Right away I knew the kid would be good without knowing a thing about him, right there on the first day of school, just taking roll, just the way he said, “Here!” with a certain shine or affirmation of joy. And I was right. Manuel, in his junior year, loved high school, baseball, and had a good sense of humor. There is always, though, the shit that you don’t know, or the shit that you find out later.
About halfway through the first quarter of the school year, Manuel dropped in one afternoon after school. He got right to the point.
“Mr. Chavoor, can I move in with you?”
“What?”
“Can I move in with you?” He smiled big.
“Sure. Which one of my kids am I going to throw out though?”
“Oh you don’t have to do that!” he laughed. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Well, I don’t know.” I was figuring out how to say no but at the same time I was picturing him eating scrambled eggs at our breakfast bar.
“I’ll do yard work. I’ll wash your car.”
Kids think washing your car is the grandest of all gestures for some reason.
“I appreciate that Manuel, but I don’t think I can do that legally.”
“I won’t tell nobody.”
“Well, tell me, what’s going on at home?”
“You see, Mr. Chavoor, it’s like this: My parents ran away from me.”
I looked at him and he was still smiling. There was no visible pain in him. His smile was not masking his embarrassment; his smile was acknowledging that he understood the irony of it. He was staying positive in the worst kind of storm.
“What do you mean?”
“They left.”
“You mean you woke up one morning and…”
“The house was empty.”
“Ok. Manuel, I am only going to say this once: Are you kidding?”
“No, Mr. Chavoor,” he laughed. “I swear to God. They’re gone. They took my little sister and brother, too.” Mentioning his siblings put a serious look on his face for the first time.
“They took them but not you?” It slipped out before I could stop it.
“Yeah,” he laughed again. “I was odd man out, I guess!”
It was quiet for a while. I tried to process the information that I had just heard and the information that I already knew. His mom was a nurse; his dad worked someplace where a forklift was involved. Manuel was a B student. He had never been in trouble for drugs, fighting, or even attitude. He was always sunny and upbeat, and did not fit the profile for an abused child.
“Any idea where they went?”
“Mexico. My mom left a note.”
“A note? What did it say? Did it say why?”
“She just said they would send me money to buy food and stuff.”
“Get any money yet?” I had my doubts.
“No. Just another letter that said to be good.”
“Where have you been staying?”
“Well, I stayed in the house until they cut off the hot water. Then I stayed at my girlfriend’s but her mom said I have to leave pretty soon.”
“Where do they live?”
“Ashland and Marks.”
“That’s 10 miles away. How do you get here?”
“The city bus. It takes two buses! I gotta be at the bus stop at 6 to get here on time.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Couple of months.”
“You gotta job?”
“Not yet. You know any?”
“No. Any letters after the last one?”
“No. I gotta plan though. I mean besides moving in with you.”
“What’s that?”
“This guy named Poncho said I could stay with him as long as I want. Until I graduate next year.”
“Who is this guy?”
“A drug lord.” He started laughing when he saw the look on my face.
“No drug lords. That’s out.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Chavoor. Poncho said I don’t have to sell drugs.”
“Manuel, the guy’s lying to you. He’ll have you selling drugs.”“
No, he said he wouldn’t. That I wouldn’t have to if I didn’t want.”
“Don’t you have any family in town?”
“Tia Maria, but that didn’t work out too good.”
“Anybody else?”
“No. My real dad’s from Puerto Rico and his whole family lives over there and I don’t know any of them anyway. My mom and stepdad are Mexican and all their people live there. But I don’t want to go back there; I want to stay here in Fresno.”
“Your mom or stepdad ever talk to you about moving or going back to Mexico?”
“No. Never. Everything was cool how it was.”
“Have you ever heard of foster parents, Manuel?”
“Yeah, I think so.” We walked over to the office, found his counselor and got him started on the process. A few weeks later he was situated and Poncho was a thing of the past, except whenever Manuel mentioned him just to rile me for amusement.
When I saw him during his senior year he was as happy as ever. He was going to Fresno City College, planning to play baseball there and he had a job. He said his foster parents were ok but he was looking forward to moving out on his own. He was going to major in business and learn how to start his own business and then raise a family. I don’t doubt that he met most if not all of those goals.
Sometimes you never know how things will go. I didn’t know for years and years, but I always believed that Manuel would come out all right. I am happy to post this story today because just this morning March 31, 2014, nearly 20 years later, I found Manuel on Facebook. He has given me permission to post this story and here’s how he described what happened after high school. I am exceedingly happy for him and wish happiness and blessings on him and his family. I admire his strength, determination and positive attitude. I am glad I got the chance this morning to tell him so. I know that we read the poem “Dream Deferred” the year that I had him. His dream was deferred but I again say that I am happy, very happy to report that he reached his dream. Staying positive paid off big.
I graduated high school, but didn’t really go to college. Was homeless for about a year and a half after high school. Started to work. And in 1999 I met my girl, got married and we had a child. Five years later we had another child, a little boy, but he passed away 4 days later. One year later we had twins, a boy and a girl. Now they are 7 and my oldest will be 14 this year. It was rough right out of high school but I am doing good now.
Noel Salvatore was a nice guy, a regular guy, which is to say he was as good or bad as any of the rest of us regular guys battling our way through the David Starr Jordan Junior High School experience in Burbank, California. Everyone knew that regular people couldn’t run for office, but Noel had one very good quality to have at that troublesome age: he was ambitious, and that gave him the chutzpah to run for student body president as a nice, regular, ambitious and self-assured guy. He had a plan and it seemed like a good one at the time. I’m not sure if he hatched the plan or if it just presented itself to him as plans and opportunities sometimes do.
For consultation, Noel went to his go-to closest friend, as any regular guy would. The difference was, he friend was Ron Howard, the actor. All of us at Jordan knew him; he went to school there, I mean, everyone goes to school somewhere. But Noel was friends with him, and anyone would ask his friend to help him run for office. In this case it became what may have been Ron Howard’s first production project.
There was a popular novelty music act at the time; his name was Tiny Tim. He had shoulder length hair but he was no hippie. No electric guitar for Tiny Tim, not even a cool looking acoustic guitar. He played a ukulele and sang in a tremulous falsetto. He was part Lebanese, his nose was the size of Connecticut, his skin was pasty white, and his upper torso resembled a refrigerator. He was in no way a freak, as in the Fabulous Fury Freak Brothers, he was a freakish novelty. He rejected the status quo and he countered the counter-culture at the same time. In an era when everyone was hoping to be “natural,” Tiny Tim was doing schtick. He had a hit, “Tiptoe through the Tulips”; he was at the zenith of pop culture zeitgeist. Ron intuitively tied the election of Noel Salvatore to Tiny Tim somehow.
Ron approached me in the middle of the hall during passing period, whacking me on the back like a politician getting that one last vote he needed to win. I was nonplussed; we knew each other but we weren’t back-whacking buddies. But that’s how it was. Ron was like a regular guy. Let me rephrase that: Ron was a regular guy.
“Jack Chavoor, how are you?”
“Ok.”
“I’m wondering if you would be interested in appearing in a skit.”
“A skit?”
“Yeah, for the election assembly. I’m helping Noel Salvatore with his election assembly skit.”
“Yeah?”
“And I think you’re the only guy who can play the part I have in mind for it.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. How’d you like to be Tiny Tim?”
“What?”
“Yeah, you would sing ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips.’”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, really. An appearance from Tiny Tim will make everyone forget all the other candidates. What do you say?”
“Yeah, ok.”
“That’s great.”
