A Hope in the Unseen

by Ron Suskind

  “Boy, keep that hat off,” he says, sounding almost rueful. “You don’t need to be doing all that. You’re supposed to be a role model. You’re fine, just the way you are.”

  A smile crosses Cedric’s face—the first real smile in a month. Didn’t know it until now, he thinks, but that’s something he’s wanted to hear since ninth grade.

  “All right … forget the hat, but I’m keeping the jacket on,” Cedric says with a self-deprecating chuckle before sliding around to help James with calculus.

  After morning homeroom, Cedric stops by his locker. The river of kids flowing through the halls crowds close to him, but he doesn’t pay any mind. He puts the books he’s carrying on the floor, opens the locker, and slips off the jacket, with the apple cap now tucked in the pocket. He strokes the leather collar once, intently, before hanging it on the hook. And, a moment later, he’s surprised to feel relieved as the metal door slams shut.

  At the start of this afternoon’s college prep class, a kid whom Cedric thought was pretty tough sort of blushes as he hands in a rough-hewn personal essay. Near the back wall, a few boisterous and obnoxious kids grow quiet, flipping through the glossy applications book. Every time this class meets, Cedric is surprised by this silence, like a spell has come over everybody.

  In some ways, this class—the senior year’s complement to junior year’s SAT-PREP—is the cruelest offered at Ballou. Many kids take it, spending a casual hour each day leafing through books listing colleges and scholarships and filling out applications, even though few are actually college bound. Many of them won’t even graduate from Ballou, but it’s hard, still, not to be curious about what might have been.

  For Cedric, application books are both irresistible and excruciating. In this first, confusing month back at Ballou, he’s been experimenting with resignation. It’s been a week since he put away the leather jacket. Now, though, he’s assessing a fallback position: at best, he’ll end up going to a middle-rung college.

  He can manage to retain that idea as he goes through the motions in most of his classes. Then he comes into this room. He gets up and retrieves the phone-book-sized Barron’s College Guide from the resource table and flips pages, starting from the back. What happens every day he’s in here happens again: he stops at Yale, then Stanford, Princeton, and MIT. He has read each description many times already, but he reads them again, trying to find some opening—some avenue for entry—that he might have missed. Invariably, he ends up staring at the nose-bleed average SAT scores of applicants. He looks up from the book and thinks of Rev. Keels, a science teacher who offers informal tutoring to athletes trying to raise their SAT scores and is lately in Cedric’s face about his dismal 910. In a hallway encounter earlier today, Keels told Cedric his score “won’t rate,” that “top schools, Ivy League schools, don’t care about your grades if your test scores are sub par.” Keels offered to give Cedric some pointers before he takes the SATs again in early October, but Cedric refused.

  He hates Keels, who’s always talking about how many great students there were at Ballou in the early 1980s, and he imagines himself beating the man to a pulp—right there in the hall. After indulging this idea for a bit, he recalls, vaguely, that last year Keels mentioned a Ballou student from way back—some athlete he tutored at least a decade ago—who got into Brown University.

  He’s heard a bit about Brown over the years. He flips past Cornell, Columbia, and Carleton College to the B’s. There it is: Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. He reads the synopsis. It’s top drawer all right—strong on math and science. With a 22 percent acceptance rate, it’s less competitive than Harvard and slightly more competitive than Yale. But the curriculum looks uniquely loose and fluid. Taking classes pass/fail is encouraged. It’s still tops, still Ivy League, but it seems like you can go at your own speed.

  He checks the numbers. Average SAT score of 1290. His 910 puts him nearly 400 points shy, but maybe a last try on the test in a few weeks will bring the score up. He fills out a request letter for materials for Brown, and—on a whim—decides to send requests to Duke University and Dartmouth College as well and drops the envelopes on the teacher’s desk at the end of class.

  A few weeks later, sitting in the same classroom, he stares at a pile of application forms, trying to muster the optimism he’ll need to fill out each one convincingly. He took the SATs again on October 8 and is waiting for the new scores. Who knows? It felt a little better this time, but not much. He flips open one application, then another. Each asks of him the same untenable thing: to distill himself into neat categories like GPA, SAT score, extracurricular activities, and favorite subjects.

  He looks at the Duke application. Then at Dartmouth. Each asks for a personal essay. Here’s one area where he can explain why he’s different. He poises his pen over a blank sheet of notebook paper and searches for inspiration, running over old sayings and homilies, memories of awards he’s won and names of memorable teachers.

  He can’t seem to find much in those old memories for an essay, and he puts down his pen. He wonders how hard it must be for most kids here to flip through the glossy books. Looking across the desks, now mostly vacated by classmates who don’t bother coming to this class anymore, he feels a funny chill, though the room is toasty warm. He turns his gaze out the window, and the applications lie untouched.

  When the SAT scores finally arrive in early November, they’re nothing to cheer about. His math score went up to 580, an improvement of 50 points over the spring, probably due to his summertime rigors at MIT. The verbal scores, however, dropped to a bleak 330. Thankfully, the Educational Testing Service lets you combine your best math and verbal scores, mixing Cedric’s 580 math from this time and the 380 verbal from last time to total 960. He’s up a bit from 910, but still way short of what he thinks he’ll need for almost any of the top schools.

