Something like right, p.3
Something Like Right, page 3
“Hey, Mel. It’s good to see you,” Ma responded. They hugged and Ma looked at me.
“Hi, Aunt Mel,” I said. We took my luggage inside. Smith sat on the couch, watching baseball, rubbing a thin spot in his afro at the crown of his head. “Smith, Tameka here,” Aunt Mel called out. Smith raised his beer bottle in my ma’s direction without taking his eyes off the screen.
“Playoffs. Who you got, Mimi?” he said.
“You know I don’t watch that stuff,” Ma yawned, “… Gerald … since we using names the other don’t like to be called,” she added with a lethal stare. I could see a smirk spread across Smith’s profile as he kept his eyes on the TV.
“Aw, Li’l Mimi done got too grown up for her nickname, huh?” he spouted, and Aunt Mel forced back a giggle. Ma shot her a look two times as fierce as the one she had given Smith. Aunt Mel knew better.
“Chill, Tameka, chill. I’m just messing. It’s good to see you,” Smith said.
“Yeah,” Ma said. “Well, anyway. Thank y’all. For doing this. I know it’s not ideal, but—”
“You don’t have to explain it all again. We family. That’s what we here for,” Aunt Mel stopped her. Ma wrung her hands and pulled a taut smile across her cheeks.
“The boy gone have to work.” Aunt Mel cut right to the chase. “But it’s plenty li’l places ’round here could use the help. And he gone have to clean up too. Not just after himself. We work together. And … uh … are you still gone send that money every month?” Aunt Mel asked.
Ma nodded. “You’ll have it as soon as I do.”
“He gone be fine, sista. We got it.”
Ma hugged Aunt Mel and made her way to the door. She had to get back to the city and get ready for work the next day. Outside, she got halfway into the car and waved to me with sad eyes. I waved goodbye as she shut the door, then I stepped back and watched her reverse out of the driveway. Ma whipped the car around at the dead end of the private drive. Then she sped off, her silhouette behind dark tint.
The clang of the metal door behind me got my attention, and Smith hit the button on his key fob that made the sedan squeak twice. “Wanna take a ride?” he asked. I got in on the passenger side and buckled up. Smith lit up a cigarette and took a drag, blowing the smoke out of the window as we raced off.
“They say you beat that boy down pretty good,” he started.
“I guess,” I replied.
“Shit. Well, it ain’t gone be the same type of boys down here. Not at B.A.S. Them some bad kids, man. They wild. Rough.”
“I’ll be aight,” I said, starting to get agitated.
“I ain’t worried about ya. I’m just sayin’. Keep ya head on a swivel.”
“Got it.”
We stopped at a gas station and rescued some fried chicken and over-nuked sides suffering under a heat lamp. Smith paid for my food and got me some sour candy too. When we hopped back in the sedan to head to the house, Smith went right back to the small talk.
“So … I hear your dad is back in town.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s that like?” he asked.
“I don’t know. He’s only been around for a few days.”
“Did you talk to him? Y’all been catching up?” asked Smith.
“No … not really.”
“Hmm. I see. You know, my dad was locked up for a little while too. Not as long as Keith, but long enough for us to miss him. It was weird when he came home. Like trying to fit a puzzle together but the pieces feel a little off.”
My brain turned Smith’s comparison over for consideration. That was how I had been feeling. Like Pops, Ma, and me were all pieces of a puzzle that was supposed to fit together, but didn’t. From where I stood, it seemed like my ma was willing to jam the pieces into place no matter what, as long as she could get a chance to be with my pops. I’d never seen her so dedicated to succeeding at anything more than she was at her relationship with him. A shame, really, because that relationship was the one thing that had brought her the most failures and the biggest heartbreaks.
I felt sad that Ma couldn’t shake the grip that love for my pops had on her. But I held more anger than sadness at the fact that she’d put me and anything else to the side for him. Anger toward Pops that he’d allow her to do such a thing, knowing he’d only ever let her down, no matter how much he pretended this time would be different.
