by Neta Jackson
With a sly grin, José took up her challenge, and Pete followed— though how he could dance in those baggy crotch-around-his-knees pants, I’ll never know. Feet flying, shoulders shrugging, the two young men did a hip-hop something to the pulsing praise music, while Chanda and Yo-Yo copied their moves. Everyone clapped and whooped. Encouraged, the rest of the kids joined them—even Josh and Amanda. Hmm.Where did they learn to move like that?
The living room was definitely crowded now, so most of Yada Yada faded back and let the young folks dance, while we cheered them on.
Not sure how I heard the doorbell, but I saw Denny go to answer it. Good, I thought. If it’s another Bandana Woman selling Avon, he can handle it. But he came back and motioned to me.
“Upstairs neighbor,” he said in my ear. “Complaining about the noise.”
Oh, brother. It wasn’t like we had a party every weekend—or even once since we’d moved here! I glanced at the clock. Good grief. It was only nine o’clock! And tomorrow was Columbus Day—a school holiday, anyway. But I turned down the volume on the CD player.
DENNY, BLESS HIS HEART, took Chanda and Hoshi home, and Stu somehow squeezed Delores, José, Edesa, Florida, and Chris into her two-door silver Celica. Hope she doesn’t get stopped by a cop, I worried. As Ruth and Yo-Yo’s brothers headed out to Ruth’s car, Yo-Yo gave me a hug. “Thanks for the party, Jodi. And the African violet. Never had a birthday party before, you know.”
I hugged her back. “I know.”
Even after everyone was gone, the house seemed to ring with music and dance. (“Shout! . . . Dance! . . . Clap! . . .”) I sat down at the dining-room table with my school bag and pulled out my lesson-plan book, just to get an idea how much I needed to do tomorrow. A Post-it note stared at me from the cover. “Send a note to Hakim’s parents, suggest he be tested.”
Hmm. Should have asked Avis about that. Well, I’d write the note and check with her on Tuesday before sending it.
32
I managed to talk to Avis about three minutes on Tuesday, but she thought the testing could be arranged if Hakim’s parents agreed. Satisfied, I sat down at my desk while Christy was reading Ramona the Pest to the class and pulled out the envelope with the note I’d written to his parents. I’d written the note in a friendly tone, even signed it “Ms. B” in quotes, which Hakim insisted on calling me. Only one problem: since neither his father nor his mother had come to the parent open house in September, I had no idea whether I should address it to “Mr. and Mrs. Porter,” or just “Ms. Porter.”
“To whom it may concern” didn’t seem like an option.
I finally addressed it to “Ms. Porter” as the safest bet and asked Hakim to take it home to his mom. He eyed it suspiciously. “You gettin’ me in trouble? I didn’t fight nobody.”
I smiled encouragingly. “Nothing like that. You’ve been fine. I just want to talk to your mom about how to make school better for you.”
He frowned, like I’d just spoken gobbledegook, but he took the note and stuck it in the pocket of his sweatshirt. “Don’t forget to give it to her,” I called after him as he disappeared out the classroom door.
To my surprise, he brought the note back the next morning, with “Ms. Porter” on the envelope crossed out and “Ms. B” written in a strong, bold hand beneath it. Well, good for him. At least he remembered to give it to his mom. I didn’t have time to read it at the moment, so I stuck it into the pocket of my corduroy skirt, intending to wait till lunchtime. Then I got so busy setting up our science experiment about ecosystems and the greenhouse effect that my student teacher was lining up the kids to come back in from the gym before I remembered the note.
Pulling the envelope out of my pocket, I opened the same sheet of paper I’d sent home with Hakim. The word testing had been circled in red ink, and at the bottom of the page was a note scrawled in the same bold handwriting: “Ms. B—Hakim is a smart kid. He does not need to be ‘tested.’Testing is a cover-up for poor teaching. Just do your job.” It was signed, “Geraldine Porter.”
My whole face stung, like I’d just been slapped. Poor teaching?!The nerve of that woman!
