The Great Expectations School (20 page)

“Five… four…three…”

“Get in line, yo!”

“Come on, get in line!”

Athena's voice towered over the other pleading hisses. “Tay-
shaun
!”

Tayshaun wheeled suddenly and flew at her. “Shut yo' mouth, bitch!” he shouted, clearly imitating something he had seen, and landed a sharp slap to the face. Athena burst into tears instantly, crouching down and holding her cheeks.

“Tayshaun!” I drove him against the chalkboard, my head suddenly light with rage.

Happening past in the hall, Linda Devereaux, stormy keeper of the Alternative Education Strategies in-school suspension room, caught the gist immediately. Tayshaun was one of her regular customers. “YOU LITTLE PUNK! YOU THINK THIS SCHOOL
WILL TOLERATE YOUR DISGUSTINGNESS? LOOK AT ME! YOU'LL BE WITH ME ALL DAY TOMORROW AND EVERY DAY UNTIL YOU STRAIGHTEN OUT YOUR ACT!”

Tayshaun looked past her and laughed. Ms. Devereaux laughed right back with pure fury. “YOU'RE GOING TO WISH YOU NEVER DID THAT. I'll get him at lineup tomorrow.”

Athena's face was not bruised. I told her mother, Ms. Page, the whole story in the parking lot five minutes later. She shook her head, more sad than angry. “I feel bad for that boy. He probably has no parents to teach him right from wrong. It's a shame these kids aren't safe in their own school.”

Tayshaun was not in the morning line the next day. Or the next week. He cut school six days in a row. On Monday, Eddie told me he had seen Tayshaun from a distance that morning. He said, “T-Dog called over to me to go with him, but I didn't. I need to be in school.” I dialed Tayshaun's mother, but the number was now disconnected. I told the office I had a truant student wandering the streets. School security said they would send someone to check it out.

Meanwhile, problems with Deloris hurtled out of control. She told me the woman who came to our parent-teacher conference was not her mother and that she was not allowed to see that woman ever again. Deloris and Lakiya locked horns over nothing substantial as far as I could tell, but neither would let the other alone. “She bothering me!” both yelled several times a day, instigating denials, arguments, and fights. At lunch, Deloris threatened Destiny that the older Barlow sisters would follow Destiny home and jump her. I got so sick of Deloris's terrorizing ways that the sound of her voice repelled me.

On Tuesday, December 16, while I was at the weekly fourth-grade meeting during my prep period, the class went ape on mild-mannered Ms. Samuels. She deducted all kinds of group points and scribbled numerous disturbers of the peace on the Detention List, but they would not settle. When I returned, Cat looked ready to walk out of the Great Expectations School and never look back.

Later, I brought out the coveted Tarheel-blue Economy Candy
bag, full of treats from the famous Lower East Side junk food outlet. I had bought twelve two-dollar Spider-Man chocolate bars to reward my consistent Homework All-Stars, but now the bag felt light. Four bars were missing. The class immediately caught my consternation.

“It was Deloris! She was in your desk when Ms. Samuels was here!”

“I saw her! It was Deloris!”

“Deloris was beasting!”

Deloris exhibited shock at her accusers. “I didn't do nothing!”

Everyone started yelling that Deloris was guilty. I silenced them. Maimouna raised her hand. “Deloris was eating them at lunch. She asked me if I wanted a piece, but I said no.”

“You lie, bitch!”

I sent Maimouna, along with the first two accusers, Bernard and Joseph, to Mr. Randazzo's office. Randazzo was usually willing to play detective and judge for a kangaroo court, and students often left his office puzzled but satisfied over his attention to the matter. However, this time I had lowballed the kids' passion for proving Deloris's guilt. Half of the class rushed out in the hall, anxious to contribute testimony against her. A small melee erupted outside Mr. Randazzo's door. He looked at me as if to say, “What the hell is this?” I ushered my students back into 217 and stared longingly at the clock. Deloris upended her desk, claiming innocence. Marvin Winslow was the only one who did not come out against her.

Deloris had crossed a new line by stealing from me. This violation of my belongings struck me like a personal affront. It nauseated me to picture her opening my desk drawer and riffling through my papers until finding the chocolate, then gleefully showing off her plunder and offering Maimouna a taste.

