The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter

by Kia Corthron

  “You see? Yaw’s laziness has gotten me so frustrated, I screamed at my star student.” She opens her desk and pulls out papers. “Friday’s test, if you’ll recall, had a possible one hundred plus a five-point bonus. Emily Creitzer?” Emily’s wide eyes stare at Mrs. Feldman. “One hundred five, perfect score. The class curve starts at one hundred.”

  Not even Mrs. Feldman’s terrorist tactics can suppress the groans.

  “That’s not a curve!”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t start the curve at a hundred and five. The rest of you can pick up your tests on the way out.”

  Right on cue, the bell rings. Emily gathers up her books slowly, looking down, avoiding the glares shot in her direction. I turn around to try to make quick small talk with Margaret, “What are your other classes?” hoping more of ours overlap. But she’s already gone, no doubt getting a head start to ensure she’s not late to second period.

  The eighth-grade seats in Euclidean Geometry have been pushed to the very back against the wall with a space between us and the last row of regular students. There are three visitors here already, two boys and a girl, none of whom I know.

  “Everybody ready?” asks Mr. Thoms, passing out papers. “Upside down, upside down.” After each of the regular students has a sheet, Mr. Thoms picks up a few papers from a different pile and moves to the back of the room, placing one on each of our desks. “Keep your test paper upside down till I say Go.”

  Test?

  “But we’re—” an eighth grader starts.

  “Sh.” Mr. Thoms stares at the clock. When the second hand reaches the twelve: “Go!”

  Everyone flips their tests from the blank back to the front. I see now that while the regular students have an exam, we have been given a puzzle.

  Eighth-Graders, Crack the Code!

  KXGPZQX,

  JXK HSXVFQXJ!

  A few minutes later, I’m the first to solve it.

  WELCOME,

  NEW FRESHMEN!

  Afterward I look around the room, observing the high schoolers racking their brains. I wonder what Roger’s classes at the colored school are like. He told me he was the second smartest next to some girl, which I’m guessing is the truth, otherwise why not just say he’s the smartest? Yet here he was, until recently renting books from somebody a grade behind him. He says they sing a different national anthem. I wish there was a Colored School Visitation Day. Like an exchange—they visit ours and we see theirs.

  I’m startled to notice Mr. Thoms hovering over my desk. He sees my work, still the only one to have solved the riddle, and gives me the A-OK, touching thumb and forefinger. Does Roger’s school have proms? Does he go to them? Does he ever get grades so high to mess up the curve for everyone else? Do dumber coloreds hate the smarter coloreds? But Roger’s tall. Roger’s tall and good-looking and that’s why Henry Lee likes him. And Henry Lee’s no “funny boy.” Everybody likes good-looking people, just the way the world is.

  The gym is way over on the other side of the odd wing, but I make it there on time, not that I’m looking forward to PE. But turns out since we eighth graders obviously didn’t pack any gym clothes, we are not expected to participate. Mr. Lionel hands the nine visiting boys two decks. We split into groups and play blackjack and rummy and watch the high school boys run laps till their insides burst. My group is me and four boys I don’t know who call me “Stretch” and it’s a good-natured tease, not a taunt.

  The five of us go to lunch together. We point out the high school girls we want and will surely get next year. Bradley picks a cheerleader in her uniform for Team Appreciation Day, but William John knows for a fact that she’s a senior and won’t be around in the fall. Bradley shrugs. “Her loss.” She is sitting with other cheerleaders and, to my surprise, Earl Mattingly, who I haven’t seen all day, comes up to the pack of short-skirted Oxford-wearing girls and sits among them. The tall black-haired boy is enthusiastically welcomed. He has already been picked for next year’s junior varsity football team, skipping right over the freshman squad, a feat unheard of. Now Bradley asks about my schedule for the rest of the day. When I mention English with Mr. Schneider, Nathan says, “I had him. He’s funny! Hope he tells you about the tiger.”

  “Shut up!” says Jay Andrew. “You’ll give it away!”

  Across the cafeteria I see Emily Creitzer sitting alone, doing homework. Every few minutes, she pushes her glasses back up her nose. I wonder if the book she’s working out of is chemistry. I wonder if she would tell me what kind of experiments students get to do with all those tubes and spheres if I asked her.

  “Oooh is that your girlfriend?” asks Bradley, who has followed my gaze.

  “She’s pretty,” says Nathan, because she is not. We all laugh.

  Jay Andrew laments that the teacher he had for Trigonometry, Mr. Lenox, wouldn’t be around next year. “Enlisting into the army soon as school’s over.”

  On the other side of the lunchroom, I notice Margaret Laherty and Suzanne Willetts, talking quietly and looking unhappy, like they’re both having a really bad day. Margaret glances several times at Earl Mattingly, but never walks over to speak to him. He seems to be having a terrific time and never looks in her direction.

  “I got one,” I say. “When Snow White went to the ladies’ doctor, what did they find?”

  My quartet of an audience eagerly awaits.

  “Seven dents.” My friends explode in laughter. Henry Lee told me that one, and I also laughed even though I didn’t quite understand it, then nor now.

