Response

by Paul Volponi

  “I thought you was on vacation?” said the man, turning up both his palms.

  “This is my vacation, brother,” Dad said, getting up and walking over to him. “Trouble is, it’s the same as work.”

  Then he pointed back at me. I couldn’t hear what he was telling that conductor over the noise of the train. But the man nodded his head to me, and I nodded back.

  I didn’t know what my father could have said about me besides, That’s my son sitting there.

  I didn’t know if my father was proud of me or not.

  All I’d really ever done with my life is get a girl pregnant, and made the news for thinking about swiping a car and getting my ass whipped with a baseball bat.

  The train made its two stops in Hillsboro, barreling out of the black tunnel into the lighted station both times. And Dad never took his eyes off me as it did, from where he was standing by his friend.

  Mostly everybody who was white in our car had got off.

  There was a black woman sitting across from me, about the same age as Grandma. She had two big shopping bags at her feet, and I was thinking how maybe she didn’t have any family to help her. Then my eyes hooked up with hers and she put a death grip on her pocketbook.

  That felt like getting kicked in the teeth by my own kind.

  The train started slowing down for the first East Franklin station. I stood up, grabbing on to the handrail and getting my legs steady. Only my father didn’t need to hold on to anything. He bounced along with that train, shifting his weight like he’d grown up balancing on a high wire.

  “You ride enough years, you get a sense of what’s coming down the line,” he said after I asked him about it.

  We got to our apartment door, and Destiny Love’s baby stroller was folded up in the hall.

  I could hear Deshawna’s voice laughing from inside.

  Pops counted out seventy-something dollars quick, pushing it at me.

  “Here, you take care of your business and then some with that,” he said, before turning the brass knob. “Keep your baby’s mother happy.”

  Mom, Grandma, and Deshawna were almost having a party in there, calling out Destiny Love’s name. It was the first day she’d started crawling for real. They were all trying to get her to come to them. But as soon as I stepped inside, my daughter scooted straight over to me.

  DA’S OFFICE

  In a windowless office, the lead lawyer sits behind a desk, stabbing his blotter with the point of a pen. The subordinate is standing with his head bowed and heels together. Directly behind the subordinate is a smoky glass door with the backward lettering of lead lawyer’s name stenciled on it.

  LEAD LAWYER: Honestly, do you have your head up your ass, Pierce, or what? (Irately.) You schedule a session with a cooperating witness who took part in the alleged attack five minutes after the victim’s meeting ends! Did you think what could have happened if they met in the men’s restroom and not in the hallway? You could have caused serious headlines and put a major dent in this thing by being sloppy and stupid. Screw up like that again and all you’ll be prosecuting in this city are jaywalking cases. Understand me?

  SUBORDINATE (Eyes on the floor.): Yes, sir.

  LEAD LAWYER (Still seething.): You control your surroundings! They don’t control you! And that goes for your witnesses. You’ll tell them who to be, how to be, and when to be! Do you understand me, Mr. Pierce?

  SUBORDINATE: I do, sir. (His voice cracks.)

  LEAD LAWYER: It’s like I’ve taught you almost nothing.

  Chapter SIX

  MUNCH HAD BEEN ALL OVER MY CASE ABOUT missing shifts at Mickey D’s. So when I showed up for work two minutes late one Saturday, there was already another kid standing at my station, on the deep fryer.

  “Jackson, see me in my office!” hollered Munch.

  It wasn’t anything close to being an office. It was just a big walk-in supply closet stacked to the ceiling with cartons of paper napkins and floor cleaner.

  “Get into this,” he said with a straight face, handing me a clown suit.

  “Do what?” I said, shocked.

  “I need you to put this on and give out balloons to kids,” he came back. “The guy I hired to do it called in sick.”

  There was a curly red wig, baggy yellow pants, and floppy shoes that were five times bigger than my feet.

  I stared into the whites of his eyes, like he’d lost his mind.

  “Listen up, Jackson,” he snapped. “Either put this outfit on or go home.”

