“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths…” I’d begin.
Patrick would turn serious, assuming a grave air, nodding encouragingly, as if I were a child. He knew this poem almost by heart, and he’d wait anxiously for each right word.
“Enwrought with silver and golden light—no.” I’d furrow my brow, I’d stop, I’d search…“Golden,” I’d try, mangling the line. “Golden and silver?”
I’d check Patrick’s expression for assurance: Now his brow was yanking inward; he didn’t want me to fail.
I’d continue: “Of night and light and the half-light,” I’d say. “I would spread the cloths…”
Patrick would shake his head, interrupting me in a mild voice. “You be skipping a line, Ms. Kuo.”
“Are you sure?” I was buying time.
He’d wait.
“Give me a hint.” Stumped, I’d give him my best expression of mock despair.
Another student would have burst out loud with the answer, showing off the fact that he knew. Perhaps I was that kind of student. Patrick was quiet; he hoped I would figure it out.
“Oh!” I’d remember. He was right; I had skipped a line. “The dim and the blue and the dark cloths,” I’d try.
“Closer,” he would say. He didn’t want me to win by cheating.
I’d look at him blankly.
Finally, he would relent. “The blue come before the dim,” he’d say. “Like life.”
8
* * *
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
What’s a brook?
A little river.
Meadows parching—if parch means dried up, what will happen?
No more brook.
So what will happen?
No more peace inside.
He likes these lines of Yusef K. (my favorite, too!) This man who stole roses and hyacinth for his yard, would stand there / with eyes closed & fists balled
His assonance homework, lovely:
long, strong, bone
bee, tree, leaf
when we memorize he always gets this line right: And like a thunderbolt he falls
—Notes about Patrick from my journal, 2009
WHEN I DECIDED TO COME back to the Delta, I wanted to do what I viewed as the moral opposite of publishing a piece of writing about my past experiences in The New York Times Magazine. Instead of remembering the Delta inside my room at a far remove, I would talk to people. Instead of fixing Patrick to the page, mourning him as if his life were over, I would help get his life started again. If I did continue writing, I would permit it under certain conditions: It would not be a “personal essay”—personal meant indulgent—but rather a sweeping history or sociology, which had scope and ambition. These were the books I read in college that had equipped me with an understanding of race and poverty and pushed me to come to the Delta in the first place.
But the contents of my notebook betrayed me. It told me what I really cared about. It was about Patrick, just Patrick: about his handwriting, about the crazy way it looked at first; about how he stared at the picture of the Faun crying; about memorizing poems and why it seemed to mean so much; about how hard it was teach, how easy it was to regress, what it was like to learn. My relationship with Patrick—wasn’t this the core of it all? Until I saw him in jail, it had never occurred to me that a student could regress or that we could resurrect roles in which we’d previously failed.
—
“THINK OF IT as a very little guy,” I said.
I was speaking about the apostrophe. “It’s not nice to forget him just because he’s so little. Don’t be a mean friend.”
Patrick laughed.
“Ms. Kuo, I bet you got a lot of friends.”
“I have a few good ones,” I said carefully, “which is all you need.” This was a lie. I had more than a few.
“Danny and Lucy, you know them from college?”
“No, from teaching. Danny was my first friend here.”
“He be a good teacher?”
“The best.” Then I asked, “What about you?”
His mood shifted. “Friend,” he said, emphasizing the word with an ironic tone. “Are they friends if they get you killed?”
We were quiet.
“I got you,” he said. “And I got my mama and my sisters. That all I need.
“Ms. Kuo,” he said suddenly—something else was on his mind. “Do me a favor and get me some more cigarettes from my daddy today?”
Even though I wanted to be there for him, I was feeling pressed. I had told Jordan I would finish out the semester at KIPP, so I still had packed days. “I have work.”
“When you get off work?” he asked.
“Six,” I said, though it was five.
—
I WENT TO Patrick’s house later that evening to get the cigarettes. Patrick’s mother came to the door and knew at once who I was. She waved for me to come in. I’d hoped she would be home. I was filled with curiosity about her, because Patrick loved her most of all. In a letter he had written to her, he’d said: I miss you too much to keep writing.
In her arms was a child: Patrick’s daughter. Cherish. It had to be her. She had big cheeks, a big jaw, and resembled Patrick. Her braids dangled prettily, framing her face, tied at the ends with pink and blue beads.
“It’s Mary, right?” I said. “And Cherish.”
She nodded and smiled as if she was about to cry.
“You know when Pat’s court date be?” she asked.
Patrick was still in legal limbo—arrested, charged, and in jail, but with no trial date. I told her the delay was terrible, that it wouldn’t be allowed in big cities. “It was supposed to be last month, in November, you know. But now they say it’s going to be in February.”
She nodded as Patrick’s father had, accustomed to the legal system.
“Patrick’s doing well,” I said.
Hearing this, she at once relaxed.
“Patrick say you an angel watching over him,” she said. “I do believe God is helping us, I do believe that.”
“I’ve been giving him homework; he’s been reading every day, working on his own mind, you know,” I said.
Now her attention strayed. I took out some of Patrick’s homework to show her.
Mary looked absently at the page, not seeming to realize I wanted her to read the actual words.
Pam emerged suddenly from the back of the house and went straight to her niece, stealing her from her grandma, sweeping up the baby so that they touched noses.
“She know a lot of words now, Ms. Kuo.” Pam was bragging. “Quit, no, chair.”
The two disappeared to play.
“I heard you’re a cook at the retirement home,” I began.
“I fry a lot of fries, chicken, and fish; that’s what they love. Older people love that fried chicken and fish.”
Mary was open. This wasn’t the proverbial gregariousness of a Delta storyteller but rather a person without defenses, without secrets, whom it was easy to ask much of. I asked if she liked working there.
Mary said, “My boss, he’s real sweet. He’s real quiet. He walk around with his head down, but he smiles. He’s from Helena, go to Tennessee, come back. He gave us a two-dollar raise.”