  All the applications are put in a drawer except one: Brown. Cedric has read more about the college, picking through every college guide he can find. Brown’s math department is particularly strong for a school so widely known for liberal arts. And there seems to be a lot of minorities there. And he read in one of the guides that nearly one-third of Brown students are nonwhite.

  Sitting one cloudy afternoon near mid-November in Mr. Taylor’s room, a word takes shape: accepting, a close relative to the unspeakable acceptance. He tries it out: “Mr. Taylor, Brown is Ivy league, real esteemed, but seems more accepting of different types of people.”

  Mr. Taylor, looking over his shoulder as he wipes down the blackboard, seems to genuinely agree. “Yes, Cedric, they seem to be more, well, accepting of diversity,” he says absently.

  A few nights later, Cedric enters the apartment, eats a quick dinner of Oodles of Noodles, and goes to his room. Though his mother is at Tuesday night prayer meeting, he still closes his door, committing himself to the room for as long as it takes.

  He changes into gym shorts and a T-shirt and sits at the desk. Most of the Brown application is filled out, and it looks fine: plenty of awards and extracurricular activities—student tutoring, class treasurer (no one else ran)—and all of his special mentoring programs. His grades are perfect, his recommendations from Mr. Taylor and Ms. Nelson must be good. Of course, almost everyone applying to Brown has that stuff, along with stratospheric SATs.

  He looks down at the application’s blank personal essay page for a few minutes before grabbing his pen and pulling out two pieces of notebook paper to try a draft.

  “When people come in contact with me,” he begins writing, “I want them to see that Godly love. I am very religious, and I know that the only reason I have achieved so much is because I continued to put God first in everything that I do.

  “It is He who brought me through many situations in my life that could have been my downfall. I could have dropped out of school or gotten into all kinds of trouble. But with the Lord in my life, I realize He has a greater work for me to do.”

  He pauses and then writes about how �
��being a black male in a single parent home is sometimes tough without that male figure to help in the growing process. But I thank God for my loving mother. I even see some of my peers that have a mother and father, but are heading in the wrong direction. Some of them are into drug-dealing and others try to be ‘cool’ by not doing good in school and not going to classes. But my mother has instilled so many positive values in me it would be hard to even try to get on the wrong track.

  “The most important thing that she’s taught is that being a man comes from the heart and mind, and a real man can accept responsibility and can take care of himself.

  “I realize that I used to be into grades and test scores and awards, but if I strip myself of all of these things and look at myself in the mirror, can I honestly say that I know who I am and where I am going. Getting straight A’s, having 1400 on the SATs, and getting a lot of awards is great. But if these things are the only things that can say good things about me, as a person, then there’s a problem. I would need to reevaluate myself. Because if I can’t interact with people and be able to deal with different personalities, all of these things are futile.

  “Yes, success depends on how hard one works. But individual advancement and continuous progression depend on one’s ability to deal with different people.”

  He surveys the essay and rereads it a few times. He decides he needs to make them understand just how much he wants this to happen, to be accepted, and he writes, “I am a very focused and determined person. I yearn for knowledge and I am not afraid to say ‘I don’t understand.’ These character traits have served me well. Thinking positively and holding my head ‘up to the heavens,’ is something I take great pride in doing.”

  He fusses over some words and then it’s just fine. It’s taken an hour. He copies it onto the blank page of the Brown application form.

  Then he signs it, paper-clips on the $50 check that his mother gave him a few days ago, along with a picture he took in September at a mall photo booth, and slides it all into the large envelope.

  It has been a long, confusing fall, with his senior year already nearing the midway point. Last summer, when he arrived at MIT, he felt he could almost taste how sweet it would be to make it to a renowned college—like he was practically there!—but what remains is an aftertaste of how far he still has to journey, how improbable it is that he’ll ever get there.

  While that dose of sobering sophistication has slowed his step, the last few months walking the halls of Ballou have slowly restored some of his old balance. That strange morning with James Davis; the sour words of Rev. Keels about how he was unworthy of acceptance; the faces of kids in College Prep, which turn grim right before they disappear from class.

  He leans back in his chair—the apartment now so quiet he can hear the clicks of the electric radiators—and peers through a slit in the plastic miniblinds. After the unsettling summer, he thought the familiar terrain of school would offer some respite and maybe solace to his bruised ego. Now he realizes he’s not comfortable at Ballou either. Or anywhere, really, he thinks, looking down on the flat, tar paper roofs of V Street.

  He turns back to the desk and looks down for a while at the light brown envelope. He can’t imagine being comfortable up ahead either, not at one of the truly competitive colleges. He knows now that getting accepted at one of those places is a pipe dream, though they still glitter with possibility and promise.

  He licks the envelope and seals it. So this will be his gamble—an early application to Brown. It has to be postmarked by tomorrow, November 15, and he’ll hear back in a couple of weeks. If he’s rejected, that will be that. He’ll have time to figure out what’s next, maybe apply to some no-name school or something. The thought makes him gag. If he hadn’t worked so hard and endured so much to push himself ahead—little by little, year after year—it might be easier to swallow a compromise. But he can’t. He just can’t. Dreaming of great universities was the only thing that could get him through the halls of that miserable school.

