alex & alchemy: high school Sunday, May 4 2008

Alex slams his long body into a tiny desk in the second period math class about four feet from where I sit behind the absent instructor’s stolid wooden desk. His kingly, entitled appearance is marred by a huge scowl on his face. I hand him a test left for the class by their instructor, he grabs it, plugs himself into iPod and scribbles away.
I immediately have some ideas about him, some of which make me cringe inside: He is tall, muscular and lithe with macchiato skin and a halo of wooly hair. He has attitude and is seething inside with the angry edge of it. Trouble. He must be a basketball player, all arms, legs, lean height, the perfection of good-quality baggy clothing drapes his athletic form, black and red, the school colors. A young Othello jock with attitude.
Like I need this today – but then again, it’s part of the experiment. Recently, in order to survive the unexpected challenges presented to me as a substitute teacher in local schools, I decided to view the job as that of an itinerant anthropologist making keen observations on the realities of our current education system and in particular, the adolescents who populate it.
Alex loves alchemy, but this morning it is not doing anything for him; his alchemy is not attracting anything but shit and now here he is in math doing a busywork test and this sub is here to eagle-eye them so he tunes her out alright with his iPod, the music washes over his brain then pulls the math-making cells together and he sails through the test, stupid test where people can do it in groups. Not what he wanted the day to be like. The mix is all wrong and the alchemy is just a magnet attracting lead flakes and crap.
Alex finishes the nonsense test in record time, flips it over to me, sits sulking at his desk. What a spoiled brat.
He pulls out what looks to be a carefully typed English paper, the one he didn’t get to hand in because he was 30 seconds late to English class. Bitch. It looks impressive, I can’t help but look at it, with its cover sheet proclaiming it is about “The Idiot” by Franz Kafka. Kafka? Alex futzes with the paper, opening it page by page, slapping the pages back down. I see his name: Alex Henry Cole.
“Did you write that paper?”
Wha? You talkin’ to me? “Yeah,” he mutters.
Can I see it, it looks really interesting. I teach English when I’m not doing this.
Say WHAT? “Okay, yeah, here.” I take the paper, read through it. I am aware that plagiarizing is rampant when it comes to analytical English papers, but this one is too full of funny loopholes in spelling, awkward expressions, long drawn out roads when a quick spin to the point would suffice. It’s good, I think, Yeah it’s really good. He gets it. Bing! Paradigm shift.
What the hell is she thinking? “Why don’t you give me a grade, she wouldn’t take it.”
“Who?”
“The teacher. She wouldn’t take it cuz I was 30 seconds late to class.”
“That’s too bad, because it’s a good paper.”
“Wanna stick of gum?” I take one.
“Do you like to read?”
“Oh yeah!” Warming up. “I like to read about alchemy, y’know. I’ve read The Alchemist like 20 times.”
“Cool. What else?”
“Stuff about the Law of Attraction, like by Esther and Jerry Hicks.”
Bing Bing! I am being slaughtered as preconceptions peel off my brain like a scalped skin. Just last year I was a temporary convert to the Hicks school of enlightened you-get-every-thing-you-want school of living. Not that I don’t believe in magnetized occurrences: look what’s happening here.
“The Law of Attraction?”
“Yeah, like alchemy: you draw what you want to you. You set it up, y’know. You change it around, fix it straight like you want it.”
Funny I think, that he’s attracted a rejected paper but then, attracted this conversation about it. Now, where’s the alchemy?
“It’s a good paper, a thoughtful paper. You like Kafka?”
“Naw, I mean he’s okay, this Idiot book has some ideas, like about the definition of schizophrenia. I’d rather think about alchemy.”
“I bet if you ask the teacher again, she’ll take the paper.”
“Oh, she will,” he says firmly. I’ll set that alchemy on the bitch.
I want to learn, damnit! “I hate school, hate it. Look at this dumb class. A test, we’re taking a test, in groups! Hmmpf.” He raises his proud chin and I see Othello drawing in his brow during Act III. “’Tis is the green-eyed monster which doth mock.” What mocks him? The rejection of his paper? His black skin shimmering in the sea of the school’s predominately brown population? Is “different” the monster with green eyes?
If this place doesn’t burn him up alive but burns him the gleaming gold of what he could be, I have a vision: The no-nonsense passionate professor drilling away at his students who fear and love him. That could be his future. Right now it is disappointment, disgust, distraction.
The bell rings and students stream out of the classroom like wild things, the hall is a hive of wasps, and Alex stands up to go. “So like, have a nice day.”
“Yeah thanks.” I reach into my bag and pull out a crumpled copy of an essay that I love by John Gatto, “The Educated Person” — “Here, you’ll like it.”
“An educated person writes his own script through life. He is not a character in anyone else’s play, nor does he mouth the words of any intellectual’s utopian fantasy,” Alex reads aloud quickly. “That’s ME!” He spins out of the room and into the deafening roar of the hallway.
Later I see him sitting high up on a concrete wall, cell phone plastered to his ear, making cool eye contact and nods to scary-looking guys with shaved heads like peeled boiled eggs. Yo, brother. Hey.
He gave me a moment, transformed my expectations. Now he’s shape-shifted to another dimension. The perfect alchemist.

