A GUEST EDITORIAL FROM THE PAGES OF THE CRUISER
WE RECEIVED THIS E-MAIL TUESDAY
Although we in the United Kingdom admire the free-spirit attitude of our American allies, we wonder if that spirit is really free or, as it so often seems, is wedded to the Old West mentality that illuminates the popular image of the land across the Atlantic. When there are groups formed calling themselves Gangstas (sic) and they are celebrated as an integral part of an educational consortium, one wonders what the educational milieu could possibly be.
We have now had an opportunity to examine both The Palette and The Cruiser, and thank the editors of the latter for sending them along. We hesitate to endorse The Palette simply because it lacks distinction. As to The Cruiser, we simply, but quite vehemently, hesitate.
Phoenix School, London, England
Let’s get back to Phat Tony.” Kambui looked worried. “What did Mrs. Maxwell say?”
“Just that she called the police, and they weren’t saying very much,” I said. “I think they’re not completely buying his story that he wasn’t in the mall.”
“Somebody must have dimed him in the first place,” LaShonda said. “How did the police get his name?”
“I think we should just stay out of it,” Bobbi said. “I don’t want anybody to get in any trouble.”
“What’s the deal if we have a picture of him and the police find out?” Kambui asked. “Are we, you know, tampering with evidence or something?”
“Google it!” Bobbi said.
We Googled. The question was, If a person knows about a possible felony, does he or she have to report it to the police? The answer came back in the form of an answer to someone else asking the same question: There is no legal duty to call the police if you see a crime being committed or suspect someone of a crime. But if you help to cover up the crime you can be charged with being an accessory to the crime.
“So Kambui is in the clear?” LaShonda asked.
No one spoke for a moment, and then we all started nodding.
“Except if the police ask Kambui if he has any pictures,” Bobbi said. “Then he has to say yes or no, or refuse to answer.”
“No one knows about the photos except you guys,” Kambui said.
“And we’re not talking,” I said.
“What Phat Tony does isn’t my business,” Bobbi said.
“I don’t believe he did anything, anyway,” LaShonda said.
No one was feeling good about it. We switched the conversation to English, and then to Ashley for a while, and then the meeting broke up.
Kambui was down as he stuffed some books he wanted to borrrow into his backpack. I told him not to worry about the photos.
“Just try to forget them,” I said.
“What happens if Phat Tony really is a gangster and kills a kid at Da Vinci?” Kambui asked. “I saw a special on kids that kill. They had this thirteen-year-old kid who gunned down his cousin just to see how it felt.”
“You want to talk to Phat Tony?” I asked. “Tell him to keep himself cool because we got photos?”
“No.”
“You scared?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“So Ashley is going around the school talking to kids in the hall and pretending she wants to interview them to get their opinions on how a newspaper should be run,” Caren said. “What she’s really doing is trying to get kids to like her so they’ll think her paper is the best.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything was wrong with it,” Caren said, twisting her hair around one finger. “I just noticed what she was doing. And it’s okay if I’m going to talk to some kids to see if I can influence them, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
What I really meant was, “Yeah, sure, if that’s what you want to do.” Something like that. I mean, it didn’t seem like that big a deal for Caren to talk to other kids at Da Vinci.
Caren Culpepper is, like, a mystery girl. Sometimes she’s super friendly, and sometimes she walks around with her nose in the air like she just smelled something bad.
The fact that I went out with her twice doesn’t mean anything, but I think she thinks that I like her a lot. I don’t hate Caren, and I don’t really like her, but I like her in a non-boy-and-girl kind of way. If you know what I mean, which you probably don’t know what I mean because when it comes to Caren Culpepper sometimes I don’t even know what I mean.
And since she’s Mr. Culpepper’s daughter, and he’s the assistant principal of the school, you can’t be too mean to her.
She’s kind of smart (probably studies), but in a sneaky sort of way.
She’s not ugly and not pretty, just a little ordinary unless she fixes herself up. The main thing with Caren is that you never know what she’s going to do next.
THE PALETTE
Thug Life
By Ashley Schmidt
The new phenomenon in American school life is the homage being paid to what is being called Thug Life. Our understanding of this is it basically started with Tupac Shakur and glorified what he considered to be the code of the streets. Now Phat Tony (aka Tony Williams) is carrying on that tradition with his raps and his appeal to violence. But is this what we truly want at Da Vinci Academy? Aren’t we capable of better than “not being snitches” and “not slinging to kids”? I think that just being at Da Vinci tells more about you than Phat Tony will ever admit.
Naturally, The Cruiser applauds Phat Tony and even ran his very weak attempt at poetry. Is The Cruiser advocating Thug Life as the epitome of our school and our ambitions? One wonders if they’ll supply an answer.
THE CRUISER
TO BE A THUG
By LaShonda Powell
… Sparkling bright and worry free!
That’s just where I want to be!
Tra-la-la-la!
