What’s this? he says.
It’s yours, I say. I can’t.
Can’t do what? he says.
I told you not to let me see, I say. You should’ve kept it from me.
See what? he says.
Too much, I say. It was all there. I saw it all.
What time is it? he says. It’s too early for this. Come inside.
No, I say. I take the car keys out of my pocket and drop them on the bag.
Oh boy, he says. Ooooh boy. That Bible got you tripping like this? What the Bible teach us but how to suffer? he says. That’s what you want for us? Suffering?
Son, we can get away from Him, I say. But no one gets so far they can’t get back. I leave, track the line of lambent bulbs to the stairs. There’s a cold that belongs outside, belongs out of this world, in the lobby and through the lobby glass there’s the Honda, parked by the curb, its wheels flecked with dirt. I totter outside and into the street and face the building and search the windows, and there’s my son gazing at me with his arms crossed and a face I can’t make out. I turn away from him and close my coat, this nothing coat, and march off against a treacherous wind.
Chapter 22
You hate to think it, hate to say it.
—Champ
Last school year me and Big Ken were the emergency contacts. What that meant was, the times they couldn’t reach Big Ken or when they could but he couldn’t get away from work, they called me. They called me more than once too. Baby bro stayed in some elementary school strife: backtalking the teacher, scuffling in the lunch line, forging notes home, was in the office so much the little nigger damn near had a reserved seat in detention. The last time they called they were vague about the transgression, but were clear it was grave, that he had to be picked up ASAP. I got the call while I was on campus between classes. I blew my next class and drove the fast lane most of the way to his school. When I got in the office, the school’s hawk-beaked secretary thrust a stack of carbon copies in my face. Meanwhile, I glimpsed the principal (he and I had had words) in his office nursing a vainglorious-ass smirk. The secretary had security take me down (as if I needed directions) to the detention room, where my bro was stooped over a lefty desk with his faced smashed in his arms. I caught him by his collar and, with the security (a fossilized waif who couldn’t make an infant follow rules) stalking us, I drug him out of the school. It felt like there was a set of eyes pressed against every single window, watching me shove Canaan into the car and slam the door, watching me storm around and seethe at him through my windshield. Me huffing and groping for slick calm. Don’t ask me why I was so hot without the details. Could’ve been the way the principal looked at me or the latent grudge over it being me once again attending the issue instead of Big Ken, instead of Mom, who was still in her program; don’t ask me why, but that day I had a mind to fire on baby bro right there in the bright broad light of the lot. Lucky for him the watchful gaze of a building of witnesses made me think twice. I took out Canaan’s paper and read the script:
Canaan Thomas, a student with a history of behavioral problems, was involved in an altercation with Mr. Glisan. Mr. Glisan ordered Thomas to run lines for dressing down late for class and Thomas refused. Mr. Glisan then asked Thomas to leave the gym, at which point Thomas cursed Mr. Glisan in front of the class. Mr. Glisan requested once more that Thomas leave the gym and report to the principal’s office at once. Thomas responded by tossing a ball in the stands and threatening to bring a firearm to school to shoot Mr. Glisan. School security was alerted and Thomas was escorted to the main office. Thomas is hereby suspended from school pending a hearing for expulsion.
What to do??? Read it once. Read it twice, then asked him, with fist and heart open, for his side of the story. He said he showed up a couple minutes late for class, and in front of the whole team the coach fired a ball at him and said to run suicides. He (my granitehead bro) tracked the ball and kicked it to the other end of the gym (this was a bad move, of course, but as it turns out the lil homie was locomotive) and told the teacher what he could do with his suicides. He claimed that day that the teacher called him a loser and a waste and only then did he curse (another dandy move but youngster was caught, bad breaks to boot, on that steep, steep slope of flawed judgment) and say he’d get his older brother (me) to come the next day and whoop the teacher’s ass. This was what made the teacher call security, not, as baby bro alleged that day (his eyes leaking Oregon raindrops) because he threatened to bring a pistol to school.
Man, they got you in the system now, I said. Satisfied?
