by Laura Goode
“Let’s continue our meeting,” I say, livid. “We can’t let some cowards who don’t even have the guts to show their faces stop us.”
“Dude.” She brushes ash off her sleeves, boiling. “How?”
“I’m going to get out my notebook,” I growl. “And we’re going to make a plan.”
After the firebombing incident, Marcy, Tess, and I demand another meeting with our old friend Principal Ross Nordling.
“The problem is, girls,” Nordling wheezes, sounding weary and asthmatic, “the administration can’t protect meetings that are happening off campus.”
“Principal Nordling,” Tess protests, “you can’t pretend you didn’t suggest we meet in the warming house back in September. We had an agreement with you that if we could prove that this group had a purpose and that other people were interested in it, you’d recognize it.”
“Yes, Miss Grinnell, but I never formally approved it,” he sniffs. “You might remember that not one of you signed this year’s code of conduct, which was the second part of our deal.”
“So let me get this straight,” Marcy says. “You’re saying that you’re reneging on our agreement and that school groups Holyhill ignores don’t deserve to have safe meetings?”
“Even if I knew who was behind this alleged assault, Miss Crowther —”
“Ms. Crowther,” she corrects him icily.
Nordling stink-eyes Marcy for a second, then continues. “Ms. Crowther, even if I had any way of determining who set off those fireworks, what would you suggest I do with them?”
“Report them to the Holyhill Police?” Tess says. “Principal Nordling, this was a hate crime. Fireworks aren’t even legal in Minnesota, which means our assailants must have trafficked contraband in from Wisconsin. What would you do if some guys in Boy George masks firebombed a Bible study meeting?”
“If anything, what happened at your meeting proves that this kind of music incites violence,” Nordling says. “Violence that the administration was trying to prevent by banning it.”
“How can you argue that we’re the ones inciting violence when we were the victims of it?” I explode. “You might remember, Mr. Nordling, our contacts in the local media.”
He sighs. “All right, ladies. Let’s level with one another here. I have it on reliable information that your little organization facilitated the Halloween incident in order to promote yourselves on the news. Are you sure this alleged attack isn’t just a follow-up story?”
I can feel Marcy fuming.
“I have a problem with your referring to Mary Ashley Baumgarten as reliable just because her dad is a state senator,” she says. “And if we intended to stage an attack on our own meeting, why would we invite a Holyhill faculty member to be there?”
“I’ve spoken with Mrs. DiCostanza, and she does corroborate your claim,” Nordling sneers. “But I can’t help but wonder if you invited her expressly so she would offer that corroboration.”
“Principal Nordling,” I seethe, struggling to contain myself, “we take the integrity of our group very seriously. We submitted an application. We’ve met with you about that application. We’ve recruited a faculty adviser. What we have not done is invent an attack on our own meeting.”
Nordling sighs. “Let’s call a truce. You and I both know that after the, ahem, Halloween incident, I don’t need any more bad press. If any media organizations get wind of this, I’ll have no choice but to suspend all of your group members from all student activities. Ms. Crowther, I know you don’t want to be kicked off the drumline.”
“This is straight crap,” Marcy snarls. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Other than smearing Holyhill’s good name in your little impromptu news appearance,” Nordling replies levelly. “I also can’t help but notice that Ms. Rudra isn’t here in support of this group as she was in the fall.”
I strive to resist punching him in his smug, pink mouth. It’s your fault she couldn’t handle being with me, I think, fuming. You and all the assholes like you.
“Look, you kick me off drumline and this becomes a story,” Marcy threatens, losing ground.
“Then if you don’t want that to happen, I’d recommend for both of us that you discontinue your meetings,” he returns. “The choice is yours.”
“This meeting is over,” Marcy says, rising.
“I agree,” he agrees with maddening serenity. “I think I’ve made myself clear.”
We all stand up and walk toward the door. I open it, and Marcy looks behind us to get in the last word on our way out.
