Black Boy White School

BLACK BOY WHITE SCHOOL

BRIAN F. WALKER

Dedication

For Ava and Olivia

Contents

 

 

Anthony Jones, an inky-black knot of a fourteen-year-old, stomped down the elevated railroad tracks, hammering his thigh with a clenched fist. Inside his hand was crammed the hastily written note he had scribbled while his mother dictated. He'd been back at home only minutes before, splayed on the couch with one eye on the clock and the other on the TV, waiting for her key to stab the lock. She'd blown in and up the stairs, then slid out of her overcoat and barked the familiar orders: “Get up. I need you to go to the store.”

Of course she did. And of course he went, just like the day before and the day before that. He wouldn't mind so much if she spread it around a little, maybe made his brothers go every now and then. But that would never happen. Andre and Darnell were too old to be bossed around and too big to hit.

“Maxi pads,” he spat at the wooden ties in front of him. “What I look like, buyin' somebody's maxi pads?” He uncurled his fingers and reread the list, each printed item giving the paper weight. Two bags of shit, maybe three. How was he supposed to lug all of that by himself? “Whatever I cain't carry I'm just gon' leave,” he said, and then checked over his shoulder. His mother had a way of showing up in unexpected places.

He scooped a handful of rocks and stomped on, looking for something or someone to hit. Some people called him a troublemaker, but he saw himself as more of an adventurer. The noise and the rush, the fear of getting caught, bitten, or beaten made him tease dogs and test total strangers, break bottles wherever he found them, and dash into the path of moving traffic.

“Maxi pads.” The words made him uncomfortable, especially the first one. He tried to clear his head by firing a rock at a pole. It struck the wood with a
thok
and ricocheted into dead bushes. “She make me go to that school, she gon' have to get her own damn Kotex, anyway.”

He checked behind him again and walked on, looking down at the houses and busy streets below. It was warm, more than sixty-five degrees in early March, and it looked like everybody in East Cleveland had found a reason to be outside. Dudes in T-shirts and baggy jeans slopped soap on Oldsmobiles and Mustangs, while packs of teenage girls walked by slowly, hoping for a chance to ignore them. Shorties on BMX bikes jumped curbs and toiled across the clumpy little lawns, flinging mud into the air behind them and drawing brown scars on the pavement. And packs of grim boys weighed down some of the street corners, flagging cars and leaning into the windows.

At a bridge he came down and crossed the street, pushed through the electric door at Judd's Super­market, and found an empty cart. As he maneuvered the cart through the cramped and pitted aisles, Anthony wondered what it would take to get his mother to forget about Belton Academy. He wasn't going. They hadn't even given him an answer yet, and even if he did get in, he still wasn't going. Tuition was steep and his family was always broke.

That didn't stop his mother, though. All she could do was talk about it; tell her friends that her baby boy was going off to some “school for smart people” up in Maine. To hear her tell it, that dude from Belton came down to East Cleveland specifically looking for him. Never mind that he was a regular in detention. Never mind that he only once made the honor roll. And never mind that he didn't play organized sports, didn't belong to any clubs, and only occasionally finished his homework. He'd filled out the application, so now he was special.

And now he couldn't listen to music or talk on the phone without her jumping all over him about what they listened to up in Maine, or how they talked up in Maine, or how he better not go up to Maine and start acting ghetto. Maine. Anthony's mother didn't even know where it was until he'd shown it to her on a map, but that still didn't stop her from acting like she was born there.

His cart loaded, Anthony coasted to a stop in line, rested his elbows on the handle, and stared at the lanky security guard in front. Kids in the neighborhood called him Barney, even though that probably wasn't his real name. And every time he walked into the store, especially if he was with his best friends, Floyd and Mookie, Barney became their white shadow.

Anthony paid the cashier and accepted the change, dropped the money in his pocket, and lifted the bags. Walking out, he felt Barney's eyes on the back of his neck; felt like turning around and spitting.

Walking home, he came across a group of dope boys on the sidewalk. They were all wearing loosely laced Timberlands and blue hats or bandannas. One of them, chocolate brown with thin eyebrows and thick lips, smiled at him. “W'sup, Ant?” he said, and lightly punched the boy on the shoulder. “Yo' momma sent you to the store again, nigga? What you got in there?” He tried to look, but Anthony took a step back. Shane was cool but unpredictable.