“My sister’s got a ukulele. I don’t know all the words though, and I don’t have a wig.”
“We can work all that out during the rehearsals. We’ve got a couple of weeks.”
“Rehearsals?”
I somehow thought we were going to put it together over doughnuts during nutrition break in a couple of days and wing most of it. Winging it was how I did everything.
“Yeah. I have to talk to my mom about it but I’m pretty sure we can have them at my house.”
“Yeah, sure. That’s cool.”
“All right, then. I’m putting you down for Tiny Tim!”
“Ok.” He took off like he was in a hurry to go write it down somewhere.
The next day he handed me a paper with the rehearsal dates and directions to his house. He told me not to tell anyone because Tiny Tim would be better if it was a surprise. I told him I wouldn’t tell anyone and then went immediately to look for my friend, Lenny.
“You know what this means, right?”
“I’m going to end up in the movies?”
“No,” he said, laughing heartily.
“What then?”
“You’re going to have dinner at his house.”
“How do you know that?”
“Lookit the schedule there, Einstein. Five o’clock. You’ll be done before six.”
“So?”
“So they’re not going to let you stay there at six without there being dinner.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“I’m guessing a steak dinner, and the steak will cover like half the plate.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because they got the dough, that’s why. You think they eat Swanson’s or something?
“Wow. I never thought of it before.”
“Yeah, and you’ll be in the dining room with china and shit.”
“But wait a minute. I don’t know about like different forks and all that.”
“That’s easy, Jack. Just watch what they use, then do that.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s good.”
“Yeah, and that way you won’t look all greedy and too hungry.”
“Cool.”
When I told Mom that I was going to be onstage singing “Tiptoe through the Tulips,” she didn’t seem terribly impressed.
“I know that song. It was popular when I was in high school.”
“I’ll be dressed up like Tiny Tim, in front of the whole school.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Well, you gonna be there?”
“It’s tax season. I’m helping Daddy this year.”
“But it’s just one day, not even the whole day.”
“We’ll see.”
That’s what she said when she couldn’t bring herself to say no. She did attend though. She slipped in the auditorium just as the curtain was coming up and sat in the back row and left when I was done. Many years passed before she told me she was there.
The rehearsal went well. Ron worked me pretty good. He went over everything – where I stood, how I stood, what I said, how I sang. I never imagined that something so zany could be so well planned and rehearsed. Mrs. Howard came out to the backyard once, to bring some lemonade. I didn’t see or smell a barbecue. Mom arrived a little after six and we went home without the spectacular dinner Lenny had imagined. I was so well prepared that he called off the second rehearsal.
I stood at center stage with the curtain down waiting for Noel out front at the podium to say, “What if we had a special guest?” The wait seemed interminable but at last I heard the cue line and the squeaking of the pulleys to raise the curtain. I flicked back my long fake tresses, cleared my throat and the place exploded with cheers just at the sight. I wasn’t miked but it didn’t matter. I sang as loud as I could and the cheers got even louder. I sang the first verse, then shouted, “Don’t forget, boys and girls, vote for Noel Salvatore!” The curtain came down while I was blowing kisses. The place went nuts.
I had that rush that actors get, mixed with the sadness that Mom wasn’t there. I pretended in my mind that she was there somehow. She did, in fact, attend though. She slipped in the auditorium just as the curtain was coming up and sat in the back row and left when I was done. Many years passed before she told me she was there. I never knew why she didn’t tell me.
Ron Howard’s brilliant campaign strategy backfired a bit. The entire school was abuzz for a week with Tiny Tim mania. Kids I never knew were calling out, “Tiny Tim!” to me in the hall. But the hoopla overshadowed its original purpose. Noel Salvatore lost the election. But maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe it’s just that when it comes to school elections the popular kids will get elected no matter what a regular kid and his regular friends do, even if Tiny Tim visits the school.
I just wrote this story last week. For a while there I felt as though I had run out of stories or the muse had taken a permanent vacation. There was a time– maybe three years ago– when I was writing as many seven stories a month, but I’m ok with any amount as long as they show up every once in a while. If you’re a sports person writing something is like being in the zone. And speaking of which I was in the zone exactly once for a basketball game. It lasted 10 minutes during which I hit three shots in a row. Anyway, hope you enjoy the story, which is not by the way about Donna Xiong, who was a former student from Roosevelt. The story below is about a different Donna. Happy reading. Feel free to leave comments.
JC
March 1997
Every morning she walked into class clutching her binder like a shield, head down, stride exaggerated, pace accelerated. She walked straight back to the last row and last seat, put her stuff down and sat waiting for the bell with a severely curved posture that gave me the feeling that she wanted to be invisible.
She did her work, and was polite and punctual. She just didn’t interact with other students, and they left her alone. She wore dresses and rarely initiated conversation, but would respond at length if I asked her something. I was taking roll one day and instead of calling her name I started singing “Oh, Donna,” the Ritchie Valens song. I only sang the two words in the title. That’s the whole song, the heart of the song as far as I’m concerned; the rest is just filler.
“Mr. Chavoor, my dad sings that all the time.”
“Of course he does,” I said, happy that she was pleased.
After that I would sing those two words to her every morning. It slowed down her gait and lightened her demeanor. Almost every high school kid hides. Some hide by being brash; others stick to the walls, staying silent. From the first time I heard the expression, “Look for the good,” I believed it. I felt that part of my job was to draw them out; to let them know that—inside the parameters of decency and fair play—there is plenty of room to be what you want and discover who you are as well as who you aren’t. They came to class as grunge, Goth, prep, jock, school-boy, skater, introvert, extrovert, drama-makers, drama-takers, nerds, turds, fakers, metal-heads, sports fans, proselytizers, and any number of other things. They hide or haven’t discovered their true, good core. Teachers have a chance to draw them out. For Donna, holding back in my class was where she wanted to be. Singing those two words from a 50-year-old song somehow opened the door to other possibilities.
“Mr. Chavoor, do you like oldies?”
“Sure do.”
“You know that song, End of the World?”
“Umm. Skeeter Davis?”
“Yes! How about I Will Follow Him?”
“I remember that one.”
“Peggy March, Mr. Chavoor.”
“Oh uh, of course.”
“But you didn’t remember.”
“Well, I was in, I don’t know, first grade? I knew the song but not the singer at the time.”
“Oh, that’s OK, Mr. Chavoor.”
“Don’t you like the Spice Girls or something?”
“Not really,” she laughed.
Everything about her was from the past. She liked old movies, old plays, musicals, earlier times. We had several conversations on those topics. She became more and more at ease, although she didn’t care to connect to other students in my class.
“Mr. Chavoor, do you like Grease?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I didn’t want to tell her how much I didn’t like Grease. Not many people understood me on that particular subject.
“I love Grease. My sister and I have seen it, like, I don’t know how many times.”
“Oh, yeah. I know it’s really popular, even after all these years.”
“Grease is the word.” It was the first time I had heard her sing.
“And among all her varied talents and gifts, Donna sings, too!”
“Thank you, Mr. Chavoor.”
Donna graduated with good, very good grades. She got into Fresno State and certainly had the skills to do well there. I imaged she would major in something practical and get a job for a medium-sized but growing company and work her way, quietly, into an administrative position. I also pictured her married, with three kids and all of them singing songs from the 50s.
Three years later Donna came to visit. She arrived without an office pass during class. I went outside my room and we stood on what I called the front porch and we talked.
“Mr. Chavoor, I’m going to be a teacher!”
“A teacher?”
“Yes. Isn’t that great?”
“Well….”