c 2008

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jacob in special education: high school Sunday, May 4 2008

Note: This is the first in a series of vignettes chronicaling my journey into various classrooms – in both public and private charter high schools – as a substitute teacher. I also include stories about students I have encountered in community college and college settings for 17 years. The vignettes combine real events with the creative spin of my inner observations. All characters are composite.

He felt like nothing.
Classroom is grimy, reflecting the zero-colored light streaming in from a long barred window. The instructor is gone for the afternoon. “Coach”. He coaches some kind of sports and he teaches Jacob’s class. But today Coach is gone. In someone else’s eyes, Coach might be a former football player who drank beer and didn’t do much in college. That’s why he’s teaching here in this classroom cuz he doesn’t have to work so hard. Jacob imagines things about the man called Coach, things like he’s seen on TV with big white guys. Coach must have been an Army guy: his desk pad has Army stuff on it, and there are little magnets with military pictures on anything metal on his desk. Coach might also be said, upon observation, to have little sense of décor. The walls are empty as a stare except for the “Procedures for Crisis Intervention” poster tacked up by a window.
Before he left this afternoon, Coach showed The Sub the room , and gestured at Jacob and Charlie and said to keep an eye out, puffed out his chest, and said he was off to coach a game for the rest of the day. It was unnecessary to make eye contact, Coach just wants to leave. He has his two little sugar-cube kids with him, they eat mini-bags of Doritos and dart around the desks, little rabbits. He leaves without saying goodbye to Jacob.
* * * * *
On the chalkboard Coach has written four questions for students to ponder the next day when he will also be away coaching whatever; two have misspelled words. Jacob would not know this so it is nothing to him.
Five computers line the wall left of the door that has no window. From the outside this door seems to be a portal into an insane asylum and remains locked.

