by Lisa Wingate
In the nearby Destiny Room, with a couple weeks of hard work by the kids, borrowed folding tables from the church next door, and the help of some legacy descendants of the library’s Ladies New Century Club, we’ve created a temporary research center of a sort. It’s the first time this much of the area’s historical information has been gathered in one place, as far as we know. Over the years, Augustine’s history has been tucked away in desk drawers, attics, file boxes at the courthouse, and dozens of other out-of-the-way spaces. It has survived mostly in bits and snatches—in faded photos, family Bibles, church baptismal records, deeds of sale for land parcels, and memories passed down from generation to generation as children sat at the knees of grandparents.
The problem is, in today’s world of fractured families, readily available cable TV entertainment, and video games that can be plugged into home television sets for hours of Pong and Super Mario Bros. and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, the stories are in danger of fading into the maelstrom of the modern age.
And yet, something in these young people is curious about the past, about what led to those who are here now and what…or who…came before.
Aside from that, the idea of dead people, and bones, and graveyards, and playing dress-up to bring ghosts to life is too much even for my most closed-off kids to fully resist. Perhaps it is the presence of Granny T and the other New Century ladies, but my students are all business in the Destiny Room and cooperative in sharing the ten pairs of white cotton gloves loaned to us by the church’s bell choir. And thanks to a speaking appearance by a history professor from Southeastern Louisiana University, the kids understand the fragility of old documents and why using the gloves really does matter. They’re careful with the materials we’ve borrowed from the library’s archives and the record cabinets of local churches, as well as those we’ve transported from Goswood Grove and the attics of various families around town.
Other than during the library’s short public hours, we are alone in the place, so noise doesn’t matter. And we are noisy. Ideas circle the room like honeybees, buzzing from landing place to landing place, gathering the nectar of inspiration.
Over the past three weeks, each day has brought new discoveries. Breakthroughs. Little miracles. I never imagined that teaching could be this way.
I love this job. I love these kids.
I think they’re starting to love me back.
A little, anyway. They’ve given me a new nickname.
“Miss Pooh,” Lil’ Ray says as my fourth-period freshman class makes the short trek over to the library for another Monday session.
“Yes?” I squint upward into the patches of sunlight and leaf shadow slipping over his chubby cheeks. He is a mountain of a kid, in the middle of the adolescent growth spurt that seems to hit boys about this age. I’d swear he was three inches shorter yesterday. He must be at least six two, yet his hands and feet are still huge for his body, as if he still has a lot to grow into. “You could put some chocolate chips in these.” He holds up the pooperoo he’s eating while we walk. He’s struggling to choke it down with no drink. Food is not allowed in the library, but there is an art deco drinking fountain on the way in. “I think that’d be good.”
“Then they wouldn’t be so healthy for you, Lil’ Ray.”
He chews another bite like he’s trying to process gristle.
“Miss Pooh?” He opens another topic. I’d like to believe that they’ve given me this delightful nickname because I am cuddly and charming in an oh, bother sort of way, à la Pooh Bear. But really, they’ve named me after the lumpy oatmeal cocoa cookies.
“Yes, Lil’ Ray?”
His gaze rolls upward, scans the trees as his tongue swipes the leftovers from his bottom lip. “I been thinkin’ about something.”
“That’s a miracle,” LaJuna smarts off. She returned as unceremoniously as she left and has been back in class for two and a half weeks now. She’s staying with Sarge and Aunt Dicey. Nobody, including LaJuna, knows how long that will last. She’s strangely lackluster and negative about the Tales from the Underground project. I don’t know if that’s because of her current life situation, or because the project developed while she was AWOL from school, or because she doesn’t like the fact that dozens of other students have horned in on her exploration of the secrets the judge left hidden in Goswood Grove House. That place was sacred territory for her, a refuge since her childhood.
