In a pleasant tone of voice, I gave John my own proposal. "Hey, I got an idea. Just hear me out a minute. I already got my stuff in Malik's room, but since I ain't having no illegal shit like drugs or drug business in my room, he's gonna move in with you. You guys can do your thing, and I won't see nothing, hear nothing, or say nothing. I'll go about my own business, and there won't be no problems between you and me. How does that sound?"
John reacted with a curious expression of disbelief on his face. "How does it sound? It sounds like you're telling me what you will and won't do and how shit is gonna be in my house. It sounds like you need to learn that I run things here, and I own your ass. You know Hal and Jenny can't hear nothing going on in here from the other end of the house and that means that you got about three seconds to change your attitude before I fuck you up."
I glanced around me and saw that no one else had entered the bathroom. John was still leaning against the wall within arm's reach of me, and Malik, a few feet to my left, was still nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot. I knew I had him worried about what would happen if he were caught selling for John. My guess was that he was picturing the scene I painted of him as the victim of brutal attack in Stockwell.
"How do you know Hal and Jenny can't hear us in here?" I asked.
John smirked. "Let's just say from past experience."
"You sure they can't hear? I think you're lying."
John's face reddened, and he strained as if he were trying to crap a painful log. He leaned forward and spat at my feet. "You fucking half-breed piece of shit. Are you deaf or just stupid?" He had a blob of spittle still hanging from his lip. As he wiped his mouth, I saw his eyes leave me and dart downwards to the hand he used.
I was happy to teach John a priceless lesson, one of many I learned in Stockwell. You never, ever, not even for half a second, take your eyes off a guy that you just called a "half-breed piece of shit."
I turned out John's lights with a solid, right uppercut.
As Gabby had taught me in Stockwell, I shifted all my weight into the punch. My fist connected solidly with John's chin, causing his head to make a dull thud when it smacked the tile wall. He reminded me of a cartoon character when his body slid down the tile until he was sitting on the floor with his head leaning over on his right shoulder. He looked like he had fallen asleep while watching TV, except for the bloody drool running from the corner of his mouth.
Malik was no threat as he only stared curiously at John and dug both hands deep into his pockets, a universal sign that he wanted no part of fighting.
That night, Malik moved his things into John's room, and I had a short but productive conversation with John after we helped him to his bed. He agreed to answer any questions about his bruised face and two broken teeth with a story about slipping in the bathroom.
After my confrontation with John, he and the rest of the boys mostly left me alone. Malik grew the nerve to refuse to sell weed anymore and others gradually followed. The gang fell apart and in order for John to satisfy the big man, he had to sell drugs at the park and at the area schools. It was only a few months after my arrival at the house, when the police arrested John for selling at a middle school. The judge sentenced him to Stockwell until he was twenty-one years old.
***
In my meeting with the Mackeys, they continued to give evidence of my poor social skills, as they turned to my teachers' assessments of me during the two months that were left of the public school year after my parole. In Stockwell, we had our own school, which was mandatory for six hours a day. I worked ahead of most of the inmates, and I was on the right grade level, seventh grade, when I started public school.
The teachers all agreed that I completed the assigned work and scored above average on tests, but they marked my daily class grades lower for refusal to participate in activities that required interaction with other students. I would give a short answer to a teacher who asked a direct question, but otherwise, I remained silent. I wouldn't give my fellow students any response at all. I wasn't going to have students treating me like a leper in the halls and cafeteria and then allow them to act as if they enjoyed our classroom interaction in front of the teachers.
One teacher complained that there were times when I stared at others, including teachers, in a way that unnerved them. My teachers agreed that some students hugged the walls to allow me a wide path to walk through the corridors. It was true that most of the students avoided meeting my eyes, and none of the female teachers wanted to be alone in a room with me. They were concerned about my "spooky behavior" and threatened by my physical development. There were also the rumors about me attacking a student in the restroom.
I knew that my house parents would again drudge up the restroom episode, which occurred about two weeks after I started school the first week of April. They had to attend a conference with the principal and a teacher to discuss an incident involving two other classmates and me in the boys' restroom. Mr. Miller, the teacher, told the Mackeys that he strongly suspected me of choking Kevin Schultz and threatening further harm to him and Ron Simmons, his friend.
The faculty knew Kevin, who was a repeater, as the most aggressive bully in seventh grade. Ron was his sidekick. Both of them had a history of detentions and even suspensions for terrorizing the other students. At the time, they were on their final warnings before expulsion, but apparently, the two redneck bullies generated more sympathy than a half breed delinquent from Stockwell did.
Miller told the Mackeys that he began his science class the prior day after noticing that Kevin, Ron, and I were absent. He assumed that we would come rushing in at any moment, but ten minutes later, only I came in to take my seat, which I did before anyone saw the damp spot on my jeans. Before Miller could tell me that I had earned detention for being tardy, a very pale, tearful Ron Simmons came to the door and motioned for Miller to join him in the hall. Ron, sniffling and shaking, told the teacher that Kevin was sick in the bathroom and needed help.