Jacob logs on to YouTube to watch “real-time footage” of “Gang Fights”. Coach said they could do this. He hears Coach tell the woman “if they keep looking at the pictures, you know, just tell them to get back on-task.” Coach doesn’t tell her what the on-task part is. Jacob watches the Bloods and Crips push one another around and kick stomachs and heads. Little photographic worlds line up on the screen, all of them with somebody knocking somebody else down, or showing off tattoos, or prowling around in search of someone to smash. Jacob giggles and fixates his eyes on the flickering images, then logs onto “Girl Fights”. The girls are all hot and he knows such a girl — with her sweet-nasty face and tight torn jeans and rumpled hair grabbed into the fist of another girl – a girl like this would never look at him. So he looks at them fighting instead and they know that somewhere out there in the World they are being watched and they look right at him and sneer.
After Coach leaves The Sub talks to Charlie. Only him and Charlie are in the room today. She talks to Charlie about tagging and gets Charlie off the “Gang Fights” site and onto a site with brightly painted taggings on buildings and water towers, power company poles, and they look at the gang symbols too. Those are beautiful she says. Look at those colors and the way the lines are made, some of these are pretty creative. She asks Charlie do you like to draw and Charlie says he likes pictures.
Then The Sub walks over to the chalkboard where Coach had wrote his questions and uses her finger to erase two letters in two different words and then she writes in two different letters.
Jacob is not curious about The Sub and why she is now walking around the tiny classroom with its faded light, with a Tootsie Roll pop stuck in her mouth. Bloods and Crips continue to stalk each other right in front of him and someone always falls to the ground, then gets up again. Like a cartoon. Damn, here she comes and she asks can she join him. He is nothing and has no power to say ‘no’ and it’s kinda strange she would ask could she sit and watch instead of ‘get off the gang stuff Coach said to stay on task, this ain’t a movie theatre, yah yah yah.’ She asks a shitload of questions like what was this guy doing to that guy and why? Who is wearing red (Bloods, like blood, y’know, Stoopid) and who was in blue? duh. Why’s this person got a bandana tied around his face? Is he hiding, is he ashamed of himself or something? It ain’t nothing but she keeps at it like his kid brother. These guys are in L.A. – Los Angeles – aren’t they? she asks. Dunno. Shrug. L.-A. she said, like it was another planet: L – A; Jacob suddenly wants to go to L – A and smash someone for real maybe and go to DisneyWorld. But being nothing he sits here forever in this greasy snot-colored room where normally he listens to Meathead telling them to read the newspaper sports page and find game scores, then write them down for class work.
Look it’s snowing she says. Charlie and Jacob stay in gang fight world. Snow’s nothing. There is nothing out there. Now she’s walking around the room, standing by the window, then looking at books about how to act if you want to get a job.
Mr. B. from Spesh-Ed english comes in slurping on a big ol’ McDonald’s cup like it’s his baby bottle. Mr. B. sits down by Charlie and starts reading the sports page. He’s like huge – like one of those wild pigs in Arizona, a javelina, yah. He ignores The Sub and Jacob. Him and Charlie look at the gang fights and talk about whatever. It seems The Sub tries to talk to Mr. B but Mr. B ain’t gonna to talk to her. She kinda like flicks herself and twitches off and Jacob knows she’s pissed. Mom does this when the stepdad says he’s going out for beer but she knows he’ll stop to see Esquivel his friend with the meth.
So Mr. B dis’es this Sub chick like she’s nothing. To Jacob being nothing is nothing new, maybe it is to The Sub. He doesn’t care what’s her name or why she asks so many questions or why she seems to like tagging, why get that close to anyone. He’s got the close he needs with these Bloods and Crips now, living the good life on the screen. Jacob chews his fingernails and his feet do a little jig of restlessness. At least no one will slap him on the head for moving, when it’s just nothing, y’know? He doesn’t know that The Sub wonders if he gets smacked at home and that she is watching his feet dance in their big goofy black trainers and looking at the purple mark on his head.
Bus bell goes off and it’s time to leave. The Sub watches Jacob turn off the computer and hurry to leave, pulling up his baggy bad-ass shorts and tugging down the oversized black t-shirt. He rubs the stubble on his round shaved head. Outside it’s cold; he feels that in his short-sleeved shirt, no jacket, but it isn’t dope to need anything. There’s nothing to do on the damn bus except sit by Charlie and stare out the window and maybe laugh when Charlie says something funny like “Dude!” his new favorite word. Ride to his road, now walk up to the house. The religious channel is on and there sits the grandma watching, nothing in her head for sure. Nana stares at the screen and a white guy asks for money. Nana blinks. The grandma don’t even know he’s there, mom’s sleeping off whatever shit she did to herself this morning. Bedroom door is closed.
The house is cold shadows and smells like cigarette smoke, beer, old coffee and burnt toast. The stepdad is gone and the peanut butter jar is open on the kitchen table with a knife stuck into it like the peanut butter is a dead guy. Jacob likes his own joke. If his brother Moises was around he’d tell him what he sees and they could laugh. The dead guy is nobody but peanut butter. It’s fucking freezing in this dead zone.
* * * * *
When The Sub leaves the building she wonders where Jacob lives, if his parents are both living there, if he will eat a decent dinner tonight. She knows she’s made a lot of assumptions about the place she’s been spending her time today, and the people. She wonders what makes a kid be Jacob, where the real Jacob is — lost in some measurable brain blip, or carefully folded inward, like an unopened origami bird. For all she knows, Jacob could have the most beautiful wings.

c 2008

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