“You haven’t seen the last of 4H.” She throws him the 4H sign as we exit. “B-girls will be girls, buster.”
We hold our breath and tongues all the way to the hallway.
“We’re launching a counterattack,” I pronounce.
“Hell yes,” Marcy replies in a rush. We fist-pound. It’s on.
We start small. First, we get all the cats who were at the last, ill-fated 4H meeting to stage silent protests. Marcy and me and even Tess start wearing big saggy jeans every day, and after a few days Angelo, Jane, Yusuf, and the theater girls, who look completely ridiculous with jeans hanging off their skinny asses, follow suit. People start to get creative with their apparel of resistance: Kai shows up one day wearing a white T-shirt with the lyrics to “Fight the Power” hand-scribbled on it.
I have to wonder how Chuck D would react if he knew how meaningful his words are to a bunch of suburban high-school kids, but, hey, I also have to believe that Chuck D and I are on the same side of the freedom-of-speech argument. With a few well-planted seeds from us, word flourishes about the attack on 4H and our response to it, and all of a sudden, to our massive surprise, all kinds of fellow misfits we don’t even know are baring their underpants for our common cause. A few even get their hands on Boy George masks at Party City and start wearing them with the baggy jeans, which is one of the more surrealist acts of protest I’ve seen. Soon the butts are coming out of the woodwork: band kids are going saggy-pantsed, some debaters, ABS kids, goths — even the weird formerly homeschooled kids are panties-out with us. We must be freaking Nordling out a little bit, because, at least for the moment, no one gets reprimanded.
Gaining momentum, we start making hip-hop megamixes and blasting them from the warming house during track practice, audible on the track and in the parking lot, thanks to Yusuf and Marcy’s clever rewiring. At first we get a lot of dirty looks, but after a few days, a strange, gentle camaraderie builds: even the track stars pick up their pace when we blast the beats.
“I wanna see those knees up high, boys! This one’s for our principal!” Marcy crows at the team as Gang Starr’s “Same Team, No Games” bumps and grinds. “All are welcome at today’s 4H meeting! Listen to what you want! Love who you want! Come join the least recognized group at Holyhill Hiiiiiiigh!”
Yusuf examines the PA speaker perched in the corner of the warming house. “If I could get into the main office soundboard for ten minutes, we could totally hotwire the entire sound system to a motherboard out here,” he says.
“No shit?” I marvel.
“Yeah, dude,” Marcy says, drumming on the side of the house. “And if we really dug in there, we could record anything we wanted too.” I see Yusuf beam at her. It’s cute how Marcy thinks none of us know she and Yusuf are totally hitting it. Cute, and totally exposing.
For the first time in a long time, I actually look forward to going to school. There’s some backlash, of course — someone scrawls DYKES in lipstick on my locker; a rainbow bumper sticker mysteriously appears on the James’s rear window — but for the most part people seem psyched to have something new to chatter about. It’s a relief to feel like I’m contributing to the flow of social information instead of just being the object of it. I am becoming the author of my own chaos.
I’m working on new lyrics, too — nonstop. The song I started writing a while ago and performed for the girls and Rowie’s mom starts to grow into a longer piece; f
or the first time, I’m writing for one voice, for a performance without Rowie. Our wave of revolution almost makes me forget how it feels to see her and Prakash together at school. I’ve developed a unique talent for holding my neck still in Chemistry so I don’t have to look at them.
“But that’s why Battlestar Galactica is the best show of the last twenty years,” I overhear him saying to her as I spot them down the hall. “It’s all about dynasty.”
“It’s not that I don’t think it could be good,” I hear her reply. “It’s just never what I want to —” She sees me passing, and stops, dropping his hand. He reaches out and tries to hold her hand again, looking straight at me, but she dodges it. It gives me a sick kind of satisfaction. I duck out of their path and into the girls’ room, but I don’t look down.
