“Might I suggest…” Kupczek’s voice entered the room slowly, as if it had traveled from a far-off place and needed rest, its appearance so unexpected that Dr. Mishkin’s expression changed from rage to surprise. “Might I suggest that this situation is not entirely…intractable?” Patrick had grown used to Wally’s Dickensian circumlocutions, but those new to him were always disarmed by this man who looked like the former gym teacher he was (“Mr. Cup-check”) but spoke like Mr. Micawber. Wally leaned over his desk, brushed his mustache with his fingertips. “It seems that Joshua might benefit from some additional tutoring. Perhaps he and Mr. Lynch could find some mutually advantageous time to meet––during a study period, or after school.” He looked at Dr. Mishkin, then Patrick. Dr. Mishkin’s large features fell into something like satisfaction. The Kupczek grin peeped from under the stash. Peace in Our Time, once again.
And it was thus that Patrick found himself sitting at his editing table with Josh at 3:30 the following Wednesday afternoon, holding Josh’s dissection of Twain, Nigger Huck.
A siren had wailed down 103rd Street as Patrick bent over the essay, chin in hand. Josh, reclined in his chair at sixty degrees, was playing with his X cap, trying to find the most rakish backwards angle. Satisfied at last, he smoothed down the front of his T-shirt, which bore the do-ragged and belligerent visage of St. Tupac, exhorting his public to KEEP IT REAL. Softly but insistently one heard the taptaptap of the basketball Josh’s buddies were dribbling down at the end of the hall. Moments earlier they’d been dribbling it in the doorway, until Patrick had been forced to shoo them down toward the exit, which he did firmly but with some restraint, mindful of how such a situation could turn on you, of how Wally, in a similar circumstance, had yelled, Gentlemen, hold your balls. And they had.
Dr. Mishkin was right about one thing: her son was damn smart. Most of what Josh had handed in this year was dashed off and under-written. The only pieces he’d spent time on were angry, painfully derivative, the anger imported from the South Bronx. But this essay was really strong––well-organized and -argued, with a command of standard English few students, regardless of ethnicity or class, had these days. True, the first draft had been blue-penciled to a fare-thee-well by Dr. Mishkin, or possibly by her husband, the other Dr. Mishkin, but the editing was largely mechanical, a poignant parental attempt to unscramble the workings of a mind so badly miswired. The thinking and prose were clearly, and impressively, Josh’s.
Patrick looked up. Josh had his eyes fixed on the doorway. Patrick assessed his possible first moves. Don’t be too complimentary, that was the main thing. Patrick leaned back in his chair. Casual. Like they were gettin’ together for a coupl’a beers. “Josh, you know, you got some stuff in here.” He patted the essay. “Some stuff that’s kinda––interesting.” Josh’s eyes were trained on the doorway like a hungry dog’s on its bowl when it’s being filled. Was the room empty? Patrick wondered. Was he talking to himself? Did he need this? Only the vision of a second conference with Wally and Dr. Mishkin, perhaps both Drs. Mishkin, prodded him on. “Actually, it’s more than interesting. Some of the issues you raise about Huck Finn are really important.”
Josh favored him with a glance but managed not to move his head nor disturb the angle of his body. “Yo, my moms made me write it.”
Patrick picked up the essay. “What you said on page three, ‘Nigger Jim is the archetype of the helpless slave’––archetype, good word––‘incapable of independent action in his own self-interest.’ That’s pretty provocative. Could you tell me more about that?” Joshua requires significant amounts of “wait time” said his Ed Plan. He waited. The fluorescent lights buzzed. Taptaptap from down the hall. He leaned in, elbows on the table. “Are you saying Jim’s incapable of action, or is it just a matter of independence?”
Josh shook his dreads and shifted to an angle slightly less obtuse. “Twain’s a stone racist, and I ain’t gonna say anymore ’bout dat,” he mumbled. His eyes went back to the doorway. Taptaptap. Yo, Lynch, this audience is over.
Patrick had hoped this essay was a breakthrough, that they could actually talk. But Josh was only willing to drop his persona on paper; he wouldn’t cop to having written in his mother(’s) tongue. Had he really said dat? No doubt Josh scrutinized Black Entertainment Television with the same intensity his scholarly forebears had invested in the Talmud––he had the particulars down––but occasionally he slipped and sounded like he was auditioning for the road show of Porgy and Bess.
