Black Boy White School (12 page)

Rolling away from the bus terminal, Anthony watched his neglected city scroll by and wished he was in an airplane instead. From the sky, he would only see shrinking rooftops and neat streets. He wouldn't see the rotten yards and liquor billboards; wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the red boys and the blue ones, the white from black or rich from poor. From the clouds, he wouldn't hear the gunshots, shouts, and sirens, and he wouldn't see shrieking mothers fighting through yellow tape. From way up in the sky, everything below was as pretty as a postcard. But from where he sat inside the northbound bus, everything to Anthony looked bleak.

Back at Belton, Anthony did what he could to fall into a normal groove. He went to all his classes and hung with his friends, joined the freshman lacrosse team and became a pretty good defenseman. As the days grew longer and warmer, kids talked more about the upcoming summer. Seniors found where they'd be going to college, underclassmen paired with buddies and picked their rooms for September. Anthony decided not to tell anyone that he wouldn't be coming back. He didn't want to have to explain that his family was broke.

So he chose Brody for his sophomore roommate, in case he wasn't voted a proctor, and he left the kitchen dish crew that spring to work for Mr. Kraft in the admissions office. Anthony also wrote a short story for the literary magazine that Mr. Hawley called “raw and inspiring.” Mr. Hawley offered to help try and get it published in a book of teen writers. In many ways, it was Anthony's best stretch at Belton. The better it got, though, the more difficult it was going to be for him to say good-bye.

And then one morning, while sitting in one of the bathroom stalls, Anthony relieved himself and read all the new graffiti. In black marker were the words
WHY ARE YOU READING THIS WHEN THE JOKE IS IN YOUR HAND?
And another one in red warned to
PISS IN SPURTS! MAINE CRABS CAN SWIM UPSTREAM!
He laughed and flushed, put his hand on top of the swinging door, and was about to push it open when he noticed another slogan, written in pencil, just above the sliding lock.

NIGERS SUCK

Anthony sat back down. Another freshman had written that, knowing that Anthony and Paul would see it. But who was bold and hateful enough to write it? Most of the boys on his floor marched around in Barack Obama T-shirts.

Rage took over, and Anthony kicked the stall open. Then he kicked the door again and again, until it hung from bent hinges. Curious faces pressed into the bathroom, and Anthony thought about kicking them, too. “Move!” He stormed into the crowd and the boys fell into one another, trying to avoid him. Seconds later, Anthony was knocking on Mr. Hawley's door.

“You need to see this,” he said, and brought Mr. Hawley to the bathroom, where the boys were gawking at the ruined door and misspelled slur.

“Well,” Mr. Hawley said, inspecting the writing. “Whoever it was, he's not the brightest bulb in the box.”

“I want to know who did this,” Anthony said. “I'm serious, Mr. Hawley. These people don't know who they're messing with.”

Mr. Hawley tried to calm him, but Anthony kicked the door again. “I can't believe this shit!”

Hawley looked at the dented door and then at Anthony. “Are you finished with that?”

“With that,” Anthony said. “Let me catch who wrote that bullshit and I'll stomp on him instead.”

Hawley crossed his arms and sighed. The disappointment on his face was obvious. “You can't make those kinds of threats around me, Tony, even in a situation like this. People need to know they're safe around you.”

“Safe around me?” Anthony kicked the door off the final hinge. “What about me being safe around
them
?” He glared at Mr. Hawley. “Do what you gotta do, man,” he said. “But don't expect me to just shrug this shit off.”

For the next few days, things were tense among the students. Gloria and a few other black kids filed complaints. Dr. Dirk called a schoolwide diversity assembly and gave a presentation about the dangers of hurtful words. Some of the kids listened attentively, but a lot of them did homework. And others were offended. They didn't understand why they all should be punished because of one person's stupidity. The school administration was only making things worse by forcing them all to address it.

“Typical!” Gloria shouted without raising her hand. Then she stood up, and a lot of the students sighed. “Just stick your heads in the sand,” she said. “Act like it never happened.”

“We want to,” someone yelled, “but you won't let us!” A few kids laughed and some even clapped until Dr. Dirk warned them to quiet down.

