Classless Society

SOUTH CENTRAL HAS CLASS

I want to tell the story of Willy, one of my students at Markham Middle School in Los Angeles, in the Watts district. It might be said of my stories that they never actually occurred. This is true. A fine teacher in, say, Iowa, might assert that she has never known students like these. It pleases me to no end to hear her say this. There is no “we” intended in these pages. I do not purport to speak for others. I do not claim that mine are shared experiences. I do not suggest that others have known Willy as I did nor that one is called upon to respond to him as I did. You might despise him. So be it. You might even insist that a boy like this never existed, that such a figure must be a figment of my imagination. You might even charge that my imagination is fevered, that I must be suffering from delusions which cloud my reason and twist my mind. I concede all these points.

I never declared this a work of non-fiction. It was never meant as a biography of an 8th grade student named Willy. It is an autobiography. I admit that if the reader were to go in search of young Willy, he or she might be disappointed to learn that such a boy does not exist. I am also aware if I were to search for a boy of this description, it is very likely I would find him.

In today’s climate one easily draws fire. Readers are sensitive. If I were a Russian writing in Stalin’s time, a book like this, if read and found wanting, might draw hostile attention. A group of critics within the Writers’ Guild might criticize the book, might denounce the author and as a consequence he might be forced to flee. If caught, the writer might be exiled to Siberia. There might even be those who’d call for his head. Our dear country today produces readers of similar disposition. They, too, call for the blood of writers who say things that are thought to be unwelcome, perhaps, even unsound. I hope my words will be accepted, not rejected. I wish to be greeted with tolerance, with bemused forbearance rather than with open hostility. I am uncomfortable with resentment.

The stories are the product of a single man’s reflections. Not a word herein can be verified. Much of what I say is not true. The events may never have happened. I did once hold the position of teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School district, but I would be the first to agree that what appears in this book doesn’t come close to capturing the complexity of experiences that I had over the course of some twelve long years. These are fragments, shards as it were, scraps of information, barely worthy of being called narratives. If there were 10,000 events in my working life, I have chosen to share only a few of them, a tiny fraction of the whole. I have not been truthful, as I cannot tell the whole story. I could certainly have chosen to tell two, three, four, or even ten other anecdotes. You might read those stories and draw a conclusion in total opposition to what this picture reveals. If you were to conclude that my portrait of life as a public school teacher sounds delightful and enviable, I could share two others that might convince you otherwise. In reaction to these as yet unwritten stories, you might become beside yourself in anger, determined to get yourself a gun and head for the teachers’ union, the superintendent’s office or to my classroom in the mistaken belief that by doing so you would be improving the lives of American school children.

I strongly urge you to pull yourself together. The stories and descriptions here are intended for your entertainment. If you feel yourself enriched by this reading experience, I will be more than satisfied. You may not believe what I have said occurred. You would be wise to be cautious. I am an old man, writing about things that happened years ago. You might conclude that such things might have happened, but they are unlikely to occur again in the same way. Let me say that this is a certainty.

There is no reason for the reader to feel anger unless learning about injustice and stupidity makes you feel this way. I hope the reader is not angry because she feels that I have gotten things wrong. I have most certainly not gotten anything wrong, but it is equally certain that I have not written about the reader’s experience. I do not claim to have knowledge of the reader’s life. If the reader lives in Idaho, for example, or in about 100,000 other places on earth, I can say with absolute certainly that what I have told does not relate or apply to him or her. This story does not take place in Idaho. I’ve never been to Idaho. If characters described in my story resemble students or staff members at your school lying in the shadow of the Cascade Mountains, let me say once again that there has been some sort of mistake. This is not the story of every teacher in America. It is only my story, the story of a little teacher in an inner-city school in the last decades of the 20th century. I ask but one favor. If you find yourself formulating anything resembling the following, set the book aside: “This is not true for me, so it cannot be true for you.” Don’t hate me for getting your life wrong. I haven’t tried to get it right. That’s up to you. It’s none of my damned business.

I had been teaching 8th and 9th grade English to a group of students with learning disabilities. Slow learners: that’s what they were, and not just in math and language arts. They hadn’t learned to leave people alone; hadn’t learned to keep their hands to themselves; hadn’t learned not to take things that didn’t belong to them. There were some 15 students in the class and of the most difficult students was a short, tough little boy named Willy. He was short for his age and built like a boxer. He had shiny black skin and was rather good-looking, save for his angry, slightly pinched face. He was in fact smarter than he looked but had no real education; he was unschooled in virtually every way. My school, by the way, was located in the shadow of the famous Watts Towers, just across the street from the notorious gang projects.

