The Great Expectations School (29 page)

Then I announced, “Put on your coats. We're going outside!”

“What?”

“We're going on a neighborhood walk. With this!” I produced a disposable camera from my pocket. “And everyone is going to get to take pictures. Then I'm going to send you home with your own camera to shoot whatever you want. You'll bring them back to me, and I'll get the film developed so we can all look at your photos together.”

“Oh my goodness!” Jodi, one of Karen's star students, enthused.

Snow had fallen on New York the previous night, coating the sidewalks with glistening powder. We walked up the Marion Avenue hill (or Murder Hill, as some locals know it) and around the block, passing the camera to whichever kid yelled out that he or she had an idea for a picture. Matthew made a snow angel, which Lilibeth wanted to shoot from a high angle. Joshua arranged Corrina, Ivana, and Sonandia to stand in front of a parked car and look curiously at each other, while a chained dog on the roof of the auto body shop went nuts in the background. After forty-five minutes, we returned inside and I handed out the cherished personal cameras. Before that day, none of them had ever taken a photograph.

The next day at lineup, Jodi, Lilibeth, Corrina, and Jennifer gave me their already-spent cameras. I tossed them in my bookbag.

I counted the minutes until three o'clock, when Carol Slocumb took the 4-217 line downstairs and my Visual Arts kids entered the room with excitement, this time arranging the circle themselves. I talked about and illustrated the idea of reordering, or editing, moving pictures. This was something they had never heard of. We discussed how a director can pick out exactly what he or she wants the audience to see and in what order they will see it, using music videos by Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry as models. Jonze's “It's Oh So Quiet” Björk video was a particular hit.

“We are going to make one of these before the year's over,” I announced. “We're going to make our own music video.” The thrill in the room was palpable. Sonandia's and Corrina's mouths were wide open. This is my best Thursday of the year, I thought.

Instead of heading home, I hopped off the D train at West 4th Street and strolled through Washington Square Park. The weather was very chilly, so only the die-hard pushers loitered by the fountain.

I had patronized the downtown photo lab at Waverly and Greene since I first arrived in New York, and I always appreciated the complimentary white borders they put on the pictures. As I came in from the cold, the lab man greeted me, “Good to see you, my friend. How is everything?”

“Extremely excellent,” I said, swinging my bag off my shoulder to unzip it. I reached inside.
The cameras were gone.
My Discman too.

I emptied the bag, hunting through the side compartments. I was positive I had put the cameras in there. Positive.

“Are you okay?” my friend asked.

“Yeah,” I said, drifting out the door. I walked to the northeast corner of the square and sat on a cold bench. A sharp chill shot through my chest.
Someone went through my bag.
Someone had stolen the cameras. Jennifer, Jodi, Corrina, and Sonandia's first rolls of film. The cameras were irreplaceable, and worthless undeveloped.

I vegetated for ten minutes, pins and needles all over. My Visual
Arts Club would have been better off never existing. I had hoped to build something new, but now the foundation was pulverized to ruin. I wanted to talk to someone, but I had nothing to say. I called my mom.

“Danny, hi!”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don't know.”

“What's wrong? Did something happen? Where are you?”

“Four kids from the club gave me their finished cameras this morning. I just realized they all got stolen out of my bag. And the roll from the whole club on Wednesday and the Dr. Seuss day pictures. I don't know how it happened. I don't know what to do.”

As I spoke, my mom said, “Oh no” about six or seven times.

“I don't know… it's like everything gets swatted down. It's a hell. I can't stop them…”

“Danny. Look… Danny.” She was using her crisis voice, grasping for comforting things to say. “Can you try to find out who did it and get them back?”

“I don't know. They're gone. That's it. I shouldn't have called.”

“No, no, no, you can
always
call us. But what a
shame.
You can make it. You've got less than three months left. And one more week till spring break. You can hang on.”

“I don't know. Guiterrez and Boyd keep telling me I'm a failure. Now this happens…”

“Have you given out the new bears?” my mom asked, trying to change gears.

“Bears?”

“The new Courage and Hope Bears. And the other, the Love Bears.”

“No. I still have them,” I said.