Just then an old Ford rattled to a stop at the curb and a woman stuck her wild hair out the window. Shane stood tall and checked the block, then he pimp-limped over to the car. Seconds later, he was back at his spot on the corner, adding a crumpled bill to the knot of cash in his sock. “Stay busy out here, dude,” he said to Anthony without looking at him. “All day, every day. Work for me an' you can make some paper. Enough so you can pay another nigga to go to the store for you.”

Anthony laughed but shook his head. The bags were getting heavy, and he switched them around. “I'm straight,” he said, and nodded good-bye to everyone there. “Need to get home, before my momma start trippin'.”

Farther down the block he saw his big brothers, Darnell and Andre, slouched on the front stairs at John Mays's house, bobbing to beats that pumped through an open window. John stood on the porch above them, resting his ashy elbows on the banister while his quick tongue and fingers put the finishing touches on a blunt. Andre nodded and then scooted over. “Cop a squat, little nigga,” he said. “What you get from the store?”

Instead of telling him, Anthony passed the bags and then sat down hard. Seconds later, Andre's hands were rooting around inside the plastic sacks while Darnell scowled at him.

“Anything sweet?”

“Yeah,” Andre said, and tossed up the pads. “Chew on these.”

“Chew these nuts,” Darnell answered, and threw them back. “Ain't no cookies in there?” He looked at Anthony and the boy shook his head. Cookies hadn't been on the list.

“Got some Cheerios.”

Darnell frowned and leaned back on his hands. “What I look like, eating some Cheerios?”

Weed smoke, thick and danky, rolled from John's mouth and churned in the open air before the wind bundled it up and took it away. “I got some cookies in the house,” John offered. “Chocolate chip. They good as hell.”

Anthony looked at Darnell, who was staring at Andre. The three of them shook their heads together and then laughed. “Cookies and roach eggs,” Andre said. “You can keep that shit to yourself.”

They laughed louder, except for John, who took savage pulls from the blunt. He inhaled and exhaled, inhaled and exhaled until the end was bright red. “Like yaw niggas ain't got roaches,” he said finally, and more to himself. “Everybody around here got some bugs.”

Darnell reached for the weed. “Other niggas got roaches, but them roaches got you. How much they be chargin' you for rent?”

More laughter, and this time even John joined in. There was no use in arguing with the obvious. In the house, the stereo played “To Live and Die in L.A.” and all their heads bobbed knowingly, even though the closest any of them had ever been to Los Angeles was Detroit.

John looked at the three brothers and hit the blunt again. Then he passed it to the left and laughed out a cloud. “I was just noticing . . . all three of yaw got some big-ass heads!”

Even Darnell smiled a little. People said the Jones boys had heads built for football.

“Forget you, man,” Andre said. “You know what they say about big-head niggas?”

“What? Yaw cain't buy no hats?”

“Big dicks,” Andre said.

“Big brains,” Darnell added matter-of-factly.

“Kiss my ass. Maybe Ant, down there,” John said, aiming a narrow finger at the youngest. “Little dude goin' to college next year an' shit. What happened to yaw?”

“The same thing that happened to you, dumb nigga,” Andre said. “East Cleveland Public Schools.”

“I ain't goin' to no college,” Anthony protested.

Darnell looked at him with disappointment or regret, but really, Anthony couldn't tell. His oldest brother's face was always a flatline. “College, boardin' school, you know what that fool saying.”

“So? I still ain't going nowhere. They probably ain't even gon' let me in.”

“You gon' get in,” Darnell said confidently. “Schools like that be loving them some black people. Probably gon' throw you a basketball and some tap shoes as soon as you get there.” He laughed, but it was hollow. Anthony didn't say anything else because he knew that he couldn't win.

In time, the song inside ended. When nothing else came on Darnell hawked and spat a brown blob. “Roaches cut your 'lectricity?”