For the record, my peoples, yes I know it could have been a snafu picking a side. But who gives a rat’s ass whose story I believed? The end game was this: my baby brother won’t be back in “regular” school (oh, the shit we forsake) for at least a year if ever at all.
At Canaan’s new school (an alternative school housed among a bunch of warehouses) the office, or what I’m guessing is the office, is empty, desolate, so I stride down the hall and peek inside the first open door and introduce myself to a lady sitting behind a messy desk. She greets me all cherry-like, and I tell her why I came. She knows Canaan, his grade, his class, and offers to walk me over.
Canaan’s class is in another building, and from the office to his class you can see the shabby warehouses, forklifts, bereft wooden pallets. Up ahead a semi pulls onto the lot, its engine making the sound of tools knocking, and muscles towards a garage where men in grimy jeans and hooded jackets wait in the cold. My escort stops and rubs her shoulders and points to the building. It’s really awesome you came, she says, her nose and ears chilled soft red. She strides off hugging herself.
Dinged lockers, a lone lefty desk tagged with Fizzuck Mizz. H, a dented trash can, that’s what I see inside. The classroom door is closed, but you can see the teacher (I’m guessing she’s Ms. H) through a window cut in the door. She’s standing by a portable chalkboard dressed in slacks and a blouse. She points to the word DREAM written in giant letters on the board. I crack the door and wave and she smiles and waves, and I stroll in searching for baby bro in the seats. He’s posted in a row nearest the back and sinks in his desk when I look at him. This classroom is all these classrooms. There’s a hand-drawn box on the board with a name in it, a wall of maps showing countries these youngsters, like it was for me and my patnas, got a 0.01 percent chance of seeing as nonsoldiers, a laminated poster of the classroom rules. Ms. H announces me to the class, all boys, and warns them on their best behavior.
What, he posed to be babysittin or somethin? says a youngster with level-five acne. Ms. H tells him to show me respect and the little peon balls a sheet and shoots it well short of the closest trash can.
She asks me if there’s anything I’d like to say.
What pops in my head is the story of old classmates, a pair of fine young gentlemen who had a dope spot near my high school. Every day they’d slouch in a desk by the window and eagle-eye the shit out of their spot, and each day whenever either of them saw a potential lick, they’d blast out their seats and scramble out the class and out of school in competition. They both (go figure) ended up in alternative school and I lost track, but no sooner than I’d waltzed offstage in my grad cap and gown, I heard they got rocked with state racketeering charges. Their fates beyond that? Gent A got bludgeoned to death with a bat in a state prison, and Gent B, well, let’s just say that by the time he sees the free world again, we’ll be booking weekend trips to the moon.
That’s the story that pops in my head, but what comes out my mouth is this: Hey, guys. I’m happy to be here. But we can pretend I’m not. That I’m a ghost.
This, of course, goes for everybody but my baby bro. I pick the desk right behind him and he twists around. I give him the you-best-not-embarrass-me-or-I’ll-fuck-your-young-ass-up look and he slumps lower than even I thought he could. Ms. H waits until I’m settled, then writes REM on the board. When we dream, our brain all but paralyzes us, she says. That’s what happens to us physiologically.
Physio-what?
Physiologically, John, she says. That means what happens inside our bodies.
Ms. H asks them to take out a sheet of paper and write down their last dream. Most of the class cracks open a notebook, all but the acne-struck youngster who says he don’t do no dreaming. Not only does he participate zilch, he balls up another sheet and tosses it haphazard. John, do you need a break, do you need to take a trip to the office? she says.
Nah, he says. Do you?
You hate to think it, hate to say it, but there’s a kid like him in most every class (well, the ones I was in), a rogue-in-training who’s at worst beyond rescue. Ms. H tours the desks and lets them write till they slap their pens on top of their sheets. She walks to the board and ask for volunteers.
One of the boys in the front shoots up his hand.
Go ahead, Juan, she says.