When Miller entered the boys' restroom, he was shocked to see the school bully on the floor with his back pressed against the wall. Kevin's face was a mess of tears and snot, and he was shaking with his arms wrapped around his body as if he were freezing. Miller's first thought was that the boy was absolutely terrified, and it took several minutes of the teacher's kindest tone of voice assuring Kevin that he would be okay before the boy allowed Miller to check him. The only obvious physical signs of injury were the red marks on the boy's throat, which told Miller that some strong hands had put tremendous pressure on Kevin's neck as if someone had attempted to choke him to death.
Miller could get nothing out of either boy as to what had happened. Even after both boys' parents came to school, Kevin and Ron refused to talk. The adults decided that the boys should go home and perhaps after some time, they would be willing to confide in their parents. After the boys and their parents left, Mr. Miller and Principal Latham brought the number one suspect to the office. The students didn't know that I was fresh out of Stockwell, but the staff did. The teacher was convinced that I was to blame, and thought that he knew exactly what had happened in the boys' restroom.
I sat in the chair facing Latham, and Miller sat at the end of the principal's desk. I'm sure I acted differently from most other kids under similar circumstances. Unlike their typical student, I was no more nervous than I would have been if I were listening to the radio in my room before I dozed off to sleep at night. For me, the principal's office wasn't even close to being as scary as Stockwell.
Miller took the lead in the questioning and decided that he would skip the friendly preliminaries in which he normally pretended to want to help one of us students. He intended to break my calm, shake me up, and gain a fast admission. Miller had a reputation for making kids cry and blubber their promises to be angels in the future, but those kids had not grown up in state care and learned about real fear in a place like Stockwell. It was all I could do to keep from laughing at the skinny, little man with
his crooked nose and weak chin. And, seriously, where did he even find the pocket protector?
"Mr. Blue, because of you, Kevin and Ron were so upset that their parents had to take them home. Tell us what you did in the restroom?"
I calmly locked eyes first with Miller and then with Latham before I responded with, "I pissed."
"You know that's not what I meant," said Miller. "I want an answer."
I silently stared at Miller.
"Answer my question, Mr. Blue. What did you do in the restroom?"
"Pissed."
"Young man, do you know that you're in a lot of trouble?"
"No."
"Don't you think Kevin and Ron told on you?"
My mind drifted to the image of me choking Kevin against the restroom wall while I listened to his feet kicking, trying to find sold footing. His face turned crimson as he grunted his agreement with my conditions for allowing him to live. I was confident that Kevin and Ron had said nothing about me, and I was equally confident that Kevin would never again shove me from behind when I was using a urinal. It was difficult to keep a straight face when I remembered the boys' reactions to the promise I made them before I left the restroom.
"Answer me, Mr. Blue. Did you honestly think they wouldn't tell on you?"
"Mr. Miller, I know they didn't tell on me. I didn't do anything."
"Mr. Blue, do you know you could be expelled from school?"
"No."
"What did you do in the restroom?"
"Pissed."
Miller and Latham never coaxed anything out of me and with Kevin and Ron both vehemently denying that I ever touched them or even said anything to them, the men took no disciplinary action against me. All they did was call in Hal and Jenny Mackey to apprise them of the situation and register their concern that I might have anger management issues or even a personality disorder that might cause future problems. They informed the Mackeys that they would closely monitor my behavior. At home, when Hal and Jenny attempted a discussion with me about Kevin and Ron, they achieved the same level of success that Miller and Latham did.
The Mackeys gave me more examples of my behavior at home that convinced them that I was not ready for an unsupervised day in a public park. They continued to dwell on the fact that I had declined participation in any of the home's group activities, choosing isolation instead. I stayed in my room and never spoke a single word to anyone unless I had no choice. I would give my house parents the briefest answer to a direct question, but if they merely said, "Good morning" or "Have a good day in school," I ignored them. I quietly did my assigned chores and tried to follow each house rule, but I never volunteered to do anything extra and refused to lend so much as a sheet of notebook paper to any of my foster brothers.
In one instance, Julio, a Latino boy about my age, but much smaller, came into my room and without asking, grabbed some blank sheets of notebook paper off my desk. He muttered something about paying me back and turned to leave. I can only guess that since I'm part Latino, he thought it was unnecessary to ask permission to borrow some paper. In response, I jumped off my bed, grabbed his right hand, and pulled back his index finger until I heard the bone break. I promised to break the rest of his fingers, if he told on me, and then I tossed him into the hall where he crashed headfirst into the wall beside the bathroom. Hal and Jenny were a little skeptical of his explanation that he broke his finger when he tripped in the hall.
Since my efforts to gain permission for daily visits to the park only generated more comments about my anti-social behavior, I took another approach. I proved to them that their own system showed that I followed their rules better than the other boys did.
