put my silverware down and held my head in my hands. “It was built for a thousand students,” I said, “and they’re expecting over twenty-five hundred. That’s more than twice the population of the town where I grew up. The playground is filled with mobile classrooms, and that still doesn’t solve the overcrowding.”
“So how are they going to manage?” Pastor Paul said.
“By running the school in two shifts,” I said. Everyone shook their heads and made tsk tsk sounds.
“A way to make two schools out of one,” Linnea said.
“Is Miss Huskings still the principal?” Ronnie asked. “She was one scary lady. And creepy?” He lifted his hands up in mock horror. “She used to roam the halls to check on what was going on. We were all afraid of her.”
“I’m a bit intimidated by her, too,” I said. “I get the impression she’s supportive of the teachers but that you’d better not cross her.”
“You can always quit,” Frank said.
I stared at him. Quit? I picked up my hamburger, licked away the mustard oozing from the side of the bun, and bit into it. Three years of marriage and four years of dating before that, and my husband still didn’t have a clue who I was.
~
The first day of school finally arrived, delayed for two weeks by a teachers’ strike that I didn’t understand. At five minutes before seven, the gymnasium was packed, teeming with brown-faced children and pale-faced teachers. I stood with my back against the concrete under a sign in thick black marker posted on the wall that said Mrs. Waters, Third Grade, Section 8. My heart skipped a beat at the sight of the thirty-five students gathered around me, a surging swarm of curiosity and anticipation in a rainbow range of Bronx skin tones. I smiled at them. Some of them smiled back. Others stared, wide-eyed, like deer caught in the headlights.
“Welcome to the zoo,” I heard someone to my right say. I turned to see a short, squat man with a handlebar mustache, about ten years my senior, wearing a wrinkled off-white short-sleeve shirt. A blue and tan striped tie dangled at his neck. With a sinister smile, he waved his palm in mock blessing over his students, who, unlike mine, stood at attention in a straight line. The sign on the wall behind him said Mr. Frascatore, Fourth Grade, Section 1.
“It’s pretty noisy and crowded in here, all right,” I said, trying to be pleasant.
“An extension of the neighborhood.” With a look of scorn on his face, he tipped his head toward the heavy-duty wire mesh covering the towering gymnasium windows along one wall. “Better be careful out there. You could get punched in the face at any time for no reason at all, or worse yet, stabbed in the gut. My name’s Anthony, by the way.”
“I’m Sylvia.” I paused, then added, “I live within walking distance of here. We moved here this summer.”
He snorted and dipped his head toward my students. “They are trainable. But don’t expect them to learn anything.” Then he smiled, exposing square, yellow teeth.
An ice cube settled in the pit of my stomach. I crossed my arms and looked down, kicked at an invisible piece of dirt on the floor. I wanted to say something, but didn’t. I was new, and it was my first day of school. And, having grown up in a family that was averse to arguing, I’d never developed a knack or an appetite for overt disagreement. I turned away from his negative energy, tried not to engage with him or make it seem in any way that I agreed with his reprehensible views.
“Don’t listen to him.” It was the teacher to my left, a sturdy, bosomy middle-aged woman. The reddish-blond hair tied up in a loose bun on the top of her head contributed to the confident look she had of someone who belonged here and knew her way around. She rolled her eyes in Anthony Frascatore’s direction and reached out to shake my hand. “My name’s Bonnie. Bonnie Goldmann. I teach third grade, too. Welcome to P.S. 457. Looks like we made it. We lost a couple of weeks because of the strike, but it could have been worse.”
“What was the strike about?” I asked.
“Depends on who you ask. I support my union.” She gave Anthony a look that I didn’t understand and spoke to him more than to me. “But, in my opinion, walking out now was a mistake. Unnecessary... and counterproductive.”
“The UFT has to take a stand,” Frascatore said. “We have show that OHB board and those ATA folks we won’t compromise.” He swiveled the upper part of his body toward me, saw the confused look on my face, and scoffed. “See that, she doesn’t even have a clue what I’m talking about.”
He was right. All those acronyms—OHB? ATA?—sent a blush up my neck and onto my cheeks. Bonnie gave Frascatore a swat on his arm. “So how much did you know, big shot, when you were new?” She turned toward me. “Forget about him. He’s always like that.”
“I signed up as a UFT member,” I said, “so of course I know the United Federation of Teachers is our union.” I made a face with my lips, an apologetic shrug. “But otherwise he’s right. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
She slipped her hand through my arm, pulled me close and spoke in a low, confidential voice. “OHB is the Ocean Hill—Brownsville school district, where the mayor is conducting a community control experiment in an attempt to improve the quality of education in the black community. A school board made up of folks from that community is in charge of the Ocean Hill—Brownsville schools. It’s a good thing, in my opinion, for the community to have power over how its own schools are run. The ATA is the African-American Teachers Association, which supports community control. The UFT, our union, opposes it.” She pulled away from me then and turned toward Frascatore, raised her voice. “And you know, Anthony, that there would be no need for the ATA if the UFT had lived up to its mission and commitment to integration and civil rights.”
Frascatore stuck his thumbs between the waistband of his black slacks and his belt and leaned back on his heels. “Look, when you’re in a battle, Bonnie, you rise or fall as one unit, you look out for each other. You can’t have a bunch of Muhammad Alis in the ATA marching off to the beat of another drummer to fight a different war.” He marched in place and his shoes squeaked on the gymnasium floor. Then he winked, squeezing together the lids of his left eye and holding it like that for too long to be joking or teasing. Long enough to ridicule but not long enough to be a threat.
The seven o’clock bell rang with a deafening blast that shook the windows and reverberated through my insides. On cue, all the students in the gymnasium silenced themselves and formed lines in front of their assigned teachers.
I smiled at my students and pointed to the sign on the wall. “Good morning! My name is Mrs. Waters, as you can see, but I would like you to call me Ms. Sylvia, okay? May I hear you say it, please?”
“Good morning, Ms. Sylvia.”
One voice rang out over all the others, a voice strong, sure, curious, and ready, a voice deep for a girl, for any child her age, with a resonance that welcomed me in like an open door to a mystery, offering a gift of discovery, an adventure.
“Ms. Sylvia! Ms. Sylvia! My name is Mentayer LeMeur and I have a question about your name.” The girl’s smile was contagious.
“Yes?”
“Why? I mean, why does the sign say your name is Mrs. Waters, but you want us to call you Ms. Sylvia?”
“Good question,”