Patrick ran his hand over his hair, noting the lack of follicles at the corners, how, even at this relatively tender age, he was replicating his father’s Nixonian balding pattern. Cynical, Susan had called him recently. Had he lost his patience, his passion? Had he become one of them? He thrust his head back and cocked it in an attitude of disbelief. “Oh, come off it, Josh. You don’t think I’m gonna buy this bull about Mark Twain being a racist? For its time, Huckleberry Finn was fiercely pro-Black. You say right here,” Patrick flicked open the essay, “right here on page four that Clemens practically adopted a Black boy named Jimmy and put him through school.”
“Yeah, and he ripped-off his African dialect and style and painted him white and renamed him Huck and made a million dollars!” Josh had thrown himself forward, halfway across the little round table. His eyes blazed, his dreadlocks shivered. “Just like Elvis and Chuck Berry.”
A smile at this point would be fatal, but it was hard to tamp down. Patrick puckered his lips slightly and scratched at his chin. “You’ve got a long way to go to convince me about Twain…but this Elvis connection…I’ll have to think about that.” Josh settled back some, but his elbows were on his knees now and he looked straight at Patrick, eyebrows animated. Patrick leaned back––had to stay cool––which would be difficult, his cheeks feeling flushed, that tight thrill in his chest. A familiar sensation but somehow distant. How long since he’d cracked a nut this tough?
Patrick evaluated the various avenues before him. Josh sat motionless, anticipatory. The tapping down the hall had gotten closer, louder, and the dribbler had added a more insistent crossover––tataTAP––but Josh seemed not to notice. Patrick sniffed, pulled on his nose. He threw out a hand dramatically. “Let’s just say…let’s just entertain the idea that Twain was doing something radical here. Perhaps he was so fascinated by African-American culture that he wanted to create a white character who inhabited those qualities, that style. A character who scorns white bourgeois values––a bold and spirited traitor to his race!”
Patrick let this sink in. Josh’s eyes showed nothing, or, rather, too much, as if he were trying to make a long and complex series of calculations and all the circuits were full. Seven years of teaching experience told Patrick to let this sit, but that feeling in his chest drove him on. He spoke gently, almost a whisper. “Can you imagine why someone, Twain, Huck––anyone––would make such a choice?”
Josh sat open-mouthed, slack-jawed. His lips, surrounded by that pale and wispy facial hair, took on an unusual shape, the shape of a question. Then it came––tataTAP, tataTAP. Louder and louder, right outside the door. And laughter: soft, off-hand, derisive.
Josh shot up from the table with such speed, the unfolding of his long limbs requiring such effort, that his chair flew out, skidding halfway to the wall behind him. “Yo, dis is wack,” he shouted. Laughter, tataTAP. “Dis is wack.”
Patrick couldn’t help flinching when the chair smacked the floor, but he’d seen and heard much worse and quickly pulled himself in. “Hey, Josh, take it easy. Have a seat, let’s talk.”
Josh backpedaled, stumbling over his chair, kicking it away. “I’m gone, man. I’m outta here.” Then he was, in fact, leaving.
Too much was leaving with him. Patrick stood and raised his voice as he never did in class. “Josh, this is not going to get your mother off your back!”
Josh whipped around, his dreadlocks flailing about his skull. “Or
yours! Which is what this is all about. My mother.” He jabbed an index finger at Patrick. “You, Kupczek, you’re all so intimidated by Dr. Mishkin. She just might yank out one of the last white kids in this school. That’s what this is all about.” They stared at each other, Patrick afraid to blink and lose him. “You’re all so pathetic.”
Patrick cupped his hands in front of his chest, weaving a loose basket there. It held Josh for a moment, but not long enough for Patrick to fashion a counter to Josh’s claims. And, if he’d had longer, would it have mattered?
Someone in the hall, perhaps Abdul, said, “Yo, J-man, les go, a’ight?” and Josh was out, greeted by laughter and hand slapping and that fancy dribbling. Patrick listened to their sounds recede until all he heard was the buzzing of his lights and the basketball’s echoing tataTAP: inyourFACE, Lynch, it said, inyourFACE.
