Sister Mischief (30 page)
Authors: Laura Goode
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Homosexuality, #Humorous Stories, #Adolescence
“Why don’t you ever read me any lyrics you’re working on? Have I not done enough to make this feel like a safe creative space for you?”
“No, Pops, we’re the safest creative space on the block.” I roll my eyes. “Do you seriously expect me to rap for you?”
“Yes!” he says, dropping his fork for emphasis. “I completely do expect you to rap for me. I gave you life. Now I want to hear a song.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No! Aren’t I allowed to just want a little rhythm with my dinner?”
“You are a fucking nutbag.”
“I’m taking your steak until you give me some rhymes.” He snatches my plate.
“This is child abuse. I’m calling the authorities.” He starts to take a bite of my steak. “Fine fine fine fine.” I dig my notebook out of my purse. “Are you ready?” He nods eagerly. I take a breath.
“I got all this hysteria, maybe it’s uterus lunacy
I’m defective and restive, gotta find a way to get through to me
And all of these haters, all the shit that they do to me
We gotta get positive, find a cure for this prudery.
Who says that the white girl can’t come to drop bombs?
And who says I gotta dress like these Botoxed white moms?
My girl DJ She and me got some anthems to dance with
We wearin’ low-riders low and we got plenty of bandwidth
To transmit these messages you best not be messin’ with
We got ladies in the house, ladies first, ladies wicked
We ride to get high, Minnesota-do-or-die
We talk shit and kick it, our bidness is the shiznit
So holler out our name, we’re the illest Sister Mischief.”
He’s got that mushy look on his face again. Jeezy creezy.
“Esme! You’re so —
good
!” he squeals. “Are you going to perform that?”
I shrug. “Marcy and Tess and me might have something in the works.”
“What kind of something?”
“I don’t know,” I say casually. “Maybe something — at school, or something.”
“How are you going to pull that off? Please don’t get kicked out — that’s all I’m asking. I really can’t afford to pay the property taxes here
and
send you to private school.”
“Come on, Pops. They can’t kick us out for performing our songs, or for forming a hip-hop-friendly gay-straight alliance. The ACLU would spit-roast Ross Nordling over a First-Amendment bonfire.”
“Are you sure?” he asks skeptically.
“Look, we’re not definitely doing anything yet. Why don’t you just not worry about it for now.”
“Yeah,” Pops snorts. “
That’s
going to happen. Just let me know what you’re planning when you are definitely going to do something. And for God’s sake, think it through.”
I squint at him. “What do you mean, exactly?”
“I mean do your homework, girl. Whatever you plan, make sure you’re within your rights, make sure you have other people standing with you, and whatever you do, never, ever give away the cameras. And if for any reason the cops get involved, don’t say
anything
until you have a lawyer present.”
“Jesus, Pops, I’m not going to get
arrested.
All we want to do is stage a sneak-attack performance.”
“Just do it right — that’s all I’m saying.” He pushes my plate back across the table.
Never give away the cameras,
I note silently. Pops has this way of being smarter than me.
The tension’s building at school. Angelo and a few other kids get called into the office, but all the administration does is ask them to pull up their pants. Mary Ashley Baumgarten and her creepy little mini-me Stina actually spit at me as I pass them in the hall; MashBaum’s been preening around the halls like she’s fucking royalty or something since her dad won the election. Marcy and I start to mix up beats under my verses on the weekends. We copy more flyers, neon ones with lyrics this time. Choosing which lyric chunks to paper the school with takes us hours of debating and scribbling. We find snippets of MC Lyte (
I may come on strong but that’s what you like / You like a female MC who can handle the mike. . . . / So that’s why I’m here, don’t mean to make a case of it / This rap here, well, it’s just for the taste of it / I write the rap to make the whole world sing / And I’m the type of female, well, I like to swing)
and our hometown boys Atmosphere
(As a child hip-hop made me read books / And hip-hop made me want to be a crook / And hip-hop gave me the way and something to say / And all I took in return is a second look)
and we plaster the girls’ bathrooms with them, stuff them in lockers and under classroom doors, pin them under windshield wipers in the parking lot. It’s like we’re getting into the fray of hip-hop. We’re picking a fight and it’s coming for us.
The biggest windfall for our movement arrives unexpectedly, though, when an anonymous op-ed comes out in the
West Wind,
the school newspaper. It makes the front page, and the editor’s note indicates that it was submitted to the paper from an anonymous e-mail address. For me, seeing it erases any shadow of a doubt that the administration is going to have to respond to the homo-hop revolution before too long. The headline is “Censorship Reigns at Holyhill High.” My mouth falls open as I read:
Holyhill High School enjoys its status as one of the nation’s best public schools — and its administration is so busy enjoying it, maybe, that it seems to think it can implement intolerant and unconstitutional policies without its students noticing, and prioritize the comfort of some students over the safety of all students. This fall, a clause prohibiting “loud, violent, heavily rhythmic” music, and apparel associated with the culture of this music, on Holyhill High’s campus appeared in Holyhill’s code of conduct.
