Black Boy White School

by Brian F. Walker

  Brody laughed, but Anthony shook his head. It was the worst voice he had ever heard.

  There was a brief meeting that night in the auditorium, where the headmaster, Dr. Dirk, explained way too many rules. All of the Belton freshmen were there, along with a handful of teachers. Anthony checked out their faces. Aside from a few Asians and one kid who looked Indian, he was adrift in a Caucasian sea.

  And then he heard it. Someone laughed from the corner of the room. It sounded familiar to Anthony, like school assemblies at MLK. When his eyes adjusted and he saw the two black kids, he felt like yelling out. On stage, the headmaster reminded them of the freshman camping trip. Then he dismissed them to their dorms.

  Anthony found the two boys. The tall one was Paul and the chubby one was Khalik. Both of them were from Brooklyn, but they had only met that morning. Paul seemed cool, but Anthony wasn’t so sure about Khalik. He talked too fast and never looked Anthony in the eye.

  Inside the dorm, there was another meeting, this time with Mr. Hawley, an English teacher who was in charge of their floor. The man smiled a lot but also laid down the law, sometimes reading directly from the student handbook. The boys had cleaning jobs that rotated every Sunday. Plus they had morning room inspections and supervised study hall every weeknight. There were rules about bedtime and when to be awake; girls weren’t allowed to visit their rooms, except for supervised occasions; and no one could leave campus before signing out with Mr. Hawley or another adult first. So much for all the prep school freedom Anthony had imagined. The regulations made him miss his mother’s grocery lists.

  An hour later he was lying in the dark and staring at the ceiling while his roommate slept soundly in the bunk underneath. Anthony suspected that the other boys on the floor were sleeping, too, but he couldn’t keep his eyes closed. How far had he traveled in just one day?

  Someone had put BELTON SUCKS in glow-in-the-dark letters on the ceiling, along with a bunch of little stick-on stars that formed an obscene constellation. It was supposed to be funny, but the cosmic blow job only made Anthony uncomfortable. He peered outside, but everything was pitch black. There weren’t any streetlights, and no passing cars. He had never felt so out of place.

  The next morning, Anthony and the rest of the freshmen left school for three days of camping. They brought equipment and canoes to a town called Rangeley, where there was a huge lake with islands. Anthony stood at the shore and watched the wide water, the sharp rocks beneath the surface, and the dented boats knocking together. He had never been camping or canoeing before and was starting to have second thoughts. He looked at Brody, who stood next to him, along with a short kid named Nate. “I don’t know about this, man,” Anthony said as the first few kids paddled off.

  “Relax,” Brody whispered. “These things are like impossible to sink.”

  “Unless you do it on purpose,” Nate added, and laughed. He had already put shaving cream on everyone’s doorknobs that morning, and the night before, he had run up and down the hallway, flapping his arms and squawking.

  Anthony tapped the shorter boy’s shoulder and whispered, “Do some dumb shit, if you want to. Hear?”

  Nate stiffened and then turned around. “I was just joking.”

  In front of them, Brody took off his shoes and walked the canoe into the water. “Both you dudes need to chillax,” he said. “The day is young, the sun is bright, and so are we. . . . Now get in the boat.”

  By the time they were a hundred feet from the shore, Anthony loosened his grip on the sides. He was in the middle seat, surrounded by gear and doing nothing, while the other two boys rowed easily. There was laughter and shouting from the rest of the boats. Some of the girls had stripped down to bikini tops, and a few of the boys were shirtless. Most of the canoes moved along in straight lines, but some of them hopelessly zigzagged. Anthony glanced at the third oar lying flat at his feet, picked it up, and dipped it into the lake.

  “Way to go, dude!” Brody shouted. “Now let’s blow the rest of these boats away!”

  “That’s what’s up.”

  They dug in and Anthony rowed hard, leaving deep swirls in the water. They reached the first island before everyone else, and Brody pulled something from his pocket. “A little herbal blessing before lunch?”

  Anthony looked at the pipe in his roommate’s hand, at the blobs on the lake that were his teachers and classmates, approaching but still far off. He could get high and no one else would know it. Then again, he could get paranoid, fall out of the boat, and drown. There was no telling what kind of weed Brody was smoking. “Go on,” Anthony said, still watching the other canoes. “I’ll keep a lookout.”

