal of pure joy every time we swung in either direction.

  And a good part of me felt that inside again, too—like I was still a kid.

  That was the kind of thing my daughter could bring to me.

  When we finished, I was super careful where I let Destiny Love crawl in that park, not wanting any of that filth on the ground to touch her.

  DESHAWNA’S APARTMENT

  DESHAWNA: I hear you, Tamika! I’ll torch his cheating ass! (Slams down the phone.)

  DESHAWNA’S DAD: What’s all that noise about, Deshawna? (Muffles his anger.) You’re gonna wake up your daughter.

  DESH AW NA: Noah Jackson thinks he’s God’s gift— that’s what, sending out signals to every girl at school. All my friends know he’s playing me.

  DESHAWNA’S DAD: And what do you think he was after when he got you pregnant? A seventeen-year-old boy’s mind is on but one thing. Having a child with you ain’t gonna change that so fast. That’s just the truth of it, little girl.

  DESHAWNA: Noah’s no closer to putting a ring on my finger than the day I had his baby.

  DESHAWNA’S DAD: I told you ten times already. Now I’ll tell you again—just ’cause you share blood together, that don’t make you family.

  DESHAWNA: Sometimes I really love him, Daddy. When they busted his skull with that bat, and I thought he was gonna die (Starts to cry.), I couldn’t take it.

  DESHAWNA’S DAD: You don’t know real love for a man yet. You just concentrate on loving that baby of yours. What I had for your mama, that was real love. (Hugs Deshawna tight.) I held her in my arms for the last two months of her life while that damn diabetes broke down all her functions. You need to go through hard times together to find out what love is.

  DESHAWNA (Through a flood of tears.): I miss Mama so much. I wish she could have seen Destiny Love.

  DESHAWNA’S DAD (Softly.): We both do, baby. We both do.

  DESHAWNA: What am I gonna do about Noah?

  DESHAWNA’S DAD: That boy comes from decent folks. No matter what happens between you and him, he might grow up to be a good father. That’s all you can hope for now. That’s all you can try to hold him to.

  Chapter EIGHT

  WE FOUGHT FOR ALMOST FIFTEEN MINUTES with Deshawna pressing me about Tiffany.

  “When you want me to be your wifey, I am, and when you don’t, I just disappear from your head,” she complained, with our daughter asleep in her stroller as we started a second lap around my block.

  “I was just sitting there. I can’t help it if shorties come on to me,” I said. “I didn’t do anything with her and you’re still on my case. How’s that right?”

  “It’s not what you don’t do, Noah,” Deshawna said. “It’s the respect you need to show me in front of people. The same way I’m always going shopping for Pampers and baby clothes alone. It don’t matter that you give me money. You think your time’s more important than mine.”

  “Yeah, I see how it’s all my problem,” I said, short and sarcastic.

  I turned my face away from her, before I boiled over and said something too strong. As we turned the corner, Destiny Love woke up, letting out a loud cry.

  Deshawna and me both went to reach for her, and nearly knocked heads.

  So I took a step back and said, “I’m sorry. All right? I know I’m not perfect.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear,” she said, picking up our daughter in her arms.


  Later that week, I got my first-semester report card at school. I knew I was doing all right but my eyes skimmed it quick anyway just to make sure there were no red marks. Then I took a look for real and almost couldn’t believe it. Mr. Dowling gave me a 95 and his handwritten comment next to the grade read—Noah, you’re learning more about social studies through your personal trials than I could ever teach you.

  Reading that started a real feeling of pride churning inside of me—something I hadn’t felt about myself in a long time.

  I got an 85 in math, and Hendricks gave me an “S” for “satisfactory” in both of my PE classes. I had a GPA of 90, nearly fifteen points higher that it had ever been before.

  On my first open period, I met with my guidance counselor, to fill out the paperwork to enroll in a city college next semester. I even checked off “engineering” as the major that I was most interested in.

  When I was in the fifth grade, some kid’s uncle who was an engineer came in to talk to us for career day. He was black, acted supercool, and wore the sharpest alligator shoes I’d ever seen. I remember how he walked over to our classroom bulletin board and pointed to our math tests hanging up there.

  “All of these students with the one hundred percents on their math papers—they’re heading in right direction to become engineers,” he said before he called out six or seven names off the tops of those tests, including mine.

  Then he showed us a tape of skyscrapers and big bridges swaying in the wind, and explained to us how an engineer designed them so they wouldn’t crack or buckle from the strain.

  Anytime after that, whenever somebody asked me what I wanted to be and wouldn’t settle for answers like a millionaire or a pro football player, I’d say, “An engineer.”

  “An engineer on a train maybe,” Dad would rag on me whenever I talked about college during my junior and first senior year. “Every father wants something better for his son, Noah. But a degree in engineering is just crazy talk, unless you’re finally ready to get serious about school.”

  It hurt my pride every time Dad poked at me like that. But I never really argued back too hard, because I knew he was right.

  All that afternoon at Mickey D’s I could feel my chest pumped up, standing at my station in front of the deep fryer. It didn’t matter what kind of shit Munch threw my way. None of it could touch me. I kept pulling that report card out of my back pocket, reading Dowling’s comment to myself over and over. And I left there for home thinking, Destiny Love’s daddy is going to be somebody.

  For a change, nearly every part of me was feeling whole. The patch of hair the doctors cut out of my scalp had grown completely back in, and the headaches I was having had mostly disappeared.

  I bounced through the front door ready to show off my report card, but nobody there was in a mood to celebrate.

  They were all raging over the TV news, and I felt like I’d just been sucker punched walking into my own house.

