"Just remember sweetheart, you're the smartest kid I've ever taught. You can be anything you want. All you have to do is set your mind to it. You're gonna be just fine at your new school. I'm expecting great things from you."
"Thank you," I said as I hugged her and headed outside.
It was the last day of school. In my rush to get out of the building I ran right past Mrs. Wright, my first grade teacher. When I heard a voice calling out my name, I thought that I was going to be in trouble for running, but when the coarse texture of her gruff voice brushed past my ears I knew that I was cool.
In Mrs. Wright's eyes, I could do no wrong. She was always telling me that I was the smartest kid that she ever taught and since she decided to flag me down on the last day of school and remind me of my place in history – and English and math and science for that matter - I knew that once again no one had eclipsed me, making it four years and counting. I'm usually one to boast about my academic prowess but for some reason I kept The Mrs. Wright Award private. She was older than the building. I didn't want to rub it in because she had practically taught everyone in the neighborhood.
Things were about to change. My elementary school was one block away from my house, but my new middle school was 26 miles and 45 minutes away. I'd never been to that part of the city. Court ordered bussing had been imposed just a few years before. I was allowed to continue at my neighborhood school for elementary but now had to prepare my mind for the big commute in the fall.
The school was in a rich white neighborhood. Up to this point, I hadn't really interacted with any white kids. I knew how to deal with white adults but not kids. At the time I didn't really think about it much. My brother Chance was bussed there at the beginning of the year. He didn't seem to think that things were all that different, but what would he know. He didn't live in the real world. He was a foot taller than everybody and was the star of the basketball team. Other than the long bus trip, how different could it be?
Day 1
We arrived at school 45 minutes before homeroom started. My friends and I spilled off the bus and were herded into the gymnasium. We stood in line and got our schedules. After we all got our yellow index cards we met up in the corner to compare notes to see if we had the same classes. I was put in the Advanced Program. I was cool with that, but soon found out that the initial cost for such an accolade was social isolation. None of my friends were in any of my classes – not even lunch. One of the student ambassadors, a somewhat cute 8th grade white girl, escorted me to my homeroom, which was also my first period class – Advanced Unified Math.
When we arrived at the classroom I asked her if she knew what time it was. She reached down with her right hand to push the button on the watch on her left wrist. After the red letters lit up she thrust the watch in my face. The digital output read 07:26AM — a full 34 minutes before homeroom was to start. She left me there having not said a single word to me the entire time. When I opened the door, I was the only person in the room, no teacher, no other kids, not even any books – just desks.
I sat down in the first row in the seat closest to the door. I pulled out and opened my brand new red Trapper Keeper to reveal a rainbow of 6 individual Trapper folders. Moms wouldn't even let me touch the Trapper Keeper after I put it in the shopping cart at K-Mart the week before. I was dying to check it out, but didn't dare do so on the bus in front of all of my friends. Since I was all alone I could go for broke and feed the OCD beast. Finally, I could open and close it a million times. I could continually count the folders inside to make sure that all six were there. I could decide whether to arrange the colors in alphabetical order by color name or simply use the Roy G. Biv method. I was in heaven! About 10 minutes into my bliss I was interrupted by a skinny little white kid in a Terry Bradshaw T-shirt. He came in and sat down in the desk right next to me.
He said something, but I didn't really hear him. I was too busy staring at his mouth. I had never seen braces before and didn't quite know what they were, but I wasn't going to expose my ignorance to this complete stranger. I kept staring at him as he talked trying to gather enough information so that I could figure out why he had a bunch of metal and rubber bands in his mouth.
"Hey, hey, buddy, yoohooo," he said while snapping his fingers uncomfortably close to my face.
"What!!!!" I said as I moved my head in search of a new comfort zone.
"I think you're in the wrong class. This is the Advanced Class. The regular class is down the hall. Do you want me to show you?"
"No I'm fine."
"Really, buddy I can show you. You don't want to be late on the first day."
"No, really I'm cool, but thanks anyway."
"OK suit yourself, but when Ms. Cooper gets here she's going to make you leave, so you should save yourself some embarrassment."
"Look man, I said I was cool."