The truth was, Donna was an unlikely candidate for teaching. She certainly would master the subject, and cared enough about people, but there is the other part to teaching, where the teacher has to run the show and engage the kids. There are different ways to do those things but I wasn’t sure Donna could. I didn’t want to be right, but you can’t see what isn’t there. A lot of teachers are familiar enough with hamming it up or shtick—we have a little bit of show-biz in us.
“I would like to teach one of your classes, Mr. Chavoor.”
“One of my classes? Are you in a student-teacher program?”
“No.”
“Have you taken any Ed classes?”
“Not yet.”
“So you want to know if you can, if teaching is for you.”
“I know I can, Mr. Chavoor.”
“Have you ever stood in front of class before?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you wait until you get some Ed classes under your belt?”
“But Mr. Chavoor, I want to teach your classes. I can do it.”
The other thing about teachers is that a lot of us are optimistic beyond our own common sense. I told her I would let her teach my afternoon class. I gave her the weekend to get ready. Who am I kidding? I gave myself the weekend to figure a way out or to somehow get her to understand about putting yourself out there.
She was a little underprepared; she was sincere but she was not connecting to the students, and the students were trying to cooperate.
“Chavoor, please come back. Please,” Maria, an outgoing student said on Donna’s second day teaching.
“Give her a chance,” I said.
“She’s boring, Chavoor. She ain’t cool like you.”
“Come on, Orlando, I’ve seen you put your head down before Donna, uh, Miss Giselle ever got here.”
“That’s different. I was just tired. That chick’s gotta go.”
“We ain’t learning nothing off her, Chavoor. She puts us to sleep.”
“Alfonso, you always want someone to cut you some slack. OK, look. Let’s give her one more day.”
“But that’s it,” Maria said.
It was my fault. You never hand over the reigns to someone who’s not ready, and I knew she wasn’t ready. I might have been thinking after one day in one class she would see how much more there is to teaching. Well, ok, l don’t know what I was thinking. Hoping for the best, I guess. She was a nice young lady, but there was something out there for her besides teaching.
“Donna, can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure.”
“Well, let’s go out on the front porch.”
“OK.”
“Today was your last day.”
“It’s only Wednesday.”
“I know, but you’re not officially enrolled in an Ed class, and I think you’ve had enough… to, to get the idea.”
“You don’t think I’m a good teacher.”
“I think you’re a good person. I think you gave it a shot and, well, it’s time to think about what else is out there.”
“That’s awful, Mr. Chavoor. You’re wrecking my dream.”
“Well, you can still take those Ed classes like I said and try again.”
“I feel, just, horrible.”
“I don’t want you to feel bad. It’s just that….”
“OK, well, I gotta go.”
She hopped off the porch and took off, head down, pace brisk. I spent a few days wondering if there was a nicer way of saying what I said. I didn’t want to be a dream wrecker. Maybe there was a better way but it still wouldn’t have changed the content of what I said. Perception can often overrule truth, but truth eventually wins out. Still though, I hope Donna has seen it the way I saw it, and I hope she has found her true gift and is happy.
Teachers get 40 minutes at lunch. That’s five minutes to get to the lunchroom, then five minutes to standing in line, and throw in the five minutes you leave early to get to class ahead of the kids and you end up with 25 minutes to eat and socialize. I know for a fact that one year they gave up a 30 minute lunch. You can do the math on that, but just in case you don’t, that made of 15 minutes to eat and socialize. So when we had Institute Days– nonstudents days packed with seven hours of meetings– we liked making the most of one full hour for lunch. We were creative; we knew how to stretch that 60 minutes out. Administrators, for example, didn’t bother to return until well into the 70th minute, and even then people would mill around for an additional five minutes, and then factor in the simple truth that no one was going to take notice if you came five minutes after the actual proceedings had begun. Now you had 80 minutes to work with. There was no dawdling though. You had to have picked out your place and your friends. If you didn’t plan ahead you might end up eating where you didn’t want to or with people you hadn’t planned on hanging out with. You might have even ended up dining alone until you found someone you knew only tangentially.
I don’t know how I missed connections with my friends that day but I ended up at my car alone with no plan and no idea who was going where. I guessed that some of them might go to Javier’s, a popular restaurant on the east side of town, only a few miles from Roosevelt.
There was a place closer to school, El Sombrero, but the food there was old and stale, and the ambiance was worn, torn and faded. It was the kind of place you would go to only if you had been going there for years and years and couldn’t give up on the place because after all those years it had become a matter of loyalty. But I was young and had no such notions. I could have driven there and found Carol, the department chair, and her set, but I was restless and got on Kings Canyon Avenue and headed east, assuming someone would be at Javier’s.
There was a good noontime crowd at Javier’s, but none of my colleagues were there. The clock on my stretched out 80 minutes was running down and I was hungry so I figured it was better to eat alone and go back to those dull, pointless meetings with that starched-out, sleepy feeling. I would even buy myself a after-dinner mint which always prompted pleasant flashbacks of all the previous meals there.
I was being escorted to my seat when I saw Aram. I wasn’t sure at first but, as I passed his booth, we glanced at each other without speaking. I knew him from church and he me, but ours was an unusual history: 50 years earlier he had dated Mom. I was also on good terms with his daughter, whom I had met 17 years earlier at an Armenian Christian Endeavor Union retreat where she was the keynote speaker. I liked what she had to say at the time and I liked her calm, occasionally droll speaking style. It was as if she believed she could help others understand this world as well as the next by slowing everything down, and it was at a time when everyone was anxious to speed things up. Hers was a gift few people possess.
But in the moment there, I was just a guy about to eat alone in a restaurant, and so was Aram. We were two men perhaps with more differences than similarities: a 34-year-old English teacher and a 74-year-old retired chemist. I worried that if I went over to his booth and suggest we eat together we wouldn’t have much to talk about, and besides, what if we waiting for someone else? Wouldn’t that underscore the oddness of me being alone at lunchtime? Wasn’t that for old retired men? I still felt obliged to say hello though, and I so I got up and walked back to where he was.
“Oh hi,” I said cheerily, as if seeing him for the first time.
“Hi,” he said, “What’re you doing eating alone?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, unable to come with a short, reasonable answer, “I just, well, it was lunchtime and I…”
“Wanna come over here?”
“Oh yeah. Sure.”
The waitress handed me a menu without comment.
“You like this place?”
“Yeah. We come here a lot.”
“Huh.”
“You?”
“It’s all right.”
He seemed distracted. His countenance was stern; he looked like Winston Churchill pondering weighty matters. I didn’t want to ask him anything.
“How long’ve you been in Fresno?” he asked after I ordered.
“Almost ten years.”
“Like it?”
“Yeah. I like the affordable housing.”
He stared at me.
“I mean, coming from LA.”
“Huh.”
“I mean, people say stuff about leaving LA but what do you do with your social time? You have someone over or you go over to someone’s house. You go to the movies. You go out to dinner. You can do that here as well as anywhere else.”
“Fresno’s not like it was.”
“Yeah.”
I thought he meant it wasn’t as good as it once was. Something old people are prone to do. I was wrong, though.
“There was a lot of prejudice against Armenians.”
“I heard about that.”
He went silent for a while, then finally spoke again.
“I was a good athlete in high school.”
“I played football in high school,” I replied, not sure why he had changed subjects.
“I was good at football and track.”
“Never liked track. Running any distance was like torture to me.”
“I was good at sprints. I ran for the JV squad.”
“Junior Varsity?”
“Yeah. I ran better than the kid who ran varsity. Understand?”
