by Ed Boland
I put my elbows on the windowsill, my face in my hands. I winced thinking about everything Nee-cole and Yvette had endured. During the crisis with Kameron, I had fought hard not to cry as I stood in the bathroom stall. But here it was no use. I let go. At first I wept for their terrible lives, then their loneliness, and then for myself. I had never been much of a crier, and the tears in my palms seemed so unfamiliar, so out of place.
Scared by the intensity of my own reaction, I went outside for a breath of cold air and tried to snap myself out of it. I had a whole grade full of Yvettes and Nee-coles; some of them were even worse off than these two. How could I do my job and feel for their terrible lives? Being a whitey with a salvation complex was not going to help them. Maybe I was just too thin-skinned for this shit. But I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want to become so tough, so veteran, that I wasn’t fazed by the thought of a seventh-grade hooker or a kid being homeschooled on a subway by her homeless mother.
I walked toward Delancey Street, where two little girls in braids with their grandmother were waiting on a worn green bench for the bus. The older girl was teaching the younger the rules of rock, paper, scissors. I stood there eavesdropping, hoping their innocent chatter would restore me, remind me how sweet childhood could be. I heard:
Paper covers rock.
Rock crushes scissors.
Scissors cut paper.
But there was no escaping the despair as I recited my own version quietly to myself:
Silence covers fear.
Fear crushes hope.
Hope cuts silence.
Chapter 6
Sweet Jesús
EVEN THE ROUGHEST boys would now and again show a chink in their armor and acknowledge your humanity in some modest way. It was always after school and usually with their girlfriends in tow. They might say, “Hey mister, you really like those white-people doughnuts from that expensive place, don’t you? No Dunkin’ doh-dohs for you. I seen you chowin’ ’em down in the teachers’ lounge.”
But not Jesús Alvarez; never Jesús. He was a shit—a perfect shit. He executed his role as a tormentor of adults seriously, almost professionally. Even mobsters I had read about were eager to show their warm and fuzzy side on occasion, but he was all business, all the time. A short, squat Puerto Rican kid, his mouth was permanently triangulated between a smirk, a snarl, and a wiseass smile. Even at fourteen, he had little black sprouts of back hair creeping out of his T-shirt. For a tough guy, he had remarkably long eyelashes. As if he weren’t formidable enough on his own, his longtime girlfriend and coconspirator was the foulmouthed Chantay.
Jesús started his assault on me the first week of school, but it was indirect at first. Some kids said it was he who put Chantay up to her now-famous desktop defiance. He followed that up by furtively screaming trash talk into my classroom from the hallway while changing classes, “Bolan’, who you ballin’? It ain’t no chick.” I clearly recognized his voice (as if Beavis and Butt-Head had come up on the tough streets of the Lower East Side), but no matter how many times and ways I tried to catch him in the act, he was always gone, like an apparition.
He followed this trick up with a form of abuse by proxy, where he would home in on the more academic or earnest of students (or, really, anyone who showed the slightest sign of kindness toward me) and torture them in front of me. He alternated between sweet Nee-cole and brainy Byron, presenting me with a classroom version of Sophie’s Choice. I tried to protect them both, to no avail.
Yet, his most infuriating trait was his ability to act like you simply didn’t exist. Caught red-handed in some transgression—hocking a fat loogie onto Mexico on the class globe to show his disdain for its people or destroying a new textbook by creating a type of gummy worm carpaccio between the pages—he would simply stare through you with that “Did somebody just say something?” look on his face. No manner of rage or wit or pleading from me was ever registered. Even in my humiliation, I recognized his brilliance in these dark, naughty arts.
After about two months of this, I called Jesús’s father to set up a meeting. Like almost every bit of advice I got from my coworkers, their take on just how advisable this was was split right down the middle. Half said, “Don’t! It’s the ultimate sign of surrender. The kids smell your desperation,” while the other half proclaimed, “It’s your only recourse. What’s to lose?” One veteran, Marquis, recounted that the previous year, after he’d called the home of another tough student, the kid’s mother showed up in the flesh in his class and beat her son for all to see. She had to be restrained by security guards.
