Black Boy White School (5 page)

“Slow-hio,” Khalik answered before Anthony could. “You can hear it in his country-ass voice.”

Anthony glared. “I can beat that ass slow, too.”

“Damn,” George said while everyone else laughed. “Remind me not to piss you off. What part of Ohio you from? Cincinnati?”

“East Cleveland.”

Jamaal's face lit up for a second, and he leaned across the table. “East Cleveland? I'm from East New York. You think they're the same?”

“I don't know,” Anthony said, still wanting to punch Khalik. “Probably.”

George looked back and forth between the two nodding boys and then started to nod himself. “Well, all right, Ant from East Cleveland,” he said, standing up. “Believe it or not, around here you gotta look both ways before you cross the street, just like back at home.” He bent down, put a hand on Gloria's shoulder, and squeezed. “You let me know if you need anything, baby girl. Day or night.” Walking away, the big junior leaned into Jamaal. “Swear to God, son. She look just like Beyoncé.”

Anthony's first class that day was Algebra I, and he left it feeling dizzy. The same thing was true for biology, history, and Spanish. The only exception was English, but even then most of the conversation went over his head. If it wasn't for the fact that Gloria was in there, Anthony wouldn't have paid attention to anything.

And it was all of the talking that confused him the most. Kids had something to say about everything. It didn't matter if they had the right answer or not, or even if they kept to the topic; the teachers still let kids run their mouths until they ran out of words or until another student interrupted. Anthony had never experienced classes like that. Back at home, kids who asked too many questions usually got shut down or sent to the principal's office. And as for the ones who had all the answers, sometimes they got sent to the hospital.

So Anthony didn't ask any questions that day or for much of that first week of classes. He rarely raised his hand or made a comment. He felt invisible sometimes, but it didn't bother him at all. It was like his teachers knew it, too, and agreed to play along. He did finish all of his homework, though, and turned most of it in on time. Brody, on the other hand, was having trouble. If he wasn't somewhere getting high or kissing Venus, he was strumming his guitar and singing off-key. The only time he worked was during evening study hours, when teachers patrolled the dorms to make sure none of the kids were goofing off.

On one of those nights, Anthony and Brody sat at their desks, reading an assignment for Mr. Hawley's English class. It was an old story about a black man in a segregated southern town, where he worked for a white family as a resident handyman. Although he was religious and often turned the other cheek, the man snapped one night and shot a lot of the people, black and white, young and old, he didn't care who he killed. When he ran out of bullets, the man stopped by a river and waited for the advancing mob. They shot him to pieces and then displayed the riddled body in a store window. Near the end of the story, back inside the dead man's modest room, it showed his Bible open to a passage about Judgment Day.

Anthony put down the book and looked at the words from a distance. They were as blurred as the man's final gesture. He could have escaped but took his boots off instead. It was like the man had wanted to get caught. Anthony glared at Brody, who, by the shocked look on his face, had also finished the reading.

“Bummer,” Brody said, and flipped the book closed. Then he stared straight ahead and said nothing.

The next day, before English class, Anthony was apprehensive. Kids were abuzz over the reading and ready to talk about it. Mr. Hawley breezed in and dropped his briefcase on his desk, pulled the cap off a dry-erase marker, and wrote
WHY?
across the whiteboard.

Immediately a dozen hands flew up. And although they each expressed it in a dozen different ways, every kid agreed that racism had made the man kill.

“Interesting . . .” Mr. Hawley stopped behind Brody and put a hand on his shoulder. “Is that what you think, too?”

Brody shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

Mr. Hawley glared. “You guess?”

“I mean, yes,” Brody said, straightening up. “If you think about the time period, the place of African Americans on the social ladder, the way the white people mistreated and disrespected him in the story, it makes perfect sense that he would get fed up and go postal.”

“Impressive,” Hawley said, and moved on. Anthony agreed and stared at his roommate, who sat in a sudden patch of sunlight that came in through the window.

“Anyone disagree?” Hawley asked. No one raised a hand.

“What about the Bible?” Hawley continued, and started moving again. This time he stopped directly behind Anthony. “Why did the author make the Bible so significant to the killer?”

The hands on his shoulders made Anthony jump. Hawley was looking down at him and benevolently smiling. “What about you, Mr. Jones? Anything to add?”

Everyone turned to look at him, and Anthony suddenly felt hot. “I don't go to church,” he said, and stared at the table. Then he thought about something else from the story that had bothered him. It didn't have anything to do with the Bible, but it did poke holes in everyone's theory. Slowly, he raised his hand. “One thing,” Anthony said. “If he was mad at white people for mistreating him, then why did he kill black people, too?”