  “Out of all these kids workin’ here, how come me?” I asked, ready to blow.

  “’Cause I’m the boss and you’re the horse,” he answered, snide. “That simple.”

  I should have walked out of there cold. But I thought about what my father would say to me if I had to borrow another day’s pay, or worse, got my ass fired. Then I thought about all the things my baby daughter needed, and how Deshawna would give me grief, too.

  On the flip side, I’d be embarrassed as shit for Dad or Deshawna to even see me dressed up that way. I guessed only Destiny Love would have smiled over it.

  Finally, Munch just shoved that clown suit into my arms, putting a tube of white makeup on top of it. Then he walked off grinning from ear to ear. That bastard wanted me to paint my face white, like the clown in Mickey D’s commercials.

  I stood there steaming.

  Inside the bathroom, I put that suit on over my clothes, grilling myself hard in the mirror. Then I squeezed the white makeup onto the tips of two fingers. But I couldn’t rub it in, and washed my hand in the sink till the water got so hot it almost burned.

  I hid my face from Munch behind a bunch of balloons, and stood outside the store for nearly four hours, trying my best to laugh and joke with every little kid who came past. No matter what color.

  And I learned that as long as I was dressed as a clown and was there to amuse them, even white folks from Hillsboro would send their kids up to me for a free balloon.

  But towards the end of my shift, Munch marched outside all pissed off.

  “People are complainin’, Jackson,” he said. “They want to know when our clown turned black. What happened to the makeup I gave you?”

  “What people?” I asked, staring him in the face. “Who do they all look like? You? ”

  Munch didn’t answer. He just stormed back inside the store.

  When my shift was over, I folded that clown suit up neat, making the corners sharp like it had just come out of the box. Then I left it sitting on a tabletop by the time clock. I’d sent that tube of makeup to where nobody would reach for it, burying it at the bottom of the bathroom trash beneath the sole of my shoe.

  If Munch ever wanted to press me on it, he could take whatever that makeup cost out of my pay, and I wouldn’t argue a lick.

  The DA’s office had been prepping Asa and Bonds, too. Only they never had us all down there at the same time, probably so Scat’s lawyer couldn’t say we worked up a story together. But we’d talk things over plenty in the cafeteria at school, like how Asa wanted to climb up into that black lady lawyer’s skirt.

  “A brother needs a sexy sister with a job like that,” crowed Asa. “Think of all the trouble she could spring you out of.”

  “How she look at you?” Bonds asked him.

  “Like a prince. No, check that—like a strong African king,” Asa answered.

  “That’s how she looks at me. And I’ll bet she’s even nicer to Noah,” said Bonds. “Know why? That’s the law game—keep the witnesses walking around with a hard-on, so we’ll say what they want. She probably smiles at that Rao cat, too.”

  “I don’t know,” I argued, stabbing at a dried-out slab of cafeteria meat loaf with a spork. “She seemed real, and representin’ from East Franklin.”

  “Yeah? She tell you that she had a date with Rao and his father, right after you and your pops?” Bonds asked. “Or did you catch her on the sly?”

  “Sister done two-time me with the wrong dude,” sparked Asa
. “I get the chance now, I’ll just do her and bounce.”

  “What chance you got, car thief?” Bonds laughed.

  “Better than you, Slim Jim,” Asa said. “Least I got wire-cuttin’ skills, and a GED that’s coming.”

  “You bragging on a GED?” cracked Bonds.

  “When you flunk your last few classes, you’ll be going for one, too. Only you’ll be a year behind me,” said Asa. “And the new test is hard.”

  I listened to all that crap, looking at the rows of mostly solid black or white tables, including ours. And I wondered how much we really learned from everything that went down. We were still slinging the same old shit at each other, getting older and further behind the eight ball every day.

  After more than a month of school, all the drama over that T-shirt had mostly died down. But every day I’d see at least one or two kids still wearing it.

  Then one day, in Mr. Dowling’s social-studies class, there was a “Do Now” question up on the board—HOW WOULD LIVING IN AMERICA BE DIFFERENT IF EVERYBODY WAS THE SAME?