John jumped from his perch and disappeared through the door. Seconds later, Jay-Z's latest bumped through the window and John came back, smiling. Someone sparked another blunt and they passed it around, but it never came to Anthony. It was time to get home; his mother would be worried. People had a way of getting robbed after dark.

When he got to the house, his mother yelled at him for taking so long and then disappeared into the bathroom. Left to himself, Anthony went to his room, plopped down on the bed, and scooped a book from the floor. It was
The Stand
by Stephen King. Inside, the characters tried to survive in a plague-stricken world while a dark man in cowboy boots and an old black woman fought for their souls. It was just the kind of stuff that Anthony liked to read; the kind of thing he even secretly hoped to write someday.

“You doing your homework?”

His mother's voice at the bottom of the stairs made him jump. “Yeah, Ma. I'm doing it right now.” He dove for his bag and dumped it on the bed. Textbooks and boring math sheets covered the comforter. He got to work and then lost track of time. When he looked up again, it was full dark outside the window and cold gusts rattled the frames. He hated the season and the need for gloves, the black slush splashed up on his pants and coat by moving cars. Walks to Floyd's took twice as long and meant stinging cheeks and numbing toes, bitter breezes and awkward falls that made him want to curl up and quit. His middle school principal, Mr. Davis, had said that up in Maine it was winter nearly all year long. How did they expect him to live through that?

The phone rang and it was Floyd. He was in a car with Mookie and Curtis, and they were on their way over to pick him up. Anthony went downstairs to find his mother gone and Darnell in front of the television, eating Cheerios from a mixing bowl. Anthony started to say something smart but asked for five dollars instead. “Come on, I'll pay you back.”

“How you gonna pay me back, little nigga?” Darnell asked. “You ain't got no job.”

“I got five dollars somewhere upstairs. Soon as I find it, I'll hit you back.”

Darnell slurped his cereal, stared at the TV, and grunted. Jerry Seinfeld and his crew were trying to figure out if a local store's yogurt truly was fat free. “I cain't get into that white boy humor,” he said, and changed to BET. “What you need money for?”

“Why do it matter?” A horn sounded in the driveway. “Come on, man. Five dollars.”

Darnell clacked his teeth on the spoon and winced, fished a five-dollar bill from his pocket. “You better pay me back, Ant. Don't think I'ma let you slide.”

“I know.” The bill disappeared quickly. “Soon as I got five, you got five.”

Curtis's Buick was like a rolling massage. There was no spare tire, no jack, no road flare in his trunk of funk; only the subwoofers, amps, and blinking lights he made sure to show all of his friends. One day, Anthony knew, Curtis was going to show it to one person too many and have no stereo or car to flaunt. But for now, everything was cool, and he was happy to be where he was, floating in a car full of people with music so loud it made talking a waste of time.

In front of the store, sipping wine and telling lies, were the gray and dusty men who gathered there every day, blowing into cupped hands and rocking on unsteady legs. Ant saw his father standing among them, a big and leathery hand choking the throat of a forty-ounce bottle of beer. His dad saw him, too. It was too late to turn around.

“Well, lookey here.” Moses Jones opened his arms, but Anthony slapped his empty hand instead. “Too big for all that, huh? Not too big to knock out, though.” His father threw a playful punch and Anthony dodged it, then he threw an anemic punch of his own.

The other men looked on while they boxed, Anthony embarrassed but trying not to show it. Floyd and Mookie exited the store carrying paper bags. They nodded to the fighters and got into the car.

Anthony dropped his hands. “Gotta go.”

His father smiled at him. “You know I'm proud of you, right?”

Anthony looked away, but his old man was still in front of him, waiting for an answer.

“You don't wanna go, do you?” Moses said finally.

Anthony kicked a hole in the snow with his heel and sighed.

His father laughed. “It's awright. You only gotta do two things in this world: stay black and die. Everything else is up to you.”

Anthony made a face and his father nodded knowingly. “Don't mind yo' momma,” he said. “She be tryin' to act all big 'n' bad, but put yo' foot down. You'll see.”

“Like you did?”

“That was different,” Moses said after a pause. “Husband an' wife shit. Plus I messed that one up. You ain't got nuthin' to worry about as long as you ain't done nuthin' wrong.”