“Better?”
“Better times. Record times.”
“But….”
“Know what the coach said to me?”
“No.”
“He didn’t want an Armenian doing better than a white kid.”
“What?”
“That’s what he said. That’s exactly what he said.” His face and tone indicated it still hurt him.
“You gotta be kidding.”
“That’s why he kept me on JV.”
I had heard stories. My Uncle Harry, Mom’s brother, who served in World War II, came home and couldn’t find a job because everywhere he went he was told, “We don’t hire Armenians.” My dad was so infuriated by was his brother-in-law experienced, he suggested that Harry return to those places but this time in his uniform. He should go back, Dad suggested, where he was told he did not qualify for consideration because of who he was and say, “Now what am I?”
At the time Armenian-Americans, African-Americans, and Mexican-Americans could not buy property on the exclusive Huntington Boulevard in Fresno, and neither could they join the join the country club. Armenians in Fresno were even assigned a pejorative label, “Fresno Indians.” I knew all of this but it was a history lesson, even with family members involved. Now though I was sitting across from a man who was still stung by the indignity. It became real to me. I didn’t share any family stories of prejudice with him. I didn’t know where the conversation would end up. Maybe it would ramp up his rage. Maybe not, maybe it take us to the past and his relationship with Mom. I didn’t want to visit either subject.
Mom told me the story when I was in high school one rainy day while she made dinner preparations. She had dated him. She attended Fresno State while he attended Cal Berkeley. She had a job at her uncle’s hamburger place across the street from Fresno High, and she sent some portion of her earnings to send to Aram. Accord to Mom– and it is freely admitted that Mom not be an unbiased source– she went one day to meet him at the train depot and he got off the train with his fiancée. This, according to Mom, after six years as his “steady girl.” She told me the story without any animosity, and she described nothing beyond that point of Aram stepping off the train. She simply stopped the story, put the pot roast in the oven and there was nothing else to hear except the drumming of the rain on the kitchen window. She never brought up the subject of Aram again.
Ten years after Mom told me the story I met Aram for the first time. I took Mom to the Fresno High School 50th Class Reunion at the bar at Cedar Lanes Bowling Alley. There were about 35 alum in attendance and roll was taken which turned into toll accounting.
“FLoyd Johnston?”
“He’s dead.”
“Bernice Johnston?”
“Alzheimer’s. Doesn’t know who she is.”
It went on like that for a while. There was a kind of nonchalance that sometimes bordered on comedic schtick as the man taking roll drew lines through the names of the disabled or deceased.
Aram was near the front. I knew who he was because Mom and I arrived late and she scanned the crowd from the back of the room and locked on to the back of his head and nodded, but didn’t say anything. Between sips of gin and tonic I wondered what she would do.
“Come on,” she said suddenly, like a hunter who had spotted her prey.
I fell behind when I debated whether or not to bring my drink with me. She glided past men debating football games from half a century ago and women smiling politely while eyeing each other with traces of caution. I almost bumped into Mom when she suddenly stopped where Aram was sitting, chatting amiably and contentedly. I finished my drink and rattled the ice cubes as if that was what you were supposed to do under this circumstance, as if this circumstance was common enough to have a way to proceed.
“Hey,” Mom said.
“Hey, kid,” Aram replied.
She stood and he sat. They eyed each other silently for a beat, then Mom turned, apparently satisfied with this exchange, and we went back to our original spot. They didn’t speak to each other the rest of the night, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t speak to him until I sat down to lunch with him at Javier’s.
“Prejudice against Armenians?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“And now we are regarded respectfully,” I said, trying to get some consolation for him.
“It was like a country club.”
“Yeah, Armenians couldn’t get in.”
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the whole thing. The coaches, the high school, the college. Everything, all of it. It was a country club and we weren’t invited.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I was good at sports. They had no reason to keep me on JV.”
It still had power. He appeared freshly enraged.
When our food arrived we ate with vigor. We kept moving the conversation from one topic to another. He was clearly intelligent and articulate. I couldn’t help comparing him to DAd. It seemed that Mom’s paradigm for boyfriends did not change much. Both men had a clear sense of right and wrong and had expectations for everyone to uphold those ideals. They also had remarkable long-term memory capacity.
I drove back to Roosevelt in a daze. I thought about all the Armenian names I had seen in old yearbooks I flipped though one day in the library: Abajian; Hanoian; Garabedian. Had any of them been discriminated against? According to what I heard from the older teachers, Roosevelt and the Sunnyside area was awash in Armenians. I imagined it would be nice to attend a public school with my fellow ancestral countrymen. At Burroughs High, my high school, there were four of us: Mike Delbarian; Virginia Frankian; Mike Ezmerlian and Jack Chavoor. Maybe no one bothered us because they didn’t know who or what we were. Did we know who we were? Did we know what price had been paid, and did we know the shoulders we stood on for the view of the future we had? Dad used to say to me, “You’re Armenian, you’re Assyrian, you’re 100% American. Get it?” I did, but it took me longer than I realized.
I went to the English department meeting exactly 15 minutes late and sat in the back of the room. I was thinking about Kathleen, my three year old, wondering what kind of town Fresno would be for her or if she would ever encounter any kind of exclusion for any reason. I thought about Mom, who experienced a different but no less damaging kind of exclusion. Would she have even gone to college if it were not across the street from their house? Would she have stayed in college long enough to graduate if she weren’t waiting for Aram to finish at Berkeley? And might it have been said that I had followed my mother’s footsteps if she had become an English teacher instead of a homemaker as prescribed by the era? It seemed that Mom and Aram both were victims of the same country club.
I thought about Mom who experienced a different but no less damaging kind of exclusion. Would she have gone to college at all if it were not across the street from their house? Would she have stayed in college long enough to graduate if she weren’t waiting for Aram to finish at Berkeley? And might it have been said that I was following my mother’s footsteps if she had become an English teacher instead of a homemaker as prescribed by the era? It seemed that Aram and Mom were both victims of the same country club.
The department chair went on and on about literature-based instruction, unaware of all the other issues moving around in my head like a hundred wind-up toys tossed in a swimming pool. I closed my eyes and started to doze when a colleague leaned over and asked me where I went for lunch.
“Met an old friend for lunch.”
He nodded and I leaned back, laced my fingers together, set them on my contented stomach and drifted away.
Tino may have been a Bulldog. He showed me the secret handshake that ends with a bark. His face wasn’t hard and angry though, and neither was it chillingly blank and indifferent. His face had the look of a grade school kid hoping he answered correctly. His speech was soft and slurred, but the cadence of it was accelerated. He was skinny and angular and made me think of the mechanical spiders in the film version of “Minority Report.” In brief, if there was a casting call for central California gang members, Tino Reyes would not be called back.
Most mornings I would greet him at the door; sometimes we did the Bulldog handshake and sometimes we didn’t. I had mixed feelings about the handshake. I didn’t want him to think I approved, only that I was able to acknowledge a world different from mine. I know I got some buy-in from it, although it was never a guarantee of his full cooperation. No self-respecting gang member or associate would want to be considered a “school-boy.” Those who could read and cognate effectively were cautious about revealing their skills publicly. Typically, Tino would give a vociferous smart-ass answer followed by a softer, correct answer.
“Why is that money so important to Walter?” I would ask the class.
“’For he could buy him some WEED with it!” he shouted,and then while the class was laughing, he would murmur the answer which revealed the fact that he was paying attention, “Because he could get his dream with it.”