  “Do you mean if everybody was white?” a girl from Hillsboro asked.

  “Nah, if everybody was black,” somebody shot back from the other side of the room. “Right, Mr. D?”

  Dowling just shook his head and answered, “Try your best with this one on your own. No direction yet from me.”

  I wasn’t sure what to write. But all around me, for something like four or five minutes straight, I never heard so many pens flying across papers. A couple of kids even filled up whole pages, flipping them over fast to write even more.

  “Okay, who wants to read what they wrote out loud?” asked Dowling, and hands went up high in every row.

  “If everybody was the same, Joe Spenelli would be home on bail right now. Why? Because people who are charged with robbery and assault get bail,” a girl read all excited, with her blonde bangs hitting into her eyes on every word. “So if he got accused of doing that to someone the same color as him, it couldn’t be a phony charge like a hate crime.”

  “Let me stop you right there, thank you,” said Dowling. “Who’s next?”

  “If everybody was the same color—black,” read a dude from East Franklin, “Noah Jackson wouldn’t have a steel plate in his head. Not unless he said something about somebody’s mother or—”

  “Everybody’s the same color in Africa,” a kid cut in. “Why don’t you all go back there?”

  “’Cause white people kidnapped us here for slaves!” somebody shouted. “That’s why!”

  Then Dowling shushed everybody down, taking control.

  “What do you mean go back to Africa? What would America be without black culture?” Dowling asked the kid who’d cut in.

  “Less crime. Less welfare. No projects,” he answered, counting off on his fingers.

  Then a black dude waved his hand wild, like he’d shit in his drawers if Dowling didn’t let him say something back.

  “How about no NBA, or almost any pro sports,” he blurted out as Dowling pointed to him. “No fly dancing, no rap music, no jazz, no soul music, and no soul food.”

  “How many people in this room have ancestors from Italy?” asked Dowling.

  Almost every white kid in the room raised their hands.

  “You know that Sicily’s part of Italy,” Dowling said. “It’s so close to Africa you could almost stand on Sicily’s shore and hit the northern tip of Africa with a rock. Lots of Sicilians mixed with Africans, and then spread that blood all through Italy.”

  “But I’m not black, not even close,” said a Guido dude, sitting two seats away from me. “All I wanna know is, how come they can’t be more like those kids on The Cosby Show. Because all I ever see in this school are the low-rent kind from Good Times.”

  If I could have got away with it, I would have leaned over and smacked that guy good to shut his mouth.

  Then I looked down at my own paper.

  Besides my name at the top, the only words there were: NOT NEARLY AS GOOD, BUT LESS VIOLENT.

  CITY JAIL—ATTORNEY/CLIENT CONFERENCE ROOM

  CHARLIE SCAT (Wears an orange jumpsuit and slippers.): There’s no good reason I can’t have bail. I’m not gonna run. How the hell can I? Everybody knows my face. I even sold my car to get you money. They think I’m gonna hitchhike to Mexico? I should be at home wearing one of those bracelets around my ankle, keeping track of me. I can’t take livin’ here like a fuckin’ animal no more. I didn’t kill nobody and eat their body parts.

  AARON CHAPMAN: You’re high profile, Charlie. I filed motions on it, but it’s probably not going to do any good. You mean something to this city now—you’re their poster boy for intolerance and they’re going to keep you off the streets for as long as they can.

  CHARLIE SCAT: But a different judge might have gave me bail, right? (Slams his fist on a small plastic table.) This is prejudice—in here. Every inmate and guard that’s black wants my ass in a sling.

  AARON CHAPMAN: That’s the reality. Your good buddy Joe Spenelli doesn’t have bail, either. And he’s not accused of wielding the bat. You need to separate yourself from that now. (Picks up a yellow legal pad.) Let’s go over the bigger points of this case again.

  CHARLIE SCAT: Go ’head. One more time. (Exhales, long and loudly.)