“Yep, yep. It was hard,” Smith continued, breaking the trance of my thoughts. “But eventually it all worked out with my dad … You think it’s going to work out for y’all?” he asked.
“Why do you care so much?” I spat.
Smith was quiet. “Hey, man. I’m not trying to make you upset. We just have similar experiences, you know? I guess I just wanna say … if you ever wanna talk about it … I’m here. That’s all.”
I faced forward as we drove the rest of the way in silence. Smith pulled back up to the house and trudged through the first fallen leaves of the season up to the door. After we set the food on the counter, he showed me to my room and set me up with towels and bath stuff.
“Here you go, nephew. We got you a spot in the pantry for any of your own groceries you wanna buy, because, well, Melanie don’t shop too often. I’m working on that though. I tried to get her to cut you a house key so we ain’t gotta be breathin’ down your neck, but … well … just give it some time. She can be weird about that kinda stuff. Anyhow, if you need anything, gimme a holler.”
Smith left and I sat on the bed. The faded, bluish-gray comforter had stuffing poking out of ragged patches here and there. The yellowing wallpaper peeled like a banana to reveal a stained, tan drywall. I stood in the middle of the room and stretched my arms out—I could almost touch both walls at the same time. Someone—probably Smith—had done a slapdash installment of a fan that rotated on the low ceiling, tossing the pull chains up against the glass bulb covering, tink after tink after tink. I carefully pulled one and slowed the rotation to a stop. Silence.
I lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Light brown water stains blossomed across the white paint. It reminded me of jellyfish making their way through sea-foam. The sheets smelled like cigarette smoke and Irish Spring. Not as bad of a combination as you’d think. I let the sounds and smells of my new home wrap around me and soothe me to sleep.
LESSON 1.5
Broadlawn Alternative School
“Aight now, Zay. Don’t be in here fuckin’ around with these kids. These kids is different. They either too country or too hood down here, and either way they ain’t got much to lose. I don’t know what you could get away with up there in the city, and you probably think you tough now that you—”
“I got you, Aunt Mel. I’m chilling,” I interrupted.
She turned to me, hand still clenched on the steering wheel of the old sedan badly in need of new upholstery. Her eyes met mine and softened. She reached over and put a hand on my knee, patting it affectionately, but her mouth remained tight and her eyes stayed stern. She probably kept that same face all day over at the youth detention center. Her brown uniform matched the cloth seats in the car, but it paled in comparison to her cocoa butter–rich skin.
“I’m sorry, Zay. This job—I hate it. I hate that I’m involved with it. I’ve seen a lotta trouble down this way with the kids. I know all the worst parts and sometimes, whether it’s fair or not, you don’t always get a chance to show somebody your best parts before they fear the worst. I’m sure that’s how plenty of the kids at the school feel. I know you can handle yourself. Just be careful.”
“I will, Auntie.”
I got out of the car and walked down the dirt path, following the signs that said ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE. The pathway stretched all the way from the school’s front gate to its entrance, with a well-manicured lawn on both sides. I felt like I was walking down the yellow brick road, but I didn’t hold out hope for any wizards.
That ain’t work out in the real story, anyhow.
I walked up to the admin office—a small, sand-colored building in front of a bunch of bigger sand-colored buildings. The aroma of bleach poured over dust enveloped me as I stepped inside. A few old ladies looking like the Golden Girls huddled around a computer in the admin office. There wasn’t a line to check in, just one girl ahead of me. She was short but looked strong—like a soccer player. She had a curly brown afro with a shade of deep red to it. I thought this was a place for rugged, unruly people. Not gorgeous ones. If she was any kind of preview of my class makeup … then maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
“Well, to be honest, Karen, I’m just not sure!” one of the office ladies said.
“My nephew normally does this for me, and God knows I can’t for the life of me understand these new computers; iPads and ePads—I just want to print this out,” the one behind the computer replied, hand across her forehead in first-world distress.
“Are you connected to the internet?” asked the third one.
“I don’t think that has anything to do with it, Shelly,” snapped Karen.
