I kept my face even. Joe was a big Italian kid, stout and broad-shouldered. I was about three inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than him, and that extra weight was evident as he stalked across the school’s baseball diamond, dust whirling about his feet. He had just called me a punk. Now he was approaching for a closer inspection to see if his description was accurate. I was the new kid at a new school. This was a test.
I’d just transferred from a pretty rough school, certainly much rougher than this one. Plus, I took a few years of karate, so I was confident that I’d perform admirably, if not dispatch Joe outright. Yet, I felt a slight tinge of unease. I’d never hit a white boy before, especially in front of a school yard full of white boys. And mine was the only black face in the entire school and, as far I was concerned, the whole town.
What had my mother gotten me into? In all fairness, this predicament wasn’t entirely her fault. Here in Belleville, N.J., she was simply trying to erect a protective buffer between us and my errant father in East Orange, N.J., who was swirling in a whirlwind of his own felonious activity: drug running, street fighting and gunplay. Apparently, two towns and a few new faces were space enough. Now I found myself—an alien almost—staring at the sweat beading on young Joe’s brow.
Joe walked up to me, leaned in for closer scrutiny and after a beat said, “Oh. I thought you were somebody else.”
So, the standoff was defused—as easy as that. He balked, mentioning something about how I strongly resembled some other out-of-towner, with whom he had a running feud. We spent the rest of that recess getting acquainted, trading guarded questions and sizing each other up. We were trailed by a throng of male sixth graders. They seemed dazed by the endorphin letdown after the anticlimactic end of my near initiation. Now, I was being regarded with a sort of intense curiosity. How had I—this anomaly—managed to somehow infiltrate their scholastic clubhouse?
My mother was apparently pleased with our new locale (it was Martian landscape to me). She would tout the finer qualities of the neighborhood in hopes of converting me: Did you see the park across the street? You know, there’s an Italian ice stand just down the hill.
Screw that.
I was out of place and gauging by their body language, some of my new neighbors seemed to agree. To make matters worse, I began to lament the loss of eight rich boyhood years that seemed dearer now that they were threatening to drift away. Gone were our house and the wonderment of a backyard that doubled as my own nature preserve. I was AWOL from my unit—the A-Team—a crew of pint-sized ruffians who’d banded together in an effort to defend against taller nemeses.
I grew up on North 16th St., in East Orange. Bragging rights were not taken lightly from 15th through 18th streets. In East Orange, one made a good showing and proved himself worthy of his address.
In Belleville, I suffered some strain of environmental separation anxiety. Where were the Puerto Rican bodegas that maintained my steady supply of Chick-O-Sticks, penny cookies and quarter waters? Here, I got a Krauszer’s. If 7-Eleven ever bore a child, then Krauszer’s would be its afterbirth. That little convenience store was devoid of everything that I regarded as fuel.
Also, I’d never attended a school that didn’t have a proper name. I’d just graduated from the historic-sounding Columbia Elementary School and bypassed the high-sounding John L. Costley Middle School to attend the lowly P.S. No. 8.
How was I to muster affection for a school that sounded like some sort of knockoff mail-order fragrance? Of course, I understood that my father had turned feral and that my mother was escaping a heaping portion of misery. But in my shortsighted, childish naïveté, I was convinced that I’d drawn the short straw. It was as if her only tangible readjustment was a new residence; her job remained the same, her co-workers unchanged. Everything that I knew was whitewashed—most significantly, a school where I felt an outcast.
My sixth-grade teacher was old-school; a strict disciplinarian, severe in appearance with a tight, curt demeanor. I was relieved that her standoffishness was not directed just at me but to the majority of my classmates as well. I was perplexed when I learned that she taught the class that lagged behind academically. This was an unforeseen blow. Where was the test to determine my scholastic aptitude? I’d just graduated the fifth grade in great academic standing, and as the class president, no less. Was it general principle to assume that since I was black and from an underserved community that I needed to be corralled with the dunces without regard to my previous achievements? I didn’t help myself by performing poorly on the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) shortly thereafter, lending credence to the notion that I might have been in the right class after all. I was almost certain that the B in ITBS stood for cultural bias.
Reeling from those setbacks, I was sent into a deeper tailspin when the school’s speech-and-language therapist materialized in the doorway of our classroom. At Columbia, the person in that capacity dealt with kids that slurred, lisped or stuttered. I had none of those afflictions. Nonetheless, I was listed on her roster and was to have my speech evaluated—worse, right then—in front of a jury of my peers. Robert, a classmate, was also on the list. He would go first.
“Robert, say rabbit.”
“Wabbit.”
“Say wristwatch.”
“Wistwutch.”
She frowned, scribbled into her clipboard and then turned her sights on me. I repeated her words as I heard them, secure in the fact that I didn’t sound like anything voiced by Mel Blanc. But I was at the brink of panic when, at the end of my inquisition, she asked me to repeat “in” six times in a row.
“In…in…IN!”
I heard a snicker from behind and a feminine voice coo, “Weirrrrd.”
There was more scribbling, more frowning and then the brusque order that Robert and I report for speech therapy. I was beyond confused. Robert and I were not in the same proximity with regard to vocal execution. Truthfully, I didn’t exactly speak the Queen’s English, but there was no queen in Belleville, and I was far from unintelligible. I was being targeted for my urban patois and I felt utterly demoralized. Defiant, I never reported to therapy. Thankfully, no one cared enough to come looking for me.