  “Sweet!” Brody and Nate crashed off into the woods, while Anthony skipped flat rocks on the water.

  After lunch, they rowed closer to the group, partly because they didn’t know where they were going next but mostly because a teacher had yelled at them. There was talking and teasing between the boats, and a few kids used their paddles to slap water at one another. Anthony didn’t take part in any of the horseplay, though. And he wouldn’t let Nate and Brody do it, either. His clothes were new and he didn’t want to get them wet.

  They reached the final island, and Mr. Hawley and the other teachers got the kids to work. Soon the entire camp was set up and Anthony relaxed in the mouth of his tent, watching everything. Nate squirted girls with a water bottle, Brody and a hippie girl named Venus slipped into the woods, and the Brooklyn boys traded big-city stories in front of a wide-eyed audience.

  “Tired?”

  Anthony looked up to see Ms. Atwood smiling down at him. She was young and pretty but way too nosy. It was the third or fourth time that day that she’d ambushed him with a question. “I’m straight,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean, I’m okay. I’m not tired.”

  “Oh.” Still grinning, she sat down close to him. “Well, that makes one of us. I’ll sleep like a log tonight.” She laughed and looked at Anthony, clearly hoping that he would laugh, too. He didn’t, though, and eventually she put a hand on his arm. “What’s the matter? Are you homesick?”

  “No.”

  “Are you lonely?” She glanced at Paul and Khalik holding court, and then back at Anthony. “Those guys seem pretty fun. Have you met them yet?”

  “I met ’em. They’re straight.”

  “Oh,” she said, lighting up. “Are they from the same part of the city as you?”

  Anthony looked at her, shook his head, and then frowned. Did they think that every black person in the world came from New York? “I’m from Cleveland, Ms. Atwood. I wish people around here would get that right.”

  She shifted uncomfortably, and blood rushed to her face. Anthony was glad that she was embarrassed. “That was a dumb assumption,” she said sincerely. “It’ll never happen again, Tony. I promise.”

  Anthony rolled his eyes and caught movement at the edge of the woods. Brody came out, smiling wide and weaving between the trees. Venus emerged a few seconds later and teetered over to a group of girls. Anthony sighed. Maybe he should have smoked up when he had the chance.

  “Don’t worry,” Ms. Atwood said, rubbing his arm again. “Making friends takes time.”

  He drew a breath but then let out the air. Telling the truth wouldn’t get her off his back. “I’m making plenty of friends, Ms. Atwood,” he said. “For real. Everything’s fine.”

  She stared at him awhile and then smiled. “You mean straight, right? Everything’s straight?”

  “Yeah, Ms. Atwood,” Anthony said, grinning. “Straight as a gate.”

  After dinner, Khalik started telling more New York stories. Most of them were violent and filled with blazing guns. The tales sounded fake to Anthony, or at least exaggerated. He could tell that Paul smelled the bullshit, too, by the way that the other Brooklyn kid kept frowning.

  “I got a story,” Anthony said before he could stop himself. Everyone looked, and he suddenly felt hot.

  “He talks?” on
e of the other kids said, and a few of them laughed. Anthony said to forget about it, but then they all urged him on.

  “Okay,” he said, and then swallowed. At first he was going to tell them about Mookie, but he changed his mind. He wasn’t ready to share that story yet, especially with a bunch of rich white kids.

  “There was this old dude who used to live on my street,” he said. “Mr. McKinley. And he was mean as shit. He used to sit upstairs on his porch all day and yell at anybody who came near his grass. But these girls, Delores and Darnetta, lived in the downstairs half of the house, and we used to sit on their porch and play Uno.” A few people nodded at the mention of the card game. It helped Anthony relax. “So one day we were down there, playing; me, the two sisters, my friend Floyd, and this dude named T-Bone. Mr. McKinley started yelling at us, but we mostly ignored him. Old dude got quiet after a while and we kinda forgot he was up there. Then all this water came down on top of T-Bone and he started screaming. We all jumped out the way and saw Mr. McKinley standing up there with a big pot in his hands, laughing his ass off.”