“Um, excuse me?” the girl in front of me spoke up.
The Golden Girls looked up, awestruck, like they couldn’t believe someone other than them was in the office.
“Yes, can I help you?”
“Isn’t that what y’all are here for?” I answered, even though they weren’t talking to me. Curly-Fro turned and looked at me, confused. She had big hazel eyes and an almond-shaped face. Her skin was brown with red undertones, smooth and clear. Her features looked like someone had sculpted her a little each day for a long time, making sure she was perfect.
“Young man,” said one of the ladies, “you need to wait your turn. I don’t know who you are, but it’s too early for the disrespect. I ain’t even had my coffee yet. Young lady, are you a new student?”
“Yes.” A voice like silk.
“Alright, here are a couple of forms. What is your last name? We’ll pull your schedule.” Karen dealt with the girl in front of me while I waited. When it was my turn to move up to the counter, Curly-Fro squeezed by me and made her way out of the office.
“Excuse me,” she said, flashing a quick smile as she walked by. Rosewater and vanilla sugar filled my nose as she swept past. I watched her exit the office and turn down the hallway. My eyes followed her until they couldn’t anymore. Only then did the sounds from the office rush back into my senses—printers printing, phones ringing, and the Golden Girls still bickering.
I filled out my new-student paperwork and got my schedule from Karen. She kept looking at me. Not in any kind of way. Just looking. Every few seconds, glancing up from her paper, or sneaking a look when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. I felt like a specimen under a microscope. Shelly started explaining how I could find my way to my second-period class, because I had already missed the first, but in the middle of her struggle with the instructions she peered over my shoulder and hollered out.
“KENNY! GET IN HERE!”
I turned to see a skinny, floppy-eared boy with a messy mini-fro walking through the hallway. He put his hands up and rocked side to side, swaying like the seismic sound of Shelly’s voice had forced him off- balance, before bursting into laughter. His searching gaze eventually landed on us, and he stepped into the office with a shit-eating grin.
“Howdy, Ms. Shelly,” he spooled out in a heavy drawl.
“Good morning, Kenny. Don’t come in here smiling, I ain’t got time to play around with you.”
“Aw, come on, Ms. Shelly! I ain’t even do nothing yet.” He laughed. “What you need? Or did you just miss my beautiful face?”
Shelly shook her head. “This is a new student. Xavier Rogers. Y’all have the same second period. Please walk him down to class.”
“I don’t know, Ms. Shelly, it’s gonna look bad on my rep walking around with fresh meat on his first day. Besides, he look like a city boy. I can walk him, but uh … what you gonna do for me?” He smiled slyly.
“What I can do is not write you up for sexual harassment, Kenny. We’ve told you time and time again that making comments like that is inappropriate.”
“Damn, it’s like that, Ms. Shelly?” Kenny smiled, unbothered. “Now, if you get me sent to Y.D.C., who around here is gonna fill all your days with joy and laughter?” He chuckled, amused at himself. “It’s all good. Imma take him to class. Come on, city boy.”
We left the office and headed down the hall. At the end of the walkway, we stepped through double doors and down a small flight of concrete steps onto a sidewalk.
“Where we goin’?” I asked.
“To class,” Kenny said. I rolled my eyes. He walked with a bounce and a half in his step, like at any given moment he could break out running if he needed to.
We walked until a rusted white trailer came into view, the orangish-brown creeping up from its base plaguing it like leprosy. Kenny threw open the door to the trailer, and the humidity inside engulfed us.
No ventilation, save for a couple of open windows. A small, studious-looking man sat at a desk in the corner. He wore a striped white button-down shirt with gray slacks and had his feet crossed on top of his desk. He was two thumbs deep in his phone, typing away rapidly, examining his screen over the top of his glasses. The rest of the trailer held thirty-some-odd desks mostly filled with students.
“What up, baybeee?!” Kenny shouted as he stepped into the “classroom.” A few of the kids turned to him and laughed.
“Kenneth, sit down,” said the small man, immediately exasperated.