At Sam’s urging, I made one of my frequent early-evening phone calls to my sister Nora to help break the tie. “I’ve tried everything with this kid. Positive reinforcement. Befriending him. Being a hard-ass. He’s been in the reflection room more than anybody,” I said.
She was home cleaning up after dinner. Over the sounds of running water, clacking plates, and her daughter Millie practicing the recorder, she asked, “What the hell is a reflection room?”
“It’s our euphemistically named detention center.”
“No wonder the school is having trouble. What a dumb name. Maybe that’s what we should start calling solitary confinement at the prison. The reflection room.”
She continued. “I hate to break it to you, but ultimately, you need to realize that your students are people with free will. Just like you and me. You can do all you can, but in the end, it’s not you who has the power over their behavior.”
“I don’t like that answer. Being powerless isn’t fun.”
“Welcome to their world. They have very little power in their lives, so they will use it where they can. Either of us would do the same.”
She paused before going on, seeming to sense my need for reassurance more than truth. “Sure. Call the father. It doesn’t sound like it could get much worse.”
She ended the call with a strangely reassuring comment: “You know, in a weird way, you have it harder than I do. I can use real sticks and carrots with my kids at the prison that have direct consequences on the quality of their lives. But an afternoon in your reflection room sounds like a nice break for kids. You have it rough.”
I hung up the phone and plunked down on the couch. I fantasized about Jesús being stripped of his beloved Air Jordans and Hollister hoodie and put in a pair of paper shoes and an orange jumpsuit.
About a half hour after dismissal, Jesús’s father swaggered into my room for the meeting wearing a shiny windbreaker with some kind of International Brotherhood of Something union insignia on it. He was probably in his early thirties, but he looked young enough that he and Jesús could easily have been mistaken for brothers. Physically, they were carbon copies of each other. Jesús shifted uneasily at a desk in a corner. Without so much as a word from me, Mr. Alvarez planted himself at the desk immediately in front of Jesús, toe to toe, and launched right in.
“Jesús, this is a good school. People here like Mr. Boland care about you. He’s a good teacher and an educated man. If they toss you out of here—and it looks like they might—you gonna end up in a place like Washington High.”
“That’s right,” I echoed sternly.
Washington High was a notorious place. Bedlam with lots of gang violence. Three years earlier, rogue students had thrown a stool out of a fourth-story window, hitting a pregnant woman on the street who lost her baby and nearly died.
“You think you tough?” Jesús’s father continued. “You a chickenshit. You’d be begging the cops to take you home in the back of a patrol car from there.” He laughed. “It would take you about a week before you’d get a buck fifty in your face.”
“Yeah, Jesús, a buck fifty in your face,” I said, repeating his comment like some kind of cooing backup singer. Then I realized I didn’t have a clue what a “buck fifty” was. I later learned it’s 150 stitches in the face from a razor attack. Handy information.
“You get yourself right, get an education, and show this man some res
pect,” he went on.
Jesús tried to keep up the tough veneer, but I sensed something might be sinking in. He stuck out his chest, but he was silent for once. I was impressed, inspired, and at the same time ashamed of the subtle glee I was experiencing at seeing him on the ropes for the first time.
“Go stand in the hall,” his father barked. Jesús walked out silently.
“I’m sorry about all this. I’m going through a real messy divorce with his mother. He and his brother are with me now, and it hasn’t been easy for anyone. But that’s no excuse. If he gives you any more lip, call me. Pronto.”
“He’s a good kid,” I lied. “Thank you for backing me up. We just need to get him back on track.” He locked eyes with me, shook my hand, and walked out the door.
