something over everyone else.
The professor takes a good look at the students and then asks,
What do you think it will take to get us to see?
The professor challenges us to remember.
Wheels turn in one student’s eyes. He closes them and remembers.
PART I
The Cave
1
IT WAS A CLEAR SUNNY DAY in late May, but the inside of that school felt subterranean. Some rooms had an unobstructed window to look out of— initial joy for the view of the sky— blue all around from the bottom to the top of the window— only to be followed by the sinking recognition that plexiglass stood between us and nature. It was a glimpse of the world out there, but so difficult to break through. The plexiglass was deceiving. We were caged in that building like broken animals gone from the jungle far too long.
I sat in English class distracted by images of my brother being thrown across the room the night before. The violence was sickening, yet I tiptoed around it and it tiptoed around me. Violence and I didn’t want to know each other. Not anymore. I had had my share of fights early on. All the kids I fought were bigger than me and I took them to the ground like a lion does to a water buffalo. But those fighting days were behind me. I wanted to be left alone, yet it seemed like people poke you when they know you don’t want any trouble. Teachers do this sometimes.
Mrs. Lumbrera slammed her fist down on my desk.
“Mr. Tortis, what is Twain saying in paragraph four?”
“What?”
“What is he saying? What does he mean?”
“I don’t know… “
“Have you read a single page of the anthology this entire year?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what? Tell me what he means.”
“I don’t know…you’re the teacher. Why don’t you tell me?”
She stood over me with her square, chiseled jaw and flexed her fists together. You would’ve thought this woman was going to beat me down on the spot. Her challenging demeanor warranted the worst from a disturbed student like myself, so she was lucky. Or maybe she knew deep down inside that I wasn’t the crazed girlfriend-beater she had made me out to be a couple of weeks earlier in class.
In anticipation of the summer, I had shaved my head close. I went to eleventh grade English class, settled into my seat, and opened the musty anthology of American literature. Mrs. Lumbrera entered the room and sat down at her desk. The whiff of cigarette smoke sometimes followed her in from the women’s room and no cheap perfume could mask it. She began taking roll. When she got down to my name she paused a moment to observe me after calling my name.
“New look? You look like a girlfriend-beater,” she said.
The class snickered.
“What?” I answered.
“You look like someone who beats their girlfriend; it’s that new haircut.”
If I had been a good military kid, this haircut would have been the norm, and I would have been saluted with a pat on the back, but I wasn’t the good kid. I was the bad one with no hope, no respect. I could’ve changed my style any which way and I’d still be the punk.
Welcome to paradise.
My girlfriend and I were on and off, so Mrs. Lumbrera’s comments didn’t sit well with me. I wanted to run down the hall opening doors, screaming, calling for recruits— out to the parking lot to open our arms to freedom and fresh air— keep running like we were in a music video with a whole crowd behind us. I blew off her statement and she resumed taking attendance. I think she was lucky. How many others thought about clocking her?
I didn’t go to English class the next three days. It was something new every day with that woman. I needed a break. And like so many times before, I was once again suspended for cutting class.
After I erased the answering machine message, I showed up the next day to serve my suspension and meet the new director. Mr. Horton had been transferred into a teaching position and Mr. Kelly, the lowest on the totem pole, had taken over. The bearded man was stocky with a serious demeanor. He had just arrived at our school from Rhode Island where I heard he was a fisherman. As soon as the bell rang he ordered all the students to quiet down and stare forward. This man was serious, but he gave orders with a degree of respect.
The in-school suspension room, known as ISS, was bare and cold. Eight or nine desks faced opposing directions. Some faced the closed curtained windows. Some faced the brick walls. We were expected to sit quietly for seven hours with only one bathroom break and twenty minutes to eat lunch. If we were good, we were able to go on errands or sometimes we’d be lucky and a teacher would send for us for a period or two. This room was the beginning of the end for some of its inhabitants who would go on to make a life out of being locked up.
Throughout the first hour of the school day, Mr. Kelly went around to each of the students assigning them their work. When he got around to my desk, he handed me five sheets of paper.
“Jack, tell me something about you. A story from your life. An obstacle. Change the names of real people. At least five pages.”
In my many previous suspensions, I’d sit and stare at the wall for seven hours. Mr. Horton would let us melt away in boredom if our teachers didn’t send anything. Mr. Kelly’s assignment could help time go faster. I had a lot to say, and I didn’t know where to start, so I settled on telling him about the previous suspension, or at least what led up to it.
2
I CAME HOME to find my brother bleeding from the mouth and my mother crying in the bedroom. It was 11:30 on a Thursday. Don had left for the night. Who knows what he’d done. Who knows when he’d be back. These kinds of things happened mostly when I wasn’t home or when I was upstairs sleeping. It’s not that I was bigger and stronger than Don, but I guess there was something about my presence that spooked him— maybe knowing I had a crazy father of my own out there. I don’t know. Any anger Don directed towards me was passive aggressive. When I wasn’t around he would become another person when he was angry. I only saw a glimmer of this other Don once in a while; most of the time I would only hear about it and witness the aftermath.
My brother was sitting alone with a rag to his busted lip. He didn’t want to talk, but I asked him what happened anyway.
“I bumped into the TV.”
“Again?”
He threw the rag across the room. His red t-shirt was stained with sweat. His troubled red face, bent brows, and pained lips all stared back with hopelessness.
“He’s a motherfucker,” he said.
For a nine-year-old, JP was years ahead in so many ways, yet kept back by too many distractions. He couldn’t stay still. My little brother had the energy of a marathon runner, yet he couldn’t find his way to the race. No direction.
I remember once we went to the Bronx Zoo and he couldn’t
