by Dickson Lam
Paul Robeson and Diego Rivera Academy was the name of our school in the Point, two names for one school, which was reflective of the amount of services we crammed into that place. Founded only two years before I joined, Robeson Rivera was an intense program launched collaboratively between several agencies, created to serve youth specifically who were wards of the juvenile justice system. They were mostly violent offenders, a dream team of fuckups, each kicked out of their previous school.
To attend Robeson Rivera, students didn’t just need to be on probation, they had to be experiencing severe issues in three of four areas:
1) family
2) school
3) delinquent behavior
4) substance abuse
We’d have less than ten kids each day in the entire school. My classroom may have looked like any other classroom, thirty desks, but I’d have a class of only three kids, three spread out amongst a sea of empty chairs, a reminder that others had moved on with- out them. They’d gotten so used to being further than arm’s distance from the next kid that when I’d attempt to bring them closer to each other, to set the empty chairs aside, they’d freak out and invariably get into a scuffle with each another.
With so few students, we were given only a wing of a floor, in a building that we shared with a preschool. A nonprofit ran our school and worked to incorporate arts into the curriculum. Some dope stuff: dance, poetry, playwriting, deejaying. Down the hallway from my classroom were two mental health counselors. They’d have sessions with students individually and with their families, mostly comprised of single-parent households. The school was designed as a one-stop shop for students and their parents. Educators, counselors, a probation officer, and social worker pitching together to meet the needs of struggling youth. Sounded good in theory, which was why I was there, but isolating the students away from their peers at regular schools probably backfired. Our students saw the school as a prison. I’m not speaking metaphorically. At the entrance to the school, they had to swap their clothes for the school uniform, burgundy polos, and then they were patted down daily by their probation officer as part of a “check-in.” Their PO had an office across the hallway from my classroom. He’d pee test them occasionally as required. If they violated their probation, he could take them straight to juvie. Placement at our school was part of their probation. Hard to have school spirit about a school like that.
We were lucky to get through a week without a student cussing us out. Our response: Take a time-out. There was a Time-out Room with nothing but pillows, a fluffy solitary confinement.
We were taught “nonviolent crisis intervention.” We were given a workbook that included self-defense techniques, sketches of a teacher escaping the hold of a student: The One Hand Wrist Grab Release, The Two Hand Wrist Grab Release, The Hair Pull Release, The Front Choke Release, the Back Choke Release. And who could forget, The Bite Release: Staff should lean into the bite and use their fingers to create a vibrating motion above the upper lip of the student to get their jaw to open. The vibrating motion causes a parasympathetic response. Staff should use the minimum amount of force necessary to effect the release. Avoid pulling away from the bite. Move out of the way.
One student had stolen a teacher’s car from the school parking lot and took it on a joy ride through the Sunnydale housing projects. During gym class, two students threw rubber balls at the PE teacher’s head. It probably wasn’t the first time, but on this particular day, the teacher snapped. Put each of the students into a choke hold, putting them to sleep. I’d thought of the teacher as a gentle guy, the kind of guy you’d peg as a vegan or a Buddhist. It was the same guy who, when I’d first started at the school, taught me about resiliency.
The teacher I’d replaced had left a vine plant in my classroom. It hadn’t been watered over the summer, its vines yellowed, its soil dry. I put the plant on the top shelf of a lateral file cabinet and hid it behind a stack of books. One day, the gym teacher took a look at the plant and assured me it could be revived. “Plants are resilient,” he said, “like humans.” In a couple of weeks, the vine plant started growing again, its vines stretching along the cabinet.
I’m not sure I’d use the word resilient to describe my year at Robeson Rivera. That sounds self-flattering. The only thing I know is that I endured. I’d have nightmares about students, kicking my then-girlfriend in my sleep. I lost my usual appetite and fifteen pounds, not a good look for someone already thin like me.
