Tutored (3 page)

“I am not going to let you push me around, don’t tell me that a nigger can’t get no water when he wants some water.”

“Please leave.”

“I’m gonna kick your ass.”

“Please leave.”

“I should have known that we shouldn’t come here,” Wendy’s dad mumbled.

Just then the irate man began taking his message straight to the people.

He eyed Wendy’s dad and zeroed in.

“You with me, brother?” he asked Wendy’s father, as if he was already assured of the affirmative answer.

Wendy’s dad straightened his shoulders, looked him dead in the eye, and enunciated two words: “Hell, no.”

The man stepped back. “Oh, so it’s like that, Uncle Tom?”

“You must be out of your mind to think that I would take part in this foolishness in the presence of my daughter. If that makes me an Uncle Tom, then I’ll be one gladly.”

Now Wendy’s heart pounded. She had no idea what was going to happen next. Would the man take his anger out on her father? Would her father be dumb enough to incense him further?

She never found out. Before the man had a chance to react, the police burst into the restaurant and hauled him away.

During the ride home, Wendy had had to listen on and on about how “this” was “proof.”

“And you wonder why we live in the suburbs?” Wendy’s dad asked. “That was exhibit A right there.”

“Dad, one bad apple doesn’t spoil the whole bunch.”

Her dad laughed at that as he turned onto the highway. “Where I grew up, I had to deal with poor excuses for human beings like that all the time.”

“Maybe he really didn’t have the money for a soda, Dad.”

“Then he shouldn’t have a soda. There’s no need to terrorize a restaurant like that.”

“
Terrorize?
” Wendy asked. “Don’t you think that’s a little strong? He’s not Osama bin Laden.”

“Don’t make excuses for that idiot. And remind me to never let myself get hungry in the slums.”

“Dad, something like that could happen anywhere.”

“Oh, sure, Wendy, sure.”

“It could.”

Wendy’s father switched to cruise control.

“I don’t want to hear it, Wendy. All your life I have tried to keep you in a nice, quiet, safe place, but you
seem hell-bent on putting yourself in harm’s way. We could have been shot!”

“He didn’t even have a gun. All he did was talk. How could we have been shot?”

“Well,
he
could have been. When we get home to Bryn Mawr, I am going to kiss the ground.”

Ever since that afternoon, Mr. Anderson had amped up his tirades against “those areas” and “those people.” This was of course the main reason Wendy sought out more opportunities to volunteer. Now that Wendy was working at the center, with a whole new group of so-called hoodlums, she and her dad were fighting more than ever.

T
here were GED classes back in Cincinnati, but Hakiam had wanted a fresh start. He was totally burned out on Ohio. He knew every back alley. Every one-way street. Every dead end. It was time for a change.

The day he decided to leave, he had just finished serving a juvie sentence for shoplifting. That day his counselor, a tweed-blazer-patch-on-the-elbow-professor-looking-with-the-bright-yellow-shiny-happy-button-down-shirt-wearing, underfed forty-something white man, signed him out.

“What are your plans now, Hakiam?” the counselor had asked.

“Philadelphia.”

“Who do you know there?”

“A cousin and an aunt. They used to live here but then she got divorced. My aunt did.”

“So you know her pretty well?”

“Five years ago I did. They used to live two blocks away from my old house.”

“Do you have a job lined up? Are you going to finish your education? Enroll in a high school there?”

“Yep,” Hakiam had said by reflex. He knew it was what the counselor wanted to hear.

The man handed Hakiam the paperwork he needed.

“I’m done?” Hakiam asked, just to make sure.

The man nodded and Hakiam took his folding chair to the wall.

“Just one more thing,” the counselor said, holding up his pointer finger for emphasis. “Remember: an open palm gets more than a closed fist.”

Hakiam had almost busted out laughing. What kind of advice was that to send someone off to start a new life with? That was a formula for disaster. In Hakiam’s experience, the few times he’d chosen to be nice and trusting he’d gotten stepped on and crushed.

Hakiam wanted a new life. He never wanted to return to the one that he’d had.

At the end of the week, he paid seventy-five dollars to Greyhound and boarded a bus headed east.

He started feeling low immediately.