He was always on the verge of doing ok, which is where he wanted to stay, I think. He liked being comfortable and he like being able to be in control of any given situation. One day though he didn’t come to class. I stood by the door a full minute after the bell rang. Whatever faults he had, not being at school wasn’t one of them. I had the feeling that he was one of those kids who would rather be at school than at home. Two days later Tino shook hands with me at the door in the conventional manner.
“Where’ve you been? You’re never absent.”
“Sorry, Mr. Chavoor.”
“You ok?” He looked different, as if that grade school kid was no longer interested in getting the right answer but instead wanted to go home and sit in his mother’s lap and fall asleep or at the very least, if he had to stay at school, put his head down on the desk and not be disturbed.
“I’m just tired.”
“You got a job?”
“Nah.”
“You staying up late? You know you can’t pretend to not be a schoolboy if you don’t get your sleep!”
“That ain’t it,” he said wincing suddenly.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
He was listing to his right, holding his side. I thought it was his appendix.
“I got stabbed, Mr. Chavoor.”
“What?”
“I got stabbed.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Yeah I did. Hurts like hell, too. Wanna see it?”
“No, I believe you.” But he pulled his shirt up anyway, and there right above his right hip was a three inch square gauze pad secured with white tape on all four sides.
“You called me a liar, Chavoor.”
“Sorry.”
“See? Here, look. Wanna put your hand on it?”
He started to peel off the pad.
“No. How’d this happen?”
“I told you like three times already, I got stabbed.”
“No, I mean…when?”
“Last night.”
“What were you doing?”
“I was at a kickback and it got late, and I was close to home so I started walking .”
“Yeah?”
“I was about half way there when these guys came up to me.”
“Ok.”
“And they say like what’s up and I say what’s up, you know?”
“So then?”
“They’re all older than me but I wasn’t gonna be nobody’s punk so then this guy just hits me in the face.”
“What for?”
“Nothing. These guys just come up on me.”
“Did you talk shit to them?”
“No. I was just walking home, that’s all, and they surrounded me. They’re the ones that were talking shit.”
“How many of them were there?”
“Five, get it? Me, one—them five. Ok?”
“All right, go ahead.”
“The one guy who hit me, I hit him back real hard. But then this other guy hits me with a bar. See? See the lump?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty big.”
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed a sizeable bump above his left temple.
“So I went down and then I tried to get up but they were all kicking and stomping me.”
“And where were your homeboys?”
“Exactly, Mr. Chavoor. When you don’t need them, they’re all around but when you need them they’re nowhere.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, so I got up somehow and that’s when this one guy, the oldest guy, he had a knife and he stabbed me.”
“When was this?”
“Last night.”
“Last night?”
“Yeah.”
“You went to the hospital?”
“Yeah. That’s why I’m tired. I had to wait forever in emergency.”
“They stitched it?”
“Yeah.”
“Did they give you anything for the pain?”
“Just while I was there. Right now though it hurts bad.”
“You wanna go to the nurse?”
“No. She can’t do nothing. Lay down or go home.”
“Yeah well, go home. You’re in pain and your body needs to rest.”
“I ain’t going home.” He said it with so much conviction I started to wonder why he wouldn’t.
“Does your mom know?”
“Not yet.”
“Well how did you manage to not tell her?”
“I woke up my older brother when I got home. He took me.”
“Who were those guys anyway?”
“Nortenos, Mr. Chavoor.”
“Oh.”
“They don’t like Bulldogs. We don’t like them.”
“Mexicans hurting Mexicans. What for?”
“You know, Mr. Chavoor. It’s just one of those things that goes a long ways back.”
“Tino, don’t you think you get enough misery with white folks who are racist?”
“Mostly all whites are racist.”
“No they’re not.”
“Yeah they are.”
“Tino, where do you live?”
“You know where I live at– in Calawa, Mr. Chavoor.”
“There are neighborhoods where this stuff doesn’t happen.”
“That’s for whites, though.”
“There’s Mexicans living in those neighborhoods, too.”
“Look, Mr. Chavoor. The way it is for us, is the way it is.”
“What?”
“It ain’t gonna change. Stabbings, shootings, drug dealers, gang-banging. That ain’t gonna stop.”
“Maybe, but you don’t have to live where it’s happening.”
“Know what, Chavoor? If me and my homies moved somewhere else it would start up over there. That’s true-talk.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing. What do you think this school stuff is all about?”
“I’m just telling you how it is. Go ask Juan, or Marissa, or Julio, or Jose. Lettie, Berto, Carlos. They’ll all tell you the same thing.”
“I’m not gonna convince you in one day. You have to see it for yourself. But remember what I’m telling you– the worst kind of failure is failing to try.”
“That’s true, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“’Cept one thing. In Calawa the main thing is survival. Everything else comes in second place.”
“Ok, well, let me write you a note to the nurse. Laying down isn’t a waste of time.”
“No. Can we go in though? It’s easier sitting than it is standing. It don’t hurt as much.”
“Yeah, ok. Come on. And one more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Payback won’t get you anything but in trouble. You hear me?”
“Yeah”
I yanked the door open and we walked in. All his Calawa friends were chatting amiably as I began to take roll, I wondered whether they would be interested in reading more of A Farewell to Arms. It was a tough semester to finish. I saw them all stuck in the morass of bad neighborhoods and bad choices, and if they had the same passive acceptance to it all that Tino said they did, there was no getting out of it. Two years later though I was at a football game—it was homecoming—and Tino approached greeted me and told me he was attending Fresno State and doing ok. You know that feeling when you find a twenty dollar bill in your jeans that you didn’t know you had? It was like that, except more like a hundred dollar bill.