I left school disgusted and went shopping for my Secret Santa recipient, math coach Al Conway. Chocolates, a classic rock mix CD, and VHS copies of
The Dirty Dozen
and
Rio Bravo
would have to suffice.

A minute after midnight on Wednesday, December 17, the third
and final
Lord of the Rings
movie was loosed upon the world. I was a bona fide Rings fanatic and
Return of the King
had always been my favorite book of the trilogy. Samwise Gamgee was my hero. Six friends were catching the first screening, and there was no way I was going to miss it.

I stumbled out of Middle Earth at a quarter to four and reached my apartment at 4:12 a.m., sixty-three minutes shy of my alarm beep. I couldn't even sleep, though, still charged up from the movie's perilous adventures. I knew I would crash at some terrible point in the coming school day, but I didn't worry about it.

Mr. Randazzo greeted me in the office with miraculous news. “I'm taking Deloris out of your class permanently, starting today. You're beginning to pick things up and she's brutal.” I silently exulted. Then came the rub. “I'm going to throw her in with 4-111.”

Karen's room.

No, I thought. No, no, no. Karen's class is going well. She has her three musketeers (Dequan, Dontrell, and Arthur) relatively contained and a healthy community dynamic. She plays games and holds “Class Council” meetings that could never happen in my room.

Should I stand by for the destruction of Karen's hard-earned positive classroom culture to lighten the burden on myself? I thought about telling Mr. Randazzo to forget about it, and, while he was in the class-switching mood, to send me back Fausto. I could see Pat Cartwright struggling every day. Someone had to teach the sacrificial crazy class. Mr. Spock said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” and he was always right, or at least logical. Then I thought about Sonandia, Jennifer, Athena, Evley, and Destiny, and said nothing.

“Dan, you okay?”

I nodded and went to my room. Karen came by fifteen minutes later. She had already gotten the news. “Deloris's behavior is
terrible,
” I said. “Do
anything
you can to get Randazzo to put her in another room.”

“There's nowhere else for her. Fiore would bitch and moan till she got her way. Mulvehill just got two new kids yesterday, and Cartwright's class is already horrendous. It's all right.”

“No. I'll hang on to her,” I said.

“No. We'll try it out. I'll take her till winter break, and we'll see how it goes. It's okay, trust me.” She said the words, but I don't know if she believed them.

Karen saved my life. With Deloris out, the new 4-217 was a comparative dream. I was able to spread Lakiya, Marvin, Eric, and Bernard to the four corners of the room. Tayshaun was still out of school roaming the streets.

At lunch, Karen said Deloris was silent and polite all morning. “It could just be a honeymoon period, but at least I know she's capable of doing work and being quiet. I sat her far away from Dequan. They seem to be okay with each other.” We both knew Dequan and Deloris had started their third-grade year in Ms. Claxton's class, but got separated when Dequan brought a knife to school to, in his words, “stab her in the titty.”

In the afternoon, I was leading a review of division with remainders when a distinct fart ripped across 217. “What the hell was that?” Bernard shouted.

“Hey!” I countered. “Watch your language.” My voice tripped, and I laughed. In a moment, I recovered my straight face. Gigantic smiles instantly swept the room.

“That's nasty, Athena,” Lakiya mumbled, loud enough for everyone to hear.

I moved to defuse the issue. “Relax, Dr. Ray. It is a perfectly natural—”

WHAM! A second, exponentially more powerful encore thundered out of Athena Page's group two. She pressed her palms to her temples, elbows on the desk, with a tiny smile of guilty amusement on her face.

“You crazy, Athena!” Lakiya screeched.

I couldn't help it. I laughed. Then I couldn't stop. I had one of my dad's signature hysterical fits. Tears trickled down my face. The whole class burst into weird laughter.

“Mr. Brown taking the laughing gas!”

“Mr. Brown gone crazy!”

When the dust settled, it was dismissal time. I was working on no sleep and no over-the-counter meds, but the mix of no Deloris and some maniacal laughter felt better than just about anything else all year. I went home and fell into bed.