“We'll never make any progress on this if we don't behave with civility to one another,” the headmaster said. “Let's use this unfortunate incident as a teaching moment and a chance to come closer together.”

Anthony went to his room after that, with Brody close on his heels. “I'm sorry, dude,” his roommate said, slowly pushing the hair back from his eyes. They were green. It was the first time that Anthony had noticed.

“Sorry for what,” Anthony said, thinking about the antagonism at the assembly and how it all had felt directed at him. “You didn't do anything.”

“I know, dude, but still . . . I'm just sorry.”

Anthony could tell that Brody was mad about the whole scene, too. But his roommate was white, and nigger was a black word. He didn't want or need Brody's empathy. He didn't want his condolences, his pity, or his sympathetic anger. What Anthony needed more than anything in the world at that moment was the company of other black people.

“I'll be back.”

He went down to Paul's room and found Khalik already there. Neither one looked surprised when Anthony walked in and closed the door behind him.

“Assembly got you buggin', too?” Khalik asked, leaning back against the desk.

“Yeah,” Anthony answered. “Bugging hard.” He told them about his brief exchange with Brody, how his roommate's attempt to understand had only pissed him off.

Paul slammed a fist on his desk. “What does big George call them? Twenty-five-fifty or something like that?”

“Twenty-five-twenty,” Anthony said, remembering how mad George had been that day in the kitchen, but also how he had mugged for the crowd at the auction. “I wonder what he has to say about all this?”

“He's pissed,” Khalik said. “What you think?”

Anthony hesitated but then said it anyway. There was no use in holding his tongue anymore. “I don't know what to think about your boy,” he said. “I used to think he was gaming on these white people, but now I'm not so sure.”

“What you mean?” Paul asked defensively. Over the course of the basketball season, he and George had grown close.

“I don't know.” Anthony looked at the floor to find the words. “He's just real slick. He does all this stuff to kiss up to the white people and tells us that he's doing it to get over on them. The more I think about it, though, the more I think the dude is kissing up to them for real, and he's really running game on us.”

“Game on us for what?” Khalik asked. “What we got that he need?”

Anthony thought and stuck out his arm. “We got this. All the white kids in the world can love him to death, but he knows we're the only ones who can judge him. He needs us to stay in his corner so he can keep believing himself.”

Khalik grinned and looked at Anthony. “Sort of like how you used to be, huh, Tony Granola? I see you stopped wearing all those crazy clothes since you went home. Somebody must have said something to you, huh?”

“Something like that.” Anthony had traded his bowling shirts for Phat Farm and Rocawear, switched one type of uniform for another. But the clothes didn't define who he was on the inside, any more than the color of his skin. “Let me ask you guys a question,” Anthony continued, “and really think about it before you answer. If you could be home in Brooklyn right now, hanging out somewhere with all your friends, would you go or stay right here?”

Khalik sniffed. “What kind of stupid-ass question is that?”

“An important one,” Anthony snapped. “Here or at home?”

Khalik drew a breath to say something else, but Paul spoke up first. “I know what you're getting at, man. I wonder that same stuff myself, sometimes.”

Khalik made a noise and then started laughing, but the other two boys stared him down. “Don't front, son,” Paul continued. “I know the truth.” Holding an imaginary phone to his ear, he did his best to imitate the heavy boy's high voice.
“Yo, P, let me come and chill at your spot, man. Niggas around my way is on some other shit.”
He laughed and the other boys laughed along with him, but it only seemed to make the mood darker.

“I don't know,” Anthony said, thinking about his lost friends, his family, and all the red boys hanging on the corners. “Sometimes I don't feel like I belong at home anymore.”

The other boys looked down. Khalik cleared his throat but didn't say anything.

“I know,” Paul said solemnly. “The whole time I was home, I couldn't wait to get away. Everything was different, even though it was the same.” He crumpled a piece of paper and flicked it toward the trash can across the room. He missed badly, but no one made a comment.

“But I don't feel like I belong here, either,” Paul continued. “So tell me, where in the hell am I supposed to go?”

The following Saturday, Anthony went into town with Brody and Nate. They ate pizza and talked about the bathroom stall, which was still a big topic at school. “Call me an asshole,” Nate continued. “But don't you think they exaggerate, sometimes?”