Trouble came to the freshman floor on Friday, in the form of a sopping kid named Chris. Upperclassmen had pushed him around and thrown him into a brook, leaving him soaked and smelling awful. It was the latest run-in with the kids from Welch that had Anthony concerned. So far, he had managed not to get in any fights, but he was afraid that someone would test him.

Later, after Mr. Hawley had checked them all in for the night, Anthony and a few other ninth graders snuck out of their bunks and to Chris's room, to hear more about what had happened. “They called it Freshman Brook,” Chris explained, not looking at anyone. “Told me not to fight, that it's sorta like school tradition to throw in the freshman boys . . . At least, that's what they told me.”

One of the kids called it hazing, and a lot of them looked relieved. It was an acceptable and expected abuse, part of the prep-school world not mentioned in the catalogs. For Anthony and a few others, though, it didn't make any sense. He could never just let somebody punk him.

“I don't know about that one,” Anthony said, more to himself than anyone else. “Somebody put their hands on me . . . I don't know.”

“Right?” Paul added. “That's some craziness, son.”

One boy suggested that they go talk to Zach, but Chris shook his head. “Zach was there when it happened,” Chris said. “He didn't throw me in, but he didn't stop them, either.”

At first it was silent but then Nate hissed, “We should go upstairs and put shaving cream on Zach's face!”

Brody laughed. “You guys gotta relax. . . .
Take a chill pill, on the ill will, while you still . . . feel . . .
Shit.” He laughed again, and everyone looked at him.

“Nate's right, though,” said a kid named Alex. “We should retaliate, but how? They're bigger than us, and they have us outnumbered. . . . We need a plan. . . .”

The boys looked at one another but didn't speak. Brody broke the silence with a drumroll.
“Outweighed and outnumbered . . . delaying our slumber . . . gotta figure a way, to make them all pay, for making Chris swim like a flounder . . .”
Someone belched. “Thanks,” Brody continued. “I call that one ‘Ode to a Flying Freshman Fish.'”

“No offense,” Alex said, “but we've strayed off topic. Our mission is to devise a plan, not mock the bard.”

“The what?”

“That's me,” Brody said, bowing humbly. “Brody the bard, at your service. Bringing music to a deeply troubled world.”

None of the talk made sense to Anthony. Just like in class, the way that he saw things seemed different from everyone else. No wonder he had never heard of hazing before. Back at home, it would get someone shot.

“Wait for me,” Paul hollered from behind him. “You act like they're gonna fire us.”

“They might,” Anthony said, not slowing down. “Either that, or they're gon' put us with maintenance. You feel like unclogging toilets on Saturdays?”

“Not me, son.” Paul picked up the pace.

Anthony and Paul had work-study as part of their financial-aid package. They washed dishes three mornings a week to help cover the cost of tuition. After gobbling breakfast, they walked through the swinging doors and into the kitchen, past the ovens, and into the dish room.

“Turn that down,” Paul groaned, already reaching for an apron. “Don't wanna hear all that Spanish junk this early in the morning.”

Unperturbed, Hector turned up the music. “This is Dominican music, Papi. Not Spanish.”

“I don't care what it is. You making me feel like I'm in the Bronx.”

There was laughter, and Hector returned to his station. Anthony wedged his way past George and grabbed an apron from a hook.

George looked down at Anthony and then at Paul. “Made you late again?”

Anthony nodded. “Dude be spending more time picking out clothes than my mother.”

“Don't worry,” George said, almost a little sadly. “He'll change.”

“Change how?”

Just then one of the cooks came in and gave them all the sign. George raised the big sliding door above the counter until it locked into place, and sounds from the cafeteria rolled in. “Change how?” Anthony repeated.

“For the better,” George said, and then winked at him. “Don't you know Belton makes everybody better?”

There was a steady stream of dirty dishes and then the rush before morning assembly. The boys emptied bowls and scraped plates, stacked the dirty dining ware into special trays, and then ran them through the machine.

“Ever notice how there's only black people in here?” Hector said, leaning against the counter. “Serious, look around. How come don't no white boys work the kitchen?”

“'Cause we're on financial aid,” Anthony said. “We need it and they don't.”

“And you ain't even black, Ricky Martin,” Paul said. “So chill.”

They laughed and started pulling off their aprons. George stood in the doorway in front of them and cleared his throat. “They have white kids at Belton on financial aid, too,” he said. “They just don't work in here, with us.” He reminded them of the students in the bookstore and the library. Many of them didn't even have dark hair. “That's not the point, though,” he continued. “Look at the percentages. For every one of them that's doing work-study, you have another three that can buy the whole damn school.”

