by Laura Goode
“WTF?” Rowie asks in disbelief. “That shit is unconstitional.”
“They think there are gangs in Holyhill? West Side!” Marcy laughs, throwing an upside-down finger W.
“Let me see that,” I demand, grabbing the handbook from Marcy. “Where is this coming from? Like, what suddenly inspired them to outlaw the hip-hop nation?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Marcy says, slapping her forehead in jest. “There’s been a large and dangerous — influx — into the community.” She jerks her head toward Jane Njaka, a Somalian girl in a few of our classes, who’s working on calculus and poking at something in Tupperware across the commons. Jane’s sitting alone.
Rowie nods, aping concern. “Them coloreds, they’re taking over the neighborhood.”
“And the White House!” I holler, proudly exposing my Obama button.
“Yo, I meant to tell you, I have this hook that’s like We wanna cause some drama like Barack Obama,” Rowie tells me.
“Sick!” I say. “I love it. Let’s work on it this weekend.”
“OMG, do you think this policy is because of Friday night?” Tess asks. “When Mary Ashley got clowned on by those drunk guys? It would be just effing like her to get her dad to make the administration write some wack policy because she was pissed her shirt got ruined. Plus Herb Baumgarten’s superconservative: I heard his education platform would actually make it illegal to teach evolution in Minnesota.”
“No way,” Rowie says. “Do the Baumgartens seriously have that much clout here?”
“I forgot his name was Herb,” I say. “Ha. Ha, ha.”
“Oh, mos def,” Marcy says. “They almost got me expelled. But why hip-hop?”
“Why not?” Tess says. “Her dad’s running for the state senate; he probably needs an issue. And people like that just like to feel powerful. This isn’t the first sagging-pants policy I’ve read about. I saw an article about some kid in California who actually got arrested and held overnight because his pants were hanging off his butt.”
“Held overnight? For real?” Marcy says. “I guess I can kiss ever fitting in here good-bye.”
“Were you holding your breath?” Rowie asks drily.
I throw a fry at Marcy. “Fuck here.”
“I’m sick of Holyhill’s shit,” Marcy says. “I mean, how can they confiscate, like, the most important musical movement of the last fifty years?”
“I’m not signing anything,” I say. “And I don’t see how they can make me.”
“For real,” says Rowie. “I mean, what if we wanted to learn from hip-hop? Like — what if we wanted to discuss it, or study it in an academic setting?”
“Isn’t that sort of against what hip-hop’s about?” Tess suggests. “I mean, do you really think Tupac would’ve wanted to be hauled into the classroom by a bunch of kids in the suburbs?”
“Isn’t that something to discuss in and of itself?” I say.
The girls nod.
“So let’s fucking discuss it.” Marcy licks her lips, gunning for a fight. “Let’s start a student group for hip-hop, a group to listen to it and talk about it. I wonder what they’ll do if we all refuse to sign the policy.”
“But a group like that’d never get approved by the administration. You saw the rules.” Rowie sounds skeptical.
“That’s totally the point,” I say. “We refuse to sign the policy and challenge it by applying to put a hip-hop group on the official roster of school-sanctioned student groups.”
“I’m not signing anything without a lawyer,” Tess says, sounding like her mom. “And if they deny the application, we’ll appeal and draw all kinds of attention to how unfair the policy is in the first place. How can they keep us from talking about why hip-hop is so complicated and offensive to some people and so effing bomb to all the awesome people?”
“They let the prayer group meet on campus. That’s offensive to some people,” Marcy says.
“Jesus is bomb,” Tess mumbles through a bite of her sandwich.
“You know what else this shithole doesn’t have?” I say. “A safe space. Of any kind. We don’t have a gay-straight alliance, or any group that deals with issues like that. All the shit Holyhill tries to sweep under the rug just stays there.”
“You’re totally right.” Marcy punches me for emphasis. “Even more to talk about. We should start, like, a queer hip-hop alliance.” The four of us bust out laughing, then trail off, thinking.
“Wouldn’t we need a gay to have a gay-straight alliance?” Rowie asks gently.