It took six years for me to earn my Bachelor’s. I used to tell friends and acquaintances that I crammed four years into six. It took me another two years to earn my teaching credential. Four colleges were involved in the process. For some reason I ended up taking the same speech class three times. I took one at Valley Jr. College but Azusa Pacific didn’t like it so I took their speech class but Fresno Pacific didn’t like either of those speech classes so I took their version of Speech I. Don’t remember what I did at Valley or Azusa but I remember at Fresno Pacific I did a monologue from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the passage where McMurphy realizes that the patients are there voluntarily and they are free to leave at their discretion and they are in a way imprisoning themselves. Another class I took three times was student observation. It seems the Ed Biz gods want you to observe a class before you actually teach one. There’s a natural progression to it: read about it; look at it; do it. But come on now, observing a teacher teaching? And students learning? Like you had no clue what goes on in a classroom. But thems the rules, so at Valley I observed a crazy Armenian lady screaming at her 3rd graders; then at Azusa I observed Mrs. Golden at Goddard Middle School in Glendora for two days until she thought it was enough and had me lead a class discussion on Julius Caesar—most of which I had forgotten—after which she praised me for being honest enough to tell a kid I didn’t know the answer to his question; and finally I observed Mr. Wilkerson at Sequoia Middle School, the roughest, wildest school in America. Mr. Wilkerson was an alcoholic who would disappear for 20 minutes at a time while I was observing. He had a set routine: Mondays—30 new vocabulary words whose definitions were to be looked up in the dictionary and written down; Tuesdays and Wednesdays—movies; Thursdays Scope Magazine, word search, crossword puzzles, or a story to be read silently and questions to be answered about the plot of the story; Friday—spelling test. Most of the time, Mr. Wilkerson was either drunk or hung over. He was in his mid 30’s but looked at least ten years older than that and was the lead singer for a local punk band called Ennui. He was also the department chair. Wait a minute now, I didn’t take a student observation class three times, I took it four times. My time spent enabling Mr. Wilkerson was my fourth and official student observation. The others, including one at Northridge, were attached to Ed classes which for the most part were the most excruciatingly boring experiences I ever had. The teachers were monotone, dull and dry and the students—many of them anyway—when called upon to stand in front of the class to present a lesson often had no idea how to comport themselves. Sometimes it was comical, but other times I felt embarrassed for those who wanted to teach but had no clue as far as speaking to a group was concerned, even a cooperative one. But half way through the semester we were send out to the field and suddenly sitting in someone’s class to watch them teach was a great thrill compared to being tortured with Ed theory by someone who had long given up the notion of teaching. So I was sent out a couple of months before I graduated to Reseda High, where I met Beatrice Desmond. She was a slender woman in her mid 30’s, well dressed and sporting an Afro that made me think of Angela Davis. I walked into her room after her last class had let out and she sized me up in my sneakers, jeans, burnt orange Penguin polo shirt, long mangy hair and overgrown beard. I looked behind her, at the chalkboard. One class was reading The Stranger, and another class was reading The Sound and the Fury. “I’m Jack Chavoor from CSUN, for that observation class?” “Yes, I know. Beatrice Desmond. “ We shook hands and she looked me straight in the eye, so I returned the favor. It was a long handshake. “Will there be somewhere you want me to sit?” “I don’t want you to sit. I want you to teach!” “That’s great,” I said, hiding my creeping trepidation. I hadn’t read The Sound and the Fury, and while I had read The Stranger, I wasn’t sure how I would go about teaching it. “The students are, well, they have their limitations, but they will be cooperative and respectful. You just have to be prepared.” “Of course.” I debated whether or not to tell her I hadn’t read Faulkner. “Any questions?” “No. I just…” “You’re wondering what a black woman is doing is the west valley?” “No.” She looked at me, maybe deciding whether I was telling her the truth. “You’re going to come up with your own lesson. A poem, a short story. Whatever you like, as long as it’s relevant and meaningful.” Something being relevant wasn’t an outdated expression yet, but it was a little worn out. I remember somewhere around that time coming up with “relevance is relative.” “I uh, I was wondering if I could interview some of the kids.” “Interview the students?” “Yeah, it’s for a paper. What students are like today.” “Sure, you can interview them. How many and when?” “Well I was thinking I would take them out one at a time. Have a couple chairs outside, a cassette player. Five minutes each, maybe 7 or 8 students, to get a good cross section.” “Hah, you won’t need that many to get a good cross section, but ok, fine.” So I would observe her for 20 minutes, then conduct interviews, asking them questions like, “Which song reflects your senior year best, Running on Empty or We are the Champions?” I was trying to be hip but the kids were already dialed in to punk and most of them didn’t know who Jackson Browne was. A few weeks went by and Ms. Desmond and I got to know each other. She was an ace teacher. She demanded all out effort from all her students all the time. There couldn’t have been anyone better to observe. She was self-assured and never doubted a single thing she said or did in the classroom and everything she did and said in the classroom had merit. When class wasn’t in session though, things were different. She was a smart, successful woman but her calling card was her bitterness. “Do you know how long I’ve been working here?” she asked one afternoon while I straightened chairs and put books away. “No.” “Twelve years. Now, do you know how many times I’ve been even considered for department chair?” “No.” “Zee-ro, okay? Get it?” “Uh.” “Born into this world with two strikes—a woman and black.” “But you’re…” “An outstanding teacher? I know. Everybody knows. But don’t you know what they say?” “What?” “If you’re black, get back.” “But, like, don’t you think there’s been progress?” “Look now, you got that long hair, and beard and you dress just like somebody’s old hobo.” “Yeah?” “Nobody would hire you. No corporation, no small business, no public service job. Nobody.” “I don’t think I…” “Just listen, now. So you’re a minority, ok?” “What?” “Those employers are pre- judging you, right?” “I guess.” “But you’re just a seasonal minority.” “A what?” “You can shave, cut your hair, buy some decent clothes and nobody would know the difference.” “Ok, I get it.” “Could you take those papers on the back table and put them in the basket on the bookshelf there?” “Sure.” “So you got your little costume and I got mine, but mine’s permanent. It doesn’t change.” “But the society changes.” “Look now, ever hear this one? What do you call a black man with a PhD?” “I don’t know, what?” “Nigger with a PhD.” “Well, I…” “That’s all he is.” I was conflicted. I didn’t have a problem believing that racism was still alive and well and I didn’t doubt that there were faculty members at Reseda High who did not like Ms. Desmond’s presence on campus for no other reason other than her being black. Nevertheless, it seemed that she was holding herself prisoner, like the patients in Cuckoo’s Nest. We went another week and she hadn’t said when I was going to present my lesson. I thought maybe she was giving me time to prepare but at the time I believed that there wasn’t anything I couldn’t come up with the night before the due date. I was in awe of her teaching skills and I was puzzled by her obsession with race; it was a subject on which she could not take a pass when the students were gone. I had my keys out one afternoon so I wouldn’t have to go through the myriad of unjust things the white man had done when she asked me if I was ready to teach my lesson. “Sure am,” I said, racing through possibilities. “What do you want to do then?” “Since you’re doing poetry right now, I was thinking about presenting some rock songs as poetry.” “Rock songs?” “You know, like Dylan. He…” “I know who he is.” “So I thought I’d have a class set of the lyrics and play the song, and then have a class discussion.” “Should be something to see. Monday, first thing.” “All right.” “Relevant.” “Guaranteed.” I had the weekend, more time than I needed. I picked the song and got out the lyric book my sister had given me for my birthday the year before, rummaged around and found some carbon paper, cranked it in and typed it up. I was ready. I knew my audience and I knew I was going after two birds with one stone. For once in my life the weekend was moving too slow instead of too fast. The song was “Only a Pawn in their Game,” which was about the murder of Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader from Mississippi who was shot in the back in front of his home in 1963. I picked the song because while it depicted the assassins as cowardly, racist goons, it also made the claim that those same racists were only pawns in a larger game. It was the second verse that made the case. The South politician preaches to the poor white man “You got more than the blacks don’t complain You’re better than them, you been born with white skin” They explain.
And the Negroes name is used it is plain For the politician’s gain as he rises to fame And the poor white remains on the caboose of the train But it ain’t him to blame, he’s only a pawn in their game I looked at Ms. Desmond when the second verse ended. She was standing at the back of the room with arms folded and her head down. When she looked up she tipped her head sideways but her face was expressionless. She stayed like that for the rest of the song. The students were interested and we had a nice conversation about the inimical outcomes of ignorance and how that ignorance can be used by others to manipulate an entire segment of the population. With a few minutes left in the period I thanked them and they applauded mildly. “Interesting point of view,” Ms. Desmond said without further comment. The bell rang and the students filed out. Ms. Desmond turned and began erasing the chalkboard. I wasn’t sure what she thought but I was ready to leave. She was being very thorough about erasing the board so I moved toward the door when she turned and looked at me. “I get you, Mr. Chavoor. I get you,” she said in a calm, resigned tone. “Ah, thanks. See you tomorrow.” “You most certainly will.” I was hungry and stopped on the way home at Tommy’s in Van Nuys. I felt so good I ate two chili cheeseburgers. For a moment I thought I should have picked a different song, maybe “When the Ship Comes In”, or maybe “Hotel California” with the line “We are all just prisoners here of our own device,” but by the time I finished the first burger and took a long draw on my Pepsi, I was convinced I had the right song. I had done something but I wasn’t sure what it was. It was relevant though, I knew that.