  He studies the maroon Brown University seal in the envelope’s corner and loses track of time. He thinks of people at church, old men and thick-hipped single moms who get up on the pulpit, give their last $100 to Bishop Long, and then pray that they’ll get a house of their own. That if they’re pure in faith, God will give it to them. No reason to believe they’ll get a house, but sometimes they do. Yeah, sometimes they do.

  He puts his hands on the envelope, stretching his fingers to cover its edges. “God, this is where I want to be,” he whispers, self-conscious about speaking too loudly all alone in his room. But as he continues, his voice grows stronger. “I worked so hard. I deserve it. Yes, I believe this is it. This is the place I want to be. Bless me, Lord. Let your will be done. If this is where I’m supposed to be, let your will be done.”

  It’s already midmorning when Barbara Jennings lifts her head from a propped couch cushion and checks her wristwatch on the magazine table.

  She doesn’t often take a day off—not as often as some of the ladies in her office—but after twenty-three years in office support jobs with the federal government, she figures doing it once in a while won’t kill anyone.

  She walks into Cedric’s room and thinks back to a Tuesday night about a month ago when he bounded out of the room to greet her from church—something he hadn’t done, it seems, in a long while—exclaiming that he’d just completed his essay for Brown. He didn’t give it to her to read, and she, feeling self-conscious about her lack of schooling, didn’t ask.

  The next morning, though, he told her he had prayed over the envelope and that he was certain he’d get in. She recalls how she laughed, nodding her encouragement about the power of “God’s will” but warning him to “keep your dreams to yourself—no need to be telling everyone.”

  So what does he do that very day?! Tells half the school that he’s “just about certain”—those were the very words he used recounting it for her at dinner that night—“just about certain I got into Brown.” Eyebrows rose all over Ballou.

  She hasn’t thought much about Brown since then, but being in the room brings it all to mind. Though it’s a long shot, he might just get into one of those fancy schools, she supposes, and this room will be empty for good.

  Barbara sits down on the squeaky bed and looks around, thinking that it’s odd that she and Cedric are already at this point in their journey, that all of a sudden it seems to have gone by quickly. Maybe, she figures, it’s because the feeling she has today—of staying behind while the bustling world squeezes into buses and subways and crowded offices—is the same sensation she recalls from a time fifteen years ago when she suddenly quit her GAO job to go on welfare and stay home with her little boy. Like today, she remembers, it was so quiet at home, just the two of them with the whole day to themselves, and she was so sure of what she had to do: teach him everything, make him laugh, make him feel that he was safe and watched over.

  This instant, it feels like all of it was just so he could leave her now. She shakes her head, thinking how things were so clear and simple back then. Resting her hands on her thighs, she pushes herself up from sitting and crunches over papers as she leaves Cedric’s room.

  In the evening Cedric meets her at church and, as he’s been doing for the last year or two of his adolescence, sits in a distant pew. Bishop Long is angry tonight, angry at people “who profess to love God and speak the Word but don’t live the deed.” He challenges parishioners who “don’t want to be here and don’t want to live according to the word of God” to “just leave—go on, leave!” No one budges. He does this every few months, firing up his fury at his flock’s godless ways. They have indulged in activities he forbids—like smoking, drinking, and having premarital sex, along with a host of less potent pursuits, like going to movies. Confident that she ranks high on the pyramid of righteous living, Barbara lets herself look across the packed rows for guilty faces as Long runs through his litany of don’ts.

  She stands on tiptoes, try
ing to catch a glimpse of Cedric far across the cavernous sanctuary. She finally spots his face and sees he is placid, showing no sign of rejoice or remorse. She knows that Bishop’s message is no longer sinking in as deeply as it once did. But it’s already in Cedric—the Holy Spirit, the Word—and it will guide him wherever he goes. At least that’s what she hopes.

  She and Cedric get a ride home with a church member who lives nearby in Southeast and end up arriving at their apartment building near midnight, both of them bone tired.

  Barbara opens the lobby mailbox with her thumbnail key and pulls out a fistful of envelopes and catalogues.

  Suddenly, she spins. “I’m not giving it to you,” she teases, holding the creamy-white envelope up high and away from him. “I’m just going to throw it away.”

  “Hey, give it to me—I’m not playing,” Cedric cries, lunging around her for it.

  He takes it in his hands. “It’s thick. I think that means I got in,” he says, having at least learned that trick from some friends at MIT.

  He neatly tears it open and unfolds a multicolored packet with a white letter on top. He reads it aloud: “I hope you are as pleased to get this letter as I am to send it to you. You have been admitted to the 232nd class to enter The College of Brown University.”

  Cedric shakes his head. “I told you I’d get in,” he says, but looking dreamy, like he’s witnessed a miracle.

  “Still and all, it sure is nice to see,” she says, beaming. They walk up the stairs in silence, Barbara unable to find words that are adequate to the moment.

  “Gaawwd, am I glad that’s over with,” Cedric says finally as he enters the apartment.