After 3 minutes of awkward silence, the teacher came in pulling a hand cart filled with brand new math books. The books were so new you could smell them. I couldn't remember the last time I had a brand spanking new textbook. The smell of those books was intoxicating. I felt this sense of sheer excitement come over me. I couldn't believe that I was getting excited about the prospect of learning Advanced Unified Mathematics, but then I realized that it wasn't the sight and smell of those new math books that was the source of my sensory sensation or the reason that the lunch money in my pockets was all of a sudden turning into wooden nickels - it was the sight of the two bald-headed midgets that Ms. Cooper had in a headlock.
She was 5 foot 9 inches tall, had strawberry blond hair and faint freckles on all parts of her exposed flesh. She had on a close fit teal ribbed knit top. The neckline plunged low enough to expose the fault line between her tectonic plates. I could have sworn that I felt the earth move under my feet as I sat there with my mouth wide open. I bet that someone, more than likely prior to puberty, encouraged her to walk with a lilt in her gait to bolster her self-esteem. Whoever it was should be proud, because she was exuding all kinds of confidence as she strutted through the door with her wagon of knowledge in tow. The unintended benefit of that advice was the heightened attention and disposition of all males within a 180 degree radius of her gaze.
As soon as she entered the room, metal mouth jumped up from his desk and proclaimed,
"Ms. Cooper, I think this boy here is lost, but he refused my help to get him to his right class."
Ms. Cooper stopped in her tracks and turned towards us.
"Good morning, David. How was your summer?"
"It was OK. We went to the Grand Canyon, but Ms. Cooper do you want me to…"
"Hello Ms. Cooper," I said extending my right hand to her while using my left hand to box David out – a move I learned from watching Chance on the basketball court. I handed her the papers that the counselor gave to me earlier. She smiled and welcomed me to her class and then took a moment to look over the paperwork. As I stood there examining the freckled pattern of her fault line, my mind drifted back to that excruciatingly long bus trip that I had just endured. I remembered thinking that I didn't really have a favorite subject in elementary school and wondered if I would develop a penchant for one in particular here in middle school.
In that moment, two things became abundantly clear to me: 1) In retrospect, the bus trip didn't really seem that long. As a matter of fact, I was actually looking forward to tomorrow's trek; and 2) I was a math man for life!
Day 4
"You gotta be Chance's little brother. You look just like him. Do you play basketball too?"
"No"
"You lyin', little negro"
"What you talkin' 'bout I ain't lying I don't play basketball"
"So you are his little brother then right?"
The little rich black girls who lived out by the school constantly stared at me for the first week of school. I could tell that they had money, because of the way that they dressed and I knew that they didn't live in our neighborhood because they didn't ride our bus. Some of them were kinda cute, but oddly the ones that seemed to be interested in me were 7th and 8th graders.
I racked my brain to try to figure out why they were peeping me so hard. The only thing I could come up with was that they must have heard that I was the only black kid from the 'hood in the Advanced Program and they wanted to get with me. Chance could have been in the Advanced Program, but b-ball was all he cared about, plus he couldn't deal with the isolation the way I could.
So when this one little cutie came up and started giving me the third degree, I decided to find out what the deal was.
"Yeah, he's my brother why?"
"Does he have a girlfriend? You know what it doesn't matter. Do you think you can get him to call me or better yet can you give me you all's number so I can call him?"
"What? Why don't you ask him yourself?"
"I ain't trynna come off as fast"
I stood there with a blank look on my face.
"You know what, forget about it and don't say nothing to him about this either. You hear me, little negro?"
"Yeah whatever."
People used to say that Chance and I looked like twins. We did look a lot alike except for the fact that he was like 5 feet taller than me and his b-ball skills made me not even want to play – even though I was pretty good, better than most my age.
Plenty of girls thought I was cute, but with Chance in the mix I was the display model toy in the store that people picked up and played with, and when it came time to make a purchase they were only interested if they could have the bigger fully functional model behind the glass.
That was my first lesson in relative deprivation.
Day 6
I hadn't had a chance yet to flex my skills in class. I had been really quiet. I didn't really know anybody yet so I figured it would be best if I played it close to the vest. Most of these kids had been going to school together since they were in the first grade. The urban school their neighborhood was bussed to had no Advanced Program – so they got to stay put and skip the ride altogether.