“Why you hatin’, Mr. G? I got my late pass right here. From Shelly too, so you know I’m legit.” He smiled.
Mr. G peeked at the note and waved Kenny off to his seat. I stepped up and looked down over this Mr. G.
“Um, hey. I’m Zay. A new student. Here’s my pass.”
Mr. G peeked at my note and waved me off with the same nonchalance.
“Thanks. Do I need a, um … book? Or worksheet or something?”
Mr. G didn’t look up from his phone this time. He simply waved again.
I scanned the room. There weren’t any white kids in my class. Back at Central, I was used to going to school with some of everybody. It was, after all, the high school smack in the middle of the city.
Half of the students in Mr. G’s class seemed to be working diligently on something. The other half, on a separate side of the room, didn’t even have pens or paper. Most of them were joking around or flirting. Kenny was on the jokey-flirty side with an open seat right next to him. He patted the empty seat and beckoned for me to come over.
“Alright, city boy. This is Mr. G’s math class. It’s a breeze. You got the Arnolds over here and the Palmers over there. Today, you’re with me. But if you’re a nerd, then you can get to class early and sit with the Palmers for the rest of your stay at Château de Broadlawn.” He clapped and rocked back and forth in his seat, laughing at his own joke.
“Arnolds? Palmers?” I asked.
Kenny rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Like the drink, you know? Half sweet tea, half lemonade? The class is split into two. This the sweet side. Jokes and fun. Arnolds. Them over there—those are the sourpusses that get uptight about getting work done. Real lemonheads. Palmers. The more you talk, the more I’m starting to think you probably belong over there with them.”
I looked to the studious side of the room and noticed a familiar face. Curly-Fro. The girl from the office, sitting on the same row as me, several seats away. She looked up in my direction as I stared at her, like she felt my eyes on her. I quickly put my head down, but Kenny had no interest in being discreet. They met eyes and he waved at her, winked. She put her eyes back to her paper and kept working. Kenny sucked at his teeth.
“Damn, she fine!” Kenny said, loud enough for her to hear. “Probably stuck-up though. All the pretty girls act like they don’t belong here when they first get to Broadlawn. Like we ain’t all here for the same reason.”
I cut him a death glance.
“What? You know her?” he asked.
“Nah,” I said, looking back in her direction.
But I wanted to. Boy, did I want to.
LESSON 1.6
Orientation
“Okay, here’s the breakdown,” Kenny started between chews on a mouthful of french fries. We sat in a huge cafeteria with concrete walls and one massive window on its far end, opposite the main entrance. The laminate on our table peeled back in a million places, and Sharpie hieroglyphs from Broadlawn students past told stories most people didn’t care about. Kenny mixed his ketchup and mayonnaise together using a single fry as a stirrer and then dipped the rest of his fries in the newly formed concoction.
“Consider this your orientation,” he said, “only one you gonna get, anyway …
“See,” he chomped.
“It’s a delicate…” Chomp, chomp.
“Balance.” Chomp, chomp, chomp.
“It’s a whole ecosystem. And if you wanna survive, you gotta know how to finesse through all the different parts of the Lawn.”
“Oh, that’s what y’all call it, huh? ‘The Lawn’?”
“‘Y’all’ is ‘we’ now, city boy,” he responded. He was right.
“Like Mr. G’s class, for instance. He already did all his teaching for the year on day one. He passed out a syllabus and a calendar of assignments. He not gonna say nothing else about it. If you wanna do the work, you will. He got his tutorials uploaded to the class page. Turn it all in before the year is over and if it’s correct, you pass. Real easy. He not gonna trip on us, but he not gonna teach us either.”
“So that’s why some of the kids weren’t working. They just don’t care?”
“Yeah, well, you know. There’s always two sides. It’s like Democrats and Republicans. Ain’t never gonna be everybody that agree on one approach. This is a last-chance school. If you fail outta here, then you can’t go to school at all until the next year. And then you probably may have to take classes you were in when you got kicked out of your original school. That’s too big of a risk for some kids. So, they in there grindin’. Other kids … well, they couldn’t care less.”