I left that meeting brimming with confidence. Involving parents was key. Tough love was the answer. Jesús would turn; others would follow. The next day in class, he played it just right. He was an angel for the first fifty minutes of the period; at the end of class he created a small harmless scene. I guessed he didn’t want to arouse the suspicion of his peers or Chantay that he was getting soft. But it was a détente I could live with.
The reprieve, however, lasted exactly one week, and then Jesús came out swinging again, seemingly worse than before. I called the father several times. I got a message or two back promising action, but nothing really changed after that.
The end of the semester was fast approaching, and the entire ninth-grade team was demoralized. We found it so alarming that a full third of our students were in danger of not passing ninth grade. Mei had just sent out letters to parents alerting them their child might not pass and urging them to set up a meeting. But only three parents called in response, one to say she was going to send a letter back saying we were crazy and didn’t know how to teach her son.
In terms of discipline problems, I was getting the worst of it from the kids, but everyone was suffering. Bridget, the redheaded and wildly freckled science teacher, was also in the hot seat these days. She had taught in the backwaters of Laos for a few years, where kids would literally walk for miles barefoot to class, which was sometimes conducted outdoors. Many nearby children couldn’t even afford the uniform that was required to attend the school. Teachers in Laos are generally revered, but as an American willing to come to the jungle, she had achieved near godlike status.
Her transition to Union Street was jarring, to say the least. She had a reputation as an excellent, meticulous teacher who ran a tight ship. Her tomboyish Peppermint Patty energy earned her both respect and disdain. When her requests that a boy pull up his sagging jeans to cover his crack or that a girl stop giving herself a pedicure in class were met with frothing rage and profanity, Bridget was incensed. It was baffling to many teachers that the disadvantaged kids we taught were, in an odd way, so spoiled. One day, after one indignity too many, Bridget flew into a rage about their ingratitude. She brought her fist down onto the overhead projector so hard she broke the damn thing and sent pieces flying everywhere.
My friend Porter, the ninth-grade English teacher, had a similar meltdown. During an advisory period not long before, he was chatting with Jesús and a group of boys when he mentioned his fiancée and their weekend plans. Jesús started laughing and asked, “Hey, do you ever flip her over and fuck her up the ass? You know, make her bite the pillow? That shit is tight!” Porter flew into an apoplectic rage. It was unsettling to hear such a usually mellow and kindhearted guy bellowing down the hall after them. When he later came to my room, his mouth was still agape, his face beyond beet-red, almost an unearthly purple. Sprawled over a desk, he held his head in his hands and said, “Those little fuckers. I think I burst a blood vessel screaming at them so loud. I want to hurt that son of a bitch Jesús so bad. I want to slam him against the lockers.” Like Bridget, he, too, had taught abroad in the third world and was utterly revered as a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar. The only disturbance he encountered in two years of teaching there was when a six-year-old girl showed up obliviously wearing a T-shirt from a Western charity drive that read, “I’m shy but I have a big dick.” When someone translated it, her older brother raged against the class for laughing at her, but his outburst was short-lived. He showed up the next day proudly wearing the shirt, only too happy to share its message.
At our ninth-grade team meeting on a cold January afternoon, we passed around a tin of stale Christmas cookies and, in desperation, formulated a triage plan. Dorothy, the petite blond math teacher who seemed to have a relatively easy time with the kids, had an idea: “If we all agreed to teach one more period every day, we could significantly decrease the size of each class from about thirty-two to twenty-five. Smaller groups would be easier to manage. We could split up some of the cliques that are giving us the most trouble. More learning would get done.” It was a great idea, and I was proud to be on a team that was ready to innovate instead of just bitch and moan.
We brought our restructuring idea to Mei. From the dismal first-quarter grades and harrowing daily discipline log, she knew the ninth grade was in a bad way and appreciated our initiative. She ran the idea by the instructional superintendent for the district and got back to us quickly with approval. The new semester would start in three weeks, which gave us time to plan carefully for the transition. The whole ninth-grade team was reenergized by the idea. The final step was to get the blessing of the UFT, the teachers union.
