“Good morning, Mrs. Duke,” they repeated in an obedient singsong Osei had heard in every school.
“You may sit down. I’m here to say hello to our new student, Osei Kokote.” She got his last name right but pronounced his first “Oss-I,” with a thick, deliberate emphasis, as if saying such a name required effort. O was not about to correct her.
“Oss-I is from Ghana, is that right, Oss-I?” Her eyes landed just above his head.
“Yes, madam,” he replied automatically.
“Mrs. Duke,” Dee whispered again.
“Well, Oss-I, would you like to stand and tell us something about Ghana?” Though her voice rose at the end, this was clearly a command rather than a question.
“Yes, Mrs. Duke.” Osei stood. He wasn’t as worried as he might be; he’d had to do this before.
“Ghana is a country in West Africa,” he began, “situated between Togo and the Ivory Coast, with a coastline on the Atlantic Ocean. It has a population of nine million people. Its capital is Accra, which is where I was born. It was a colony of Great Britain until 1957, when it declared independence—the way America did in 1776,” he added, because he could see the other students looking baffled. “General Acheampong led a military coup d’état in 1972 and became leader.” Osei remembered the tension that summer when they returned to Ghana—tanks and soldiers with machine guns at the airport. They did not stay in Accra but went straight to his grandfather’s village, where things were as they had always been.
More bafflement. The US had never had a coup d’état, so how could they know? O returned to more familiar topics. “Ghana has a tropical climate: it is warm all year around, and there is a rainy season in the spring and summer. Its main products are cocoa, gold, and oil.”
He stopped, looking at Mrs. Duke to gauge whether she expected him to continue. He hated reducing his vibrant, complicated country to a few bland sentences. But he knew that was what she wanted.
The class was silent. Mr. Brabant was looking out the window and frowning. But Mrs. Duke nodded, satisfied. “Very good, Oss-I. That was very articulate. I always welcome the opportunity for a new student in this school to teach something to others about the world.” She turned to the class. “I hope you will welcome Oss-I so that he will feel at home for the month he is here.”
If only she had stopped there.
“He may not have had the opportunities that you all enjoy at our school, so I hope you will give him every chance to take part in all we have to offer to less fortunate students.”
The last three words made Osei grit his teeth. Mrs. Duke’s comment reminded him of a short story by Shirley Jackson called “After You, My Dear Alphonse,” where a mother reveals her prejudice to the black friend her son brings home. Earlier that year, a well-meaning teacher in New York had had Osei’s class read and discuss it, thinking they were old enough to handle the topic and that it might help with “interpersonal relations,” as she’d put it. Instead his classmates had been awkward around him for weeks afterward.
The principal nodded at Mr. Brabant. “Thank you, class. You may continue your lesson.” After she’d gone, her perfume—floral, too sweet—lingered.
When the bell rang and Dee whispered, “Morning recess,” O let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in. Still, he took his time going outside, heading first to the bathroom—led there by Dee, who seemed reluctant to leave him even when he insisted he knew his way to the playground. “Your friends will be waiting for you,” he said.
She shrugged. “They can wait.”
“They will talk about you.”
She laughed.
“Really,” he said finally. “I will be fine. Please go.”
Then she blushed, but she went. The moment she was gone, O wished she were back again. It was flattering to have someone be so intent.
To his relief the bathroom was empty, but he still used a stall rather than the urinal so that if anyone came in he wouldn’t have to endure the pointed glances to see how big and what color his equipment was.
Stepping onto a playground as a new boy for the second time was harder than the first, where an element of surprise usually carried him through to the safe harbor of a desk. Now, as he passed out of the building and onto the playground, Osei knew people would be waiting for him, watching to see what he did, making as clear as possible that he was not like them.
It was a very different feeling from that which he had each summer as he arrived with his family at the airport in Accra, stepping outside into an intense heat that made sweat break out on his scalp. Apart from the chaos of people and cars, the honking of ubiquitous horns, the taxi drivers hissing to get their attention, the highs and lows of the surrounding voices, the shrieks and cries of a society that did not muffle how it felt, Osei always sensed something much more profound: the ease of being among people who looked like him. His people, who did not stare at him or pass judgment on his skin color. Of course, they might soon judge him on other things—humans could not help but compare—clothes, money, what you studied in school, what your father did and how you spoke and where you went on vacation and how you wore your hair. But that first immediate sense of belonging—and of being anonymous among similar skin tones—was one that Osei welcomed every summer and missed for the rest of the year.
He stood on the playground and watched as blue eyes turned toward him, as conversations died down, as the air thinned so that everything came into too sharp a focus on him.
Not for long, though. As was often the case, sports saved him. Osei was much more confident with balls and bases and goals and teams than with times tables, pop quizzes, and timelines of American history. Sports was a language he was fluent in, because it didn’t require learning new things each time he moved. Cricket and softball had their differences, but swinging a bat or catching a ball or running—these movements transferred easily.