I was in over my head. I’d done my student teaching at Urban Academy, a small alternative school in New York City where students of color graduated at high rates and went on to universities. Kids could leave their backpacks in the hallway unattended without fear of theft. Each class period was filled with heated discussions, the students engaging each other thoughtfully and with respect. The only classroom management I needed was writing down who raised their hand. I taught a class on hip-hop. I brought in guest speakers, Fable of the legendary Rock Steady Crew. He declared hip-hop was dead. The original culture had been bastardized. My teenage students thought he was acting like an old fogey, too stubborn to change with the times.
In my class on gentrification, we took field trips around the city. We met with an owner of the fourteen-story building in Harlem that Bill Clinton was set to move into. We stood in the space that would become Clinton’s personal office. The Mountain Dew can that the former president had drunk from during a prior tour had been left untouched on the window sill. One of my students, a Harlem resident, charged the owner of the building, who had also grown up in Harlem, with being a sellout. Starbucks and Old Navy had just arrived on 125th Street, and rent was skyrocketing. Nothing would remain the same.
I’d thought I could bring the skills I’d learned at Urban back to the Bay, helping to create a school that not only engaged students in lively debates but would also send students of color to college in high numbers. The problem was I wasn’t equipped with the right set of skills, at least for the students at Robeson Rivera.
At RR, I was just trying to get respect. My loose teaching style resulted in kids spending most of the class cracking jokes at each other and at me. One wrote a dis rap: “Goddamn, Mr. Lam / Breath smells like ham.” This was Craig, the same student who had refused to participate in our class project where students were to read to the preschoolers in our building. As part of that project, I had students write letters to the preschoolers, introducing themselves. “I got no business acting like those kids should be listening to me,” Craig said. “I know better than that. You should know better than that.” A year later, after we both had left Robeson Rivera, Craig called me in the middle of the night. He might’ve been high. Sounded paranoid, like something in the room was about to pounce on him. Several years later, I’d bump into one of the mental health counselors from Robeson Rivera. He told me Craig was locked up. For what, I didn’t ask. The counselor also updated me on another former student. He just had a baby, and he’d named the counselor the godfather.
That year at Robeson Rivera, I threw out my student-centered playbook and became a busy-work teacher, a worksheet for everything. Mindless activities worked like a charm. Nothing like asking a student to write down definitions to shut them up. It’s what they were used to. But once I figured that out, I turned the worksheets into the baby steps of an essay, a thesis, topic sentences, and so on. When they combined the series of worksheets together, boom—they’d written an essay. It was the only way I could get them to do work, by tricking them.
In the spring, I heard of a teaching opportunity for the following school year in Oakland, at Dewey Academy, a second-chance school. They were cleaning house. A new principal and half the staff would be new. The one overseeing the hiring was the Director of Alternative Education, and not only had she been a principal in New York at a school similar to Urban, but she had in fact student-taught at Urban. Her vision of education reform sounded like mine.
I’d t
aken her job offer, but I wasn’t psyched about informing the students at Robeson Rivera that I was leaving, quitting on them. Fortunately for me, unfortunately for the school, the board of the nonprofit decided to pull out in its capacity as administrator of the young school. The collaborative fell apart, the school set to be closed down. Students would have to be sent to a traditional school where there’d be much less support. I feigned disappointment at the news. I rushed home afterwards to celebrate, juiced about a new start with new students.
a perfect family
For my nephew’s one-month old Red Egg and Ginger Party, my brother invited family, friends, and co-workers, everyone but Bah Ba. My father didn’t even know he was a grandfather, didn’t know my brother had been married for the last year. It was another thing I was expected to keep from my father. “He’s a stranger,” Goh Goh had said. “Why should I invite him?” I didn’t think it was my place to break the silence.
That’s not what my aunt thought. My mom’s younger sister, Sai Yi, took it upon herself to tell Bah Ba he had a grandson. I’m surprised she didn’t also spill the beans about Willie while she was at it.