Some days, I feel like I’ve betrayed a fragile trust with her or failed some important test, and we’ll never get to where I’d like to be. But I have dozens of other students to think about, and they matter, too. Maybe I’m being naïve and idealistic, but I can’t help hoping that Tales from the Underground has the potential to bridge the gaps that plague us here. Rich and poor. Black and white. Overprivileged and underprivileged. Backwoods kids and townies.
I wish we could bring the school at the lake in on it, draw together students who live within a few miles of one another yet inhabit separate worlds. The only reasons they comingle are to battle it out on the football field, or sit in close proximity over boudin balls and smoked meat at the Cluck and Oink. But during what have turned into regular Thursday evening update sessions at my house, Nathan has already warned me that Lakeland Prep Academy is one of the places I need to stay away from, and so I have, and will.
“So, Miss Pooh?”
“Yes, Lil’ Ray?” There is no short discussion with this kid. Every conversation goes this way. In stages. Thoughts move carefully through that head of his. They percolate while he seems lost in space, looking at the trees, or out the window, or at his desktop as he painstakingly manufactures spit wads and paper footballs.
But when the thoughts finally do emerge, they’re interesting. Well developed. Carefully considered.
“So, Miss Pooh, like I said, I been thinking.” His oversized hands wheel in the air, pinkie fingers sticking out as if he’s practicing to drink tea with the queen. The thought makes me smile. Every one of these kids is so unique. Filled with incredible stuff. “There’s not just dead grown-ups and old people in that cemetery, and in the cemetery books.” Consternation knits his brows. “There’s a lot of kids and babies that hardly even got born before they died. That’s sad, huh?” His voice trails off.
Coach Davis’s star lineman is choked up. Over infants and children who perished more than a hundred years ago.
“Well, of course they did, numb nut,” LaJuna snaps. “They didn’t have medicine and stuff.”
“Granny T said they’d mash up leaves ’n’ roots ’n’ mushrooms ’n’ moss ’n’ stuff,” skinny Michael pipes up, anxious to do his job as Lil’ Ray’s wingman-slash-bodyguard. “Said some of that worked better than medicines do now. You didn’t hear that, homegirl? Oh, that’s right, you skipped that day. Show up, you might know the stuff, like the rest of us, and not be raggin’ on Lil’ Ray. He’s trying to help the Underground project. And there’s you over there, wanting to tear it down.”
“Yeah.” Lil’ Ray straightens from his ever-present slump. “If losers would stop saying loser stuff, I was gonna say that we can play people our age, or people that’re older, like we can color our hair gray and all. But we can’t play little kids. Maybe we oughta get some little kids to come and help, and do some of the kid graves. Like Tobias Gossett. He lives down from us in the apartments. He ain’t got nothing to do, mostly. He could be that Willie Tobias that’s in the graveyard. The one that died in the fire with his brother and sister because his mama had to leave them home. People oughta know, maybe, you can’t leave little kids by theirselves, like that.”
The lump that was in Lil’ Ray’s throat transfers to mine. I swallow hard, trying to get it under control. A sudden uprising of opinions erupts for and against that plan. Copious slurs, a dis of poor little Tobias, and a dusting of mild curse words add to the debate, but not necessarily in a productive way.
“Time-out.” I use the referee hand signal to make my point. “Lil’ Ray, hold that thought a minute.” Then I address the rest of them. “What are classroom rules?”
A half dozen kids roll their eyes and groan.
“Do we gotta say it?” somebody pipes up.
“Until we start remembering to follow it, yes,” I insist. “Or we can go back to the classroom and diagram sentences. I’m good either way.” I make the motion of a choir conductor’s baton. “All together now. What’s Article Number Three of our Classroom Constitution?”
An unenthusiastic chorus responds, “We encourage vigorous debate. Civil debate is a healthy and democratic process. If one cannot make one’s point without yelling, name-calling, or insulting others, one should develop a stronger argument before speaking further.”
“Good!” I take a mock bow. We’ve carefully drafted the Classroom Constitution as a group, which I’ve blown up on the copier, laminated, and permanently affixed to one side of the chalkboard. I’ve also given every kid a portable copy. They get extra points for knowing it.