All around him, he saw failure. As each passenger climbed aboard, emptiness filled the bus. Hakiam saw the unshaven and the unshowered. The angry and confused dragging their duffel bags. Beside him, an old man took out his plastic-wrapped sandwiches.

Hakiam stared out the windows like a peeping Tom. Riding the bus never meant passing City Hall or going
by the nice restaurants or boutiques. There were no businessmen with wedding bands checking briefcases, no friendly pedestrians strolling past. No, instead he saw a squeegee man dirtying clean windshields.

Many hours later, he was in Philadelphia.

W
hile cleaning up after dinner, Wendy gave her best friend, Erin, a call. She wedged the phone between her ear and shoulder as she placed her cup, small dish, and spoon in the dishwasher.

“So what happened at the center today?” Erin asked. She was still at the skating rink where she worked. Wendy could hear the eighties rock in the background.

“Nothing much, it was really slow. There was a new guy who came in. I don’t know how long he’s going to last.”

“Hey, aren’t people who work with the disenfranchised supposed to be optimistic?”

“Yeah, but I can tell. When I see someone roll in coppin’ a ’tude—”

“Talk that talk, sister,” Erin interrupted.

“You mean ‘sista,’ ” Wendy corrected.

“Sorry, I flunked Ebonics in middle school,” Erin said.

“Don’t let that hold you back. There’s a tutorial every night on
Sucker Free
.”

“Whoa!”

“I don’t mean to be cynical, but the dude seemed really immature and snarling and arrogant and insulting and weird—”

“So when are you two going on your first date?”

“That’ll be the day. I hate people like him.”

“How bad can he be? If he made his way in there, he must want help. He must want to ‘improve his station in life,’ as they say.”

“Erin, why aren’t you interning at the center instead of me? You seem like the one who drank the Kool-Aid.”

“What’s Kool-Aid have to do with anything?”

“Jim Jones,” Wendy said. “You know, that cult leader who took all his followers to Guyana and got them all to drink Kool-Aid.”

“What’s so bad about that?”

“It was poisoned.”

“I don’t follow, Wendy.”

“I’m not going to allow myself to be brainwashed. I’ve been at the center for two weeks—”

“Well, that’s a lifetime.”

“I’m not a true believer, Erin, I never was. It’s just as insulting to excuse away bad behavior from a person just because he comes from the streets—”

“That’s right! It’s
their
fault. Who makes the streets the streets anyway? It’s the people who live there,” her father shouted from the next room.

It frosted her when her father eavesdropped. “This isn’t on three-way, Dad.”

“What did he say?” Erin asked.

“Never mind,” Wendy said, “he’s taking me off point. All I’m saying is that if you come into a new environment, why do you have to have a chip on your shoulder? Why do you—”

“Tell Erin I said hello,” her father said.

“Okay, Dad,” Wendy told him. “Erin, he says hello.”

“Oh, tell him I said hello,” Erin said.

“This is not a three-way call!” Wendy said.

“Boy, you are strung out, Wendy. Maybe you need a vacation from volunteering.”

“I like the center fine most days. I just don’t like dealing with everybody’s attitude.”

“So what’s his name, Wendy?”

“Hakiam. And you wouldn’t find me going out with him. If he were the last man on earth, I’d date a tree first.”

W
hoever thought up the saying “sleeping like a baby” had lied. As far as Hakiam could tell, babies rarely slept. Here it was, after midnight, and Malikia was squirming and whimpering and whimpering and squirming. She showed no sign of letting up.

Hakiam decided to take her out to the fire escape, thinking the night air would soothe her. The air was warm, but the noise started almost immediately. A dog barked. Footsteps echoed from the sidewalks and bounced up the stairs. Someone started arguing about someone running off with their shit. Next came a steady stream of “your mother this” and “your mother that.”

Malikia cried a tearless cry like the world was coming to an end. Hakiam was inclined to agree, but instead of weeping he took out a blunt. Smoking did two things for him. One, it cleared his mind, and two, it gave him something to do with his other hand. So he jiggled tiny, wrinkled Malikia and blew smoke into the blue-black night
sky. His mind drifted to more pleasant thoughts, like how good the bed would feel when he finally got to it and could close his eyes.

