by Kit Pearson
Real funny, Flux.
~
I’ll never get my Entrance Certificate if this keeps up.
~
My second-best friend, Poop Prudhomme, drew a picture of his butt and wrote Mary Jane Ballantyne’s name on it and showed it to her and she screamed and told the teacher and the teacher went after Poop and accused him of being obscene and Poop told him it was just an example of modern art and now he’s kicked out of Hopeless Public for two weeks.
I don’t think he’ll bother to go back at all. He’s done with school. Maybe I am, too.
~
Our English teacher wants us to hand in our journals but I can’t hand this stuff in so I’ll have to write a fake one but I don’t know what to say in it. I’ll just make it up. How great everything is.
~
Our neighbour next door in Unit One punched his wall and his fist came right into our place. Mom has a picture of Winston Churchill hanging over the hole.
~
My friends now are Richie, Dinny, Jamie, Mickey and Lucky. Mom doesn’t approve of any of them. I’m also friends with Bonnie and Connie. Mom doesn’t approve of them even worse.
Everybody tries to say Connie’s my girlfriend. I don’t think so. The other day Connie waited outside the principal’s office. When Mr. Black came out to go and get his cup of tea like he always does, Connie bent over and farted at him.
Who wants a girlfriend like that?
~
Mom thinks it would be good for me to learn how to play the clarinet. She said, “Music has charms to soothe a savage beast.” I told my English teacher that my mother thought I was a savage beast and told him what she said about music. He said she had it wrong. The saying was “to soothe a savage breast,” not beast.
Mom rented a clarinet and signed me up for some lessons. On the way home from my first lesson, one of the older guys on the bus grabbed my clarinet and threw it out of the window during a huge snowstorm. He said he did it because he hated music. Now I’ll never become the “King of Swing” like Benny Goodman. That’s what my music teacher said. I’m filing that under “S” for sarcastic.
~
Dad: In this letter I should tell you something about me. What I’m like sometimes.
Sometimes I feel dizzy and sort of sick and I start to sweat a lot. And I can’t breathe. And I can’t understand what people are saying to me. And I get a feeling in my stomach like I’m afraid of something but I don’t know what it is I’m afraid of. I missed school for a couple of days last week because of this feeling.
“Oh, Penman,” Mom said, “what am I going to do with you?”
As you can see, Mom doesn’t know what to do with me. I don’t blame her. I don’t know what to do with me either. Would you know?
What to do with me, I mean? Just wondering.
Somebody must know.
Anyway, here’s some more of my journal.
~
My best mark in Grade Eight so far is in bread board. In woodwork we made a bread board. You glue different-coloured strips of wood together and clamp them together overnight. The next day you chip off the hard drips of glue and take off the clamps. You have a square. You trace a circle on the square and cut along the line with the band saw without sawing off your thumbs. Then the sort of round plate of wood gets put on the lathe by the teacher. The lathe spins the wood around at a scary speed while you press in the chisel and watch the wood chips fly. (Don’t forget your safety goggles.)
Then you sand and shellac your perfect, round bread board until smooth and shiny.
I got a D-minus. My best mark.
I took it home and we started using it. It seemed to be working pretty well. Bread was getting sliced just right.
~
Last night Phil was drunk and yelling and Mom was screaming and all of a sudden she picked up my bread board and, with both hands, brought it down hard on Phil’s head.
The board fell on the floor in three pieces.
I guess I got a D-minus because of “faulty” gluing.
I was sorry about the gluing. Maybe if it was glued better it would have knocked Phil out cold and then we could have dragged him out onto the highway and waited for a truck to run over him.
~
The owner of Coulter’s Drugstore right next to Hopeless Public brought Richie and me to Mr. Black with chocolate bars. He said we stole them. My punishment was to sit at a big table in the school library all by myself and read David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.
I had to do this for two days.
I couldn’t understand one word of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. No, wait. I understood the first sentence. “I am born.” Anybody can understand that. I would probably write, “I was born,” but so what? Who cares what I think? Everybody knows he must be born. How could he write this stuff if he wasn’t born?
The second day I brought my book about Dorian Gray and put it inside the Dickens book and kept on looking for parts that told about debauchery.
The librarian caught me and squealed on me to Mr. Black. He doubled my punishment and “confiscated” my Dorian Gray book. Said I’d get it back when the time arrived for me to finally leave his school, which couldn’t come too soon for him.
~
Almost every second day my friend Dinny beats up somebody in the schoolyard at recess. Dinny always picks the fights and he never loses. He told me he wanted to beat up every boy in Grade Eight before he was finished. He might do it.
Dinny enjoys picking the boys who are well dressed. Nice jackets, shirts, boots. He likes getting their own blood all over their clothes.
He punches them first in the cheek. Makes the cheekbone bleed. Then he steps back and finds another place on the kid’s face.
I’m glad I’m Dinny’s friend and not one of the well-dressed ones on his list.
Yesterday’s massacre was interrupted by Mrs. Black. She brought Dinny and some of us spectators to her husband’s interrogation room.
