“He’s shut up in that house but he still cares about Jem and Scout. He lives his life through them,” a boy called out and Rocky nodded. “He looks out for them, keeps them safe.”
“All kids need folks to look out for them,” she told her class. “But motherless kids, well, they can have a great dad and they can have a great brother but, in the end, Jem and Scout were lucky they had Boo.”
At her words, Layne felt his chest seize and the auditorium got deathly quiet. She hadn’t talked about that when she was telling him why she loved To Kill a Mockingbird twenty years ago.
“Did you…” a girl started then paused, calling up the courage to go on, “did you have a Boo, Ms. Merrick?”
The auditorium grew silent again, this time it was uncomfortable because it was a personal question, asking too much.
But Rocky didn’t hesitate with her response. “No, Brittany, I never had a Boo. That’s why, when I first read To Kill a Mockingbird, it was all about Boo.” She leaned forward and put her forearms on her thighs. “See, that’s the beauty of books. We get to take what we want out of them and it can be different for everyone. You get a good one, you may even find what you need. I needed Boo when I read that book the first time and I got him, so, in a way, I did have a Boo. The Boo. The second time, I needed my mind opened. The third time, I needed Atticus. That’s why this is such a brilliant book. Firstly, because it is brilliant. Secondly, because every time you read it, you get something new out of it.”
“You needed your mind opened?” a boy yelled.
“Yep,” Rocky answered. “You taste injustice, even if it’s fictional, really taste it, it has a way of doing that. Sometimes, you can never put the shoe on the other foot. We can’t go back in time and know what it was like to be a black person then.” Her eyes scanned the all white faces of her class and she went on. “Even today, when things are supposed to be so much better, not one of you can understand what it’s like to be black, to live with the knowledge of what happened to your ancestry and still face injustice. But that book makes us taste it and, reading it, we know how bitter that taste is and we know we don’t like it. But that bitter wakes you up, and when you wake up, you open your mind to things in this world, you make yourself think. Then you’ll decide you don’t like the taste of injustice, not for you and not for anyone, and you’ll understand that even though all the battles can’t be won, that doesn’t mean you won’t fight.”
“Like Atticus,” a girl called out.
“Like Atticus,” Rocky repeated on a smile and sat straight. “Atticus Finch is the most beautiful man I’ve ever met in print. He’s a good dad and he does what’s right, not what’s safe, not what’s popular. What’s right. He’s gentle. He’s smart. He’s strong. He’s decisive and he’s willing to follow through with his decisions, no matter what the odds. Even if it means doing something heinous, like walking into a street and putting down a rabid dog. Taking the life of another being to put it out of its misery and make people safe. If you only read that one scene, you’d know the beauty that is Atticus Finch. Lucky for us, we had that whole book to get to know him.”
“Is that why you think he’s hot?” a boy asked.
“Yes, Zach, that’s why I think he’s hot,” Rocky answered.
“I liked it when he sat outside the police station and faced down the crowd,” another boy called out.
“That’s good too,” Rocky told him on a smile.
“I liked the courtroom scenes,” a girl shouted. “They rocked!”
“Yes, Luanne, they did. Except for the verdict, they definitely rocked,” Rocky agreed.
“The verdict sucked,” a boy yelled.
“Did it make you angry?” Rocky asked him.
“Well, yeah,” he answered.
“How angry?” Rocky asked.
“It ticked me off,” the kid returned. “I had to quit reading for awhile.”
Rocky smiled at him and asked, “And why did it tick you off?”
“Because it was wrong,” he replied.
“It was more than wrong, Will. It was injustice,” Rocky jumped off the stage, the movement liquid, landing gracefully on her high heels and she walked to stand close to the class. “Open your minds and learn from this tale. Do not stand still for injustice. If you know something isn’t right, find your strength and stand against it. I’m not going to kid you that it’s easy, it’s not. If you think Atticus Finch went home at night and slept easy because he knew he was doing the right thing, you’re wrong. He worried. He worried for his children. He worried for himself. He worried for his town. He worried for the world he lived in and his children were growing up in. He worried for the man he was trying to defend. And he knew he was going to lose. He knew it. But that didn’t stop him. Because even one voice in a wilderness of ignorance is a voice that is heard by someone. Because every woman and man, no matter their color or their religion, is entitled to a good defense. And because Jem and Scout would grow up to be like their father, spreading his wisdom, understanding his compassion and sharing his strength which are the only, the only weapons we have against injustice.” She walked along the front of the class but her eyes scanned the kids while she did it and her gaze was focused, piercing every last kid. “If you’re nothing else in this life, be wise, be compassionate and be strong because those three things are everything.”
There was utter silence until the boy named Dylan shouted, “I’m strong, Ms. Merrick, I can bench press two fifty.”
The other kids hissed, called insults, some threw wads of paper at him and one yelled, “You’re so full of it, Dylan, you can’t bench press a Barbie.”
Rocky was standing in front of the class, arms crossed on her chest and a smile was on her face.