This policy is an obvious gesture at hip-hop, which many consider one of the most important artistic and cultural movements of the last half-century, as well as a major force in modern African-American and multicultural empowerment, an instrument of social justice and critical inquiry, and a contributor to the movement behind Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election. To prohibit students from participating in the discussion surrounding hip-hop is not only to deny this almost inarguable importance; it is to censor and restrict the First Amendment rights of Holyhill’s students. The administration’s refusal of school recognition to a student group dedicated to the study and discussion of hip-hop affirms its willingness to tamper with its students’ right to freedom of expression.
More egregiously, the administration recently failed in its responsibility to maintain a school in which its students are protected from harm. The student group in question, Hip-Hop for Heteros and Homos, also advocates for the acceptance of Holyhill’s GLBT students, combining its analysis of hip-hop with an examination of sexual identity similar to gay-straight alliances at many other high schools. At a recent gathering of the group, witnesses reported that several figures attacked the meeting by storming the room, shutting off all the lights, and setting off a series of illegal fireworks. One student sustained injuries, yet instead of prosecuting or even seeking to identify the attackers, the Holyhill administration encouraged the 4H student group to discontinue their meetings.
The fact that many people in the Holyhill community justify blatant homophobia by claiming it as a Christian value only underscores the point that the administration must do more to ensure the safety and freedom of all its students. As a public school, Holyhill High cannot align itself with those tenets of religious conviction that reject or demean homosexuality, nor is it empowered to designate any peaceful intellectual inquiry as illegitimate or off-limits. It is the responsibility of the school to guarantee freedom from discrimination for every Holyhill student, and to protect our rights as Americans to discuss, examine, or explore whatever we please, provided we do so without engaging in or promoting violence. At Holyhill, the students who disobeyed Holyhill’s hip-hop policy to exercise this right were the victims, not the perpetrators, of violence, yet under the cover of their own discriminatory policy, the administration did nothing. The students of Holyhill High School demand a repeal of the ban on hip-hop, as well as the addition of Hip-Hop for Heteros and Homos to the roster of recognized student groups. Anything less would be contemptuous to the quality of a Holyhill education.
Marcy and I share a moment of gaping at the power of the article. All around us, everyone looks decapitated, all the faces obscured by copies of the paper.
“WTF does
egregiously
mean?” I overhear someone ask. “I don’t know like 90% of these words.”
“So let’s be real here,” Marcy says. “There are only like five people in the entire school who can write like this. Let’s eliminate some. Did you write it?”
I wobble my head. “Wish I had, but it waddn’t me. Did you?”
“Nope.” She takes a loaded pause. “Did you notice —?”
I don’t need to wait for her to finish. “That the author seems to know a whole damn awful lot about 4H?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. I think that list is pretty much narrowed down.”
“It had to be her,” she says, watching me for a reaction. “Well, the administration’s going to have to respond, and that’s what matters. We gotta figure out how to make this concert happen, and soon.”
I stuff the paper into my backpack. Marcy and I keep mixing beats and tinkering with my rhymes, but both of us know that the synergy of the group has been altered, still not weathered through the split in the ground. I’m writing for one voice, but I don’t know how to swagger without Rowie’s slink by my side.
“Yeah, all I’m concerned with is figuring out what our next plan is.” I turn back to her. “Let’s make a list. What do we need?”
“You and your lists. You can’t itemize the world, freak.”
“One. Portable mikes.”
“Preloaded beats on tape. Speakers.”
“New sunglasses.”
“An air horn.”
“Cameras. Never give away the cameras.”
She smirks. “Are we seriously going to call in the media? What about Nordling?”
“Fuck Nordling. But if he’s serious, you could get suspended from drumline. Are you willing to take that risk?”
“I’ll take the hit if I have to,” she says. “Yeah, we’re calling the media for
damn
sure.”
A grin spreads across my face as I tick another notch of the list off on my fingers.
“We need big humongous ovaries.”
She snickers. “We need distaste for peace and quiet.”
“And for Principal Ross Nordling.”
“And Holyhill.”
“And for MashBaum!”
“Ez.” She catches her breath. “Do you know what else we need?”
“What?”
“We need more backup.”
I nod slowly.
“I know. I’ma gonna call some in.”
She nods back. “Just let me know where rehearsal is and when.” The bell sounds off, and everyone scurries back to class, trailing a carpet of newspapers in their wake.
It’s dark by the time I finish dinner and screw up the courage to face the bitter wind and bike over to Arapahoe Hills, where some of the houses are swathed in twinkling garlands of early Christmas lights; in the windows, I see moms finishing dinner cleanup at the kitchen sinks, families moving into homework and TV and settling in for the night. The black ice is slick on the steep curve of Tess’s driveway, and Prissy skids a little as I muscle up it. I toss the bike into the bushes, narrowly missing the left headlight of Darlene’s Lexus SUV, and stomp my snowy feet on the super-Lutheran “Living Is Giving” doormat as I ring the doorbell.