I was so upset, I asked Christy to take over the class while I went to the teachers’ restroom to pull myself together. I couldn’t get rid of the accusing words ringing in my head: “poor teaching . . . just do your job.” After ten minutes of pacing back and forth between the electric hand dryer and the overflowing trash can by the door, scorching my brain cells as I indulged in a one-side mental tirade at the lady, I decided to go see Avis.
A quick peek through the window in the classroom door satisfied me that Christy would survive another five or ten minutes without me, and I headed for Avis’s office. She was on the telephone, but she motioned me inside. I shut the door.
She finally put down the handset. “Are you all right, Jodi?”
“No!” I handed her the note and pinched my lips while she read it.
“I see.” Avis was quiet a moment. “Tell you what. I will do an informal evaluation of Hakim, just to assess the situation for myself. We better not do more than that, especially since we’ve asked and the mother has said no. Then, possibly I can contact the mother if we feel we need to pursue this further.”
The principal contacting the mother sounded good to me. Real good. My steam level began to dissipate. “Hakim is bright, I agree. He shines when we do hands-on stuff. But put a sheet of paper in front of him, and he seems to freeze. Plus, he does have some troubling behavior problems. Either sulking and keeping to himself— or lashing out.”
“Well, let’s pursue it quietly for a while longer.” Avis eyed me critically over the top of her reading glasses. “Don’t let it get you down, Jodi. Leave it to God.” Then she smiled, almost a tease. “And just do your job—like you’ve been doing.”
LEAVE IT TO GOD . . . Leave it to God . . .
Avis’s admonition followed me the rest of the week. Actually, it helped. I knew I was doing a good job—not perfect, but pretty darn good—teaching those third graders, and if I wasn’t, I’d hear about it during staff evaluations. Like Avis said, I just needed to keep doing my job. And, I tried to tell myself, if Hakim’s mother didn’t want him to get tested, that was her problem.
No! I couldn’t accept that. Because even though Hakim was bright, he was falling behind. And that wasn’t fair to him.
Yet I had a whole classroom of kids to worry about. I couldn’t tutor Hakim all day—unfortunately. Still, I determined to look for ways to give him more individual attention, especially with written work and reading. And parent-teacher conferences were coming up in a few weeks along with report-card pickup. Maybe that would provide a natural time to talk to Hakim’s mom. If she showed up.
The weekend arrived before I noticed that the pumpkins we’d bought on the way back from Lincoln Correctional were still sitting in the garage. Yo-Yo and Florida had elected to leave theirs at our house since we’d talked about having a pumpkin-carving party with their kids. And I’d totally forgotten to say anything to Chanda.
But, hey, why not? It could be fun. I hadn’t met Chanda’s kids yet—this might be a good time. So I got on the phone with Florida, Yo-Yo, and Chanda, and we lined it up for the next Saturday. That gave a few days to enjoy the jack-o’-lanterns before Halloween, but not enough time for them to rot.
Since the Bagel Bakery was closed Saturday for the Sabbath, Yo-Yo didn’t have to be at work till they opened at sundown. She didn’t think she could drag either of her brothers, though. I laughed. “That’s okay. You gotta hit twenty before you realize how much fun it is being a kid. Just bring yourself.”
Fortunately, the weather cooperated—one of those treasure days of late October, when summer made one last attempt to return. Josh and Denny had soccer games on Saturday, but they both got rides, so I offered to go pick up Chanda and her kids.
“Why didn’t you invite Emerald Enriques?” Amanda demanded, following me around as I hunted for my car keys. Right. And José would
have to come along to escort his sister on the el, I suppose. I spied my keys on the stove—the stove?—and snatched them up before Amanda made a comment about me having a “senior moment.”
“Next time.” I smiled sweetly and pecked my daughter on the cheek. “Tell you what. You can either clean your room as usual or make some sugar cookies for our little party—pumpkins, with orange frosting or something.”
I backed the minivan out of the garage, feeling smug about my little deal with Amanda. Of course, she might get huffy and not do either—you never could tell with fifteen-year-olds.
There was no quick way to Juneway Terrace on a Saturday afternoon, even though it wasn’t that far. I mentally tossed a coin and headed for Sheridan Road. “So, God,” I muttered as I waited at a red light on the busy north-south street. “What should we do about Amanda and José? Let them date? Figure it’s puppy love and it will go away? What?”