Anthony thought about his arrival on campus and all the expensive cars. He'd met kids who dined with diplomats and took family vacations in Greece. But so what? Sometimes he thought all their money made them soft, but that didn't make Anthony dislike them. George, on the other hand, was scowling. Anthony said, “Are you pissed just because some people here have money?”

“No,” George snapped. “I'm pissed because we only got a spoonful of students of color, and every one of us is on financial aid. I'm pissed because it makes it look like every black person in the world is poor. And if they think we're all poor, then they probably think we're all stupid and eat watermelon, too.”

“But we are poor, right?”

George glared at Paul and shook his head, rubbed a big hand down his face, and sighed. “That's not the point,” he said evenly. “Let me put it another way. Where do you think financial aid comes from? And please don't say from washing dishes. . . .”

He waited, and the younger boys looked at one another. Then Paul said, “From nowhere. They just don't charge us.”

George shook his head. “Every time these white kids pay their tuition, they pay a little bit of yours and mine, too. And don't think they don't know it, either.”

Hector cried out, “That's fucked up, bro! I don't want them paying for me, I can pay it myself.”

“No, you can't,” Paul said. “So don't front. Just accept that cash and use it to your advantage.” Hector thought for a second and nodded, then the two of them slapped hands.

Anthony wasn't swayed. “No such thing as a free lunch, though.” He looked up at George. “So what do they want from us?”

“League championship,” Paul interrupted, and shot an imaginary jumper. “Maybe two or three.” Hector reached up and grabbed the invisible rebound while George glared joylessly at the two of them.

“You're a smart dude, Ant,” George said, watching them play. “Twenty-five-twenty always expects something. Remember that.”

Anthony nodded. “What's twenty-five-twenty?”

George grinned. “Think about the alphabet,” he said. “Put the twenty-fifth letter with the twentieth. What you got?”

“Y and T,” Anthony said, not seeing it at first. “Y. T. Why tea . . . ? Whitey?”

George smiled. “I knew you were smart. Twenty-five-twenty is a bitch up here, son. And like I said, they didn't bring you up here for free.”

Anthony looked at the other two boys. Even without a ball, their game was competitive. “I don't play basketball. You know that.”

“Don't matter, you will. What else you gonna do when winter comes, anyway? Join the ski team? Just remember what I said before, okay? Belton changes people.”

“Yeah, for the better, right?” George didn't answer. Paul took another jump shot, and Hector swatted it away.

“Get that weak mess outta here!”

“Be real, son,” Paul said. “Everybody know y'all Ricans can't jump.”

Anthony laughed with them to hide his worry. He would have to play basketball, George was right about that. Belton freshmen were required to play at least two team sports, and since Anthony was already skipping the fall, he had to either ski or shoot hoops in the winter. The problem was that he was terrible. When the season started, he would be the only kid of color without a varsity uniform.

He looked at George. “Can you teach me?”

“Swear to God, Ant,” George said, smiling in disbelief. “You need to clean out your ears. What you think I'm doing right now?”

Later that day in health class, the teacher showed a documentary about cigarettes, narrated by a woman who talked through a hole in her throat. Anthony watched from a seat on the floor, next to a girl who smoked and always smelled like it.

“You know what that looks like, right?” a boy whispered from behind them. “A butthole. You know, like a hole for her butts?”

“She doesn't smoke through it, jerk,” the girl said, and then shifted uncomfortably. “Starting today, I'm quitting. . . . Today or however long it takes to finish my carton.”

The period ended and Anthony went on to the next class, thinking of the movie, the girl who'd sat next to him, and mixed messages. The handbook stated that Belton was a smoke-free school. But dorm parents handed out flashlights to smokers at night and directed them to off-campus spots near the roadway, where they could stand in the darkness and puff. The same was true for how the school handled hazing and sex. In a way, the whole place was a farce. On weekdays it was a lot like the catalog: smiling kids and happy faculty interacting in classrooms; crowds cheering the teams on the fields. But weekends at Belton were a lot like full moons, and most of the students were werewolves.

That night, Anthony sat at dinner with Brody and Nate, half listening to them insult each other, feeling a bit more settled in at the school but still nowhere close to contented. He missed home but didn't always think about it, which usually brought on rounds of guilty phone calls. He had already burned through two months of laundry quarters in just a little over four weeks.

George walked into the dining hall then, slapped hands with some of the kitchen staff, and stopped briefly to talk with the headmaster. Then he went and sat alone at a table but didn't keep his solitude for long. A steady trickle of kids, from athletes to burnouts, came to sit with him or offer high fives.

“Earth to Tony?” It was Brody, and he was waving his chicken.

“Huh?”

“Never mind. What about you, Nate? Wanna go to North Conway tomorrow? My dad said I could bring a friend.”