  AARON CHAPMAN: After Spenelli and Rao woke you up, you were still half asleep. You were leaving your house to help friends in trouble, and you didn’t even know these other guys were African American. Not until you ran into them.

  CHARLIE SCAT: Right.

  AARON CHAPMAN: When you did see them, you were just getting out of the car to talk. As for the bat, just because it was in your car to start with doesn’t mean you were the one who took it out. You might have grabbed it away from Spenelli or Rao. After all, your friends were already angry. You’d never even seen these other guys.

  CHARLIE SCAT: Yeah.

  AARON CHAPMAN: If you swung that bat, it was out of fear. It all happened so fast you’re not even clear on it. Noah Jackson could have sustained injuries when he fell. You never took his shoes. You didn’t remove his earring.

  CHARLIE SCAT: That’s right. I didn’t.

  AARON CHAPMAN: And that n-word. You hear it every day, don’t you? White kids even call each other that sometimes, just to be hip and cool.

  CHARLIE SCAT: Absolutely.

  AARON CHAPMAN: Ever hear African Americans call each other that, without starting a fight?

  CHARLIE SCAT: All the time. (Pauses.) Now what about the things I told those two freakin’ detectives?

  AARON CHAPMAN: That was tainted. They leaned on you. Threatened—intimidated you. Especially that black one. Nothing you said before I arrived was factual. Nothing. Ka-peesh? (Knocks a knuckle at his own temple.)

  CHARLIE SCAT: Definitely.

  Chapter SEVEN

  WHENEVER WE WERE AROUND SPANKY in gym, Bonds and me kept our grills set to chill, and wouldn’t even think about cracking a smile. We’d both stand our ground, too, making him move over a step anytime we passed close to each other. Then one day, Bonds and Spanky wound up at the water fountain together.

  I was shooting hoops at the far basket, so I didn’t see it start.

  “Asshole’s going for water the same time as me. He puts a little hop in his step, like he’s gotta get there first. I know what he’s thinking—doesn’t want to drink after my black lips been there. Well, I wasn’t gonna suck up after his racist cracker-mouth, either,” Bonds told me after school that day. “I swing my shoulders around first, right in front of him. Only he don’t stop coming. So I stiffen up hard and let him bounce off me—give him a good ride, and he hits the floor.”

  That’s when I heard kids making noise over it and saw for myself.

  Spanky popped right up, but Bonds stuck his chest out and knocked him back a few feet. I thought they were about to start throwing bombs.

  All my muscles tensed up, like I was standing in the middle of it myself. Not out of fear of fighting Spanky or anybody
else. But from knowing that drama was about to jump off because of what happened to me that night in Hillsboro.

  I was scared that feeling would follow me for the rest of my life.

  Out of nowhere, Mr. Hendricks came flying in between them.

  “Stop it! The two of you!” Hendricks hollered.

  But he was facing Bonds and grabbed him by the arm, while Spanky was still looking to throw down.

  Bonds yanked himself out of Hendricks’s grip, to make sure Spanky didn’t get in a free shot. But when he did, Hendricks’s fingernails scraped a long ribbon of skin off Bonds’s left forearm, from his elbow down to his wrist.

  “Shiiiit!” cried Bonds, shaking his arm in the air trying to stop the sting.

  Another gym teacher must have radioed for the deans and school security, and they came running on the double inside of the next minute.

  In the end, the deans didn’t suspend either Bonds or Spanky, because neither one of them threw a single punch. But Bonds’s mother made a real fuss to the principal about her son’s scratches. The Board of Education came down hard on Hendricks. They made him take off three days without pay and apologize to Bonds in front of the whole gym class.

  On the first day of his suspension, Hendricks came in to apologize, standing in front of us in his street clothes.

  “It’s a sad day for teachers,” Hendricks said, so steamed he was red-faced. “We’re supposed to keep you all safe, even if that means putting ourselves in the middle of something dangerous. I put my hands on somebody here, trying to do just that. And I’m sorry he got scratched up a little. I was wrong, Mr. Bonds. Forgive me.”