“Not necessarily,” I say quickly. “I mean, maybe we could have a gay — after we have an alliance.” Rowie nods understandingly, popping a dried apricot in her mouth.
Tess looks at us dubiously. “Let me get this straight. You guys are going to apply for school approval for a queer-friendly hip-hop student group?” A grin spreads like dawn over her face. “Damn. That’s bold.”
“Fucking right.” Marcy is grinning. “We can call it Hip-Hop for Heteros and Homos. Code name: 4H.”
“Are you sure that name isn’t taken?” Rowie says.
I bust up. “This is fucking inspired.”
Tess steals one of my fries and chuckles. “I’m so down. You dames may be crazy, but that policy is a violation of justice in ten different ways.”
“So it’s on,” Marcy says. “None of us signs the policy. The dissenters shall be named 4H: Hip-Hop for Heteros and Homos. Oh, hell yes.”
The bell rings again, urging us into afternoon classes. Slouching, groaning, resisting, we get up to go. Marcy balls up her paper bag and shoots it into a trash barrel fifteen feet away without so much as a kiss of the rim. “Three points!” She pumps a fist in the air.
“Marcy, how long am I gonna have to hound you before you get a reusable lunchbox?” Paper lunch bags drive me crazy; it’s a hang-up of mine.
“I should get a lunchbox so I can have a gay little accessory like that?” Her face darkens. “Uh, I didn’t mean — like, not gay gay — you know.”
“Chill out, dude,” I say. “Gotta do a lot better than that to offend old Ezmeezy.”
I’ve never known an openly gay person in Holyhill, so I don’t have a lot of precedent to go on in terms of, like, coming out to the world. I don’t think I’d get beat up, but I can’t say for sure — I’m pretty sure if I were a gay dude, I’d get the shit kicked out of me. How does a person go about coming out, anyway? I already told my best friends and my dad. Am I supposed to go around doling out high fives, all “Hey, what up, I’m Esme the Wonder Gay?”
Besides, Holyhill is a giant public high school, the best in Minnesota, 99.9 percent SWASP, or at least it feels that way. There are about twenty-five people in our five-hundred-person class with 4.0 averages: Tess and Rowie are two, and Marcy has a 3.95 because last semester she got her band grade docked for the MashBaum mud swirly incident. My friends are kind of over the whole social scene — the Holyettes danceline and their revolting highlights, the hysteria over hockey, the shiny cars in the senior lot. I think we all try to get really good grades because we know that college will get us out of this sand trap of a suburb, which I sometimes call the Orange County (gross) of Minnesota. Everyone graduates from Holyhill, everyone goes to college, and everyone seems to be Christian.
The Christian thing is a tricky stick to dip, because the girls like MashBaum who wear the little gold and silver Tiffany’s crosses every day are the same girls we see wasted on Friday nights at Perkins, the only twenty-four-hour joint in town, eyeliner melted into dark half-moons under their eyes, hair backseat-ratted, tormenting poor Pearl, the weekend waitress. It gets to me sometimes, the way the moms complain when teachers assign too much homework on Wednesdays, when all the church youth groups meet, or get their knickers all in a twist about sex ed in health class and evolution in biology and gay teachers anywhere, or the way a lot of Holyhill moms don’t seem to have anything to do but Botox their overcooked faces, cling white-knuckled to their lame middle-management husbands, an
d make their kids go to church. Living in Holy Hell is like being under twenty-four-hour Jesus surveillance.
Rowie’s inquiring face startles me.
“Chemistry?” Rowie often speaks in single words.
“What?” I shake my head. “Sorry, totally spaced for a sec there.”
“Come on, you know I’ll do most of the lab work anyway.”
Rowie’s so good at chemistry it makes me want to vom. She’s a super Hindu model minority at math and science. I’m good enough to be in the advanced class, but I’m still pretty destined for the humanities. I don’t really like subjects where there’s only one right answer. Ambivalence is practically my middle name.
I slump at the phrase “lab work,” dragging my backpack behind me like a recalcitrant kindergartner.