Marvin's mother had said in October that he was blind in one eye and that was the reason for his deficient reading skills, but that she could not get him glasses because she was unemployed. I told Ms. Guiterrez about the situation, and she immediately arranged a conference and submitted paperwork to get Marvin state-subsidized eyeglasses. My early encounters with Guiterrez were strange and disconcerting, but when it came to dealing with parents, she was an effective human tornado.

At lineup on Thursday, December 18, Marvin tugged on my sleeve. He looked terrified. “Mr. Brown, I got glasses,” he whispered, his right hand fingering the new soft case in his jacket pocket.

“That's great news! Let me see them!” He shook his head. “Okay, you'll show me when we get to class. I'm sure they look very sharp. I need to get glasses myself,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. He smiled.

At the beginning of the math lesson, Marvin silently slipped on his new glasses. For a moment, he did not look like a lost little boy.

“Marvin has four eyes,” Julissa said. “
Julissa
! Marvin looks extremely good right now and can see sharper than any of you! I'm jealous of how well he can see and I want to get glasses for myself. Group two loses three points for that rude, mean comment!”

It was too late. Marvin had already buried his face in his folded
arms, sobbing. His new glasses were on the floor under his sneaker. I picked them up; they were destroyed.

Edith Boswell and Cheryl Berkowitz had invented the Performing Arts Class program as a fourth- and fifth-grade honors class with some music and drama added in. Both sections (thirty-plus students each) were housed in the same extra-large classroom, separated only by a bookcase. The main event on the PAC calendar was the Holiday Show, a seventy-five-minute singing and dancing extravaganza.

My kids looked forward to the latest annual “2B Production” with fervent anticipation. Aside from Mr. Randazzo's monthly announcements of the lineup rubric winners, they had no assemblies and certainly no music.

Four-two-seventeen sat in the back. I couldn't decipher much of the action since the actors worked without microphones, but Santa was in trouble and Harry Potter, Spongebob Squarepants, and Beyoncé Knowles were contestants on some kind of game show that could get him out of his scrape. Sonandia whispered to me that this seemed like the same show as last year. After a half hour, my kids started to writhe. Eric Ruiz got shushed nine times. The performance closed with a rousing singalong to “Crazy in Love.” Standing by the rear doors, Boswell and Berkowitz radiated embarrassment at their creation.

A man named Professor Darling came to P.S. 85 on Fridays. I had heard things about him: he taught painting at Barnard, he was a close friend of Mrs. Boyd, he did brilliant art lessons. Occasionally I saw him in the hall with his broad leather portfolio.

On Friday, December 19, I asked Mr. Randazzo if Professor Darling could come to 4-217 that day. Randazzo threw me a look that I read as, “How do
you
know about Professor Darling?” He said skeptically, “Do you think they can really handle it?”

“Yes. I think they need it.”

Mr. Randazzo paused, thinking. “All right, you got it. Ten-thirty to twelve.”

Professor Darling had a soft voice and short, curly hair. The kids watched enthralled as he pulled out large photographs of the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower, and the Chrysler Building, which I taped to the board. The professor wrote “SKYSCRAPERS” in large block capitals.

With a blank sheet of oversized drawing paper, Professor Darling illustrated the fundamental elements of a skyscraper from the broad base to the top spires. He passed out notebook-sized sheets and walked the students through drawing their own skyscrapers, step by step. They had never done anything like this before.

After about forty minutes of steady instruction, the professor handed out oversized sheets, like his, for each student to create an imaginary cityscape. Eddie Rollins drew a brilliantly inventive skyline, complete with the Twin Towers, in three-dimensional perspective. Lakiya showed some drawing talent as well. I was sad that Tayshaun, my mad sketch artist, missed it.

I decided to be extra-lenient on enforcing the stay-in-your-seat rule because the kids were so excited to show and talk about each other's creations. At the end, Professor Darling wanted to read Langston Hughes's short poem “City.” I wrangled everyone back to their seats, but they wouldn't stop talking. They had just had their most exciting classroom experience of the year and it was Friday lunchtime, less than a week before Christmas.

Professor Darling had to wait much longer than he wanted to get through the poem, and when he finally read the words, he hurried through it, still without the undivided attention of the full group. Several times he said, “If you can't settle down, I won't be able to come back to this class for another lesson.” When the poem was over, he picked up his portfolio and sadly shuffled to the door without saying good-bye. I chased him outside.