Bronx Masquerade (11 page)

“Today, Tyrone,” said Mr. Ward.

“Yeah, my brotha,” chimed in Porscha.

“I’m getting there,” I said, taking a second to adjust the microphone. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Yeah, fool, but you ain’t saying nothing,” said Chankara.

“Aiight. Just give me a minute.” Everybody laughed.

“Okay. I just wanted to say I’m really glad I got to do this poetry thing because I feel like, even though the people in our class are all different colors and some of you speak a different language and everything, I feel like we connected. I feel like I know you now. You know what I’m saying? I feel like we’re not as different as I thought.”

I looked out at Raul, Janelle, Gloria, Devon, my homey Wesley—my whole crew—and felt something deep inside my chest, something that made me swallow hard.

“You guys are okay,” I said. “Even you, Steve, with your skinny, bleach-blond self.” Steve grinned. Raynard patted him on the back and everybody else tee-heed for a hot second. Then I went back to my seat.

When I sat down, our whole crew was clapping. Tanisha and Judianne whistled. Nobody said it, but it was like I had spoken for all of us. You know what I’m saying? And that don’t happen every day.

I’m glad I didn’t choke up there, ’cause now the whole school’s talking about that assembly. Probably be talking about it all summer, we was so hot. We sizzled! Chankara read, Raul did his Zorro thing, my man Wesley and me did a new cipher with a little sax from Raynard, and I even got Porscha to read her piece again. I never did come up with any African drum music for Tanisha, but the sista did fine all by herself.

Except for Wesley and me, we all pretty much did our old poems. The kids in our class were the only ones who’d already heard them. Besides, most of the kids want to wait ‘til next year to break out the new stuff, ’cause Mr. Ward already told us he plans to have Open Mike in all his classes then. Cool, huh?

After assembly, Mr. Ward came up and clapped me on the back. “I like what you had to say, Tyrone. And I loved your cipher,” he told me. “Any chance I’ll see you next year?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Ward,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about hooking up with some guys who want to start a band. I might have to skip school and go on tour, you know what I’m saying? So I can’t make no promises.” I’m blowing smoke about this tour and Teach knows it, but that’s the game.

“I understand. But I did want to let you know, we’ll be hosting a poetry slam here next year,” said Mr. Ward.

And guess what. All of a sudden, the man’s got my attention.

My mother says I’m lucky. She thinks I should be thrilled to go to an American school every day. I pretend I’m happy, for her sake. She doesn’t understand what it’s like for me. Nobody does.

My name is Mai Tren. I’m half Black, half Vietnamese. You try being me for a week, see how well you fit into this world. “Go back where you came from,” kids say to me sometimes. And I think, Go where exactly? We left the village my mother grew up in many years ago, right after my father died. He was American, so my mother was able to bring our family to the United States. I have as much right to be here as anyone. But no one hears me. No one cares about that. They can’t see past my slanted eyes. Not even the Black kids. Never mind that we’re all people of color, that most of us live in single-parent homes, that we catch the same amount of grief from the white world. It’s ridiculous.

I’ll be all right, though. I’ll finish high school, go to college, get my law degree, and be out of here. I just can’t count on having too many friends along the way.

Black people keep reminding me that I’m not one of them. Asians shun me because my blood is not “pure.” And whites are still making up their minds, although some want me to be their friend so I can help them with their math! Which is a joke, because I don’t like math. So where does that leave me? I look around this class, with Black kids, Latinos, Jews, and Italians, and I wonder how I’m ever supposed to connect with any of them.

But then we had an assembly yesterday with all these kids reading poetry. They seemed to get along with each other, almost like a family. They said it was the poems that brought them together. It can’t be that simple, can it?

Their teacher is supposed to be doing poetry again next year. Maybe I’ll get his class. Who knows? I can think of worse things.