“I dunno,” Nate said haltingly, “your dad seems kinda weird. . . .”

“Forget it.”

“. . . He kinda has that look.”

“I said forget it. Jesus Christ, dude, you just go on and on. Maybe you're the weird one. Ever think about that?”

Anthony turned to watch King George, surrounded by his court of twenty-five-twenty, calmly eating his food. A blond girl rushed over with a slice of apple pie, put it down, and sat on his lap. For all of his warnings about the nature of white people, George seemed to have a lot of them as friends.

“. . . Tony?” It was Brody again, and it was clear that he was getting annoyed.

“I told you to stop calling me that.”

“Sorry,
Anthony
. So you'll go, right?”

He thought about the day he met Brody's parents, the way they'd made a joke of his last name, how Mr. Lavallee had seemed to take pleasure in almost breaking his hand. Anthony didn't want to see them again any more than he suspected they wanted to see him. “Naw, man,” he said, deliberately not looking at his roommate. “You can count me out.”

Across the room, George got up and left, the blond girl draped over him. They walked past the headmaster's table, where a few of the men sitting there either looked away from the couple or grinned.

Nate made an obscene gesture. “Where do you think they're going?”

“Anywhere they want,” Anthony said in quiet awe.

The dining hall slowly emptied. Kids left in pairs and in threes and in groups, some determined to screw or kill brain cells. And the teachers, jacked up from cups of dinner coffee, went out to try and stop them from succeeding.

Anthony soon found himself at the pay phone on his floor, waiting for the operator. On the wall, someone had drawn a smiling penis with running legs, not far from Nate's name, scrawled in the same color. Someone else had drawn a pair of cartoon bears, dancing in a field of mushrooms. And there was something in a language that Anthony didn't recognize, next to a phone number with too many digits.

“Go ahead, sir,” the operator said, coming back. “And thank you for using AT&T.”

The phone clicked, and then Anthony's mother said, “Hello?”

“Hey, Ma. What's up?”

“I've been wondering the same thing,” she said happily. “You forget our number?”

“I know. Sorry. They keep us pretty busy, and like I told you last time, this is the only phone on the floor.”

“Well, we gon' have to see about getting you a cell phone, 'cause we need to stay in touch.”

He agreed but didn't say anything about reception in the valley. “So what's going on with you?” he asked. “How's life in Cleve-burg?”

“I'm pretty fair, baby, just going to work every day, like always. You know don't nothing change around here but the weather. What I wanna know about is those grades.”

He closed his eyes and thought about all the Cs he'd earned so far, except for algebra, which had dipped down into the D range. He still had time to turn things around before report cards went out, but he would have to work like his life depended on it. “Everything's fine, Ma,” he said. “No failures and no fights.”

“And your roommate, what's his name, Brodney? How are you two getting along?”

“Better,” Anthony said, and then thought about it. The morning Kleenex had finally disappeared, and since Brody's grades had been pretty bad, too, he was spending more time in the library. “Yeah, I guess it's been a lot better between us,” he continued. “I still spend most of my time with the other black kids, though.”

He couldn't see it, but Anthony could hear the frown in her voice. “You got black friends back here,” his mother snapped. “Don't be wasting time up there with people who cain't do nuthin' for you. How many times I gotta tell you that?”

“Okay.”

“For all you know, that Brodney boy could be the key to you getting a job or going to college . . .”

“You're right, Ma. Okay.”

“. . . Shoot, wish I had me that kinda chance. You best believe I wouldn't blow it.”

Anthony picked up a discarded marker from the floor. “I won't blow it, Ma,” he said. “I promise.” He tested the felt on his fingertip, and it left a black dot. “Anybody else home?” He scribbled aimlessly on the wall.

“Darnell was here a few minutes ago,” she said. “You just missed him.”

“Oh . . .” He stopped his circles and put the marker down. One of the dancing bears had been disfigured.

“What's wrong, baby?”

“Huh? Nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I'm fine, Ma.” There was a twang in her voice. Not quite southern fried but still country, just the same. He supposed it had been there all the time, only he hadn't noticed it before.

“Don't worry, baby,” she said. “Thanksgiving's coming. When was the last time you had some yams and some cornbread? Some black-eyed peas and collard greens?”

“I really couldn't tell you, Ma. They don't even have grits up here.”

She laughed and said, “Poor baby. You must be 'bout as skinny as a stick. Well, we gon' have to really do it up for you next month.”

“That long? I wanna come home right now.” He listened to the doors around him opening and closing, watched the passing kids who'd come in for the night. “I miss everybody.”

“We miss you, too, but don't go getting all soft. Stay strong and do what you gotta do.”

“I will.”

He hung up just as Brody stomped past him, soaking wet. “What happened to you?”