  “Oh my God,” someone said from the other side of the fire. “He poured hot water on him? Is that true?”

  Anthony nodded, feeling a twisted sense of civic pride. Brooklyn and Khalik could kiss his ass. “T-Bone went and told his big brother, Junebug,” Anthony continued. “Bug was just outta jail and already crazy. Later on that night, he broke into Mr. McKinley’s house and straight killed him. Cut him up in the bathtub . . .”

  “Oh my God.”

  “But that ain’t the scary part,” Anthony said. “This happened when I was in the third grade, and ain’t nobody lived in that house ever since. But somehow the front grass always stay cut, and if you go sit on the steps by yourself, drops of hot water come down on your head. . . .”

  At first there was silence and Anthony wished he hadn’t said anything. But then came the grins and questions.

  “Cut him to pieces?”

  “Did the police ever catch him?”

  “To pieces?”

  “Is that really a true story?”

  “As true as I’m sitting here right now,” Anthony said, even though he had lied about part of it. Mr. McKinley, the hot water, and the murder were real, but the house was only empty, not haunted. They didn’t have to know that, though. It was better for them to believe in the angry spirit protecting his lawn, and that T-Bone’s brother was still walking around somewhere, with his razor.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They got back to campus after the camping trip and found it full of upperclassmen. Most of the ninth graders lingered outside to try to meet the older kids, but Anthony went straight to the bathroom. For days he had flatly refused to squat in the woods and he was just about ready to bust. Inside the stall, he saw that someone had scratched BELTON DIPLOMAS just above the roll. Next to that was a poem about a man from Nantucket, plus a few faded names and crude cartoons. Anthony smiled at a few of them and shook his head at others. He would get a Magic Marker and add to the wall, just as soon as he had something to say.

  When he was done, he took a shower and then went back to an empty room. From upstairs came the sounds of doors opening and closing, of loud music and sophomores talking and laughing. How many of them came from houses with swimming pools? How many had butlers and their own bank accounts? Probably all of them. And they would all grow up to one day take their parents’ places, running the world and ruining it for poor people.

  He was hungry, and Anthony realized that lunch was nearly over. He got dressed and joined Paul and Khalik in the dining hall. They ate in front of the big windows and looked out for black faces, but didn’t find any. The New York boys started talking about basketball, about Brooklyn neighborhoods and a dozen other things Anthony didn’t know. And they called each other “son” and “kid” all the time, especially when they got excited.

  Another black boy walked into the room, and Anthony got excited. He was tall and light-skinned, with an out-of-control afro. Not the kind of kid Anthony thought would come from New York. Maybe he was from Cleveland? Or at least someplace where they didn’t call pop “soda.”

  Anthony said, “W’sup,” to the approaching boy and made room at the table. But instead of sitting down or even nodding, the kid walked right by and joined two blond girls. They called him Claude and welcomed him with hugs and kisses.

  “You see that?” Anthony turned to his classmates, but they were too busy arguing over basketball.

  “Word, son,” Khalik continued. “I been to the Rucker like every year, since it started.”

  Paul made a face. “Then you must be like a hundred years old.”

  Without a word, Anthony gathered his dishes and left. Paul and Khalik didn’t seem to notice.

  On his way to the dorm, Anthony ran into Zach and a bunch of other boys. They were standing in a circle and tossing a little bag in the air with their feet. “Tony Ohio,” Zach said, kicking the bag across the circle. “How’s it hanging?”

  It made him mad, but Anthony tried not to show it. His proctor knew that he didn’t like the name. “I’m straight,” he said, walking backward. “And it’s Ant, not Tony, man. You know that.”

  “Sorry, dude,” Zach said in a way that made the older boys laugh. Then he kicked the bag to Anthony, where it rolled to a stop at his feet. “Wanna hack?”

  “Naw, man, some other time. I gotta go make a phone call.”

  “Yeah, man,” said a big kid with a ponytail. “We’ll catch you some other time.”

  Back in his room, Anthony grabbed the roll of quarters that was meant for his laundry and went to the pay phone down the hall. There was one on every floor of every dormitory because it was hard to get cell phone reception in that mountainous part of Maine.