After Bah Ba found out, he called my brother, and in no time, they were chummy, two fathers bonding over fatherhood. Bah Ba would be coming to the Red Egg and Ginger Party after all. They’d always had a connection I couldn’t compete with. Both were first sons. My brother, the first son of a first son, now had begot a first son. (Whoop-de-fucking-doo. My sister was the first daughter of a first daughter, but nobody gave a shit about that. Patriarchy rules!)
My brother had married a woman that he’d only been dating for a month or so. He’d met her through work, a cousin of a waitress. She was from Macau, and her green card was about to expire, so they took off and got married in Reno.
“That girl is using you,” my mother had said.
“Playing you like a sucka,” I said.
“This is real,” Goh Goh said. “I love her.” He said it was such heartfelt emotion that my mom and I couldn’t help it, we busted up laughing.
My brother had chosen an Asian buffet downtown to hold the party. His friend worked there and had gotten him a discount. Goh Goh needed it. Though he’d quit the take-out job and landed a gig behind a desk at a small shipping company, my brother was living check to check with three mouths to feed. He wasn’t even paying his own rent. Bah Ba was, but unbeknownst to my dad, my mother was no longer living in that apartment in North Beach. Sure, she still had her room there, but she was sleeping in Willie’s bed every night. I’d moved out as well, so the money Bah Ba was sending home, not a substantial amount, in effect went to Goh Goh via my mother. The leftover money from Bah Ba’s checks went to paying for his life insurance. I guess my mother figured, you just never know.
On the far side of the restaurant, a band wearing Hawaiian shirts was playing an Elvis song. The walls were a tacky violet. Light gleamed from the metallic “Happy Birthday” banner hanging above the registration table.
My mother spotted me and waved me over. Bah Ba and Ga Jeh were also sitting at that table. Our section for the party was separated by a wooden partition. My mom ran up to embrace me as if she hadn’t seen me in years. “My baby,” she said, louder than she needed to.
“Stop saying that,” I said.
She smiled. “Even if you are 100 years old—”
“New jokes, please.”
“I’m not joking.”
My sister came over and hugged me. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispered. “Mom won’t shut up.”
“The trick is to ignore her,” I said. “Let her talk to herself.”
“I’ll try that,” she chuckled. Ga Jeh wore a dark blouse, probably was going for a formal look, but it came across as somber. I was wearing a dress shirt that my brother had given me. All the buttoned-up shirts in my closet were short sleeve plaid shirts.
Bah Ba rose from the table, dressed in a suit and tie. The only time I’d seen him in a suit was in old photos, the wedding picture that still hung over my mother’s bed. I gave him a quick hug, the way men do. I asked the typical questions, “How are you doing?” “How’s work?” and got the expected one-word responses, “Fine.” “OK.”
We sat around the table according to age as though we’d planned it—Bah Ba, Mom, Ga Jeh, and me. A balloon hovered over each of our heads, the ribbons tied to our bright colored chairs. My mother kept fidgeting in her seat. She cuffed her hair over her ear, revealing a gold hoop earring. She placed a shimmering clutch bag, also gold, on the seat next to her, between herself and Bah Ba. Willie wasn’t coming now—she’d had to disinvite him—so my mother wasn’t saving the seat, just preventing Bah Ba from sliding over.
My father muttered something to me, but I couldn’t hear over the noise of the restaurant, the chairs scraping against the floor as people left for and returned from the buffet. Bah Ba stared at me, waiting for a response.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. Seemed like a safe response.
Busboys swarmed around an empty table nearby, grabbing plates of leftovers. I was hungry but decided to wait for the crowd around the buffet to thin. My mother curled her lips when she saw Sai Yi at another table, along with Gung Gung and Poh Poh. Sai Yi had her hair parted in the middle, revealing a generous forehead. She worked as a clerk at Walgreens.
“My family likes him more than me,” my mother whispered loudly to me and my sister. According to her family, a father or husband could do no wrong. “He’s still your dad,” they’d loved to remind me.
Bah Ba slid the small basket of red-dyed hard-boiled eggs my way. He gestured with his palm. “Sihk.”