“Is it more lab today? If we’re not blowing anything up, I’m so out,” I whine. I skip Chem a lot. Mr. Halverson is either too bored or too resentful of his job to protest my excuses — the nurse’s office, an emergency newspaper meeting. One time a forged note claiming a phony meeting with the superintendent. Another time, as soon as Halves the Calves (more cankles, really — terrible, terrible man cankles — mankles?) started talking scientific method, I just got up, pointed to my crotch, declared, “Rag. Major rag,” and walked out. That shit makes male teachers so uncomfortable that they let you go every time, especially if you’ve got the cojones to try it in a non-gym class. Totally catches them off guard, and you just slip out amid the stuttering and confusion.
“Unclear. Come on. Whenever you leave, I have to stay so you can copy my notes later,” Rowie says.
I consider her point, which is fair. Casting an arm around her shoulders, I walk toward the domain of Mankles. “Fine. But you owe me five bucks if he’s wearing mint-green again today.” Halverson has a seemingly infinite collection of orthopedic sneakers. White and black, obviously, but also — we have a running record in my notebook — mint-green, ecru, gray, red, brown, and navy.
“Deal,” she says. We fist-pound.
As we walk to class, I see Jane Njaka packing up her bag. What I know about Jane is that she’s from Somalia, she commutes from Minneapolis, and she’s wicked smart — she always knows the answers in AP Chem, sometimes even before Rowie.
“Hey, Jane,” I call, waving at her. She turns around and looks a little surprised. “Do you know if it’s more lab today in Chem?”
“Oh, God, I hope not. Prakash Banerjee is my partner, and he makes me do everything while he plays with his funny little Magic cards.” Jane’s voice is lilted in a tone I find reassuring; its articulation sounds a little islandy, but with some desert too.
Rowie and I bust out laughing.
“Prakash is a Magic fiend,” Rowie says, giggling. “That kid is dork on a stick.”
“I know!” Jane says. “I thought I was the only one who noticed what a freak he is! Do you know he always keeps four GI Joes in his pocket?”
“No,” I say in disbelief.
“Not five, not three.” She nods. “He takes them out and looks at them sometimes.”
“Wow. Always good to know there’s people out there who are even shittier at fitting in than you are,” Rowie says.
“No shit,” says Jane Njaka, nodding with conviction.
The third bell rings, and Rowie and I hustle to our lab-table-for-two. I elbow her in the ribs.
“Powder-blue today.”
She nods at my notebook. “Note it in the report.” My phone buzzes.15
15. Stealth-text from Marcy: Dude, sorry about the gay lunchbox comment. Didn’t mean it.
Me to Marcy: Dude, stop hitting on me.
Marcy to me: I wish I knew how to quit you.
Mr. Halverson briskly claps his hands three times, which is his way of beginning class. He’s not a bad guy, I guess, but he’s one of those teachers who seem constantly disappointed. Maybe what Halves the Calves really wanted was to open his own cake shop or play pro cricket or, I don’t know, tickle the baby grand for shoppers in the Galleria. Maybe a lot of grown-ups are disappointed.
In his dejected drone, Halverson begins. “Sit down. We’re going to — well, we’re going to try to — go over the principles of valence electrons and atomic bonding. Valence electrons tell us how well or poorly atoms play with others. Write this down, please, you’ll need it for Thursday’s quiz. Or don’t. Fail the quiz. I don’t care. Valence electrons orbit the nucleus on the outermost electron shell of the atom. They determine how stable or reactive the atom is. A high number of valence electrons makes a stable atom, and a low number makes the atom likely to react, or bond, with other atoms.16
16. I have very few valence electrons, I scribble in my notebook. I think my nucleus is showing.
“While there are five primary types of atomic bonding,” Mankles continues blandly, “the two we’ll cover today are covalent and ionic bonding. In the covalent bond, a reactive atom, one with a small number of valence electrons, shares valence electrons with a nearby atom. In an ionic bond, a reactive atom steals valence electrons from another atom. This is caused by electrostatic attraction.”