Every time I see his ugly little larper hand on her, I get this vommy feeling. In the handicapped stall, I lunge for my notebook and start scribbling; if I’m writing, at least I don’t feel as paralyzed.61
61. Scribbled in Notebook: Die, nerd, die, better recognize / You may of got her hand but I got her voice / I know Ro’s flow through alla your noise / So save your show ‘bout boys being boys.
There’s this recurring dream of an unrehearsed performance that I’ve been having a lot lately. It’s always a different performance: sometimes a dance recital, sometimes a play, sometimes a concert where I have to play an instrument I’ve never studied, like the bass clarinet or the harp. I fumble through the performance for what feels like days, faking it as best I can, the faces in the audience vague and hazy with light-blindness, the sweat of the effort beading on my neck, and, as though I’m finding a muscle memory I’d forgotten, I begin to get the hang of it, dancing or playing or speaking freestyle, no longer conscious of the stakes or anyone else, feeding off the energy of the shadowy crowd in a gallop of adrenaline — and then, just as I begin to let go and enjoy it, I wake up. It’s nothing like the dreams I used to have about Mom, the ones in which I saw her face more clearly than I can ever visualize it in waking. But it makes me wonder what that second movement must feel like, the one where I start to just ride it, do or die.
“So I’ve been really getting into hip-hop these days,” Pops tells me over his famous bacon-wrapped beef tenderloin one night at dinner.
I choke in laughter, spitting out a bite of steak.
“Yeah?” I sputter. “You’re so hip with the kids, Pops. Next are you going to get on Facebook?”
“I’m serious!” he insists, looking a little injured. “I’m really digging that Young Jeezy song. You know the one where he talks about his president and his Lambo being black?”
“His Lambo is blue, Pops.” I say. “And you’re, kind of freaking me out.”
“Well, I think you should be proud that you’re encouraging people you know to listen to things they might not have listened to otherwise. You have such a good critical mind. Without you, I would never have known how much I love Beyoncé.”
I give him a suspicious look. “You know that Beyoncé’s a singer and not a rapper, right? And that you’re, like, the weirdest dad in the history of the world? I mean, you don’t give me a curfew, you don’t try to stop me from going out and hooking up — with girls, no less — and now you’re encouraging my guerrilla gay hip-hop movement? Aren’t you supposed to, like, try to stop me from doing all those things?”
“Would you rather I did? Wouldn’t that just make you want to do them more and be dishonest with me?” He slurps his wine.
“Hippie freak,” I mutter, shaking my head as I tuck back into my bacon steak. “Why aren’t you a vegetarian?”
“Why don’t you ever read me any lyrics you’re working on? Have I not done enough to make this feel like a safe creative space for you?”
“No, Pops, we’re the safest creative space on the block.” I roll my eyes. “Do you seriously expect me to rap for you?”
“Yes!” he says, dropping his fork for emphasis. “I completely do expect you to rap for me. I gave you life. Now I want to hear a song.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No! Aren’t I allowed to just want a little rhythm with my dinner?”
“You are a fucking nutbag.”
“I’m taking your steak until you give me some rhymes.” He snatches my plate.
“This is child abuse. I’m calling the authorities.” He starts to take a bite of my steak. “Fine fine fine fine.” I dig my notebook out of my purse. “Are you ready?” He nods eagerly. I take a breath.
“I got all this hysteria, maybe it’s uterus lunacy
I’m defective and restive, gotta find a way to get through to me
And all of these haters, all the shit that they do to me
We gotta get positive, find a cure for this prudery.
Who says that the white girl can’t come to drop bombs?
And who says I gotta dress like these Botoxed white moms?
My girl DJ She and me got some anthems to dance with
We wearin’ low-riders low and we got plenty of bandwidth
To transmit these messages you best not be messin’ with
We got ladies in the house, ladies first, ladies wicked
We ride to get high, Minnesota-do-or-die
We talk shit and kick it, our bidness is the shiznit
So holler out our name, we’re the illest Sister Mischief.”
He’s got that mushy look on his face again. Jeezy creezy.