Socially, I fared a smidgen better. I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t admit that the change of venue allowed me to elevate my social standing in some aspects. At Columbia, I was a middle-tier tough guy, not exactly an alpha dog but definitely not a cur. In comparison, at P.S. No. 8, I was a duke of the school. The duke was an old, East Orange–neighborhood term that referred to the one guy with whom you didn’t tangle. Joe and I shared this title while maintaining a tolerable friendship. Neither of us was in a hurry to discover that perhaps the other might be the truer duke.
I never actually had to fight to defend my status. A few shows of playground strength coupled with the usual stereotypes about black athletic prowess were enough to make most takers back down.
I recall the one recess when my classmate Ariel and I were engaged in some trivial, playground spat. Ariel was a thin boy, who was so pale that you could spy his bluish-green veins just underneath his skin. He was a usually agreeable kid but prone to bouts of neurotic behavior when under the slightest duress. Thus, as I was peppering him with quick, derisively witty barbs, he must have felt at a disadvantage. Ariel decided to even the match by wielding his verbal Hiroshima. He called me a nigger.
I was first stunned into silence and then began to seethe, white-hot with anger. I searched my arsenal and discovered that I didn’t posses an insult that could put us back on even footing. I tried a few but they paled in comparison. And he, sensing my inability to rally, closed in—Enola Gay fashion—and dropped a few more racial bombs on me for good measure.
I fumed for the rest of that day and concluded that my only recourse would be to wait for him after school and beat him like a drum. Hell, I was allowed. It had to be in the rules somewhere. So when school let out, I waited at an intersection that Ariel crossed daily. Carlos was the crossing guard at those four corners despite being only slightly older and a schoolmate to boot (it might have been because vehicular traffic was near nonexistent at that junction).
I struck up a conversation with Carlos. My intent was to feign conversation with Carlos, pretending to be uninterested in Ariel. When my prey approached, I would ambush him. I revealed my intentions to Carlos. He was Hispanic and I felt that he, being a minority, could sympathize with my plight.
But it was Carlos who saved Ariel that day. As Ariel approached, Carlos’ face began to morph into a brew of fear and revulsion. The closer Ariel got, the more Carlos’ face contorted. And then it dawned on me: Carlos didn’t sympathize.
I was wrong in my assessment of Carlos as a minority. He was raised in Belleville. And perhaps because he was rather fair-skinned and possessed no accent, was allowed to assimilate more efficiently than I. As a result, there could be no commiserating between us. He’d never fully understand the hurt stewing in my belly, the deflation of pride or punctured spirit. An attack on Ariel would’ve portrayed me a savage. That realization sapped my emotional energy.
The momentum that I needed to jump Ariel was gone. He was off the hook. I turned on my heels and meandered home—drained. Still, Ariel must’ve gotten word of his near demise, because from that day forward, he gave me a wide berth and was always uneasy in my presence.
As the days rolled along, things got better for me. I still didn’t have close friends but got along with a few guys. I was able to reestablish and maintain contact with some of the old gang in East Orange, which curbed my longing for home. I didn’t have a girlfriend, but Brenda, who was part Brazilian and very cute, was always nice and said I looked like Theo from The Cosby Show. I endured my share of letdowns: A game of tag that descended into everybody-run-from-the-black-kid, the appalled look on my gym teacher’s face upon discovering that I couldn’t shoot a basketball, the dismayed look on my neighbors’ faces when I introduced them to hip-hop music while it rudely emanated from my boom box.
Mercifully, the letdowns were tempered by some minor triumphs: discovering that the Italian ice stand sold nearly addictive hotdogs, playing my beloved clarinet even if my best tune was “Green Sleeves,” the astonishment my mother and I felt upon answering our doorbell to discover that Christmas carolers actually exist outside of television and the joyous sensation of being academically exonerated when I was moved to the honors English class.
And then it was over.
My father regained his moral compass through a potent spiritual awakening at a Sunday-morning church service. He wooed my mother back and began blazing a new legacy—as an upstanding street minister who successfully converted the wayward. Yet, I was angry again. I’d just gotten used to Belleville. The neighbors were starting to cease regarding me as some curiosity that sprouted from a vacant townhouse. Soon, we were moving back to my father’s house in East Orange.
My last day at P.S. No. 8 was quite eventful. Most notably, I recall Joe and I, standing side by side, writing some forgettable lesson on the chalkboard. He whispered, “I’m gonna miss you, man. Really, I’m going to miss you.” I couldn’t reply, lest my voice crack in emotion and be accompanied by tears. Dukes don’t cry.
As I was departing, my usually rigid teacher grabbed me by both cheeks and gave me a kiss on my left one. It was an air kiss. It was the best that she could muster. “Sorry to see you go,” she said, “You were really coming around.” This was a monumental improvement on her initial assessment of me. Her first reaction to me had been to tell my mother that I behaved like I had something to prove. She couldn’t have been more right.
And I did prove several points—all of them to myself—points about how to persevere and not be hindered by life, about the resiliency of spirit. Adversity builds character. Isn’t that the cliché? Hardships with myriad other indeterminate factors will elevate some men and send others into an abyss. What is evident is that I, as the survivor of those trials, was fortified by the awareness that I could withstand life’s trials and endure, and then endure again.
A few days later, I was in the hallway of the John L. Costley Middle School in East Orange. Damien was my height exactly but 10 pounds lighter. There were no dukes at Costley—only a hierarchy of restless, unguided adolescents with varying degrees of malice. Damien was affiliated with the groups that were already compiling impressive rap sheets. He thought that I was a punk. He tested his theory with a swift, violent kick aimed for my gut. I blocked it, squared up and stared him intensely in the face.
I was the new kid. This was a test.
Galen R. Faison is a library assistant and a communication major at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His essay was written in Michael Zeugin’s class. Posted September 2008.