The light changed to green and the line of cars crept forward, but the light turned red again just as I got to the intersection. Why didn’t they widen this road? It was only two lanes, with parked cars crowding both sides. Drumming my fingers on the door rest, a man with dreadlocks and walnut-colored skin crossing the intersection in front of the minivan caught my eye. I half-expected him to be wearing an embroidered tunic over wide cotton pants, but the dreadlocks were pulled back into a ponytail, and he was wearing a tan sport coat, open-necked shirt, jeans, and carrying a briefcase. Then, for some strange reason, he turned beside my right front headlight and made his way between the Caravan’s passenger door and the car parked along the curb.
Instinctively, I glanced at my door locks. Not locked. I pushed the button at my fingertips. The locks snapped into place with a loud click.
The man paused, slowly bent down, and caught my eye through the passenger side window. “That’s right,” he said loudly through the glass. “Lock your doors! But you really should keep them locked all the time, lady.”
Ohmigosh. He heard me lock the doors! To my chagrin, the man pulled out a set of keys, unlocked the door of the four-door sedan parked along the curb, and got in.
Sheesh, Jodi. He was only getting into his parked car. I was so embarrassed that I didn’t even notice the light had turned green until horns started to honk behind me. Oh, God, he probably thinks I locked the doors because he’s black and male and wearing dreads. I pulled forward, but I wanted to go back. I wanted to say, “I’m so sorry, sir. You’re right. I should keep my doors locked all the time. I didn’t mean to offend you.” But a glance in my rearview mirror showed the sedan pulling around the corner and disappearing down the cross street.
For some reason, the incident rattled me. Look, I told myself as I double-parked in front of Chanda’s apartment building and honked the horn. You locked the doors because a man was coming close to your car door and you didn’t know why. Not because he was black. Or . . . did I?
Chanda and her three children trooped out of the apartment building door dressed like they were going to a party. The boy even had a bow tie! The kids piled into the backseats while Chanda climbed into the front. I tried to push the incident out of my mind.
“Dat big one in the back, he Thomas,” Chanda announced. She pronounced it To-mas. “He eleven. Then Cheree. She seven. And Dia. She five. Say hello to Miz Baxter,” she ordered over her shoulder.
A chorus of hellos echoed from behind us.
“Hi, kids.” None of the kids looked alike. Made me wonder. “This car is kinda funny: it won’t move until all seat belts have been fastened.”
Chanda’s eyes widened. “That true?” She wagged her head. “Cars too smart for dey britches now.” She pulled her seat belt across her chest and clicked it.
Yo-Yo, Florida, and Carla were already in the backyard spreading newspapers on a couple of card tables when we pulled into the garage. Carla hid behind her mama while Chanda introduced her kids, but by the time I brought out black markers to draw faces on the pumpkins and serrated steak knives to cut them out, Carla, Cheree, and Dia were already giggling behind their hands.
“So glad Carla could come,” I whispered to Florida. “This isn’t the weekend she visits . . .?”
A shake of her head. No coppery ringlets or beaded braids today. Just pinned back with a few bobby pins. “Uh-uh. Just first and third weekends. But I tell you one thing—it ain’t gonna be that way for long.” Florida pinched her lips into a determined line.
Cleaning out those big pumpkins of their seeds and stringy matter proved to be a big job. Yet Thomas played the man, rolled up his sleeves, and dug out the gooey mess from two of the pumpkins, and Yo-Yo and I did the other two. The faces that got carved into the orange shells were rather lopsided. “But they’ll look great with a candle inside when it’s dark,” I promised.
Amanda—will wonders never cease?—brought cutout sugar cookies, still warm from the oven, and a bowl of orange frosting. This was a big hit, as the girls dug in with table knives and blobbed frosting on the cookies. Thomas was content just to eat them, which he did in rather alarming numbers. But Chanda didn’t stop him, so I didn’t either.
That girl is really good with kids, I mused, watching Amanda hugging Carla and teasing Chanda’s kids. Even Thomas warmed up to her. She made a game of stuffing the dirty newspapers and pumpkin innards into a trash bag, and the only fight the kids had was who was going to take it out to the trash can.
