It was a scorching day in August when I started my job as a tenth grade English teacher. More specifically, it was that last day of summer when the sun decided to push out all of its reserve rays and burn the spectrum of skin shades to sweaty crisps. Luckily, I couldn’t feel any of that. I was stuck indoors preparing for the first day of school.
8:13am
I paced around my classroom going over my lesson plan for the up-tenth time. Well, “new” actually meant ancient. The twenty-three and a half desks in the classroom were smeared with carving and pencil graffiti. The marks showed that the previous owners of the desks over the generations were more concerned about penises, broken hearts, and recycled gum than they were about class. My large oak desk was missing a leg that had been replaced by a stack of old library books. There was a wall of magnificent windows across from the doorway through which I could see the entire school courtyard. One of those windows was actually an opaque plastic shopping bag that made the most annoying crumpling sound in the wind. It would take a while to get used to that.
8:15am
I kept pacing. “Good morning class! My name is… No. Hell no. What is this elementary school?” I recited my opening lines out loud.
“Good morning. You have a warm up on your desks. You have five minutes to complete it silently. Yes! That’s it. Then I’ll introduce myself afterward. Wait, no…” I sighed.
I stopped pacing right in front of the blackboard. It smelled like last year’s chalk. Who owned a blackboard these days? My teacher-friends across town were busy using fancy smartboards and document scanners. I had, in the least bit, been trained using those lackluster dry-erase boards. Blackboards, however, were deadly. They just looked like death. They were tough to thoroughly clean and didn’t even stay black after the first day. The one staring me in the face was more like a chalky grey board. Yes, very chalky. I was raised to hate only three things in my life – the devil, liars, and chalk. I hated that stuff – the smell, the feel of it in my hands, the idea of smelling it, the idea of touching it with any part of my body. Even talking about it makes me cringe. I stared contemptuously at the board. This was my life and I had to deal with it – chalky grey board and all.
8:19am.
The wide mug of green tea on my desk was still warm. Its aroma filled the room as a natural air freshener – a much needed one. I sipped it gazing outside one of the good windows in my classroom up on the third floor of the huge building. Standing there, I peered out then down at the wide grand staircase that would soon be filled with about three thousand students, hungry for learning. Who knows what scholars trekked those stairs in the days long gone. It was a brand new day in a brand new school year. I swallowed the tea along with the lump of nerves that strangled my throat. The sun beamed through the window. Thank God for the small excuse for an air conditioner across the room. I wiped my forehead and peeked down at my little black watch with a white face. In the midst of it all, I smiled softly. The clock ticked. Any second now.
8:21am
Three hits and a boy was out cold. I didn’t catch the whole thing as I had since turned away from the scene to place my mug on a desk. It all occurred within two minutes down at the foot of the grand staircase. All I saw were a series of punches, a fallen male student, and a raging crowd of spectators. You know those impromptu celebrity sightings at random public places? The scene before my eyes was indistinguishable. High school students were the epitome of paparazzi.
“Is that all you got, little man? … Your ass got beat! … Are you alright? … You want some more?”
I imagined these were some of the things people were yelling down there. Like a prison, my windows allowed me to hear absolutely nothing on the outside. Unlike a prison, at least I had windows, albeit broken ones. The principal told us at orientation that sound-proofing the window was a purposeful move to keep the school “safe.” By that I meant, more academically-focused.
8:26am
My eyes shifted. Several administrators and curious teachers came flooding out of the main door of the school down to the commotion. I assumed they would try and break up the crowd. They were too late and they knew it. Like a male lion on pride rock, I stood my ground waiting for the pack to handle the dirty work. Part of me felt like a king. Part of me felt like a coward. Everything I needed to see was completely visible from three floors up.
There was a jolly black man waving at me from a large magnificent window, exactly like mine, directly across the courtyard. All the classrooms on this floor were pretty much like mine. His name was Maurice. The students called him Mr. Briggs. We met in college, once. I heard he went off to the Marines or something for a few years. Somehow, we ended up working at the same school. He had been teaching chemistry for the past three years.
I refused to wave back. My eyes drifted downward.
The row of large windows directly below Maurice guarded Laila Maxwell’s geometry classroom. It was her second year teaching via some fancy fellowship. The male students called her Ms. Fine, often while staring hopelessly at her covered chest. The female students secretly despised her, whispering in the crevasses of the hallways and the girl’s locker rooms. Laila was the smartest and most patient teacher at the school. She always came with criticisms and suggestions. Her ideas were seldom ignored. She always wore black stilettos that accented her model-like figure and something red. No matter what else she had on, something had to be red. I didn’t believe her when she whispered to me that it was her favorite color. But I smiled naturally every time she came around. Those windows were darker than the others. I assumed she wasn’t in her room.
8:30am
The bell rang for the students to start coming to class. They would have another bell five minutes later that would signal them to be in their seats, working on the warm-up. At this school, that rarely happened. When it did, something was wrong.
Still gazing out of the window, I noticed the principal had somehow managed to disburse the crowd and get everyone on their way. She was walking back toward the school with an arm around the beaten boy. He was limping and I suddenly felt bad. I took a sip of green tea and the guilt subsided. I admired my principal for her care and concern for each and every student. I secretly hoped to reach her level someday. Her name was Meagan, pronounced like the combination of “tree” and “again.” On those days when she was unhappy about test scores, and took on a dragon-like appearance, we called her Mrs. Alexandre. Some of the students, having a hard time adjusting to her new surname, still called her Ms. Ryan. Over the summer, she had gotten married to some French wine rancher living in California. She never actually told us who he was, so that was basically the lie that the faculty made up to mask the fact that none of us actually knew who Mr. Alexandre was. Meagan was a pro at keeping people out of her personal life. We could all take notes.