I grabbed an egg and peeled the shell. Red-dyed eggs and a plate of sushi ginger on each table, that was about all there was to a Red Egg and Ginger Party, a baby shower post-birth, minus the silly games. I didn’t know if I had to eat a red egg for good luck, or if the mere appearance of the eggs had already granted us good luck. Maybe the whole red-egg-good-luck thing wasn’t for us at all but only for my nephew, Jordan.
Bah Ba gestured for Ga Jeh to grab an egg. My mother used one hand to shield her face from Bah Ba, turning toward my sister. My mom scrunched up her face to Ga Jeh, as if to secretly impart: the eggs are poisoned! My mother was recruiting for Operation Ostracize Bah Ba.
“Is something wrong with your face?” my sister asked.
Not registering Ga Jeh’s annoyance, my mother smiled at my sister as though for a camera. My mom picked up the small dish of sushi ginger and held it out for me and my sister, grinning with one finger on her cheek. “It’s good for you.” She angled her finger so that the two diamond rings on the finger faced us. Her wedding ring was in a safety deposit box. My mother pushed the dish of ginger toward us, her gold bracelets clinking against one another like Slinkies.
She knew I never ate pickled ginger, so I shot her a confused look.
“How come like that?” she pointed at me.
“Dickson doesn’t want any,” Ga Jeh said. “Eat it yourself.”
My mother pointed at my father when she thought he wasn’t looking. “He shouldn’t be here.”
“Bah Ba can hear you,” I said.
“So, I don’t care.”
Bah Ba stared at her, but my mother continued, though in a whisper.
“Now he comes along, gives your brother some money, and the past goes away? When I was pregnant with you,” my mother pointed at me, “Ga Jeh was only two. She had a 102-degree fever. I begged him to stay, but—”
“We know,” I said. I was a teenager when she began telling me these stories. My mother and I would sit at the kitchen table, and she’d share with me all her guy problems, past and present. I was her therapist.
“Your Bah Ba,” my mother began again, “once he was drunk and tried to pull me to the bedroom. I wouldn’t go, so he pushed me to the ground, and then—”
“You’re scre
aming in my ear.” Ga Jeh tapped me on the arm and rolled her eyes.
My mother banged her plate on the table. “You think Bah Ba would’ve given your brother money if he didn’t have a baby? He used to hit Goh Goh, and now your brother wants to be his best friend!”
Bah Ba turned toward Mom. “Leih gong meh yeh? ” What are you talking about?
“Mouh yeh!”
An older woman came to our table, my sister-in-law’s aunt. We all stood to greet her, shaking her hand. I wondered if Bah Ba knew who she was and vice versa. “Tai hah leih,” she said to my mother, “gum leng.”
My mom raised her arms in the air, forming a V shape to show off her slim waist. Her red blouse sparkled with beads arranged in columns. She ran to the aunt and whispered, loud enough for us to hear, “I’ve had this blouse for thirty years.” My mother cupped her hand over her mouth and giggled. “This is my youngest son,” she said. “He’s so smart. A math teacher.”
“I teach history and English.”
She laughed, leaning on the aunt. “This is my daughter,” my mom said and pulled Ga Jeh close. My mother did her Vanna White impersonation, waving her hand over my sister as though she expected Ga Jeh to strike some pose.
“She looks more like your sister than your mother,” the aunt said to Ga Jeh.
“You’re going to make her feel old,” my mother said, cocking her head as if surprised.
Ga Jeh pulled away from our mother and sat down. If she were a son, our mother would’ve introduced her by saying that she had a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management. Probably would’ve lied and said that she went to some famous culinary school.
“You two are so lucky to have a mother so pretty,” the aunt said. She inspected my mom’s long hair as though she were looking at a piece of art.
Bah Ba sat down. None of us had bothered to introduce him. He straightened up when he saw Jordan nearby, dressed in a white bodysuit with a white beanie, held by his mother.