The Palette is sounding more and more like some kind of new detergent rather than Da Vinci’s official journal. Ashley, did you ever hear the expression “walk a mile in my shoes”? I don’t think you have because your mouth is running where your feet have never been! Girlfriend, check this out. Those kids choosing Thug Life are not doing it because they find it glamorous, they’re doing it because they don’t have the same access to the good life you are pushing. People need to find their own values when they look in the mirror, not yours. And yes, I can see that what you are running in your bourgeois newspaper is culturally hip, and perhaps superior to many kinds of Thug Life, Street Life, and Funky Roll Lane! BUT until you can create a system in which everybody can roll out of their mama’s (whoever their mama is!) and directly into the Good Life, then you need to lighten up and give people some slack. WE are not all sparkling bright and worry free, honey. And yes, The Cruiser is open to people who have wandered off the Golden Path. We understand that all paths are not golden, but they are all human.
At home. Mom is all excited and has a load of food on the table. Bobbi, who I brought over for moral support, is already digging in and has crumbs all over her face.
“So you watch it yet?” I asked. Mom had called me at school to moan about Dad sending her a DVD.
“No, but I did find out it’s a pilot for a series,” Mom said. “Which means that if anybody likes it they’ll run the darn thing. Let’s sit down and watch it.”
“You going to be okay?” I asked.
“No,” Mom said. “Of course not.”
So, if somebody is quirky, it’s Bobbi McCall. Bobbi has two platforms. One is super weird and everything is about math, and the other is super weird and everything is about being calm.
“Zander, someplace in the universe, it all comes together,” Bobbi said when she settled onto my couch. “Ask your mom.”
I looked at Mom and she was making a face. She didn’t have a clue what Bobbi was talking about. But I knew Bobbi would calm Mom down, which is why I’d asked her to come over to watch the movie my father was in with us.
“Let�
�s get this done,” Mom said, switching on the Magic Box.
I was tense as we sat through the commercials. On one hand I didn’t want Mom to be too upset because my father was doing what she really wanted to do. On the other hand it was kind of sharp watching your father in a movie.
My mouth was dry and I went to the kitchen and got some ice for my soda. When I got back to the living room there was a close-up of my father looking a little too perfect and speaking his lines as if he thought they were funny.
“So you were sitting on the porch when this car rolls up?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And then what happened?”
“Two guys came out of the car, which was a Ford Taurus SE. One of them started yelling something toward the house but the other one didn’t say nothing. He just brought his stick up and started shooting.”
“And the other one just watched?”
“You mean the cute one?”
“Whatever.”
“No, he was shooting, too. He had a silver gun. It looked a little like a Glock 38 but I really think it was a Beretta 327-A. It didn’t have the kick of a Glock 38.”
“Can you describe the two shooters?”
“I didn’t see their faces.”
Close-up on Dad. He lifts one eyebrow and shakes his head like he’s figured out something.
There’s a stock shot of a moon rising over some brick buildings and then setting. The next scene is of a dog sniffing a fence. Then he pees on the fence.
There’s a switch to a scene in police headquarters. Dad is drinking coffee and a white policeman turns to him and asks him what’s going on.
“It’s the code of the ghetto,” Dad says. “Nobody snitches and everybody knows the guilty party. This is having a terrible impact on the community.”
“Can you blame them?” the white guy asks. “They have a choice of living in fear or dying heroically. I don’t know what I would do.”
Close-up of Dad.
“I know what I would do, Dan,” Dad says. “And it sure wouldn’t be tolerating these creeps!”
“Oh, my God, your father’s a terrible actor!” Mom said. “I feel so bad for him.”
“The story’s not so good, either,” I said.
We watched another fifteen minutes of the movie with Mom moaning all the way through it. She was right, though. Dad was a terrible actor. Any moment I thought he was going to turn to the camera and give the weather report.
“He’s kind of a nonhero type,” I said.
“I don’t know,” Mom answered. “Nonheroes might be the new heroes. Like guys that get shot are heroes today. Getting shot wasn’t that cool years ago. You know what I mean?”
“And if you actually get killed, like Tupac and Biggie,” Bobbi said, “then you get to be super big-time, but I don’t think there are a lot of perks to being dead.”
“But suppose he gets a television series out of this?” Mom said.
The truth was that Mom didn’t want to see her ex-husband do too well, but on the other hand she didn’t want to see him go down too hard, either. She was somewhere in the middle.
“I don’t think he’s going to get a series out of this story,” I said.
“He could.” Mom was kind of whining. “It’s about a kind of hero and people like that kind of story.”
We watched some more of the story, sometimes with the sound off, and Mom was right, the story did make him seem like a hero.
The story sort of bumped along, like it wasn’t sure where it wanted to end up, and then my father, the “good guy” detective, gave a block party and everybody was laughing and singing. He was dancing badly, and the neighborhood people were laughing at him, too.
“That’s really the way he dances,” Mom said.
I guessed how the story was going to end. Dad had made a new set of friends and then there was a mysterious phone call that solved the case. Hmmm.