8:32am
My nerves vibrated increasingly fast as the clamor of kids in the hallways rose. I quietly imagined my life as a high school student, fifteen years before. I visualized first day passing periods and last minute locker jams, making out with an ex girlfriend who I hadn’t seen in two months, getting pushed to the side by so-called jocks. Yes, social stratification – the foundation of high school existence. The jocks, the nerds, the Goths, the singers, the cheerleaders, the groupies, the weed-heads, the artsy crews, the self-righteous overachievers. It was all coming back to me. I had been here before, in another lifetime. I could only guess what was going on outside my classroom door. I listened.
8:33am
“I missed you…” a girl’s voice whined while passing by my door. It was followed by a much louder “Fuck you too!” I closed my ears, put on a genuine smile, then walked outside to greet students as they entered class. As soon as I stepped foot outside the threshold of the door, my heart began to run a derby.
8:34am
With less than one minute to go, the halls were no emptier than they were four minutes before. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a pair of long female legs trapped behind the body of a tall Latino boy. The only reason I turned my head to look was because I heard the smacking sound of lips meeting and saliva mixing. It was the best way to start off the day. A few students picked up their pace, rushing to class. At least four young men hopped past me with pants sagging to their knees. One of them almost tripped over his own two feet – twice. One of them might have been a girl. I couldn’t tell.
“Move nigga,” one student said as I held out my hand to greet. Three more walked past me without even making eye contact. Four shook my hand and looked me square in the eye. Six tried to dap my fist. Three girls winked at me. Two of them smacked gum. One guy asked for a lighter while the girl he was attached to stared intently at my groin. One young man with suspenders tried telling me a joke. It was the worst joke I had ever heard.
This all occurred in fifty-nine seconds flat.
8:35am.
I shut the door.
8:35am.
My heart pounded from my chest.
8:35am.
I swallowed my spit and turned around. I gave my opening lines and miraculously, everyone got to work. I mean, it was beautiful. Complete silence on the first day of school. I walked among the desks, monitoring each student’s work. Then I immediately realized something.
Thirteen of the twenty students were either doodling on the paper I gave them or engraving a Sistine masterpiece into their desks. One student was writing an explicit love letter to Ms. Fine. Another was drawing what seemed to be weapons of mass destruction. Looking around, I frowned slightly then gave a verbal redirection to get everyone on task. I got nervous thinking that my directions weren’t clear enough. Nobody was doing what I asked. My verbal redirection didn’t work. Nothing was working. They started whispering and giggling. My eyes got wide. Jackson, one of the young black men who tried to dap my fist, spoke up for the class.
“Mister, who are you?” he asked. His tenor bellowed across the room.
It was a harmless question. I opened up my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. My brain got in the way of my words. Answering his question would throw the whole class off track. No, I had to stand my ground. I would not answer this question. I would not give up the power. It’s the first day for Christ’s sake! I had to maintain order or they would run me over.
“Answer the question, Mister,” interjected a black girl from a desk by the plastic bagged window. Her name, I eventually discovered, was Rene. “You scared to talk or something?”
“Yea, we won’t bite,” said another male student, sitting next to Rene. His name, I soon learned, was Carlos. He was Hispanic. He was the jokester.
“They won’t, but I might,” said a Puerto Rican girl sitting over by my desk. Her name was Lisa. The class erupted in laughter. I didn’t know what to say. My mouth was still silently fixed to respond to Jackson’s question.
8:39am
The door swung open. A young man stumbled in carrying – or attempting to carry – a stack of books, textbooks, notebooks and anything else you can think of with the suffix “book.” The entire class stopped laughing to stare angrily at the disheveled young man. He shifted through the desks to get to the only empty one, hidden in the back. It was one of those peg legged desks with a leg shorter than the other three, so it wobbled uncontrollably. It was Hell for any unlucky soul forced to sit in.
8:40am
He was still bumbling through desks trying to make it to the seat. He dropped at least four books, or notebooks, or textbooks, on his way to the desk. He didn’t take the long route to the desk, he just took the most treacherous. Either way was a bad idea.
Nichole, a brunette sitting towards the middle of the class, rolled her eyes after the young man brushed against her shoulder passing by. She popped her gum loudly.
8:41am.
“Will you just sit down already?” Rene squealed out from her window seat.
8:41am.
The peg leg of the desk hit the floor hard and made the entire desk wobble. That’s how I could tell that the boy had made it to his seat successfully.
He looked up at me, expressionless. I stared directly into his eyes, hoping for some glimmer of hope of a quick “I’m sorry for being late and interrupting your class. It’ll never happen again from now until the day I die.” But no. I got nothing but a blank stare from him. Not even an apology to the two people’s feet he stepped on or the three notebooks he knocked to the floor. Nothing. He just sat there, staring at me.
I scoped his attire and realized it was the young man who I had been stalking from three floors up. It was the boy who had just gotten beaten up. He wore this smoky grey hoodie with a huge M stitched across the front. It almost matched the color of my blackboard. He stacked all of his books on the floor beside his desk and folded his arms across the desk.
I began to walk toward him.
“That’s Andre,” Nichole said to me in her faded Caribbean accent. “Good luck trying to get him to talk to you. He don’t talk to nobody.”
I squinted in his direction then turned back to Jackson and the rest of the class.
I finally spoke up, “My name is James Lee. You can call me Mister Lee.” I paused to survey the room and each of the students. “It’s going to be a great year.”
