“Let’s all calm down,” Mrs. Parker says.
Now there’s a scene. Other counselors and students who are in the counseling center are staring. I refuse to put on a show for them. I stop talking. Stand back against the wall and wait. By the time Mrs. Parker is ready for me, lunch is over. She calls me into her office and sits across from me, behind her desk. “Are you okay to stay at school today or do you need to go home?”
“Mrs. Parker, I didn’t do anything—”
“Jade, lower your voice. I’m only asking you a question. I’m trying to help you. If you need to take a moment and clear your head for the day, you can go home. But if you choose to stay, you’ll have to let go of the attitude and—”
“I want to go home,” I tell her. And I never want to come back to this school again.
“I think that’s a good choice,” Mrs. Parker says. “We’ll start fresh tomorrow.”
“I thought you wanted to hear my side,” I say. “I didn’t do anything, Mrs. Parker.”
“Look, Jade, you’re not in trouble.”
“So you know Ms. Weber is lying?”
“I know both of you probably let this go too far and that it’s a good idea to simply move on from this misunderstanding.”
I bite my lip, hold back the tears that are boiling in my eyes. I think about Lee Lee and Maxine and how they’re always telling me to speak up for myself. But right now I can’t talk. Nothing but curse words would come out, anyway. So I stay silent.
I walk out of her office and go to my locker. Before I leave, I stop by Mr. Flores’s class. He has a prep period after lunch, so I know he won’t have students in his class. His door is open. He’s reading something on his lap top and eating a sandwich. “Mr. Flores?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going home early today, and I just wanted to know if you can tell me what the homework is going to be.”
“Well, sure, but is everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” I tell him. If I talk about it, these tears will spill over.
Mr. Flores talks me through today’s lesson and gives me the homework. “If you have questions, you can stop by at lunch tomorrow.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I look down at Mr. Flores’s computer. The screen has a photo of Natasha Ramsey on it, next to an article. “Bye, Mr. Flores.”
“Bye, Jade. Hope you feel better.”
49
el teléfono
the telephone
“Are you okay?” Sam asks. She sounds like maybe she’s washing dishes. “I can’t believe they sent you home.”
“I know. I didn’t even do anything,” I say.
“Well, you were mouthing off, Jade. I mean, I could never talk to a teacher like that.”
“Yes, you could. Hannah did.”
The water shuts off. I hear dishes clank, then a drawer open and close. “Well, you know why Hannah didn’t get in trouble,” Sam says.
“Because she’s white.”
I can’t see Sam, but I’m pretty sure she just rolled her eyes. “Uh, no. Because she’s rich. Her parents donate a bunch of money to the school every year. She can say and do whatever she wants,” Sam says. “That had nothing to do with her being white and your being black.”
“You know that’s what people are going to say about Natasha Ramsey. That it had nothing to do with her being black.”
“Who?” Sam asks.
There is silence between us.
I don’t respond, because this is not a conversation I want to have. Not with Sam. I tell her I have to go, that my mom needs the phone. I hang up. Call Lee Lee.
50
respirar
to breathe
The first thing Lee Lee says to me is, “I was just about to call you. Did you hear what happened?”
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”
“We had a town hall meeting for students who needed to talk about it. I went,” Lee Lee tells me.
“Did you say anything?” I ask.
“No, just listened. It was kind of pointless. I mean, you know, the usual, ‘If you need an adult to talk to, we’re here for you.’ You know, that kind of stuff.”
“Well, that’s more than my school,” I tell her.
“I want to do something,” Lee Lee says.
“Do something?”
“Yeah, I mean, well, I kind of am, I guess. Mrs. Baker gave us an assignment to write a poem in honor of Natasha Ramsey or any victim of police brutality. But writing a poem doesn’t seem like enough. I don’t know.” Lee Lee’s voice cracks, and she stops talking. I hear her sniffing and breathing hard.
I get up off my bed and walk around my room. “You okay?”
“I don’t know why this making me so, so . . . I don’t know. I mean, we hear about this stuff all the time—and she didn’t even die. It’s not even as bad as it could be. But for some reason I just . . . I don’t know. I feel, it just feels—”
“Too close?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And like it could have been you or me?”
There are no words from Lee Lee, only the sound of her breathing.
We sit there, not talking, just listening to each other’s breath. Just thankful.
51
borrar
to erase
Morning will be here soon and I haven’t slept at all.
How does time go by without you seeing it, hearing it, feeling it? Have I yawned? Did my stomach moan? Did my eyes fade at least once?
I decide to make another piece about York.In Clark’s journals, he wrote that many Native Americans were fascinated with York’s dark skin, his hair, his big frame. I can just hear them asking, What are you?
Where are you from?
Why are you so dark?
What happened to you?
Clark wrote that some of the tribes thought York was magic, thought he was some kind of supernatural being. York would tell them he was a black man, nothing had happened to his skin, he was not a supernatural being. But some of them didn’t believe him. So he joked around with the children, telling them monstrous tales, making himself into an evil, scary being. The children loved to laugh and run away from him. I wonder how he felt at night. When the star-filled sky blanketed him, did he ever think about what his life was like before the expedition? Before he was a slave? How far back could he remember? Did he remember existing in a world where no one thought him strange, thought him a beast? Did he remember being human?