  On the way to Latin I, I spot Henry Lee walking in the other direction. We have not spoken since the train episode, but as today feels like an entirely different plane of existence, I wave to him as if nothing happened. He doesn’t see me, focused on finding his next class.

  Miss Collins is a young, pretty woman with black hair styled in a bob. She studies her teacher’s manual as the students file in. Behind her a map is rolled down, entitled “Latin Countries of the Roman Empire.” The only student I recognize in the class is Emily Creitzer. When the late bell rings and all are seated, Miss Collins pulls the map, causing it to roll itself up. Behind it, written on the blackboard, is

  I have laryngitis. May I have a student volunteer lead the class today?

  Emily’s hand is up like a shot. A few others also raise their hands, but Miss Collins’s warm eyes are on Emily. The teacher tips her forehead slightly in the girl’s direction. A few soft frustrated sighs from the other students as Emily struts to the front of the class.

  Teacher Emily asks the students to take out their homework and instructs some to recite conjugations, others to write conjugations on the board. She is an unexpectedly confident and encouraging teacher. “Good try, Amy Jane, but that would be the stem if it were a first conjugation verb. This is a third.” Miss Collins seems to be smiling at Emily the entire class time. Finally she goes to the board, startling Emily by the interruption, and writes, “How do we thank Emily?” and the better students reply “Gratias tibi ago” while the other students look blank. The bell rings. Some of the kids go up to Emily to compliment her on how she handled the class, making no effort to hide their surprise at her success. With every admiring phrase, Emily smiles graciously. “I want to be a teacher!”

  When I enter Mr. Schneider’s English, there’s a line of six students, among them Bradley’s cheerleader, waiting for the teacher to sign their yearbooks, which he does quickly and with a flair. Mr. Schneider is tall and well built with sandy hair. There are no open seats in the back. I’m the first eighth grader here, so I stand near the rear, and four subsequent visitors take my cue, including Suzanne Willetts, out-of-step and abandoned by her old self-assurance. I’m stunned when she nervously smiles at me in recognition before turning away to stare at the floor. “Hold on,” Mr. Schneider says to the visiting students. On the board is written

  The Merchant of Ve
nice

  Portia

  The quality of mercy

  Shylock

  I am a Jew

  I notice that for the third time today I am sharing a class with Emily Creitzer. At her seat she looks down into her already opened textbook, clearly having lost the ebullience of the Latin class just last period.

  The late bell rings. Mr. Schneider says, “Find a seat,” and we realize we are to insert ourselves among the regular students in the handful of open desks available. I can feel the trepidation of my fellow eighth graders, something I felt myself this morning, but now I confidently find a chair. The others follow suit, except for Suzanne, who seems frozen before a firing squad. Out of the familiarity of always being in a huddled group at Prayer Ridge, she seems at a loss.

  “Repeat: find a seat,” says Mr. Schneider, amused but not unkind. Giggling in the class. Suzanne, red-faced, sits in the only chair now available, having to walk to the front.

  “Who’s Portia?” Half of the regular students raise their hands. “Who’s a Jew?” Laughter as the remaining regular students raise their hands. “Shuffle! Jews here.” He indicates the desks on the right side of the room. “Gentiles here.” Some of the students look confused. “If you’re not a Jew, you’re a Gentile.”

  They trade seats, clearly an exciting change of pace.

  “Mr. Johnson.”

  The boy called upon stands and recites.

  “I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, heal’d by the same means—”

  “Go back.”

  The boy frowns, befuddled.

  “Miss Fitzgerald.” Mr. Schneider is looking at another Jew. “What did he miss?”

  “Subject to the same diseases.”

  “Aw!” Johnson, who wears a football jersey, smacks his forehead with the palm of his right hand. Titters in the class. I’ve seen him play, the tight end Eric Johnson, going to a couple of games with my father to keep him company. He begins again, reciting in a singsong monotone, this time getting through to the end: “And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”

  “You skipped a few lines but we’ll get back to that,” says Mr. Schneider. “What’s it mean?”

  The class is silent, perhaps unaware they were expected to comprehend the words as well as memorize them.

  “I don’t know,” Johnson shrugs. “He’s a Jew.”

  “A Christian wouldn’t ask for a pound of flesh,” calls out Bradley’s cheerleader, sitting smack in the middle of the class. Another cheerleader sits next to her.

  “That’s not what Shylock is saying,” says Mr. Schneider. “I wanna know what Shylock is saying with the speech.”

  “That Christians and Jews are the same,” says Cheerleader No. 2.

  “Correctamundo!” says Mr. Schneider, and the class chuckles.

  “I know what he’s sayin,” says Cheerleader No. 1. “I’m sayin I disagree.”

  “He’s sayin he’s doin what the Christians taught him, and now they’ll understand it cuz it’s bein done to them,” says a girl from the Gentile side. I’m surprised to see Emily Creitzer with her face down, trying not to be called upon. Didn’t she do the assignment?

  “Exactly! Now. What’s Portia got to say about all this pound of flesh business?”

  A moment of hesitation from the Gentile side, then a boy raises his hand.

  “Mr. James.”

  The boy stands.