Patrick felt his neck tensing as he waited for the chancellor to enter his classroom. Down boy, he told himself. Just another day at the office. He loosened his tie, the one Susan gave him for his birthday, with the Marxes––Groucho and Karl––on it. That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever hoid, Groucho says to Karl. Patrick’s little joke for the day, chancellor be damned. He’d left scarface Emily Dickinson up, too, though he knew he’d get flak from Silverstein.
“So,” Mr. Lynch growled at second period, “what’s up with that ending?”
“Made no sense,” said Jamar.
“Yeah,” said Angela, “why do they risk Jim’s life after that big trip down the river?”
“And all for some stupid little play Tom wants to be making out of Jim’s escape,” said Maria.
“Good point, Maria. Many critics have wondered about that.” Julio clapped toward Maria. “Julio?” Julio froze when Patrick spoke. “What do you think?”
Julio scratched an elbow. “That Maria’s right.”
Second period laughed.
“Yes, smart girl. We’re all in agreement on that,” Patrick said. Maria tilted her head, patted her hair. “But why does Jim go along with it?”
Julio shrugged.
“Yo, that nigga’s crazy,” said Abdul.
Mr. Lynch gave him the death stare, reserved for special occasions, such as violating the class’s sacred vow to only use the n-word in context, with quotes around it. They’d spent the better part of a tough week discussing the history of that epithet, processing Twain’s 219 uses of it in his novel.
“Sorry,” said Abdul.
Mr. Lynch looked away from Abdul, apology accepted. “Hemingway called Huck Finn the ‘Great American Novel.’ Did Twain mess it up? Why this choice at the end?”
Josh lifted his head off the editing table, periscoping it around, as if tuning in to a familiar frequency. The teacher flop-sweat started up under Patrick’s pits, beneath his tie. Why would anyone make that choice? He’d said it again. Damn. Why would anyone make that choice? Josh looked him full in the face, dreads twitching, ready for action. He stood. If he flips the editing table again, Patrick thought, he’ll take out Hegira’s girls in those folding chairs.
Josh looked over Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick glanced down: Jamar, Abdul, Maria, Angela—all of second period—was looking over his shoulder. Mr. Lynch twisted his head toward the door.
The chancellor was a little man, as the mayor had so memorably noted, but he was one of those small men who, like rice, puff up under pressure. He seemed to fill the doorway in his broad-shouldered charcoal suit. He took a few steps into room 234, followed by Silverstein and the entourage. Mr. Lynch nodded at the chancellor. The chancellor, arms folded across his chest, nodded back. Silverstein glanced at the teacher, then past him with thinly veiled fear, the expression he wore when a faculty meeting promised to run to riot. Patrick remembered that he was in the midst of a student’s psychotic break.
“So, Josh,” Mr. Lynch said, cool, so cool, as if the second most important man in New York City weren’t watching, “what are your thoughts on the ending of Huckleberry Finn? Did Twain lose his nerve?”
Josh looked at Mr. Lynch, then the chancellor, then Silverstein, then his classmates. He licked his lips, tugged at his T-shirt, which featured an orgasmic Jimi Hendrix gripping the head of his phallic guitar. Josh looked down at the editing table, seeming to forget why he was standing. He looked up. He opened his mouth.
What would come out? Patrick wondered—the latest in ghetto profanity? His Torah portion? What?
“Well,” said Josh, clearing his throat, “first you have to consider Twain’s audience.” He stood a little straighter. “He wanted to appeal to the quote unquote liberal northerners. They wanted an enlightened view of race relations. But he didn’t want to alienate his broader audience, who wanted a, wanted a—” He glanced at the window, the meshwork over the hole. He was quoting himself, of course, highlights from his masterwork, Nigger Huck, but he’d lost the thread. He looked back at Patrick. Those blank eyes again. Please, prayed Patrick, don’t let the table hit those girls. You saved them from the Russians, Lord. “—who wanted a funny sequel to Tom Sawyer.” Josh swallowed. “And then there was a deadline to face. He had to pay for that monster house he was building in Hartford. And there was Mrs. Twain. And the little Twainses.” He let himself grin. Inside that furry frame was a lovely smile.
Everyone laughed appreciatively.
“Thank you, Josh. Interesting viewpoint, well stated,” said Mr. Lynch.
Josh sat.