He was still thirsty, though; Leesa had no juice or milk in the house. Soda was all she had, which anyone could tell you just made you thirstier the more you drank. He’d had three cans of Pepsi since he’d been back from social services.

As late as it was, he knew he wasn’t going to get to look over his books for those GED classes. He wondered what that girl would say. What was her name? He hated that voice she used, like she was auditioning for a Shakespeare play. Why couldn’t she just make it plain?

This would drive him crazy: what was that big-eyed girl’s name? Sure, she annoyed him, but in his two months in this city of so-called brotherly love, she was the only candy striper he’d met. Was it Janet? Betty? How could he forget it so quickly after the run-in he’d had with her? For a second or two, he felt bad about the way he’d treated her.

After another blunt, the baby finally went down, and his mind then turned to how glad he was to be under the covers. He didn’t give what’s-her-name another thought.

“K
eep a positive outlook and positive things will happen to you.” That quotation was the heading in Wendy’s daily planner. She tried this mind-over-matter approach as she sat in the center awaiting a client. She was wearing a raspberry V-neck T-shirt and a crinkly mahogany-colored rayon skirt. Her delicate features were arranged in an expression that was far from a smile but also far from a scowl.

And then he came in.

As he approached her, he held out a piece of paper. “Sign that to say I was here,” he told her.

She up-and-downed him without expression. “Pardon?” she asked.

“Sign—”

“I heard you.”

“Well?” he asked.

She peered at the sheet, then turned her head. She
reached into her bulging canvas bag and pulled out a thick textbook.

“You can do that on your own time,” he told her.

She further ignored him by opening her book to chapter nine and reading silently, occasionally marking a passage with her yellow highlighter.

He observed her for a while, sighing and resting his weight on alternating sides of his body, hoping she would react to his impatience. Finally he said, “I never took you for a goldbricker.”

That made her look up. “What did you call me?”

“A goldbricker. You’re goldbricking.”

“And that means?”

“You’re supposed to be tutoring people.…”

She placed her highlighter down and pushed her book to the side. “Exactly. I’m
supposed
to be
tutoring people
, but
people
haven’t been coming in here to be
tutored
.”

He frowned. “I’m here, ain’t I?”

“You just want your paper signed. I’m on to you.”

Hakiam took the seat beside her. “Look, you. I—”

“You? You mean to tell me you don’t even know my name? Give me that paper.”

When he did, she wrote quickly on it and handed it back to him.

He crumpled it up. “Look, how dumb do you think I am? I know you’re not Paris Hilton.”

Wendy laughed extra-loud just to needle him.

“I don’t have time for this mess. I’ve been up all night.”

She held her hand up to halt his talking. “One word, Hakiam: priorities.”

“Whatever that means.”

“It means if you want to waste your time hanging out with the homies—”

“Homies?” he asked, reeling at her dated slang. “Listen, you, I was watching a baby last night.”

Her thin eyebrows arched. “A baby?”

“Yeah.”

“A baby baby?” she asked.

He nodded.

“You have a baby. You didn’t tell me that last time.”

“It ain’t mine.”

Wendy took the cap off her highlighter and went back to reading her book. “You ought to get on
The Maury Povich Show
.”

Hakiam grabbed her hand. Not wanting him to touch her, Wendy jerked back.

“Listen,” he said. “It’s my cousin’s little girl. She’s not even supposed to be here yet. She was born early and my cousin works nights at the late-night window and she said I could live there for free if I just watch her every now and then.”

Wendy rolled her eyes. “What a setup. What’s the little girl’s name?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Everybody has a right to be called by a name, don’t they? Even I have one, not that you bothered to remember.”

“Look, that baby kept me up half the night with her wailing. I had to light up—”

Wendy slammed the book shut. “You smoked marijuana in front of an infant?”

“I didn’t hear her complain.”

“Secondhand smoke around a baby is very dangerous. It could lead to respiratory problems—”

He rolled his eyes and repeated, “Respiratory problems.”

“Oh, so now you think asthma is funny?”

“I think asthma is hilarious.”

“That’s a very ignorant thing to say.”