  “The quality of mercy is not strain’d, / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; / It blesseth him that gives and him that takes—”

  The boy is stuck. After a more than acceptable silence, Mr. Schneider calls for help. “Gentiles?”

  Most of the Gentiles, but not Emily, say in unison: “’Tis mightiest in the mightiest!”

  “’Tis mightiest in the mightiest!” The James boy goes on. “It becomes / The throned monarch better than his crown—” His eyes scanning the ceiling for the next word. When the silence goes on too long, Mr. Schneider glances at Emily, a vague smile on his face.

  “Miss Creitzer.”

  Emily looks up, eyes wide.

  “I’m sure you can recite ‘the quality of mercy.’”

  Emily stands. She looks down at her desk.

  “The quality of mercy is not strain’d, / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven—”

  “Stop muttering, Miss Creitzer, we need to hear it.”

  Emily takes a breath, looks up, and speaks.

  The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

  It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

  Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;

  It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

  ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes

  The throned monarch better than his crown;

  His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

  The attribute to awe and majesty,

  Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

  But mercy is above this sceptred sway;

  It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

  It is an attribute to God himself;

  And earthly power doth then show likest God’s

  When mercy seasons justice.

  There is a silence. I cannot take my eyes off Emily. Even through her fright, she has given her words meaning, seeming to actually understand what Shakespeare is saying, what she is saying, so we understand.

  “In contemporary English?”

  Emily stares wildly.

  “What have you just said?”

  “It has to do with. She’s asking—”

  “Who?”

  “Portia. Portia’s asking the merchant to not. To have compassion, leniency, not to hurt Antonio—”

  “‘Hurt’?”

  “To shave off the pound of flesh, she’s asking the merchant—”

  “And the merchant is?”

  Emily seems utterly confused. Mr. Schneider sighs. “Is the merchant a Gentile?”

  “The Jew! The Jew! Portia is asking the Jew if he will please be gentle with Antonio—”

  “Who’s Antonio?”

  “The debtor. Antonio is the debtor who borrowed three thousand ducats from Shylock, the Jew—”

  “What’s a ducat?”

  Emily frantically searches Mr. Schneider’s face for the answer, then looks down at her desk shaking. The random snickers from the students don’t surprise me, but the smile on Mr. Schneider’s face is unsettling.

  “I don’t know. Money.”

  Mr. Schneider turns to the rest of the class. As if for the thousandth time: “What do we do when we come to a word we don’t know?”

  In unison: “Look it up.”

  “The gold ducat was currency, a coin used throughout Europe from the twelfth century up until just before the Great War. At the end of its usage it was worth a little more than two dollars, the silver ducat about half that amount. Continue.”

  “So. So Antonio was wealthy with ships but he didn’t have cash, and his friend Bassanio needed three thousand ducats to travel to Belmont and woo Portia. So Antonio borrowed from Shylock, and Shylock hated Antonio for being a Christian and for making fun of him being a Jew so he said if Antonio didn’t pay back the debt on time he would exact a pound of his flesh and Antonio said okay so Bassanio wooed Portia but when it came time to pay back the debt Antonio’s ships were at sea so he couldn’t pay and Shylock who was even madder because his daughter eloped with a Christian and some of Shylock’s money so Shylock comes to collect the pound of flesh and Portia dresse
s up like a learn’ed lawyer man and says ‘the quality of mercy’ asking Shylock to save Antonio’s life which Shylock refuses until Portia points out that Shylock can only take Antonio’s flesh not his blood so they win.”

  We all erupt in outrageous laughter. Emily is utterly confused, apparently unaware of how long it has been since she has taken a breath.

  Last spring, I was flipping through Benja’s old seventh-grade yearbook. She was always protective of the current volume, not allowing any unauthorized personnel to handle it, and I was definitely unauthorized, but as soon as the new issue came out twelve months later, she could be oddly cavalier about the previous year’s once-sacred tome. I noticed my seventh-grade earth science teacher Mr. Reilly had signed her book. “To a sweet girl and good student.” I remarked upon it.

  “Everyone liked Mr. Reilly.” She continued looking into her mirror, pinning up her hair in curls for the night.

  I didn’t say anything, and though my eyes remained on his picture, I could tell in the silence she had looked up.

  “Except. He did have a habit a pickin on kids that kids already picked on. At the time I thought it was kinda funny. We all liked him better for it. But now. I don’t know. I guess he was kind of a jerk.”

  I turned to my sister, sticking a bobby pin in, not looking at me. It was the closest we ever came to addressing our very different social standings.

  “Thus,” Mr. Schneider picks up, “Portia’s speech is about?”

  Poor Emily had thought the torture was over, having started to sit, but now she is snapped back on her feet. “Excuse me?”

  “What is Portia asking of Shylock?”

  “Leniency.” He stares at her. Her voice quieter, pleading: “Leniency?”

  Mr. Schneider continues to stare, and Emily seems close to bursting into tears. Then the teacher laughs incredulously. “Miss Creitzer! What is the speech about?”

  Emily is a deer in headlights. Mr. Schneider sighs.

  “What’s the first line of the speech?”