“Try to give them out. Maybe it will motivate some of them to behave better.”

“I don't know…”

“Maybe you'll be surprised. Just give the bears a chance. They'll
want
to behave better.”

“The bears don't matter, Mom. I can't…”

“Danny? Danny?”

I crumpled into a crouch on the pavement. The sound coming from me could have been mistaken for constrained laughter, but tears and snot gushed out. I moved the cell phone away from my ear, trying to breathe.

I came in on Friday with a singular, cold-blooded mission: my thief would be revealed. At lineup, I ordered my students around with ice in my voice. I hated this school.

Once inside 217, I began my mentally rehearsed speech about cowardice and truth, but I had barely started when Ms. Devereaux barreled in the room. “I heard about someone
stealing
from Mr. Brown! WHO DID IT?” Devereaux roared.

No one made a peep.

“Say who you are
now,
or we'll have the police look at the tapes from that camera up there, and yes, that is a real camera!” She pointed at a black fixture on the wall that was part of the fire alarm system and absolutely not a camera. “We've got you on tape. If anyone saw anything, say something
now
!”

Utter silence. Even in this furious moment, I still recognized and appreciated the relative luxury of a quiet moment in room 217.

Julissa raised her hand. “It was Marvin. I saw him in after-school.”

Marvin Winslow had his head down.

“Marvin! Did you take the cameras?”

“It wasn't me,” he whispered.

“Did anyone else see Marvin with the cameras?” Ms. Devereaux asked. Three hands went up—all kids in the after-school program.

I scribbled off a note to Andrea Cobb, the after-school teacher. Sonandia delivered it and returned minutes later with written corroboration
that Marvin had in fact been playing around with several white disposable cameras yesterday.

“Step out in the hall, Marvin,” I said.

The class remained silent, partially in relief of their collective exoneration, but mostly in perverse excitement to see a classmate get nailed. Standing in the doorway, I grilled the hapless boy while Ms. Devereaux watched.

“Where are the cameras?”

He looked at the floor.

“Marvin, answer me, or you'll eat lunch alone for the rest of the year. Where are the cameras?”

“I don't have no cameras.”

“Did you have any cameras yesterday at after-school?”

“No.”

“Ms. Cobb says you did. Is she telling the truth or is she lying? Marvin, is Ms. Cobb lying?”

“No.”

“So you did have cameras in after-school, yes?”

“One.”

“What color was it?”

“Black.”

“Where did you get it?”

“My uncle.”

“Your uncle who?”

“My uncle from Manhattan.”

“What's his name?”

“Killer.”

“Uncle Killer from Manhattan gave you one black camera and that's what you had yesterday, not six white cameras from my bag.”

“Yeah.”

Ms. Devereaux interjected, “We're getting your mom in here to see about this nonsense. Get in Mr. Randazzo's office
now
!”

Devereaux ushered Marvin away. I turned back to the class.

“Okay, let's talk about elapsed time. Who can show me they're listening?”

Forty minutes later, my in-class phone rang. Ms. Guiterrez told me that Mrs. Winslow was here and I should come to the office to meet with the two of them and Marvin. Mr. Daly agreed to cover my class, and I rushed out of the room.

“Mrs. Winslow, thanks for coming in so quickly,” I said. “The main issue is that I don't know where they are, but yesterday, in the after-school program, Marvin had six of my disposable cameras. It is very important that I get these back.”

“I'm sorry, but I
have
to speak,” Mrs. Winslow seethed. “The issue here is people in your class, that
Lakiya,
are picking on Marvin and that's why he has to fight back. And I want to organize the parents of Mr. Brown's class because he don't give no homework. I send my son to school to learn and he come home with no homework
every day.
Marvin needs homework to learn. And I want to talk about that Ms. Devereaux. I don't want her touching Marvin. When I see her, I will knock her down and she will not get up. Yes, this is a parent saying this. Yes, I am aware that I am a parent saying these things. Don't let me near that Ms. Devereaux, because I am not a little boy like Marvin. I am a grown-up, and I will
hurt her.
”

Silence. Ms. Guiterrez and I looked at each other, unexpectedly united for the first time. I turned back to Mrs. Winslow.