It’s my birthday today, I turned 60. Here’s a story about my birthday 50 years ago and some of the stuff in my life at the time. And as a bonus, here’s a Grateful Dead tune. A touch of grey’s nothing to fret about; I’m ready for another 60 years.
It was the year I wore a bow tie for the class picture in an emulative gesture to Dad, the year Kennedy was killed and The Beatles arrived, the year I attempted to play organized baseball, the year that a girl– Diana Mitchell– made me feel all hollow inside, the year I first heard the expression, “She’s got you wrapped around her little finger,” when my best friend, Lenny, counseled me to being so stop offering to sharpen her pencil.
In the morning I didn’t tell anyone at school it was my birthday, but after the first recess I decided someone had to know.
“Hey Chris, guess what?”
“Today’s your b-birthday.”
“How’d you know?”
“I could tell it in your face. You l-look happy and stuff.”
“You’re right, today’s my birthday. You’re pretty smart.”
“Nah, it’s just easy to see.”
“You’d make like a good detective.”
Chris nodded, then Mrs. DeBetta arrived, unlocked the door and we went all went in. It had been and would be quite a year, something like a prelude to adolescence; sometimes I felt happy and great but other times I felt awful and useless.
By the end of fourth grade it became the year I read Mary Poppins and was afforded the opportunity to say the following year for the very first time, “the book is much better than the movie,” the year someone called me Black Jack, the year I heard a Robert Frost poem, and it was the year that I wrote a poem that was my first and as it turned out, my best. Well, it was probably my best poem, I lost it, but the poems I wrote in college and kept are uniformly awful, whereas the one I wrote in 4th grade for Mrs. DeBetta contained a line that she liked very much and she was almost never satisfied with anything.
My 10th birthday was a let down. I don’t know why I felt bad when not much happened; not much ever happened anyway. I had a 5th birthday party, a surprise 19th birthday party and the last one I remember before I moved out was my 21st. At the former a local children’s TV host, Sheriff John, wished me a happy birthday from a long list of names. My guests and I were gathered around the TV awaiting the mention of my name and when he finally actually said it the guests cheered so loudly that I didn’t hear it, and instead of feeling happy, I found myself fighting off the feeling of disappointment and pretending I had heard it. On my 21st birthday Mom served cake and milk and then afterwards set a bottle of Michelob in front of each of us. It was memorable because there was never any alcohol in the house and I marveled that Mom knew I was drinking and that she picked what was at the time my favorite beer.
On my 10th birthday Dad worked late, his cousin Lily did not come over with my great Aunt Margaret, Grandma Ruth’s birthday card with the five dollar bill did not arrive on that day, and my brother was living in Fresno. The three of us, Mom, my sister and I ate dinner almost in silence. Mom seemed distracted. After dinner I watched TV and then Mom told me to go take my bath and get ready for bed. Maybe she was hoping Dad would make it home before my bedtime. When I finished my bath and had my pajamas on, Mom called me into the kitchen. I put on my robe and went into the kitchen where I saw a sponge cake with three candles in it. I couldn’t believe it wasn’t a cake like you see on the Duncan Hines box or at least a cake in a square pan, at the very least something with frosting on it and the right amount of candles. I willed myself not to let my disappointment show. For presents I got a bat and ball, since I had ventured into the Police Athletic League, “PAL” age 9-10 softball. But the bat was too short, the ball was too big and I was a horrible baseball player anyway. The other present was an Ed “Big Daddy” Roth bucket T model car with a Rat Fink decal, which was good. Building models was my 10 year old version of expanding my horizons. I also learned to prepare and paint ceramics at a place where you could pick out an unpainted ceramic item then prepare it, paint it and then allow the proprietor to put it in the kiln, and there you had your little ceramic do-dad. I really liked doing that. But after a few sessions I was asked not to return because it was, according to the owners, “Something for girls,” although I didn’t find the activity gender specific in any way and felt hurt and baffled. So I blew out my three candles, ate the sponge cake, thanked Mom for the presents, but I couldn’t bring myself to smile when my sister took a picture of Mom and I in front of the cake and presents.
I got into bed and asked myself what presents I would have preferred but I couldn’t think of anything. I considered that there were undoubtedly other kids who would have been happy to have had any kind of birthday celebration. I still felt unsettled, so I tried to imagine birthdays for my own children in some unimaginable point in the future. It had to be there because I was beginning to understand that nothing stopped the forward movement. I had been a kindergarten baby, born in the gravy, then I was a first grader, relegated to the small yard, and finally a fourth grader entrusted with the big yard but still required to be subservient to sixth graders. At some point the restrictions and the gradations would end and I would be a grown-up, dispensing rules instead of being subjected to them. Or maybe I wouldn’t bother with rules, maybe I would leave children and my own children alone and just let them be, well, except where they might hurt themselves. The tears made my eyelashes stick and I couldn’t open my eyes. I thought maybe I was already asleep and dreaming about the tears. Then I heard Dad in the kitchen talking to Mom. A few moments after that, I fell asleep.
The following day I was standing next to Ross Andrews, looking at the world map.
“Nigger River, how about that?” He traced the river with his finger.
“That’s not what it says.” I would say it was the first time I had heard the word except for the fact that I knew there was something bad about it.
“Yeah, it is. Nigger River, buncha niggers in the river. Ha-ha.” He was touching the word on the map as proof. He walked away to tell others about his discovery. Soon, streams of kids were coming up to the map, where they would find West Africa and track down the infamous river. Within minutes the majority of the class was atwitter with the renamed river. Mrs. DeBetta must have caught what was in the wind because she sent us all back to our seats and gave us an impromptu lecture on the country, river and correct pronunciation of Niger, while breathing fiery hot threats to anyone who would pronounce it otherwise. We didn’t know whether or not she knew that Ross had been the instigator, but we knew enough to cool it and Ross looked pale with fright.
We went to recess, relieved to be away from our mood driven teacher; she had gone from calm and watchful, to stern to the borderline of full blown rage, as she had done on other occasions. It often seemed as though she was holding something back or holding something in, something that she couldn’t or wouldn’t explain to us. But we liked her; I felt that we were well instructed. She was informed, knowledgeable, inquisitive and she spoke to us as if we were capable of having an opinion. Mrs. Wyatt, our first grade teacher, was grandmotherly; in second grade Miss Bennett was young, pretty and soft-spoken; Mrs. Macbeth in third was ancient, crabby and could not control us. Mrs. DeBetta though was calling us to wake up and see the new world because the old one was slipping away.
“Why do we go to school?” She asked us one day. “What is the purpose of it?” I knew it was a question that Mrs. Macbeth would never have asked.
“To read and write and to tell what time it is.” I answered, offering what I thought she was fishing for.
“So what? What’s the purpose of that? Why is what time it is important?” We were too stunned to answer. It was 1964; much had changed and much more change was on its way. At recess that day though a change came that was not for the better.
I don’t know if it was Ross or even if his mispronunciation inspired it but someone came up to me during recess and called me Black Jack. At first I laughed. It rhymed and there was a hard to find gum by that name that I liked, that’s all it meant to me. Then another peer did the same thing, this time pointing at me, saying the name and then running away as if he were suddenly playing tag and I was it. Then kids I barely knew were doing it and then kids I didn’t know at all. I had always operated under the assumption that I was as regular a guy as anyone else, but all of a sudden, out of nowhere that assumption was being challenged. I was being singled out. Something was wrong with either my name or me, and the two were interchangeable anyway. I had not yet connected the word black with any racial implication because as far as I knew we didn’t have any racial problem: there were no blacks to either abuse or befriend, and I had not yet made any distinction between Mexican and non-Mexican students.