  Darnell answered on the first ring, sounding tired and energized at the same time. All of the excitement left him, though, when he heard Anthony’s voice. “I thought you was somebody else,” he said sleepily. “W’sup, man? How all them white people treating you?”

  “I hate this place,” Anthony blurted. “Don’t even get me started.”

  Darnell laughed. “I tried to tell you, little nigga, but you ain’t wanna listen.”

  “I listened. I just didn’t believe it would be this bad.” Anthony told his brother about all the rules in the dorms and how everyone assumed he was from New York. When he shared what had happened with Mr. Kraft and Coach Rockwell, Darnell laughed until he wheezed.

  Anthony waited for the fit to die down and then said, “I’m serious, man. Put Momma on the phone. I ain’t got no friends up here.”

  Just then, Nate walked by and slapped Anthony on the back. “Hi, Mom!” he shouted. “Send cookies!”

  Darnell laughed again. “I though you ain’t have no friends?”

  “I don’t. That dude is just crazy, he don’t count. Serious, man, lemme talk to Momma.”

  “She ain’t here,” Darnell said. “To tell the truth, since you left, she ain’t really been home at all.”

  That night Brody tossed and turned in his bed, blew his nose like a trumpet, and dropped the used tissues on the floor. Anthony was already awake and on edge. He wanted to jump down and punch his roommate for being so disgusting. Rich white kids should know better than to throw snotty rags all over the floor. Then again, maybe there was someone at home that Brody paid to pick his boogers. For time and a half, maybe they even wiped his ass, too.

  “What’s so funny?” Brody asked from his bunk. Until then, Anthony hadn’t realized he’d been laughing.

  “You,” Anthony snapped. “You have to be the one of the nastiest people in the world. Seriously, man. How hard would it be to throw those things in the garbage?”

  Brody turned on a light and saw his mess. “Sorry, dude,” he said, and then started cleaning up. When he was done, he reached for his guitar case.

  “I know you ain’t about to smoke in here,” Anthony warned. “Take that shit to the bathroom or something.”

  B
rody laughed and opened the case anyway. Instead of his pipe and weed, he produced the guitar instead. He strummed a few notes, and the sound was good. It was also way past midnight, though, and they were supposed to be asleep.

  “Put that junk down, man,” Anthony said. “You gon’ mess around and get me in trouble.”

  “They can’t hear us, dude,” Brody said. Then he strummed the guitar again, but more softly than before. “They can’t hear us . . . but they fear us . . . put your trust in old Gus . . . and don’t be so ser-i-ous . . .” He ended the short song with a flourish and a triumphant “Dude!” Brody grinned and jerked his head aside to get the hair from his eyes. “Just made that up,” he said. “What do you think?”

  Unsure of what to say, Anthony didn’t say anything. He kind of liked the acoustic ditty, but he also wanted to throw the guitar out the window. It was almost like Brody was trying to be annoying. “You must wanna get your ass kicked,” Anthony said finally.

  “What?” Brody asked, sounding genuinely shocked. “What did I do?”

  As if to answer, someone knocked sharply on the door.

  “What’s going on in there?”

  It was Zach, and he sounded mad. Anthony shook his head. If he got in trouble over Brody’s stupidity, then he really would punch him.

  Zach knocked again and then pushed into the room, red-faced and scowling in his flannel pajamas. “Why are you two still awake?”

  “I don’t know,” Brody said. “Why don’t you tell us?”

  “Why do little freshmen always have smart mouths?”

  “I don’t know,” Brody said again. “Why are you such a dick?”

  Anthony sat up and waited for a punch that never came. Instead of knocking Brody from his chair, Zach opened the door. “Lights off, little fresh meat,” he said. “Or I’m getting Mr. Hawley.”

  The next morning, Anthony woke up before the alarm could go off, avoided a couple of fresh tissues on the floor, and glared at his sleeping roommate. It was going to be a long year. Either Brody was an uncontrollable slob, or he was trying to push Anthony’s buttons. He went to the bathroom, took a shower, brushed his teeth; came back to find Brody sill sleeping soundly. Good.