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Authors: Paul Volponi

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BOOK: Response
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Halloween fell on a Friday, and I worked the late shift that night at Mickey D's. I left the place around midnight, walking home alone through no-man's-land with all that Halloween craziness in the streets. Junior high school kids were really feeling it, throwing eggs, chasing each other with cans of shaving cream, and swinging sweat socks filled with flour.
I guess I looked like an adult to them, because they all just ran right past me, like I was too old to be a target in that game.
I remembered crossing Decatur on Halloween with my friends when I was that age. We wore masks that covered up our faces, and went trick-or-treating on the first few blocks into Hillsboro. Those were all private houses, and the people who lived there could afford to give out brand-name mini-candy bars—Three Musketeers, Snickers, Almond Joy—the works.
“Trick or treat,” we'd say, with a high pitch to it.
We were trying to make our voices sound white, like there really was such a thing. Then we'd take our haul back to East Franklin, wanting to curse out the people from around our way who gave us loose pieces of candy corn or one-penny bubble gums.
 
This was my weekend to have Destiny Love, and that next day I took her to the playground with Mom and Grandma.
“Look at this place,” Mom said, disgusted. “Eggs everywhere.”
“Don't these young hooligans know it's a sin to waste food? What do their families teach them?” asked Grandma. “Noah, did you ever disgrace your own neighborhood like this, growing up?”
“No, Grandma,” I answered, knowing I'd boosted plenty of eggs from our refrigerator to chuck on Halloween.
But I was starting to see things different now.
I sat Destiny Love on my lap and went back and forth slow on the real swings, holding on to her with one hand and the steel chain with the other.
She let out a squeal of pure joy every time we swung in either direction.
And a good part of me felt that inside again, too—like I was still a kid.
That was the kind of thing my daughter could bring to me.
When we finished, I was super careful where I let Destiny Love crawl in that park, not wanting any of that filth on the ground to touch her.
DESHAWNA'S APARTMENT
DESHAWNA: I hear you, Tamika! I'll torch his cheating ass! (
Slams down the phone.
)
 
DESHAWNA'S DAD: What's all that noise about, Deshawna? (
Muffles his anger.
) You're gonna wake up your daughter.
 
DESH AW NA: Noah Jackson thinks he's God's gift— that's what, sending out signals to every girl at school. All my friends
know
he's playing me.
 
DESHAWNA'S DAD: And what do you think he was after when he got you pregnant? A seventeen-year-old boy's mind is on but one thing. Having a child with you ain't gonna change that so fast. That's just the truth of it, little girl.
 
DESHAWNA: Noah's no closer to putting a ring on my finger than the day I had his baby.
 
DESHAWNA'S DAD: I told you ten times already. Now I'll tell you again—just 'cause you share blood together, that don't make you family.
 
DESHAWNA: Sometimes I really love him, Daddy. When they busted his skull with that bat, and I thought he was gonna die (
Starts to cry.
)
,
I couldn't take it.
 
DESHAWNA'S DAD: You don't know real love for a man yet. You just concentrate on loving that baby of yours. What I had for your mama, that was real love. (
Hugs Deshawna tight.
) I held her in my arms for the last two months of her life while that damn diabetes broke down all her functions. You need to go through hard times together to find out what love is.
 
DESHAWNA (
Through a flood of tears.
): I miss Mama so much. I wish she could have seen Destiny Love.
 
DESHAWNA'S DAD (
Softly.
): We both do, baby. We both do.
 
DESHAWNA: What am I gonna do about Noah?
 
DESHAWNA'S DAD: That boy comes from decent folks. No matter what happens between you and him, he might grow up to be a good father. That's all you can hope for now. That's all you can try to hold him to.
Chapter
EIGHT
WE FOUGHT FOR ALMOST FIFTEEN MINUTES with Deshawna pressing me about Tiffany.
“When you want me to be your wifey, I am, and when you don't, I just disappear from your head,” she complained, with our daughter asleep in her stroller as we started a second lap around my block.
“I was just sitting there. I can't help it if shorties come on to
me
,” I said. “I didn't do anything with her and you're still on my case. How's that right?”
“It's not what you don't do, Noah,” Deshawna said. “It's the respect you need to show me in front of people. The same way I'm always going shopping for Pampers and baby clothes alone. It don't matter that you give me money. You think your time's more important than mine.”
“Yeah, I see how it's all my problem,” I said, short and sarcastic.
I turned my face away from her, before I boiled over and said something too strong. As we turned the corner, Destiny Love woke up, letting out a loud cry.
Deshawna and me both went to reach for her, and nearly knocked heads.
So I took a step back and said, “I'm sorry. All right? I know I'm not perfect.”
“That's all I wanted to hear,” she said, picking up our daughter in her arms.
 