“And Article Two? Because I have so far detected three—count them, three—violations of that one in this recent conversation.” I turn and walk backward, directing the choir again. Thirty-nine annoyed faces silently say, You are insufferable, Miss Silva.
“If the word is derogatory or improper in polite company, we don’t use it in Miss Silva’s class,” the troupe murmurs as we near the library steps.
“Yes!” I pretended to be wildly delighted with their ability to commit the constitution to memory. “And better yet, don’t use it outside of class, either. Those words make us sound average and we don’t settle for average because we are…what?” I point the pistol fingers—our school symbol—their way.
“Outstanding,” they drone.
“Alrighty then!” An uneven joint in the sidewalk foils my mojo, and I slip sideways on my platform clogs and almost go off the curb. LaJuna, Lil’ Ray, and a quiet nerdy girl named Savanna rush forward to catch me, while the rest of the class erupts in snickers and giggles.
“I’m good. I got it!” I say and pause to recover my shoe.
“We oughta add ‘Don’t walk backward in clogs’ to the Classroom Constitution.” It’s the first lighthearted thing LaJuna has said since she came back to school.
“You’re funny.” I wink at her, but she’s angled herself the other way. The rest of the group has paused to keep from running me down, but they are also focused on the library steps.
I turn around and my heart gives a flit flit flutter, like a butterfly rising. There stands Nathan. I let a brightly colored “Hey!” fly out before I can swat it down. Heat pushes into my cheeks as a random observation darts across my consciousness. The aqua T-shirt nicely complements his eyes. He looks good in it.
And the thought ends right there, like a sentence cut short, left dangling without punctuation.
“You said to…come by. If I had the chance.” Nathan seems uncertain. Maybe he feels the weight of having an audience, or maybe he senses my self-consciousness.
Thirty-nine sets of curious eyes watch us acutely, reading the situation.
“I’m glad you did.” Do I still sound too bubbly? Too pleased? Or just welcoming?
I’m acutely aware that until now, our association has always been over Cluck and Oink takeout at my house. In private. Since our first all-night research session, we’ve just drifted into a Thursday evening thing, as it’s a convenient night for both of us. We look over the latest findings from Goswood Grove, or pieces of the kids’ research, or various documents that Sarge and the New Century ladies have managed to dig up at the parish courthouse. Whatever’s new in the Underground project.
Then we walk the old plot maps of the plantation graveyard and a potter’s field that lies between the orchard and the main cemetery fence. Occasionally, we wander to the quiet, moss-covered stones, concrete crypts, and ornate brick and marble structures that hold the aboveground gravesites of Augustine’s most prominent citizens. We’ve visited the resting place of Nathan’s ancestors in a private section of stately mausoleums, the elaborate marble structures encircled by an ornate wrought iron fence. The statues and crosses cresting their interment places, including those of Nathan’s father and the judge, reach skyward, far above our heads, denoting wealth, importance, power.
Nathan’s sister is not buried there, I’ve noticed, but I haven’t asked why or where she is. Maybe in Asheville where they grew up? I suspect that the pomp of the Gossett family plot wouldn’t have suited Robin, from what little I know of her. Everything about that place is meant to provide some sort of immortality here on earth. And yet the Gossetts of old have not altered the terminal nature of human life. Like the enslaved people, the sharecroppers, the bayou dwellers, and the ordinary workingmen and women in the potter’s field, they’ve all come to the same end. They are dust beneath the soil. All that is left behind lies in the people who remain. And the stories.
I wonder, sometimes, as we wander that graveyard, what will remain of me someday. Am I creating a legacy that matters, that will last? Will someone stand at my grave one day, wondering who I was?
During our walks, Nathan and I have fallen off into deep conversations about the broader meanings of it all—in the hypothetical sense. As long as we don’t stray too near the topic of his sister, or the possibility of his visiting Goswood Grove House, he’s relaxed and easy to talk to. He tells me what he knows about the community, what he remembers about the judge, what little he recalls about his father. There isn’t much. He speaks of the Gossett family in a distant way, as if he is not part of it.
