Mitchell Jackson - The Residue Years

Son, we can get away from Him , I say. But no one gets so far they can’t get back. I leave, track the line of lambent bulbs to the stairs. There’s a cold that belongs outside, belongs out of this world, in the lobby and through the lobby glass there’s the Honda, parked by the curb, its wheels flecked with dirt. I totter outside and into the street and face the building and search the windows, and there’s my son gazing at me with his arms crossed and a face I can’t make out. I turn away from him and close my coat, this nothing coat, and march off against a treacherous wind.

Last school year me and Big Ken were the emergency contacts. What that meant was, the times they couldn’t reach Big Ken or when they could but he couldn’t get away from work, they called me. They called me more than once too. Baby bro stayed in some elementary school strife: backtalking the teacher, scuffling in the lunch line, forging notes home, was in the office so much the little nigger damn near had a reserved seat in detention. The last time they called they were vague about the transgression, but were clear it was grave, that he had to be picked up ASAP. I got the call while I was on campus between classes. I blew my next class and drove the fast lane most of the way to his school. When I got in the office, the school’s hawk-beaked secretary thrust a stack of carbon copies in my face. Meanwhile, I glimpsed the principal (he and I had had words) in his office nursing a vainglorious-ass smirk. The secretary had security take me down (as if I needed directions) to the detention room, where my bro was stooped over a lefty desk with his faced smashed in his arms. I caught him by his collar and, with the security (a fossilized waif who couldn’t make an infant follow rules) stalking us, I drug him out of the school. It felt like there was a set of eyes pressed against every single window, watching me shove Canaan into the car and slam the door, watching me storm around and seethe at him through my windshield. Me huffing and groping for slick calm. Don’t ask me why I was so hot without the details. Could’ve been the way the principal looked at me or the latent grudge over it being me once again attending the issue instead of Big Ken, instead of Mom, who was still in her program; don’t ask me why, but that day I had a mind to fire on baby bro right there in the bright broad light of the lot. Lucky for him the watchful gaze of a building of witnesses made me think twice. I took out Canaan’s paper and read the script:

Canaan Thomas, a student with a history of behavioral problems, was involved in an altercation with Mr. Glisan. Mr. Glisan ordered Thomas to run lines for dressing down late for class and Thomas refused. Mr. Glisan then asked Thomas to leave the gym, at which point Thomas cursed Mr. Glisan in front of the class. Mr. Glisan requested once more that Thomas leave the gym and report to the principal’s office at once. Thomas responded by tossing a ball in the stands and threatening to bring a firearm to school to shoot Mr. Glisan. School security was alerted and Thomas was escorted to the main office. Thomas is hereby suspended from school pending a hearing for expulsion.

What to do??? Read it once. Read it twice, then asked him, with fist and heart open, for his side of the story. He said he showed up a couple minutes late for class, and in front of the whole team the coach fired a ball at him and said to run suicides. He (my granitehead bro) tracked the ball and kicked it to the other end of the gym (this was a bad move, of course, but as it turns out the lil homie was locomotive) and told the teacher what he could do with his suicides. He claimed that day that the teacher called him a loser and a waste and only then did he curse (another dandy move but youngster was caught, bad breaks to boot, on that steep, steep slope of flawed judgment) and say he’d get his older brother (me) to come the next day and whoop the teacher’s ass. This was what made the teacher call security, not, as baby bro alleged that day (his eyes leaking Oregon raindrops) because he threatened to bring a pistol to school.

Man, they got you in the system now, I said. Satisfied?

For the record, my peoples, yes I know it could have been a snafu picking a side. But who gives a rat’s ass whose story I believed? The end game was this: my baby brother won’t be back in “regular” school (oh, the shit we forsake) for at least a year if ever at all.

At Canaan’s new school (an alternative school housed among a bunch of warehouses) the office, or what I’m guessing is the office, is empty, desolate, so I stride down the hall and peek inside the first open door and introduce myself to a lady sitting behind a messy desk. She greets me all cherry-like, and I tell her why I came. She knows Canaan, his grade, his class, and offers to walk me over.

Canaan’s class is in another building, and from the office to his class you can see the shabby warehouses, forklifts, bereft wooden pallets. Up ahead a semi pulls onto the lot, its engine making the sound of tools knocking, and muscles towards a garage where men in grimy jeans and hooded jackets wait in the cold. My escort stops and rubs her shoulders and points to the building. It’s really awesome you came, she says, her nose and ears chilled soft red. She strides off hugging herself.

Dinged lockers, a lone lefty desk tagged with Fizzuck Mizz. H , a dented trash can, that’s what I see inside. The classroom door is closed, but you can see the teacher (I’m guessing she’s Ms. H) through a window cut in the door. She’s standing by a portable chalkboard dressed in slacks and a blouse. She points to the word DREAM written in giant letters on the board. I crack the door and wave and she smiles and waves, and I stroll in searching for baby bro in the seats. He’s posted in a row nearest the back and sinks in his desk when I look at him. This classroom is all these classrooms. There’s a hand-drawn box on the board with a name in it, a wall of maps showing countries these youngsters, like it was for me and my patnas, got a 0.01 percent chance of seeing as nonsoldiers, a laminated poster of the classroom rules. Ms. H announces me to the class, all boys, and warns them on their best behavior.

What, he posed to be babysittin or somethin? says a youngster with level-five acne. Ms. H tells him to show me respect and the little peon balls a sheet and shoots it well short of the closest trash can.

She asks me if there’s anything I’d like to say.

What pops in my head is the story of old classmates, a pair of fine young gentlemen who had a dope spot near my high school. Every day they’d slouch in a desk by the window and eagle-eye the shit out of their spot, and each day whenever either of them saw a potential lick, they’d blast out their seats and scramble out the class and out of school in competition. They both (go figure) ended up in alternative school and I lost track, but no sooner than I’d waltzed offstage in my grad cap and gown, I heard they got rocked with state racketeering charges. Their fates beyond that? Gent A got bludgeoned to death with a bat in a state prison, and Gent B, well, let’s just say that by the time he sees the free world again, we’ll be booking weekend trips to the moon.

That’s the story that pops in my head, but what comes out my mouth is this: Hey, guys. I’m happy to be here. But we can pretend I’m not. That I’m a ghost.

This, of course, goes for everybody but my baby bro. I pick the desk right behind him and he twists around. I give him the you-best-not-embarrass-me-or-I’ll-fuck-your-young-ass-up look and he slumps lower than even I thought he could. Ms. H waits until I’m settled, then writes REM on the board. When we dream, our brain all but paralyzes us, she says. That’s what happens to us physiologically.