“Esme! You’re so — good!” he squeals. “Are you going to perform that?”
I shrug. “Marcy and Tess and me might have something in the works.”
“What kind of something?”
“I don’t know,” I say casually. “Maybe something — at school, or something.”
“How are you going to pull that off? Please don’t get kicked out — that’s all I’m asking. I really can’t afford to pay the property taxes here and send you to private school.”
“Come on, Pops. They can’t kick us out for performing our songs, or for forming a hip-hop-friendly gay-straight alliance. The ACLU would spit-roast Ross Nordling over a First-Amendment bonfire.”
“Are you sure?” he asks skeptically.
“Look, we’re not definitely doing anything yet. Why don’t you just not worry about it for now.”
“Yeah,” Pops snorts. “That’s going to happen. Just let me know what you’re planning when you are definitely going to do something. And for God’s sake, think it through.”
I squint at him. “What do you mean, exactly?”
“I mean do your homework, girl. Whatever you plan, make sure you’re within your rights, make sure you have other people standing with you, and whatever you do, never, ever give away the cameras. And if for any reason the cops get involved, don’t say anything until you have a lawyer present.”
“Jesus, Pops, I’m not going to get arrested. All we want to do is stage a sneak-attack performance.”
“Just do it right — that’s all I’m saying.” He pushes my plate back across the table. Never give away the cameras, I note silently. Pops has this way of being smarter than me.
The tension’s building at school. Angelo and a few other kids get called into the office, but all the administration does is ask them to pull up their pants. Mary Ashley Baumgarten and her creepy little mini-me Stina actually spit at me as I pass them in the hall; MashBaum’s been preening around the halls like she’s fucking royalty or something since her dad won the election. Marcy and I start to mix up beats under my verses on the weekends. We copy more flyers, neon ones with lyrics this time. Choosing which lyric chunks to paper the school with takes us hours of debating and scribbling. We find snippets of MC Lyte (I may come on strong but that’s what you like / You like a female MC who can handle the mike. . . . / So that’s why I’m here, don’t mean to make a case of it / This rap here, well, it’s just for the taste of it / I write the rap to make the whole world sing / And I’m the type of female, well, I like to swing) and our hometown boy
s Atmosphere (As a child hip-hop made me read books / And hip-hop made me want to be a crook / And hip-hop gave me the way and something to say / And all I took in return is a second look) and we plaster the girls’ bathrooms with them, stuff them in lockers and under classroom doors, pin them under windshield wipers in the parking lot. It’s like we’re getting into the fray of hip-hop. We’re picking a fight and it’s coming for us.
The biggest windfall for our movement arrives unexpectedly, though, when an anonymous op-ed comes out in the West Wind, the school newspaper. It makes the front page, and the editor’s note indicates that it was submitted to the paper from an anonymous e-mail address. For me, seeing it erases any shadow of a doubt that the administration is going to have to respond to the homo-hop revolution before too long. The headline is “Censorship Reigns at Holyhill High.” My mouth falls open as I read:
Holyhill High School enjoys its status as one of the nation’s best public schools — and its administration is so busy enjoying it, maybe, that it seems to think it can implement intolerant and unconstitutional policies without its students noticing, and prioritize the comfort of some students over the safety of all students. This fall, a clause prohibiting “loud, violent, heavily rhythmic” music, and apparel associated with the culture of this music, on Holyhill High’s campus appeared in Holyhill’s code of conduct.
This policy is an obvious gesture at hip-hop, which many consider one of the most important artistic and cultural movements of the last half-century, as well as a major force in modern African-American and multicultural empowerment, an instrument of social justice and critical inquiry, and a contributor to the movement behind Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election. To prohibit students from participating in the discussion surrounding hip-hop is not only to deny this almost inarguable importance; it is to censor and restrict the First Amendment rights of Holyhill’s students. The administration’s refusal of school recognition to a student group dedicated to the study and discussion of hip-hop affirms its willingness to tamper with its students’ right to freedom of expression.