Hal and Jenny maintained a merit system for rewards and punishments and used a grease board outside the office for all the boys to see where they stood. Each week, the Mackeys tallied every boy's total merits and demerits to see if he earned a reward or a punishment for each rule, behavior, chore, or goal. I informed them that according to their grease board, I was the best-behaved boy in the house for the two months I had lived there. I had only earned one punishment, and I was the only boy who had done every chore on time for the same period.
The only demerits the Mackeys gave me were for using profanity a few times, and I earned enough demerits for punishment. I never argued or complained if I deserved punishment, as I did for the cursing. That first time, since I was new, they were more than fair because they warned me several times before they wrote me up on the board.
Since I couldn't go to the park, the only place I could exercise outdoors was in Tolley House's big back yard where I ran laps around the inside perimeter of the fence each day. My choices for punishment were confinement to my room for a week, or Hal giving me three licks with his paddle. I didn't even have to think about it. I apologized for my cursing, took the three licks, and kept up my running in the back yard. The paddle stung like crazy and was enough to make my eyes water, but staying inside would have been far worse to me.
At Tolley House, the funny part of house discipline was that Jenny and Hal didn't like punishing us, but with the kind of boys we were, their other choice was losing their sanity. As far as the paddle, Jenny refused to use it so that left Hal, who hated it almost as much as she did. Even though Hal didn't like using the paddle, if we chose it as punishment, he did his best to make us think harder about breaking the same rule again.
After showing the Mackeys that I had followed their rules better than the other boys had, I told them that I planned to call Miss Martin the next day to complain of unfair treatment. I would tell her that my house parents had to be punishing me for personal reasons because their own merit system proved that I deserved to visit the park more than the other boys did. I promised that if I got nowhere with social services, I would call the news media.
I ended the discussion by saying that I was sorry if I sounded disrespectful, but my right to enjoy the same freedom as my foster brothers was very important to me. I assured the Mackeys that if I didn't have permission to walk to the park in the morning, I would do whatever was necessary to gain equal treatment.
At bedtime that night, the Mackeys came to my room to inform me that I could walk to the park on my own, but not because of my threat. After giving my point of view some serious thought, they saw that my freedom was a much bigger issue to me than to my foster brothers who had never been locked away in juvie prison. They believed that they were wrong not to give me a chance to show that I could be responsible, but they sternly warned me not to make them regret their decision. I thanked them and promised that they would not be sorry.
CHAPTER SIX
The morning following my meeting with Jenny and Hal, I walked alone to Harper Park. As usual, my foster brothers also went, but I waited until they were far ahead of me before I left. I was happier than I had been in over two years because I was finally free to spend an entire day outdoors in the summer sun and fresh air until I was due back to the house for dinner. I intended to explore the park, watch the other kids play ball, and take my imagination anywhere I wanted. I didn't plan to join in any games, because I knew it was the best way to avoid trouble. More than anything, I wanted to enjoy my new freedom alone.
With the morning sun warm on my face, I strolled casually along the sidewalk that led to the park and enjoyed the sounds, sights, and smells as if it were my first time. In the trees that lined the road, there must have been hundreds of songbirds flitting from limb to limb and performing for everyone passing by them. A breeze blew towards me from the trees and bushes to my left, and I knew from smelling the sweet scent that somewhere in all the growth, there were honeysuckle vines full of blooms. After the recent rains and warm temperatures, trees and shrubs on both sides of the street were the greenest I could ever remember seeing, and the assorted flowers growing in the wide median popped with brilliant colors.
The closer I came to the park, I heard kids' voices sounding happy and natural as if they lived there, and I wondered if they knew how luc
ky they were. When I thought of my daily runs in Stockwell's clay exercise yard, I knew exactly how lucky I was. Every day I had devoted thirty minutes of my hour of yard time to running laps, and thirty minutes to weight training. Each time I took my run around the inside perimeter of the prison yard, I focused my sight on the woods that were just across the graveled road on the other side of the fence. I fantasized about running across that road and disappearing within the thick stand of trees where no one could find me. My spirits lifted with every outdoors hour I completed because I knew I was another day closer to life beyond the prison yard.
At the first entrance to Harper Park, I saw a small sign stuck in the ground that marked the beginning of a jogging trail that led around and through the wooded part of the park. I took the trail and jogged slowly at first, gradually picking up speed until I was running at a steady pace. I ran up and down hill, around curves, through tunnels of dense growth, and then into small clearings with concrete benches. I didn't slow until I saw that I was approaching the old ball fields where two or three dozen kids were playing pickup games of baseball and football. There were ancient aluminum bleachers positioned halfway between the baseball field and the asphalt track.
The track needed repairs and while I jogged around it, I dodged potholes and surveyed my surroundings. The city cut the grass, trimmed weeds, and emptied trash barrels. Other things needed work, including the baseball back screen and the shaky aluminum bleachers that needed welding in spots. I was sure the new youth sports complex was much nicer, but I was at home in the old part of the park, which was far from perfect, just like me.
My Name Is River Blue Page 9