Yo-Yo left her pumpkin at our house and asked me to bring it when I came to Yada Yada tomorrow night at Ruth’s house. Yet by the time I dropped off Florida and Carla at the Morse El station and took Chanda and her kids home, I was bushed. Not even sure I wanted to go to Yada Yada the next night.
Did I dare tell Yada Yada what happened today with that man? Made me look like a dork, for sure. Or revealed my prejudices beneath my smug exterior. Part of me wanted to tell them—or tell Avis, or somebody. Somebody African-American, who would affirm my motives. “Of course you should’ve locked your doors! I would’ve! The man’s just got a problem.”
On one level it didn’t matter what my real motives were. The man obviously experienced it as just one more white woman protecting herself from a black man. And there was no way I could go back and fix it.
33
Denny let us out in front of Uptown’s storefront the next morning as usual then drove off to find a parking place. A stiff, cold wind chased bits of trash down Morse Avenue. Yesterday must have been summer’s last gasp.
Funny, I thought. No lights on. I pulled on the door handle. Locked.
“Hurry up,Mom!” Amanda whined. “I’m cold.”
I shrugged. “It’s not open.” I checked my watch—almost nine-thirty. Should be open. Unless the Rapture had taken all the Christians during the night and the entire Baxter family had been “left behind.” Or maybe Pastor Clark changed the time of service and we weren’t paying attention. Or—
“Uh-oh.” Realization dawned. “It’s the last weekend of October. Daylight Savings Time ended last night. It’s only”—my kids were going to kill me!—“eight-thirty.”
Amanda’s jaw dropped like I’d just announced the end of civilization as we know it. “Mo-om! We could’ve slept in another hour, and you got us up at the old time?” Josh gave me a dark look that said, “Bad, bad mother” and hunched his shoulders against the wind.
Denny came trotting up the sidewalk, trying not to be late, but he looked confused when he saw us still standing at the front door. When I told him we’d all forgotten to turn the clocks back—no way were they going to pin this on just me—he immediately moved into his okay-let’s-fix-it mode. “So we’ve got an extra fifty minutes? Let’s go eat! I’m still hungry.”
We nixed going for the car—it would take too much time to drive anywhere—and opted for a neighborhood grill that advertised, “One egg, grits, bacon or sausage, toast, and coffee” for $2.99. The regulars—an assortment of men who all needed a shave and looked like they lived in a single-room-only hotel—stared at us kinda funny as w
e walked in and dropped into the chairs by a window table.
“Hey! There’s Florida!” Amanda jumped out of her seat, pulled open the door, and waved them in. Florida looked confused, but she came in, followed by Carla, Cedric, and Chris, looking like chilly penguins. Her kids had the same reaction when they found out she’d dragged them out of the house an hour early, but now it was getting funny. At least we weren’t the only ones who forgot the time change.
By the time we got to church—ten minutes earlier than our usual mad dash up the stairs to the worship space—Carla was hanging onto Amanda, Cedric was saying, “Hey, Ma. Let’s forget to set our clocks next year and have breakfast again!” and Chris and Josh were still arguing about who was the best R&B singer on WCRX radio.
Stu waved at us from the second row. “Thought about calling you guys and reminding you about the time change, but I see you remembered.” She smiled approvingly.
I didn’t dare look at Florida, or I’d bust out laughing. I felt her deliberately step on my toes, and I got the message: “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
FLORIDA AND HER KIDS came home with us and spent the afternoon till it was time for Yada Yada. The kids seemed content with tomato soup out of the can and toasted cheese sandwiches, followed by popcorn and a heated game of Monopoly. Carla lost interest in the game, so I set her up on the floor with paper,markers, scissors, and tape. She immediately dumped out the markers and began to draw, saying something I didn’t quite catch.
“What’s that, Carla?”
Her head remained bent over the paper. “My other mommy gave me stuff like this too.”
“My other mommy . . .” I looked up quickly to see if Florida had heard, but her spot on the couch, where she’d been watching the Monopoly game, was empty.