The role the union played at Union Street was far more sane and professional than it had been at Eugene Debs. There, teachers were forever quoting “the contract” as a way to do less and less. The amount of required teaching time per day was dictated down to a thirty-second interval. Faculty meetings were not to exceed forty minutes, according to the contract. Watching the clock like hawks, most of the teachers were packed up at thirty-nine minutes and out the door at forty minutes on the dot, even if the vice principal was in midsentence. (If a kid ever did the same in their classrooms, they would have had a fit.)
Even worse, I watched the union rally around a teacher who had supposedly been assaulted by a student. In reality, a nasty kid had abruptly yanked some papers out of her hand and she didn’t think he had been punished enough. She claimed her wrist was seriously injured. It quickly turned into a farce of hearings, arbitrations, doctors’ reports, and interviews of a dozen student witnesses. She missed whole days of class as a result. She went around the faculty room showing her supposedly injured wrist in some kind of air-cast from a ninety-nine-cent store, but there was clearly nothing wrong with her.
I expected better from the younger, more dedicated faculty at Union Street, and, by and large, I found it. The relationship between faculty and administration was far more cooperative and professional. Both sides were more interested in the welfare of the students. Until now.
In response to our request, our union rep, Seth, the sophomore math teacher, convened a meeting with the ninth-grade team the following week, where he announced, “Well, guys, I heard back from our district rep. I’m sorry to say, we can’t go forward with your plan. The contract clearly says we teach six hours and twenty minutes, followed by a thirty-seven-and-a-half-minute student help period every day. Your plan exceeds that by quite a bit.”
“But we are electing to do this. It will help the kids and us,” fumed Bridget.
“If management sees that teachers are willing to work more without more compensation, they’ll hold that against us during the next round of negotiations,” Seth said.
“It’s an idea from teachers, not a demand from management,” added Dorothy.
“I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. We have to adhere to the contract strictly or the whole thing falls apart.”
“The whole thing is falling apart, and by that I mean the ninth grade,” I sputtered. We trudged out of the room. We lost, and the kids lost; the union and its beloved contract won.
As the new semester started at the end of January, a wave of unexpected violence gripped the a
rea immediately outside the school. Escalating gang rivalries were blamed. Cops started to stand at the corner of the school during dismissal. Chatter in the hallways placed Jesús at the center of much of the trouble. It somehow involved his parents’ ugly divorce and possibly a new girlfriend from the wrong gang. I overheard otherwise in the little snippets in the hallway: “No, it was about the drugs. Siempre los drogas.” “No, it’s a project-against-project thing, dumb ass.”
While all this talk swirled around me, I looked out my window to see a pair of construction cranes whirring about a sleek, rapidly ascending high-end condo. I had just read about an apartment on nearby Avenue D selling for $4 million. Hot yoga studios, boutique hotels, and mescal bars rubbed shoulders with bodegas, ninety-nine-cent stores, and public housing. I wondered if the influx of investment bankers who were buying these seven-figure apartments knew—or cared—what was happening a mere three blocks way. They wouldn’t have to worry about local schools, of course: Forty thousand dollars in annual private school tuition could make that problem go away.
I got a taste of the trouble myself after school one day. I’d stopped in a corner bodega to buy a sleeve of Oreos for the kids in my study group. As I left the store, I heard a woman yelling, “I’m sick of you punks and I’m calling the cops.” Underneath some nearby scaffolding was a middle-aged mother with a baby carriage, getting in the face of one of the “corner kids,” who acted as lookouts for gangs, as she called the police. The thug in question pulled out his phone and pointed it at her. Without much emotion, he said, “Go on, dial it, bitch, and watch what happens to you and your kid. I’mma send this pic to all my niggas right now. We’ll find what floor you live on.” Her face froze, she snapped her phone shut, and she walked away pushing the stroller.