  “Two years!” Mom hollered. “Two miserable years! That’s what they think taking a bat to my boy’s head is worth!”

  Every nerve inside of me pulled tight.

  “Outrageous! That’s no justice at all,” shrieked Grandma.

  At first, I thought they were screaming about Charlie Scat.

  But they weren’t.

  It was Spenelli.

  He’d come clean, copping a plea bargain with the city.

  “Why didn’t the prosecutors call here first and ask Noah if that was enough time?” ranted my father, pointing his finger at me.

  He was looking for an answer. But I didn’t have one.

  “You can’t trust any of ’em!” Dad steamed. “Even them black lawyers are just carrying their white bosses’ bags. They got no real power!”

  That wasn’t all the news.

  The prosecutors officially decided to let Rao walk in exchange for testifying.

  The face of that white detective who talked to me in the hospital—the one who swore it would never happen—burned inside my brain. And except for Charlie Scat, I started to hate him the most, blaming him for everything I felt cheated out of that night.

  The next day, in a hallway at school, I heard a mob of voices shouting, “Guilty!”

  A girl wearing a FREE SPENELLI! T-shirt was walking as fast as she could, heading in my direction. She pressed her books tight to her chest, almost completely covering up the words on that shirt. And she was staring straight down, with tears streaming from her eyes.

  The hallways were packed and nearly every black face she passed roared out, “Guilty!” too.

  Then a sister ran up to her and said, “Take off that damn shirt. He already admitted what he done.”

  I didn’t say anything to that girl with the shirt.

  I didn’t have to. That bastard Spenelli said it all when he copped to those charges. For those few seconds it didn’t matter to me that he only got two years. It only mattered that he’d confessed to what he was.

  I just listened to that chant of “Guilty!”echoing through the hall.

  Not a single white kid opened their mouth to stick up for Spenelli, or for her wearing that shirt. And after that, I never saw one of those shirts around school again.

  Parent/teacher conferences were that same night. Dad had to work late, but I went along with Mom and Grandma, ready to catch some real praise for my grades. I’d taken enough hits in the past over low marks that I really wanted to be there this time.

  “Forget physical education,” I told them. “All that racist from Hillsboro—Hendricks—can tell you about me is that I come prepared every day now.”

  “Well, I don’t need to hear that from him,” said Mom.

  “I’m the one who washes out your gym clothes every night.”

  So I took them straight upstairs to the second floor to see Mr. Dowling.

  We had to wait fifteen minutes while Dowling finished his conference with another family. He was ripping into some kid who wasn’t even there, calling him “unmotivated” and “lazy.” And I knew that would build me up even more.

  Grandma walked around the classroom reading the posters on every wall.

  “Noah Jackson, introduce me to your family,” Dowling finally said, reaching out to shake Mom’s hand.

  “Mr. Dowling, this is my mother, Mrs. Jackson, and that’s my grandmother,” I said, loud and proper.

  “I’m also Mrs. Jackson,” announced Grandma. “I’ve been looking at your poster of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. It’s so moving. I want you to know that I’m only three generations removed from slavery. My great-grandfather was—”

  That’s when her voice faded to almost nothing.

  “Are you all right?” Mom asked her.

  “Here, sit down, Mrs. Jackson,” said Dowling.

  But before anybody could get Grandma into a chair, she collapsed to the floor.

  “Lord Jesus, help her!” screamed Mom.

  Mr. Dowling got on the intercom, calling the main office. Then he whipped out a cell phone and dialed 911.

  Grandma started breathing hard, like she was in a race.

  She was gasping for air—Huh, huh, huh.

  Then she stopped cold and I thought she’d quit breathing for good.

  Every emotion inside me was spinning out of control, running wild with nowhere to go. It all built up super-fast with Mom’s hysterical screams echoing through my skull.

  I looked into Grandma’s face.

  Her brown eyes were open wide.

  And I nearly sprinted out of my shoes, flying through the hallway.

  I didn’t know where I was headed or if I was running out of pure fear.

  I shot down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Then I hit the first floor and found my voice.

  “Help us!” I hollered. “We need a doctor! Help!”

  People were pouring out of every room, but I streaked past them all towards the gym. I guess I’d gone there on instinct.

  “Dowling’s class! Hurry!” I yel
led, running into the gym office.

  But Hendricks was the only PE teacher inside.

  He looked me straight in the eye, and for a second I swore there wasn’t anyone else in the whole world except him and me.

  I ran back to Dowling’s class, exhausted, pushing myself to keep up close on Hendricks’s heels.

  I got there right behind him, and saw Hendricks take a long look at Grandma stretched out on the floor. He kneeled down next to her, doubling up his palms on top of her chest, pushing down, again and again.

  And what suddenly jumped into my brain was that speech Hendricks gave about his new “hands-off” policy.

  Then Hendricks put his lips over Grandma’s, giving her two long breaths.

  Mom buried her head into my chest, crying, “Lord, don’t take her!”

  But my eyes were glued on them.

  Hendricks kept repeating that CPR cycle. Finally, he checked Grandma’s pulse, and then backed away, giving her room to breathe.

  EMS workers came charging into the class with all of their equipment.

  Then I watched Hendricks wipe his mouth off on the sleeve of his shirt, before he walked away without saying a word.

  I didn’t know if I wanted to run him down and hug him tight for what he did, or if I wanted to wrap both my hands around his throat and strangle the life out of him for who he really was.

  Grandma was conscious again before the EMS workers carried her down the stairs on a stretcher.

  “Stop fussing over me this way,” she said in a weak voice. “I’m all right now.”

  I called my father on his cell phone to let him know that we were heading to the hospital. But his train must have been deep underground, because he didn’t pick up and I had to leave a message.