I didn't really know what they thought of me. Did the rest of them think that I didn't belong like David thought? Even if they did, it wouldn't have made a difference, the only thing I was interested in was academically crushing anyone that got in my way – the same way Chance disposed of suckas on the b-ball court.
Intramurals started that week. They were played during last period, so nobody bothered changing – you played in whatever you had worn to school that day. Each homeroom put up a volleyball team, and every team played every other one. We had to choose a name and a captain.
There wasn't a nomination process. I was unanimously voted as the captain of the team. Up to that week, I had spent 99.5% of my time around black people. The only interaction I had with white people was the white faculty at my elementary school. That's not completely true; there was also the Fonz, Gilligan, Beaver Cleaver and the Six Million Dollar Man and the like, but they didn't really count.
I felt kinda weird about being the only black person in the class and being unanimously voted in as the captain of the volleyball team. Not a single one of them had even seen me play volleyball before. As it turned out, I was indeed the best volleyball player and overall athlete in the class by far, but they didn't know that. Was their voting for me racist even though they were right? As I pondered my first thoughts of being a victim of racism, little did I know that the racial shit was about to hit the fan.
We were scrimmaging another 6th grade class in volleyball. During one of the plays, the ball was hit into the far corner of the gym. I sprinted in the direction of the ball to retrieve it. Tim, the captain of the other team was right behind me. We were beating them like a drum so I guess he was looking for a moral victory by trying to outrun me to the ball. I got to the ball before him, but he surprised me by snatching it out of my hands as soon as I picked it up. We fell to the floor and tussled back and forth like two football players at the bottom of a scrum fighting over a fumble.
"Let go of the ball niggah."
"Wait a minute, who are you calling a nigger? You're the nigger!"
These were the words I heard right before he conceded possession of the ball and punched me in the chest.
I was livid. I smacked the holy shit out of him. His face turned beet red.
By this time Ms. Peterson, the teacher in charge of intramurals, was on her way over. I'm not sure what was heard. I was just talking to him the way I would talk to the kids at the park at home. Defending the different definitions of the N-Word were not my main concern at that point. I was more focused on the pain in my chest and my hand print on Tim's face.
"Young men what is the problem, here?" said Ms. Peterson.
"He called me a…" said Tim grasping to reclaim every syllable that he blurted out of his mouth once his mind had slammed on the brakes at the oncoming N-Word.
"Excuse me what did you say?"
"Nothing"
"And you what do you have to say?"
I looked at Ms. Peterson and sheepishly said, "I think we both got a little carried away trying to get the ball and we were kinda fighting over it."
"What happened to your face?"
I immediately fell on my sword, hoping that my sparring partner would join me.
"I accidentally slapped him as I went to grab the ball back from him when he took it from me."
I gave him a perfect set. Now all he had to do was drive it over the net and we were home free.
"Yeah I was a little upset that we were losing so I grabbed the ball from him after he got there first and he went to take it back and I moved the ball away from my face and he slapped me by accident."
"OK, OK get up already and get back over there with your teams."
As I walked back I noticed that there was some collateral damage. There was a slight tear on the cuff of my brand new Levi bell bottoms and I also had a scuff on my PF Flyers. I was trying to figure out what I was going to tell Moms if she discovered it. Moms didn't play around when it came to our clothes. We had to take our "school clothes" off as soon as we walked through the door and hang them up and put on our "play clothes".
If she found the rip in my jeans she was going to go off and demand an explanation. I sure as hell couldn't get into the whole niggah battle (or was it the nigger battle?). She'd lose her mind. Hell, I think she just put away her picket signs from two years ago when the courts first ordered desegregation by bussing. If she found out that the N-Word was being bandied about at the school, she'd dip back into her whole Angela Davis bag and come out to the school protesting and rallying and carrying on.
If interrogated on the subject, I'm sure I'd come up with something.
On the way home on the bus, Chance came over to me and said, "I heard you slapped the fuck out of a cracker for calling you a nigger."
I could tell by the way he was looking at me that this was one of those rare occasions when the tables were turned and that he was proud to be my brother.