Mom said I should take Bobbi home, and Bobbi said that I should go to sleep because she didn’t need anybody taking her home. I went home with her, anyway, mostly because I didn’t want to hear Mom go on about the movie.
“So what do you think?” Bobbi asked. “He’s good-looking enough to make movies.”
“It’ll kill Mom,” I said. “But that bit you said about who was a hero — every time a rapper gets killed or gunned down he blows up even bigger.”
“You think Fifty Cent was really shot nine times?” she asked.
“Yeah, probably.”
“But that doesn’t make him a hero in my book,” Bobbi said. “It just means that he’s lucky to be alive.”
“Yeah, but you remembered how many times he was shot,” I said.
“Hey, Zander?” We were in front of Bobbi’s house.
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you something personal?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Do you think I’m really gifted?”
“You?” I didn’t believe what she was saying. “If anybody is gifted it’s you. How come you’re asking?”
“Just wondered what you thought,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”
I took the Eighth Avenue bus uptown. What was on my mind was why Bobbi was asking me if she was gifted. She had to be one of the smartest kids in the school, if not in the world, and she had to know it. For a hot second I thought maybe she was digging me, but then I remembered her poem about being in a closet by herself and wondered if she was having problems.
When the bus reached 126th Street, a block up from St. Joseph’s, my cell rang. It was Bobbi.
“So what do you think?” she asked.
“I still don’t think my dad’s going to make it in the movies,” I said.
“Not that, Zander,” Bobbi said. “Didn’t you check your messages?”
“No.”
“Check them and call me back,” Bobbi said. “It might be time to roll out the Cruise Mobile.”
I checked my messages. There was only one, a message from LaShonda saying that the Gap had accepted her design, announced it in the Amsterdam News, and there were already pickets at the store protesting against her.
Tuesday morning.
So I went to school, calling LaShonda as I walked. She answered and I could feel the burn from three blocks away. LaShonda was burning oxygen by the carload.
“And Charles Lord had the nerve! The N-E-R-V-E NERVE! to say I was exploiting the women doing the sewing on my designs!”
“He mentioned you by name?” I asked.
“He didn’t mention me by name but he said that the Gap had some black woman fronting for them! Does it look to you or to anybody else in the world like I need to be fronting for somebody? Do I? Do I?”
“Yo, LaShonda, I didn’t say it,” I protested. “Look, let’s call up the Amsterdam News and give them the —”
“They’re the ones that published this sorry-butt story!” LaShonda said.
“Yeah, but they’re fair,” I said. “We can straighten this out. This might even work in your favor if we play it right.”
“I’m too mad to be playing anything!” LaShonda said.
“LaShonda —”
“Don’t be wrong, Zander man,” she said. “I need somebody strong backing me up.”
“I got your back,” I said. “You don’t have to worry over this!”
“Okay, I just might need you to punch out Charles Lord,” LaShonda said.
Charles Lord had appointed himself the protector of the community and whatever an “activist” is supposed to be. He’s a big guy and looks like he’s in pretty good shape. He’s the kind of dude who sits on the sidewalk and watches people do their thing. And if anybody is doing anything worthwhile he runs and gets in front of them and then says he’s leading them. What I would like to do is to get him in a fight where he can’t hit back. Seriously stupid, but I liked the thought.
So I get to Da Vinci and who is on the stairs leading to the big front doors but Zhade Hopkins, looking ridiculously good.
&nbs
p; “Hey, Zander, what’s going on?”
“I’m all good,” I said. “How you doing?”
“I’m all right,” she said. “But, you know, Caren is a friend of mine and I hope you don’t hurt her.”
“Why would I hurt Caren?”
“Boys do that kind of thing,” Zhade said. “She’s all upset, and I told her to have some tea and try to get herself together before classes start. She’s sitting in the cafeteria now. She won’t talk to anybody, she just sits there crying.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Zander, that is so foul!”
“What is so foul?”
“If a girl is sitting somewhere crying and all she can say when you ask her what’s wrong is some boy’s name — and that’s all she can say because she’s too upset to go on — don’t tell me the boy doesn’t know what’s going on.”
Zhade gave me a mean look and walked away.
What I wanted to do was to go find my man Kambui to see what was going on with the police, but something told me I better check out what was going down with Caren Culpepper first.
I didn’t know if she was still in the cafeteria, but I went in and started looking around.
“There he is!” someone said.
They were all looking at me. I wanted to stop and start telling them that I didn’t know what was going on, but then I remembered what Zhade had said. I looked around and finally saw Caren sitting by herself in the corner.
I thought she saw me, too, but she put her head down so quickly I didn’t know if she had or not. Anyway, I walked over to her. There was a chair at the end of the table and I sat down on it.
“What’s up?”
Nothing.
“Yo, Caren, what’s up?”
Nothing.
I knew she could hear me. I moved my chair closer and asked again.
“Caren, what’s going on?”
Oh, Snap! Page 4