Much of Willy’s personality and behavior can be explained by the fact that he had had to survive in that murderous environment. It would have been easy to forget where one was. With the splendid campus, the wide open spaces, one might have felt that nothing could go wrong. One often wondered about the strictness of certain rules. Why not let the kids run off to the restrooms? Why not open one’s door in response to a tender knock? Alas, the lovely jacaranda trees that dotted the campus created an inviting but deceptively safe environment. One might have felt like sauntering about, humming a sweet tune, but if you were 14 years old, doing so could invite attack. It could mean a severe beating by a rival gang, a savage sucker punch delivered to one’s lower back, or sexual assault. Even stray dogs were not safe. One day some boys had found a young mutt, but instead of taking it to lost and found, they dragged it off behind one of the classrooms and used it to practice penalty kicks. They were aiming, I was told, for the large stain left by a eucalyptus tree that had been removed some years ago. Like a scene from a cartoon by Charles Schultz, one of the boys held the pup down while his friend took aim and gave it a good swift kick. The poor thing smacked full force against the back wall. It either bounced some or slid straight down to the blacktop. Then the boys ran back to class and told their teachers they’d been in the bathroom doubled-over with a tummy ache. No doubt, dear Mrs. Adelina Wallace, a graduate of Mississippi Bible College (1957), was seated inside, magnificent in her Sunday best, an outfit consisting of a black cocktail dress and a string of pearls from Robinson’s Department store. She had not heard a thing, of course, only a dull thud, which she might have taken for a distant car door or the crack of a bat. Who knows what became of the poor thing’s body? If asked about it later, Mrs. Wallace might have pointed out that dogs were not supposed to be on campus in the first place.

Willy hit the boys, all of the boys but not the girls. There wasn’t a pecking order among them as far as I knew. Keisha stayed off by herself. Melody sat to the back but laughed out loud when the boys went at it. It thrilled her to see someone punched or hurt. She and Dante were friends, sort of. Letisha sat at the front and demanded attention. She wore pink hot pants year round. The boys called her a hood rat, an expression I’d just as soon not have understood. The boys liked to tease her. “Hey, what’s with the shorts? Aren’t you cold?” One of them said.

Letisha: “No.”

Willy jumped in, “Yeah, I can see your veins.”

Letisha shook her head. “You cannot.”

Willy: “That’s gross.”

It often got going before I could stop it.

Charles leaned forward. “Hey, darling, you sure you’re warm enough?”

“Shut up, I can wear shorts if I want to.”

Keisha looked concerned. “Mr. L., Mrs. Jackson said girls can’t wear shorts. You’re supposed to send her to the auditorium.” She gestured towards the door.

“Hey, Spellcheck, why don’t you shut up?” Charles was taking over.

“Charles, be cool over there; be nice.” I never told the kids to shut up.

He was getting annoyed: “Man, I hate that.” Now he was looking at Keisha. “Why you gotta snitch all the time?”

“I’m just telling you the rules.”

Now Letisha wanted her chance. “I walked right in front of Dr. Rawls, and he didn’t say nothing,” she explained.

“It’s just another one of our unenforced rules, kids. But thank you, Keisha, for pointing that out. Let’s get back on task, OK?”

Charles wasn’t finished: “Girl, your legs look like they made outta blue cheese.”

“Shut up!”

“Charles, would you...please...”

“Can I have a bite?” He took a bite out of the air. He snapped and growled.

“Tell him to leave me alone.”

“I just said it too cold to be up in here wearing them shorts.”

“Then why don’t you go back to the jungle?” Letisha shouted.

“Ho, whoa, hold on there, you two. Not in my classroom will you talk like that! No way!”

There was a silence.

“Now apologize. Charles? You started it. Letisha.”

“Not to him.”

“Oh, yes, you will. And to me, and to the rest of the class.”

“Sorry,” Letisha whispered.

“Thank you, young lady.” I looked over in Charles’s direction. He had his black hoody pulled up over his head so I couldn’t see his face. “I’m waiting.”

“I didn’t do nothing.” Pause. “What you looking at?” Pause. “All right.”

It sounded like he said “awry”. “Is that your apology?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. Now, I want you to edit your paragraphs, just as I would. Ready?”

But it was Amanda I had to watch. Actually, she was fine but it was crucial that no one be allowed to disturb her. She could be violent if provoked. She was a born enforcer, broad shouldered and muscular. Nobody challenged her. The boys stayed clear. Me, too, but I succeeded in finding a way to get her attention. This girl had a reputation. One of the teachers had told me that the year before Amanda had had to be restrained. She rarely took her seat. The police had to be called in on numerous occasions to help pull Amanda by the ankles out from under the cabinets where she liked to hide. I hadn’t seen any of this. In the first week of school, I had placed complimentary calls to many of the parents including to Amanda’s mother, who, I’d heard tell, was as formidable as her daughter. Her mother was sick of getting complaints from teachers. “I’ve had Amanda all summer long but I never called you.” We laughed. I praised Amanda for coming to class on time with her supplies. I said how happy I was. I thanked both of them. Never mind that she had slapped Dante. Forgot completely about her use of the N-word. Ignored the fact that she’d picked a fight with Zeus. I let that all go and focused on the positive. Next day, I could do no wrong. She not only carried her books; she wanted to carry mine. When I named her student of the week, she danced all the way home. I never had to grab her ankles. When Mrs. Jackson dropped in to check things out, she just stood there. “Mr. L.?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I say that correctly?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Everything all right?”

“I believe so.”

“All right then.” She looked around the room at each student. Then she gave me a nod. She never came back.