“Thank you, Mr. Lynch,” said Silverstein. Patrick twisted back: the chancellor, hands stuffed in pockets, nodding, grinning. This was his school system. Silverstein beaming, monumental relief spreading across his face. This was his school. And, thought Patrick, if a public school teacher could ask for a raise, this would be that moment.
Mr. Lynch turned back to his class. They heard the chancellor and his crew sweep down the Down staircase. The slice-and-dice of Twain continued, the entire class jazzed by the chancellor’s appearance. A forest of hands in Patrick’s face; everyone wanted a piece of the action.
Everyone but Josh. As soon as the dignitaries left room 234, he slumped to the editing table, spent by his examination of Huck Finn. Mr. Lynch patrolled the room, up and down the aisles, hurling questions, demanding better conclusions, stronger evidence. Soon they heard engines starting up, doors slamming. Patrick strolled to the window, caught the taillights of the chancellor’s convoy as it sped down 103rd Street, flags flying, home to Brooklyn.
Patrick pirouetted back to his class. He looked at his watch: seven minutes left. Time to pull it all together. He put those two fingers to his mouth.
Abdul leaned back in his desk, stroked the hair above his upper lip. “Thank you, Professa’ Mishkin,” he stage-whispered. Julio giggled.
Josh twitched. He took a deep breath, filling with air, the slumbering beast within aroused. He mumbled into his hands, something, Patrick thought, about being sick, and needing a bathroom pass.
It was Mr. Lynch’s policy––ironclad—not to allow students out during the last ten minutes of class, lest they begin packing up and checking out after the first thirty minutes. But why not let Josh go this once? He’d just made the teacher, the principal, the chancellor—New York City—look good. His mother would be kvelling. Let him have his meltdown in the boys’ room. For once, he’d earned it.
From his desk in the back, opposite the editing table, Patrick plucked the wooden slat into which the art teacher had burned BATHROOM, 234 and laid it next to Josh’s head. Mr. Lynch turned back to the class. “Jamar,” he said, “having completed Huck Finn, knowing what you now know about the author and his era, what would you say to Mr. Clemens if he sat here among us?”
Those bright eyes sparkled as Jamar adjusted his Malcolm glasses, pleased to be giving the summation for this long unit. He leaned forward in his seat. “Sam, I’d say—may I call you Sam?”
Angela turned to Maria. “Jamar is too funn
y.”
“Sam, I’d say—” The bathroom pass whizzed past Patrick’s right ear, bounced off Julio’s desk, and skidded down the aisle.
“I said, I’m fucking sick of this class.”
The erstwhile Twain scholar stood in front of the editing table, shaking, dreadlocks doing the merengue on his forehead. Damn, thought Patrick, almost made it. He’d already begun crafting the replay for Susan. You should have seen the look on the chancellor’s face. And Silverstein! Jesus! Sarcastic musings aside, nothing aroused his significant other more than his tales of one man’s triumph over the indifferent System. He was going to get so lucky tonight.
But that thought-bubble popped as Angela handed the bathroom pass to him, disgust on her face. Maria was shaking her head, that black crest bobbing. Even Hegira, ever-placid, narrowed her eyes and stiffened on her folding chair. And Jamar—sweet Jamar—was livid, those chubby cheeks tightening, that plump bottom lip disappearing. In his relief over the chancellor’s coming and going, Patrick had missed just how ripped second period was at Josh. He’d wasted their time yet again and, worse, stolen their thunder in front of the chancellor. Isn’t that just how it goes? Jamar’s disappointed eyes said. We do the work and white boy gets the goodies.
No one was happy now except Abdul, smirking at the rise he’d gotten from his quip, and Julio, grinning behind him. Josh, who so longed to be Black, got redder by the moment. He’d been caught tap dancing for The Man, had outed himself as the professors’ kid. All that hard-earned street cred, down the drain.
Josh and Mr. Lynch glared at one another. Second period watched, and waited. Patrick patted his palm with the bathroom pass. Too late for that method of disposal. A Black kid using the n-word was survivable. The f-word, if not directed at someone, was finessable. Hurling a piece of wood at the teacher, however, was automatic. Patrick reached in his pocket for the slip to the principal’s office, pre-filled out with Josh’s name.
Class Dismissed Page 9