We watched Dinny get kicked out of school for good. No Entrance Certificate for Dinny.
Mrs. Black was glaring at me during the Entrance Certificate speech. “Your element is not welcome here,” she said. Her eyebrows were going all over the place. Your element.
I looked up “element” in the big dictionary in the library. The big heavy one on the stand with all the pages. I like that big book. There was a whole page practically on “element.”
There were all kinds of meanings. The one I like the best is: “One of the substances, usually earth, air, fire and water, formerly regarded as constituting the whole universe.”
I think I’m fire.
~
Bonnie’s with some high-school kids on the corner at noon hour. One of them has a mickey of rye. Bonnie’s acting stupid. Opening her mouth and showing the sandwich she’s chewing. I take a whiff of the rye from the bottle. It smells like Phil.
~
Last weekend Jamie and I robbed a bakery wagon at the shelter. Pies, doughnuts, cakes, gingersnaps. We took it all to Abandoned Barracks No. 666. Jamie had the idea to put up a sign and open a store. BAKED GOODS — CHEAP.
Our first customer was a big policeman.
We went home and I introduced Mom to the policeman. He told her Jamie tried to sell him a doughnut in the police car.
~
Lucky got dared in Science class. Dared to drink some kind of stuff. He drank some of it.
The ambulance came and took Lucky away.
~
School is over.
I got my report card. It said Passed On Condition. They told me On Condition means that I barely passed, but that if I don’t do better at the beginning of Grade Nine they will send me back to Grade Eight. They said Mom would get a letter telling her about the Entrance Certificate being held back On Condition.
Maybe I have it — maybe I haven’t.
~
There’s a cobweb on the ceiling that I see every night before I go to sleep. I always say that tomorrow I�
��m going to get the broom and take away the cobweb. I don’t want spiders falling on my face when I’m asleep.
But I always forget.
And every night it’s there.
And every night I say that tomorrow I’m going to get the broom and brush it away.
And every morning, I forget.
~
I’ve got an armload of school crap. Report card — all Fs except English and Shop. Workbooks (empty), notebooks (almost empty), the school song, a broken math set, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, scribblers, a sweater, my sugar scoop good for watering plants, notes passed from Connie and a Be My Valentine card with a drawing of her lips, failed test papers, lists of missed days, three-hole-paper reinforcements, 2 pencils, Geography maps, a calendar for organizing study time (blank), a school crest to remember good ol’ Hopeless Public, a photo of Sibyl Vane standing beside a car with “The King” …
I’ve missed my bus.
Along comes Bonnie.
We decide to hitchhike.
Bonnie offers me a puff on her cigarette.
She gets a ride right after she puts on a whole lot of lipstick.
They don’t want me in the car.
I decide to walk.
In the middle of Billings Bridge I stop and look down at the water flowing, moving, stuff floating.
The Rideau River falls into the Ottawa River. The Ottawa River runs down to Montreal and turns left into the St. Lawrence River. Then you could turn right and go down the Atlantic Ocean and turn right again and go up the Pacific Ocean to Australia or wherever you want.
~
If I have to walk all the way home I’m not carrying all this junk all that way — more than four miles.
I throw it all off Billings Bridge into the Rideau River and watch it float, slow and quiet, away.
All this school crap, floating further and further away from me.
To somewhere far away from here.
END OF SOME OF MY JOURNAL
P.P.P.S.
There.
That should do it.
signed, Penman
P.P.P.P.S.
As you can see, Dad, I’m fine.
And I’m not doing much.
signed, Penman
P.P.P.P.P.S.
Try and not forget my birthday this time.
signed, Penman
P.P.P.P.P.P.S.
Bye for now. Until you arrive.
signed, Penman
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S.
I hope.
signed, Penman
Though Solomon’s family are free Blacks, a close call with slavecatchers, from which Solomon barely escapes, impels them to move from Virginia to Canada West. But racism follows them even here, and rears its head when Solomon is expelled from his local school simply because he’s not white.
AFUA COOPER is a scholar and poet who has studied Black communities in Ontario during the 1800s.
To Learn … Even a Little
The Letters of Solomon Washington
Village of Charlotteville, Canada West
February 1853 – August 1854
15 February 1853
To Julius Solomon
Charlottesville, Norfolk County, Virginia,
United States of America
My dear cousin Julius,
I received your letter and happily read all its contents. To think that you are to be attending a coloured college in the nation’s capital. We are all so proud of you and expect you to do some great thing with your life. Receiving your letter cheered me up a great deal, and believe me, Julius, I am in need of good cheer. My news is exactly the opposite of yours. I have been expelled from my school! Expelled by the school trustee, one Mr. Philip Glasgow, who rode to the school in his wagon and right in front of my classmates told me to pack my things and leave the school immediately. Confused, I asked him why. “Why?” he shouted at me. “Because Anglo-Saxon civilization will not be trampled upon by African barbarity!”