I reach over and scribble in Rowie’s notebook.17 She muffles a giggle like a wind chime, and I feel distracted. Trying to get her laugh unstuck from my ringing ears, I decide it’s safe now to take out my book and read under the table. Rowie can teach me chemistry later, and better than Mankles will now. I’m rereading Anne Frank; I love her. When I was eight, I started a journal just so I could call her Kitty, and began it by cataloging the entire contents of our kitchen cupboards in an attempt to imitate Anne’s record of the annex’s food supply, but I had to stop when I found a dusty box of matzoh and burst into tears. It’s Mom’s copy of the diary I have. I don’t have much of hers, but there are still a ton of books she left behind in our house. I read the notes in the margins, or underlined passages, and I scrutinize them for evidence of her intent to abandon me, for a flight plan.
17. Let’s get ionic.
Her last letter, from almost a year ago, drops out of the back cover as I turn the page. She sends me a letter every birthday from a kibbutz she lives on in Israel. It’s virtually the only contact we have, a yearly reminder that we’re both still alive, even if we don’t really know each other. Pops didn’t understand, and I certainly didn’t understand, why she left — I guess she had some kind of breakdown. The letters I get from her are more like lists.
Esme Ruth.
Today you are sixteen, or maybe you are already sixteen and the mail is late.
Today I woke up at five and did my chores, and it felt as though you were there next to me, folding the other end of the sheet, picking fruit.
You were born in a blizzard.
I’d imagine you are angry with me. I’m so sorry. Not because you’re angry, but for my giving you a reason to be angry.
When you were three, you stuck a Raisinette so far up your nose, we had to take you to the emergency room.
Someday we’ll have a long conversation over a bottle of wine and you might begin to understand.
I tuck the letter away and return to the book. I’m at January 6, 1944. A Thursday. Anne’s been in hiding for about a year and a half. She’s writing about her mother, about her exasperation with her mother and her sister. She loves her father, like I do. She has a mother and a sister, but I don’t. She’s thinking about her body, like I am, and she’s embarrassed about it, which I guess I am, sometimes. Isn’t everyone? I’m just coming to the passage that made everyone snicker when we read it in eighth-grade Language Arts, the passage I remember best of Anne’s definitive edition, the restored version with all the sex and nasty observations her father once extracted, the passage that still rings like a bell inside my hollow places:
Unconsciously, I had these feelings even before I came here. Once when I was spending the night at Jacque’s, I could no longer restrain my curiosity about her body, which she’d always hidden from me and which I’d never seen. I asked her whether, as proof of our friendsh
ip, we could touch each other’s breasts. Jacque refused. I also had a terrible desire to kiss her, which I did. Every time I see a female nude, such as the Venus in my history book, I go into ecstasy. Sometimes I find them so exquisite I have to struggle to hold back my tears. If only I had a girlfriend!
I close the diary and look at Anne’s picture on the front, at her grainy black bob, and in profile, I see the black wall of Rowie’s bob, its smooth surface disturbed by the rapid action of her pencil, her head bowed, unaware of me just on the other side, watching.
Fall is a heady apple-tree season in Minnesota; the sinking feeling of winter hasn’t quite sunk, and the wind is aromatic with embering pumpkins and unpacked quilts and dirty, wet red leaves and a distinct, immodest scent of anticipation veiled over it all. Football season bleeds into hockey. The bottle blondes begin to lowlight a little. College scouts sniff around, and it rains until it snows. I’m in my last-period art elective on Friday, which would be the easiest class in the world to skip if I didn’t actually like it, when Ms. Mayakovsky, the severe-looking but appealingly crazy art teacher, hands me a note summoning me to the principal’s office directly after class. It doesn’t say why, though I have an idea. My suspicions are confirmed: all three of my comrades-in-arms are gathered outside the office, waiting to be called in.
“Guys, this is going to sound pathetic,” Tess confesses, “but this is the first time in eleven years of public school that I’ve ever been called to the principal’s office.”
“Me too,” Rowie says. “There goes my perfect record.”