Not wanting to disappoint and squander the moment, I looked him dead in the eyes and said in the most gangster voice that I could muster, "You damn skippy. Plus the motherfucker ripped my new jeans and scuffed my sneakers so you know I had to get in his ass for that!"
Day 7
All of the self-proclaimed cool white boys from my class always disappeared during lunch. I didn't know where they went nor did I care. I was happy to wolf down my food in the corner of the lunchroom by myself in peace. Today's fare was my favorite - Moms' famous fried bologna cut like a four-leaf clover (with the tips burnt to a crisp) on Bunny bread with extra Miracle Whip and hot sauce carefully packed in Reynolds Wrap. A week or so into the year they started trying to warm up to me. It wasn't like they were the worst kids in the world. The problem was that they were trying too hard to be cool.
There must have been something wrong with my sandwich, because all of a sudden I was getting a case of the bubble guts. I needed to get to a bathroom and quick. Because I didn't know the level of the potential nuclear attack brewing in my belly I needed to get as far away from people as possible - I needed a fallout shelter. The bathroom out by the baseball diamond would suffice. I remember Chance telling me that nobody ever went there, mainly because the place was a cesspool - exactly what I needed to disarm my arsenal without immediate or residual detection.
When I opened the door, I was hit with a different kind of mushroom cloud. The missing cool brigade was in there getting zooted. All four of these kids were straight A students and as far as I could tell their parents were pillars of society and here they were getting high as a Georgia pine. They weren't even afraid of getting caught. You would think that when they heard the door open they would try to duck or run for cover, but they just stayed where they were.
"What's up my man. We knew it was just a matter of time before you found your way back here."
I had never seen anyone getting high before. Don't get me wrong, I've heard about drugs and even knew folks in the neighborhood who sold weed and other cats who got high, but no one had ever approached me or came around me with drugs of any kind.
"I'm just here to use the bathroom"
"Sure you are," laughed the ringleader as he held out the joint in my direction.
"No thanks," I said as I skulked into the stall and assumed Rodin's position.
Day 9
I couldn't wait to get to school. We were going to get our first test back in math. As usual I got to class about 30 minutes before homeroom started. For the past couple of days I had Ms. Cooper all to myself until David came in and disturbed the force.
Today she was adorned in a close fit mandarin ribbed knit top with white knit bell bottom slacks. It wasn't Labor Day yet so she was cool. The mandarin served as a fitting mat for her freckled fault line.
Happy to have taken in my vision for the day, I couldn't wait to set my eyes on the next thing of beauty - my math test grade. I knew that I did well, but there was nothing like confirmation.
After homeroom duties were over, Ms. Cooper passed out the graded tests face down to all 21 of us. She instructed us to wait until they were all passed out before we looked at our grades. The suspense was killing me. She had sorted them in the order that we sat so I got my test first because my desk was in the front row closest to the door. After the last person got their test, she gave us the OK to look at our grades. I took a quick peek and left the paper faced down on my desk.
I looked over to David.
"Hey, what did you get?"
David showed every ounce of metal and rubber in his mouth to me and raised his test up like a flag shooting up a pole. A big red A and the number 93 followed by the words - Good Job! were in the right-hand corner of the paper.
"How about you?" asked David.
I handed him my test. After he had time to fully ingest the 100% A+ – Superb!!! – I leaned over to him and said, "I think you're in the wrong class. This is the Advanced Class. The regular class is down the hall. Do you want me to show you?"
Day 10
Our bus pulled into our stop in the parking lot of my old elementary school. I was glad that it was Friday and was looking forward to the weekend. I officially had two weeks of middle school under my belt. As I got off the bus the only thing I had in my hands was my math book.
Chance got off the bus right after me. We walked alongside one another on the way home.
"Niggah, why you always sniffing that damn book?"
I didn't realize that I had a habit of raising the book to my nose for a quick sniff. I read somewhere that smell is the sense most connected to memory.
As I jerked the book away from my face I heard a gruff voice in the distance, "Hey boys, have a nice weekend. Tell your mom I said Hi."
Mrs. Wright was getting in her car about 25 feet away. We both turned, waved and smiled and then continued on our way home.
After about a minute or so of silence Chance looked down at me and said, "She ever feed you that bullshit about being the smartest kid she ever taught?"