Julius, those were his exact words. I had no idea what he was talking about, but as he stood glowering at me I picked up my satchel and left the room while some of my classmates booed and made jeering sounds. “That is what you get for fighting with your classmates,” my teacher yelled as I walked from the room. It was then I knew why I was expelled. I walked the mile and a half home to our farm.
Let me explain about the fight. Yesterday I got into a fight with four of my classmates in our schoolyard. For the whole school year, I have been teased by these bullies. Making reference to my complexion, they called me the meanest names — I am sure you can imagine what they are. These boys began to pound me with their fists; another broke a limb from a nearby tree and began hitting me with it. I defended myself, of course, using the fighting techniques that my father taught me. In short order, I beat them up.
Soon after, our teacher approached the scene and began shouting at me. He said he was watching the fight from the doorway of the school and could see that I was the aggressor. The four boys agreed with him. I asked him how and why I would attack four boys. I asked him if he had heard the mean names they had called me. He said not to ask him anything and that I was rude and saucy. He then told me to “get on home” and not to come back to school without bringing my father.
As soon as I reached home, I had to tell my parents what happened — they could see I was bleeding. I explained that I could not return to school until Father accompanied me. My mother bathed my bruises and did the best she could with her potions. But I felt alone, sad and degraded. Father was angry and wanted to go out into the night to the teacher’s house and demand an explanation for the cuts, the bruises and the expulsion, but Mother feared that the teacher would call the constables and get Father arrested. So we waited until the next morning.
We arrived at the school early this morning. The four boys, their fathers, and the trustee, Mr. Glasgow, were already there. Our teacher sent the rest of the scholars outside to play and called a meeting. I related my side of the story, how for months I had been the target of racial abuse. The four boys merely said that whenever I passed them I “glowered.” Their fathers said they were thinking of pressing charges against me for beating up their sons. Not once did any of them acknowledge that their sons had attacked me. I think they were all embarrassed that I, one person, had laid low all four of them.
But the teacher sided fully with the boys. My father rankled with the unfairness of it all and said that he pays the school tax and therefore I have every right to be in the school and should be able to learn without fear.
This is how the meeting ended, Julius. Father left, along with the trustee and the four fathers. The teacher then told me I should sit at the back of the classroom. Shortly after, Mr. Glasgow came back and told me I was expelled. He also gave the same news to the four other Black boys in the school. Father had already left by then, so I went home and gave my parents the news. Father rode to the trustee’s house to find out why. Mr. Glasgow told him that the school was only for white children, that Mr. Ryerson, who is the chief superintendent of education, had established a school for Black children in the town of Simcoe. The trustee said that was the school I should attend.
Father reminded Mr. Glasgow that he pays the school tax for the section of Norfolk County where we live and where our school is, but the trustee repeated that the Norfolk school is for white scholars and white scholars alone. He repeated that the five Black scholars who were dismissed must go to the separate school in Simcoe.
Julius, here is the most ridiculous part of it — that school sits closed and shuttered for over a year now for want of a teacher. And even if it was not closed it is eight miles away, and not even near the section where we live.
My father says he will not accept my expulsion. He has a plan, but for now he keeps it to himself.
Mother has just appeared and told me it is very late and I must turn the lamp off and get to sleep. Why should it matter? I have no school in the morrow. But I shall obey her and be off
to bed. I will send you another letter soon.
From your dear cousin Solomon Washington
15 March 1853
Dear Julius,
I find it comforting to be able to use this letter to unburden myself — though I hope it is not difficult for you to hear of our troubles. You have been like a big brother to me. I will always remember how you rescued me from kidnappers when I was only seven. I can still see that day — you and I playing in Grandfather’s apple orchard when those two white men crept up behind us and began to drag us to their horses. My mouth was covered; I could not scream. But you did. Remember how our fathers and grandfather came running and fought off the kidnappers? That was what persuaded my parents to leave the United States and move to Canada. Father said that free Blacks should never have to live in fear of being abducted. I shudder to think of my fate had I been sold into slavery.
The entire household is upset because of the expulsion. My father sits and writes letters. My mother sings all the time — it seems to soothe her. The twins look at me with sad eyes. Ramona, who is more sensitive than Charles, cries whenever I emerge from my room and tells me she loves me. God bless her.
It is fortunate that you have a coloured private school for your younger brothers to attend. Now I better understand your father’s feelings in wanting to go to Liberia. My father says that the disadvantages we suffer in both countries are enough to make anyone desire to leave and search for a better place.
Canada was supposed to be our better place.
And for a while it was.
When we arrived from Virginia seven years ago and settled in Sandwich so Father could begin farming, we were disappointed that there were no schools for coloured children and that they were prevented from attending the local common schools. That is why Mrs. Mary Bibb was moved to open a school for the Black children. I have probably told you that she was a wonderful teacher. She taught us how to love words. Every Friday afternoon we had elocution lessons and once a month we prepared and gave speeches on topics she chose. Young as we were, we learnt many new words and learning was a joy.