Anthony knew that by “they,” Nate was talking about the other students of color. But he also suspected that his friend wasn't trying to be offensive. “Maybe sometimes,” Anthony said. “But that word is pretty straightforward. You can't say that the person didn't know what he was writing.”

“Yeah,” Nate agreed. “‘Niger.' Maybe it was one of those Korean kids and not even a white person. Ever think about that?” Nate glanced at Brody, who wouldn't look back at him. Anthony knew then that the two of them had been talking about it. “And even if it was a white kid,” Nate continued, “crap like that assembly last week does more harm than good. I don't even think about skin color until somebody forces me to.”

“Maybe that's part of the problem,” Anthony shot back. “People like you have that luxury, but I have to think about it all the time.”

Nate raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean, people like me? If I said something like that, I'd be a racist.” He looked at Brody again, whose cheeks were turning red. Suddenly Anthony wanted to fly across the table at both of them.

They finished their food and left. It was getting dark, and most of the shops were closing. “Let's go,” Anthony said. “Something doesn't feel right.”

Brody quickened his pace. Nate called them pansies but walked faster than both of them. They rounded the bend and saw the still-distant campus just as a strange sound grew behind them. Anthony thought about Mookie, turned around, and walked backward, watching the curve in the road. “You guys hear that?”

The boys listened and Nate shrugged. “So what? It is a public road, you know?” They walked on and hit the edge of campus and all its twinkling lights. But then a different kind of light from behind them turned the boys around. The yellow glow bounced off the road and trees like the dazzle from an ambulance. Instead of a siren, though, the boys heard footsteps.

“What the hell is that?” Nate stepped back into the road and squinted. The light drew closer and more intense, and then they saw what was coming: ghostly figures, pulling a wagon that carried a burning cross.

At first Anthony thought he was asleep. Everything suddenly had the slow-motion quality of dreams. He moved closer as the parade approached and saw a figure with a can of lighter fluid dancing around and squirting the flaming wood. He saw the blue jeans and work boots underneath their white robes, the homemade hoods with uneven eyeholes. He had to be asleep because this couldn't be the Klan. Not in Maine. Not walking right in front of him.

“What's the matter, monkey boy?” one of them shouted. “Want a banana?” The man grabbed his crotch and hooted. Soon the rest of the marchers fired insults.

“Put that nigger back on the boat!”

“Take your AIDS back to Somalia!”

Brody hollered, “He's from Cleveland, you fucking assholes!”

“Cleveland?” one of them shouted back. “That's even worse!”

Something about the voice broke Anthony's trance. He started after them, but a speeding truck reached the marchers first. They planted the sputtering cross in the side of the road and piled inside the pickup. Then they sped off down the black strip of state highway, hooting as their taillights faded.

Brody yelled and kicked the cross over. More Belton kids and faculty spilled out into the street. Some of them shouted and a few even cried, but most stood in subdued little clusters.

Anthony looked at the road stretching out into darkness, strained his eyes for signs of the pickup. If it came back again, he'd be waiting with rocks.

The truck never returned, though, and the kids went to their dorms. Frustrated, Anthony broke a window along the way. He liked the sound, so he broke another one. Later that night, Mr. Hawley poked his head into the room. Brody was asleep, but Anthony wasn't. “Hey, you busy?”

“Nope,” Anthony said, getting up. “I figured somebody would come here, sooner or later.”

They went to Hawley's apartment and took familiar seats. “So how are you?” Hawley asked. “I can't sleep, especially after what happened.”

“What did happen?” Anthony asked. “I was right here and I'm not even sure, myself.”

Hawley took a deep breath. “There was a meeting the other day up at the town hall,” he said. “Some people want to make it illegal for any more Somali families to move here. I know,” he said as Anthony made a face. “You would think it is 1968. Anyway, it got ugly when they couldn't get enough support. And I guess some people got the idea to send their own kind of message.”

“By coming down here and burning a cross?” Anthony said. “What kind of sense does that make, Mr. Hawley? We don't even have any Somali students.”

“I know,” he said. “They started on Birch Street and ended right here, the only two places in town where they can find black people. . . . From what I could tell, they weren't really even the Klan, just a bunch of drunk rednecks, being stupid.”