Mostly, I keep my history to myself. It’s so much easier to talk in the more abstract, less personal sphere. Even so, I look forward to our Thursday evening get-togethers more than I want to admit.
And now, here he is in the middle of a workday—a time when he would normally be out with his boat—to see for himself the topic I talk about most when we’re together. These kids, my job, the history. I’m afraid he is partially motivated by a need to learn more, in case this whole thing becomes a battleground with the rest of the Gossett clan, as he has repeatedly warned me it might. At that point, he’ll run interference or try to mitigate the damage or something. I’m not sure what.
“I don’t want to get in your way. I had to be in town today to sign some paperwork.” He pushes his hands into his pockets and glances toward the student horde, which is bunching up behind me like a marching band with a fallen majorette at the fore.
Lil’ Ray swivels to get a better view. LaJuna does, too. They’re like two plastic pink flamingos with necks curving in opposite directions, a question mark and a mirror image.
“I’ve been hoping you’d stop by sometime. To…see us in action.” I restart the forward momentum. “The kids have sifted out even more amazing information this week, not only through the books and papers from Goswood but from the city library and the courthouse. We even have boxes of family photos and old letters and scrapbooks. Some of the students are doing interviews with older people in the community, using oral histories. Anyway, we can’t wait to share a little bit of it with you.”
“Sounds impressive.” His praise warms me.
“I’ll show him round if you want,” Lil’ Ray is quick to offer. “My stuff is good. My stuff is boss, like me.”
“You ain’t boss,” LaJuna grumbles.
“You best just shut your big, nasty mouth,” Lil’ Ray protests. “You’re gonna get the Nativity Rule evoked on you, huh, Miss Silva? I think we should do some evoking right now. It’s been two times LaJuna’s disrespected me. Article Six—Nativity Rule. Times two. Right, Miss Pooh?”
LaJuna answers before I can. “Whatever. It’s Negativity Rule, and invoked, idjut.”
“Oh! Oh!” Lil’ Ray bounds three feet in the air, lands in a knee-down half split, pops up,
snaps his fingers, and points at her. “And that’s Article Three, Civility Rule. You just call me idjut. Dished out an insult instead of gave a civil argument. That’s against the Article Three. Right? Huh? Huh?”
“You dissed me, too. You said I had a big, nasty mouth. Which one of your lame rules is that breaking?”
“Time-out,” I snap, mortified that this is happening in front of Nathan. The thing about so many of the kids here—country kids, town kids, a sad majority of these kids—is that their norm is constant drama, constant escalation. Conversations start, grow louder, get ugly, get personal. Insults fly and then lead to pushing, shoving, hair pulling, scratching, throwing punches, you name it. Principal Pevoto and the school security officer break up multiple altercations daily. Broken homes, broken neighborhoods, financial stress, substance abuse, hunger, dysfunctional relationship patterns. All too often, children in Augustine grow up in a pressure cooker.
I think again about the world my mother came from in her rural hometown, the world she thought she’d left behind. But watching the young people here, I’m reminded of how much she unwittingly brought with her. My mother’s relationships with men were impulsive, careless, loud, and filled with volatility, manipulation, and verbal abuse that went both ways and sometimes turned physical. My interaction with her was the same way, a mixture of full-on love, habitual put-downs, crushing rejection, and threats that might or might not end up being carried out.
But now I realize that, even with the rocky, unpredictable home life I experienced, I was lucky. I had the benefit of growing up in places where people around me—teachers, surrogate grandparents, babysitters, friends’ parents—decided I was worthy of their time, their interest. They provided examples, role models, family meals at dinner tables, reprimands that didn’t come with a swat or a cutting remark or end in the questions Why don’t you ever listen, Benny? Why are you so stupid sometimes? People around me invited me into homes that operated on a schedule and where parents spoke encouraging words. They showed me what a stable life could look like. If they hadn’t bothered, how would I have even known there was another way to live? You can’t aspire to something you’ve never seen.