The bell ending recess rang mercifully and I headed back to the sanctuary of room 10. Mrs. DeBetta stood at the doorway and as I passed through she got hold of my arm and looked at me with a startled look.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Something wrong?”
“No.”
“Did something happen?” She leaned in as if she could discern the problem at a closer range.
“No, not really.” I was not very convincing.
“What’s going on? Tell me.”
“Just some kids.”
She pulled me out into the hallway and closed the door.
“Some kids what?”
“They were just coming up to me, that’s all.” I looked down and away.
“What kids? What did they say?”
“They were just saying, ‘Black Jack,’ that’s all, it’s not a big deal.”
“They WHAT? What did they say? Repeat that again for me one more time, please?”
“Black Jack.” I wasn’t sure who she was mad at and wasn’t sure why she was so mad. The tardy bell had rung. All the other students were in class. That’s where I wanted to be, with my friends, except with everything that had transpired erased somehow.
“Stay here. I am going to talk to the rest of the class. No one will call you that again.” I didn’t want to be called Black Jack but I didn’t want my friends to be in trouble either. I leaned against the wall, a little shaky but a little flattered that she had taken up for me, even if the cause wasn’t very clear and the offense hadn’t cut as close as she thought it did. I heard her muffled voice, and wondered if I should walk down the hall and get a drink of water so that I wouldn’t hear what she was saying. As it turned out the only phrase I heard was, “…color of a person’s skin makes no difference.” My skin? I couldn’t believe it was an issue. The door opened and Mrs. DeBetta gave me a closed mouth smile, nodded and waved me back in.
My peers and I looked at each other in a different way. They were looking at me with a “be nice to the new kid” look, while I, for the first time in my life, was looking at the color of their skin. I saw most of them had that pinkish fair and freckled variety, and realized that I was the darkest student in the room. I sat at my desk, put my head down, closed my eyes and began rummaging through the faces of students in other rooms. My best friend, Lenny, had skin like mine. Lloyd Nelson, a 6th grader might be darker. And what about that kid named Laton? He was kind of dark and he had big lips and spoke with an odd accent that was so thick most of us couldn’t understand half of what he said. What about him? Why did it matter? The great thing about being 10 though is that what was a crisis on Tuesday was over before Wednesday morning. Mrs. DeBetta had begun a unit on poetry and I got my wish; the issue felt erased.
We inhaled deeply as she handed out a freshly dittoed paper with a poem on it. She stood before us with a very solemn look on her face.
“Robert Frost was a famous poet who died last year. He was so famous that he was a poet laureate. That means out of all the poets in the country Robert Frost was the one to represent the United States as THE country’s poet. Do you understand that? He was so famous that President Kennedy asked him to read a poem when he was inaugurated president. Those are both very high honors. It’s not that he was famous; anyone can be famous. Lee Harvey Oswald was famous if you take the word to mean someone everyone knows. But Robert Frost is a great man. He created something that not many can do. He made something positive. He left something behind that is worthy of acclaim. Do you understand? The poem that I am going to read you isn’t the poem that he read for President Kennedy, but it is a very good poem. The best poems say a lot in a little. “Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening” is one of those poems. If you pay attention you may understand what he is trying to tell us.” She read and we followed, the fumes of the ditto ink giving us a collective 4th grade high.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
It made sense to me right away, and although I had only seen snow once on the ridge route on the way to Fresno on Thanksgiving, I could picture the entire scene. The falling snow, the confused horse, the man lost in thought, even on a freezing cold night.
“Who owns the woods?” she asked.
“God.” I blurted out.
“Yes, Jack. That is one interpretation. But it says his house is in the village. What about that?”
“The church. God’s house.”
“Very good.” She moved toward me. I felt as though we were having our own private conversation. “But why wouldn’t God see him?” She was looking at me as if I had done a magic trick she couldn’t figure out.
“Um, I don’t know.”
“Come on, try.”
“Well, he’s not sure if he believes in God.”
“What else? Why are the woods dark?”
“It’s night time.”
“What does night stand for?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you see when you close your eyes?”
“Nothing.”
“How are the woods described?”
“Lovely, dark and deep.”
“What does that tell you about the woods?”
“I don’t know. Just what it says.”
“Lovely and dark. Do they compliment each other or fight each other?”
“They’re ok together.”
“One’s good and the other’s bad, right?”
“No. It’s just what it is. It just describes the woods.”
“The woods are deep. How deep?”
“More than the guy can understand.”
“That’s good, Jack, ok. You did a very good job. You can see how the poem says a lot in a little.”
“I guess.”
“All right, class, now tell me this: why is the last line repeated?” It was quiet. I didn’t know if no one knew or if they were waiting for me.
“Because the second time he’s saying he has a long way to go before he dies. He wants to live a long time.” I saw her smile for the first time all year. It was as though she was able to forget fools like Oswald existed and that Kennedy’s assassination was something we could recover from. She was looking straight at me. I felt smart for the first time in my entire four and a half years of public education.
“Very good, Jack, very good.” That afternoon I told Mom about my experience with a Robert Frost poem. The next day she bought a paperback collection of his poems and put in on my dresser.
A week later Mrs. DeBetta moved on from reading poetry to writing poetry. My poem did not rhyme and I fretted much about that. It was about the sun going down at the beach. I had been to Hermosa Beach a couple of times. I had dreamed about being at the beach. Maybe it was something I had seen on TV. But the words that I wrote about the sun and the beach and the ocean were something that I could see in my mind. I felt like I was cheating because it was just sitting there; all I had to do was write it down. I didn’t add or delete anything, and I did not change any word or phrase; it was complete and right the way it came out. The idea was that the sun had made the ocean a bed of diamonds but when the sun finally went below the horizon, the diamonds melted.
When Mrs. DeBetta came to check my work and I told her I was done she scowled at me, that is, until she read it.
“Did you write this?”
“Yes.” She read it again.
“It’s very good.” She read it a third time. “Very good!” She smiled broadly.
“Thanks.” Two weeks in a row. I fell like the king of the hill.
“Where did you come up with the metaphor?”
“The what?”
“How did you decide that the sun’s reflection made diamonds on the ocean’s surface?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It just came to me.”
“It just came to you, huh?” She laughed. Then she read it to the class.
On the third week of March I tried to parlay my inside track with our stern teacher into something more. I didn’t know what the something would be and I don’t know why I felt so compelled to do it. During recess I scratched my own arms, untucked my shirt and mussed up my hair. I ran into room 10 a full five minutes before the bell rang.
“What? What is it? What’s happened?”
“Mrs. DeBetta, someone called me Black Jack again.”
“Who was it?”
“It was Gene Harland. He kind of went crazy. He was yelling it and he scratched my arms.” I offered them up as evidence.
“Let me see.” She put on her glasses. “Why did he do it? Did you say something to him?” For a moment she was ready to take up the cause of poor Black Jack all over again.
“No. Well, yeah. I said Hi Gene. So, I don’t know, he went crazy.” She went quiet and sat at her desk looking at me.
“Wait a minute. He didn’t scratch you. You scratched yourself and made the whole thing up. No one called you anything. Get out of here.” I was so thoroughly exposed for a fraud that I walked out without saying another word. I had wrecked my good standing with her. I had betrayed her good will; tried to manipulate her into pouring her rage out on Gene. I felt ashamed. Fortunately, Easter Vacation came at the end of that week. I thought maybe she would forget about it after a week. I never did though.
The Talking Wall 