Later that week, I got my first-semester report card at school. I knew I was doing all right but my eyes skimmed it quick anyway just to make sure there were no red marks. Then I took a look for real and almost couldn't believe it. Mr. Dowling gave me a 95 and his handwritten comment next to the grade read—
Noah, you're learning more about social studies through your personal trials than I could ever teach you.
Reading that started a real feeling of pride churning inside of me—something I hadn't felt about myself in a long time.
I got an 85 in math, and Hendricks gave me an “S” for “satisfactory” in both of my PE classes. I had a GPA of 90, nearly fifteen points higher that it had ever been before.
On my first open period, I met with my guidance counselor, to fill out the paperwork to enroll in a city college next semester. I even checked off “engineering” as the major that I was most interested in.
When I was in the fifth grade, some kid's uncle who was an engineer came in to talk to us for career day. He was black, acted supercool, and wore the sharpest alligator shoes I'd ever seen. I remember how he walked over to our classroom bulletin board and pointed to our math tests hanging up there.
“All of these students with the one hundred percents on their math papers—they're heading in right direction to become engineers,” he said before he called out six or seven names off the tops of those tests, including mine.
Then he showed us a tape of skyscrapers and big bridges swaying in the wind, and explained to us how an engineer designed them so they wouldn't crack or buckle from the strain.
Anytime after that, whenever somebody asked me what I wanted to be and wouldn't settle for answers like a millionaire or a pro football player, I'd say, “An engineer.”
“An engineer on a
train
maybe,” Dad would rag on me whenever I talked about college during my junior and first senior year. “Every father wants something better for his son, Noah. But a degree in engineering is just crazy talk, unless you're finally ready to get serious about school.”
It hurt my pride every time Dad poked at me like that. But I never really argued back too hard, because I knew he was right.
All that afternoon at Mickey D's I could feel my chest pumped up, standing at my station in front of the deep fryer. It didn't matter what kind of shit Munch threw my way. None of it could touch me. I kept pulling that report card out of my back pocket, reading Dowling's comment to myself over and over. And I left there for home thinking,
Destiny Love's daddy is going to be somebody.
For a change, nearly every part of me was feeling whole. The patch of hair the doctors cut out of my scalp had grown completely back in, and the headaches I was having had mostly disappeared.
I bounced through the front door ready to show off my report card, but nobody there was in a mood to celebrate.
They were all raging over the TV news, and I felt like I'd just been sucker punched walking into my own house.
“Two years!” Mom hollered. “Two miserable years! That's what they think taking a bat to my boy's head is worth!”
Every nerve inside of me pulled tight.
“Outrageous! That's no justice at all,” shrieked Grandma.
At first, I thought they were screaming about Charlie Scat.
But they weren't.
It was Spenelli.
He'd come clean, copping a plea bargain with the city.
“Why didn't the prosecutors call here first and ask
Noah
if that was enough time?” ranted my father, pointing his finger at me.
He was looking for an answer. But I didn't have one.
“You can't trust
any
of 'em!” Dad steamed. “Even them black lawyers are just carrying their white bosses' bags. They got no real power!”
That wasn't all the news.
The prosecutors
officially
decided to let Rao walk in exchange for testifying.
The face of that white detective who talked to me in the hospital—the one who swore it would never happen—burned inside my brain. And except for Charlie Scat, I started to hate him the most, blaming him for everything I felt cheated out of that night.
 
The next day, in a hallway at school, I heard a mob of voices shouting, “Guilty!”
A girl wearing a FREE SPENELLI! T-shirt was walking as fast as she could, heading in my direction. She pressed her books tight to her chest, almost completely covering up the words on that shirt. And she was staring straight down, with tears streaming from her eyes.
The hallways were packed and nearly every black face she passed roared out, “Guilty!” too.
Then a sister ran up to her and said, “Take off that damn shirt. He already admitted what he done.”
I didn't say anything to that girl with the shirt.
I didn't have to. That bastard Spenelli said it all when he copped to those charges. For those few seconds it didn't matter to me that he only got two years. It only mattered that he'd confessed to what he was.
I just listened to that chant of “Guilty!”echoing through the hall.
Not a single white kid opened their mouth to stick up for Spenelli, or for her wearing that shirt. And after that, I never saw one of those shirts around school again.
Parent/teacher conferences were that same night. Dad had to work late, but I went along with Mom and Grandma, ready to catch some real praise for my grades. I'd taken enough hits in the past over low marks that I really wanted to be there this time.
“Forget physical education,” I told them. “All that racist from Hillsboro—Hendricks—can tell you about me is that I come prepared every day now.”
“Well, I don't need to hear that from
him
,” said Mom.

I'm
the one who washes out your gym clothes every night.”
So I took them straight upstairs to the second floor to see Mr. Dowling.
We had to wait fifteen minutes while Dowling finished his conference with another family. He was ripping into some kid who wasn't even there, calling him “unmotivated” and “lazy.” And I knew that would build
me
up even more.
Grandma walked around the classroom reading the posters on every wall.
“Noah Jackson, introduce me to your family,” Dowling finally said, reaching out to shake Mom's hand.
“Mr. Dowling, this is my mother, Mrs. Jackson, and that's my grandmother,” I said, loud and proper.
“I'm
also
Mrs. Jackson,” announced Grandma. “I've been looking at your poster of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. It's so moving. I want you to know that I'm only three generations removed from slavery. My great-grandfather was—”
That's when her voice faded to almost nothing.
“Are you all right?” Mom asked her.
“Here, sit down, Mrs. Jackson,” said Dowling.
But before anybody could get Grandma into a chair, she collapsed to the floor.
“Lord Jesus, help her!” screamed Mom.
Mr. Dowling got on the intercom, calling the main office. Then he whipped out a cell phone and dialed 911.
Grandma started breathing hard, like she was in a race.
She was gasping for air—
Huh, huh, huh.
Then she stopped cold and I thought she'd quit breathing for good.
Every emotion inside me was spinning out of control, running wild with nowhere to go. It all built up super-fast with Mom's hysterical screams echoing through my skull.
I looked into Grandma's face.
Her brown eyes were open wide.
And I nearly sprinted out of my shoes, flying through the hallway.
I didn't know where I was headed or if I was running out of pure fear.
I shot down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Then I hit the first floor and found my voice.
“Help us!” I hollered. “We need a doctor! Help!”
People were pouring out of every room, but I streaked past them all towards the gym. I guess I'd gone there on instinct.
BOOK: Response
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