“I give homework every day for math and literacy. Maybe one day out of every two months, there will be no homework. You can look at the chart in the classroom or another student's homework planner if you like. If Marvin is telling you that I don't give homework, he is saying something he knows is not true. Marvin, do I give homework every day?”

“… Yes.”

“Do you have time to copy it?”

“Yeah.”

This refutation of Mrs. Winslow's first emphatic countergrievance made her angrier. “Where is that Ms. Devereaux? I need to tell
her something about me and then she will not be knocking my Marvin around.”

Guiterrez finally stepped in. “Mrs. Winslow, please relax. We will deal with that very soon.”

The conversation turned to the stolen property. Marvin denied everything until his mother assumed the role of interrogator. Then the waterworks really turned on.

“I will not ask you again. Did you take Mr. Brown's camera?”

“
Cameras,
” I corrected.

“Marvin, I will not ask you again,” Mrs. Winslow pressed. “Stop crying. Be a man. Did you take Mr. Brown's cameras?”

Marvin wiped his face with his shirt and left a streaking mark of runny mucus.

“
I will not ask you again
! Did you take the cameras?”

Marvin put his head in his hands and confessed, but said he did not know where the cameras were. Ms. Guiterrez sent them home, after I gave them Marvin's homework packet, of course.

Ms. Devereaux stopped by my room twenty minutes later, her cheeks bright red. She monotoned, “I can't take Marvin Winslow anymore.” I learned that, on the way out, Mrs. Winslow had peeled over to Ms. Devereaux's room and began hollering and cursing. Security came and escorted her out of the building. Less than a minute later, Mrs. Winslow barreled back into P.S. 85 on a beeline back to Devereaux's room to continue her tirade. Surprised, the security officer was not able to get her out for several intense minutes.

After all of the drama, the cameras were gone. A wave of lightness hit me, as if I had been twisting and struggling to hold my grip on ninety thousand helium balloons while running a marathon and now, hopes thwarted, had let them all go. I carried on with the second part of my elapsed-time lesson, my chest empty.

I dropped my kids off at lunch and bolted back up the steps, barely reaching the faculty toilet in time to vomit up my morning bagel and cream cheese. I thought about the future. The Fellows commitment
was two years, but I could not do this again. I fought the Bronx, and the Bronx won. Another winter here and I would be where Pat Cartwright was.

My senior thesis project would be premiering over the upcoming spring break week at the NYU First Run Film Festival. Maybe I should move to Los Angeles to find entry-level work in the movie industry and write on the side. My college buddy, Neal, drove out there right after commencement and raved on the phone to me all the time about his sunny West Coast life.

A few minutes before dismissal, Marvin Winslow showed up at the 217 door. “Marvin, I thought you were sent home,” I said.

He opened his fist to show six rolls of film, roughly extracted from their disposable-camera shells. They were unexposed. I put the rolls in my pocket. “Thank you. Go home,” I said. He nodded and went away. The administration agreed to keep him out of my class until spring break and to expedite his special ed referral.

I looked at the students in the room and told them again to copy their homework assignments. Gloria Diaz, a shy new student who had appeared last week and fit right into Sonandia's group two, obeyed studiously, looking up at the board and then down at her paper in between writing each word. Evley wrote with his usual solemn expression. Dennis raised his hand.

“Yes, Dennis?”

“Mr. Brown, you didn't laugh today.”

“No, you're right, I didn't. We'll laugh after spring break.”

“Okay,” Dennis said.

The all-consuming disgust of the last twenty-four hours dissipated. As I learned over and over that year, sometimes it's a victory just to keep the house standing.

The pictures were incredible. Sonandia documented her home with still-life shots around her window. Joshua employed his younger brother as a model and snapped art-directed scenes of a stuffedanimal
avalanche. Jennifer explored minutiae with close-ups of a bare light bulb or cracks in her building hallway's tile floor. I flipped through them in Pizza Mercato on Waverly Place, my jaw agape in amazement. Jodi, a star in Karen Adler's class, took a picture of footprints on a desolate snowy sidewalk that belonged in a gallery.