Okay. I had dream something chase me, he says. But I no see who chase. The chaser get loud and faster. And I kept run and run right off edge. Then I run in air and fall same time. I no hit ground, but I no stop fall either.
The tiny black interlude (you know I know about those) where don’t nobody right off say a word.
Thank you, Juan, for sharing, she says.
You won’t catch me calling myself a scholar, but I’ve cracked a book or two, one of which was the text for my Intro to Psychology class. (Don’t those psych electives look lovely when you’re working with your counselor on degree plans?) The psych professor was heavy into your boy Carl Jung. Jung, who was Freud’s patna, believed dreams are the way we acquaint with our unconscious, the way we try and solve the problems of our waking hours, and you can bet the theory would’ve been even more accepted if Jung wasn’t a German, if he was not, per the historians, a Jew-hating, self-aggrandizing, cock-chasing German. But, (alleged) Reich research, top-flight narcissism, and Aryan ass pursuits aside, homeboy’s theories are nottobefuckedwith! For proof I submit exhibit A: Jung’s seven dream archetypes: persona, shadow, anima/animus, divine child, wise old man, great mother, and of course the trickster.
Why oh why, Ms. H calls on young Scarface and he reminds her he don’t dream.
But everyone dreams, she says.
He scratches on a sheet, slams his pencil down, and swivels to glare at the class. Well, I ain’t everybody, he says.
Ms. H takes off her glasses and rubs the bridge of her nose and puts them back on and simpers. She marks a check by his name on the board.
She picks more boys to share, calls on Canaan last. My brother works a stash of transparent stall tactics. He ends up telling us about this dream he’s been having where he’s hooping in the coliseum. He says at the end of the dream they pass him the ball with seconds left on the clock, pass him the ball while KJ, Mom, and me cheer from courtside seats. The worst part, my brother explains, is not that he misses the last shot, but that he dribbles out the clock and never takes the shot to miss. Everybody boos, he says. Mom. My brothers. The crowd.
At lunchtime, Ms. H. escorts us to the teachers’ lounge. There’s a male teacher sprawled on a couch napping, another washing a Tupperwared meal back with a massive bottled juice, another plucking drenched red onions from a salad. Ms. H says for us to sit where we like and takes her sack lunch down to a seat beside the picky herbivore. Canaan rustles through his brown bag for a sandwich, takes it apart, and checks the joint as if he’s never seen roast beef. For me lunch is a vending machine special: chips and a cold pop.
So talk, I say. Spill it.
About what? he says.
How you like it here? I say. How you’re getting along.
I don’t, he says.
Good, I say. This ain’t no place to like.
Then why’d you come? he says.
Why you think? I say.
Noone else do, he says.
Now look, I say. At how smart you’ve become.
Ms. H finishes her lunch and leaves. The napping teacher wakes and hunts the faculty fridge for a plastic-wrapped plate. Others wander in and out with supplies, spoons, paper plates, plastic cups, water from the cooler, coffee. Baby bro and me watch the weak action and eat, no words.
Ms. H gives a lesson on prefixes, suffixes, and root words. She asks if I’d like to help and I stroll between the desks checking sheets. Every third boy is struggling, makes you wonder what made them “alternative” picks, if all their hellified delinquency is no more and maybe less than a thin cloak for some innominate at-risk-low-income-single-parent syndrome.
Ms. H grants free computer time for the boys who’ve made it thus far without their names on the board in the box of shame/pride. Towards the end of class, for everybody else, that everybody being miraculously or predictably Canaan and the quietest boy in the room, Ms. H offers two options: silent reading or cleanup duty. Pow! Just like that, you never seen a group of hardheads more eager to tidy and sweep. She assigns them to keep a dream journal for a week, then asks if I have any parting words. What pops in my head this time is the premise of one of my favorite books, a nonfiction joint from my I’ve-taken-too-many-black-studies-classes-and-ended-up-a-green-militant era. The book’s called Brothers and Keepers, and tells the story of two biological brothers raised in the same house who end up with fates stark miles apart: one a famous writer with a grand professorship and the other a former dope addict doing life in prison. I tell the boys about the book and end with the question for all the ox-blood marbles: The question isn’t which brother’s life would you rather live. That’s easy, right, fellas? The question is how do you avoid becoming the other?
Ms. H forces a smatter of mumble-mouth thank-you’s. The boys grab their bags and coats and bolt, all but Canaan, who I tell to wait outside.
Then it’s just she and I in the room alone.
That book sounds interesting, she says.
Oh, it is, I say.
Shawn, I really appreciate you coming, she says, and orders a stack of papers. These boys need more of this. Need someone who takes an interest. Who can model what it means to be a student.
They do, I say. But I don’t know if I’m the guy.
She puts on her coat.
That brother of yours, he’s just the sweetest, she says. He doesn’t belong here.
You think not? I say.
Oh, I know so, she says. I’ve seen the ones that do, and he’s not them. What he needs is an outlet. A person he trusts that he can talk with, who’ll listen when he speaks.
I’m with you on that, I say. But he keeps so much to himself.
She scoops an armload of files and books and papers. He thinks the world of you, Shawn. All of it.
Chapter 23
I’m fine, I say. Let me go.
—Grace
It’s friday night, a payday. I’m waiting at Check Mart, my uniform reeking of ground beef, worrying over how I’ll pay my fees and fines, my bus pass, my woman products, and groceries with yet another anemic check. All day, I’ve been back and forth, back and forth, about whether to call Champ. Whether to tell him giving it all back was mistake, that I need him after all.
Up ahead a stumpy Mexican is giving a cashier the Spanglish blues.
ID, sir, I need to see your ID, she says.
Que? he says.
ID, sir, she says. I-den-ti-fi-ca-tion.
Yo no tengo. Pero, necesito mi money, he says.
No ID, no check cashed, sir, she says.
The fine print of the Western Union poster that’s pinned to the back wall, that’s what I’m reading when Michael, yes, Michael pushes inside with a girl my first mind tells me has a suicide soul. She and he and what comes to mind is not tonight. I turn my back and spy them in the mirror, see him fix his shirt and tie his shoe and whisper to her. See her cover her mouth and titter. I scrounge my bag for coins and rub them together. Emergency change.
The Mexican gestures and grouses while the cashier looks on through bulletproof glass all tagged with rates and policies and wanted posters. Next, next, she says, and the Mexican g
rabs his check and stomps out the door cursing in English.
I slug up to the glass feeling every second of this week’s shifts in my legs and feet. The least they could do if they gone keep sneaking across the border is learn the damn language, she says. Up close the cashier has a soft chin and the cheeks of a baby. She slides my check through a scanner and asks for ID. The scanner lights green and spits out the check. She asks me how I’d like my money and I tell her, Big bills, please. She drops the coins on top and shoves all I have in the world—it wouldn’t pay rent—through the slot under the glass. Thank you, I say, stuffing the cash in my bra. He and I catch eyes. He motions for me to stop. Be blessed, I say, and flit by as fast as I can.
The last time I saw him was at a meeting. He moseyed in scruffy, in an overstarched shirt, jaws working triple-chew on a wad of gum, and plopped in a seat a row ahead of mine. Should’ve seen him for the first half of the meeting—reciting the prayers and traditions, clapping for testimonies; he even dropped in dollars when the basket came around.
The break came, and I ventured into the lobby, found a seat out of the way, took out my pocket Bible, and turned to Revelations: the verse where John describes the throne of God. I peeked up from my book, and saw Michael swanking over with his arms raised into a white flag.
Good day, he said. I come in peace.
Not to worry, I said, marked my place, and asked him why he was at the meeting.
Damn good question, he said. Heard this was the group of groups. Thought I’d stop through, see for myself.
Well, welcome, I said.
He pointed to my Bible and asked if I was back in church.
Why? I said. That a problem?
Oh, not a problem at all, he said. The problems is what hit us between groups, Bible study, and church.
Just then my sponsor—she’d been clean for an age and counseled in a group home—came out the meeting room. I called her over to us.
The Residue Years Page 14