Manuscript Continued
The lynching seemed like another lifetime now. She had taught since she was twenty-four years old. She married a young man named George Jones, and five years later, he died in the war. But, she took to teaching so much that she would have helped in the war effort if she weren’t teaching.
On the first day of school, some of the parents stood there in the back of the class room, still holding their children’s hands. “If you wish to stay,” Mrs. Jones told them, “you may stay at the back of the room.” There were hardly any white children anymore. She said, “Children, listen very carefully. I am going to call your names and you are going to sit where I tell you. Back up now, we need space to make rows for you all to sit.”
They had no desks in kindergarten. Some long tables stood at the very back of the room where for crafts. During most of their days, they sat in rows on the floor. But on the morning of the first day, they milled around their parents in the back half of the room and Mrs. Jones stood in front. Some of the children cried. James’ mother let go of his hand and stood in the very back, as the other parents did. James sat on the floor where he stood, and opened a book from his backpack and began to read as he heard Mrs. Jones call children’s names. He listened as he read. He had adapted to being easily bored.
Mrs. Jones had said, “When I call your name raise your hand without talking and sit on the floor where I tell you.”
Mrs. Jones kept calling out names. James looked up for his mother every now and then as he read. He read for a while longer, and the next time he looked up, his mother was gone. He watched the other parents walk out silently. He saw the children whose name had not been called still standing around him. He looked at Mrs. Jones and she stopped calling the names. She stared at James from the front of the classroom. She walked over to him and looked down at his book.
“We don’t play make believe in my class. I will teach you how to read with the rest of the students.”
“I already read. I read this book…” James began.
“What is it?” she said, interrupting.
“It’s called ‘Discoveries in Outer Space.” He replied.
“What are you, smart?”
“Yes.”
She had a smile across her face that she maintained before she left her house in the morning. It began to wane. She reached for James’ book as he grasped it tightly.
“It’s mine!” he said.
“I will teach you to read with the rest of the students.” She snatched the book away from him and tucked it under an arm grabbed is shoulders and gave him a shake that caused him to lose his breath and sob instantly. “Stop acting like a baby. You’re in kindergarten now,” she said softly. “You’re in school.” She breathed in deeply. She straightened and said softly, I will not have you disrupting my class.”
“I’m not disruptive!” he cried. Decades later, as James witnessed the public execution of another brother at the hands of a law enforcement officer, through what he thought would be a casual glance at his social media account, he held his chest and found the breath that he squeezed shut when she her shook him. He let his olden sob grow into a wail as he put his face down on his desk. He allowed himself the afternoon, and then the entire week off from work, as at first he furrowed his brow, then rubbed his chest, and then let his tears out onto his cheeks.
“I will tell you where to sit, and you will sit there until I tell you otherwise.” Mrs. Jones walked back to the front of the room through the kids who stared mutely. Most of the children looked at the floor. Mrs. Jones began calling out names again. James still felt where her fingers had dug into his shoulders. His head and neck hurt, and his mouth opened wide as he breathed in a silent gasp, without making any noise. A stream of his spittle fell to the floor. He glanced up at her as he stood, looking at his book tucked under her arm. She had called his name. He kept the sobs confined to the insides of his chest, which ached and strained against his emotions. He walked, looking at the black and white tiles on the floor, and he sat where she pointed. He stared at the floor for the rest of the hour, only looking up when she had them repeat, “Yes, Mrs. Jones.
He walked outside and hated Mrs. Jones. He picked up a large red ball and punched it with his fist against the wall. The kindergartners had their own small play area away from the larger children. One of the kids from his class, a boy who sat next to him, had followed him outside and stood close by.
“Hey Jamie,” he asked, “Are you smart?” James kept punching the ball. The kid pointed his finger at Jamie’s face. James tried to walk away but he kept pointing at me, his finger in James’ face.
“I have a sister in the third grade, and another sister in the fifth. I’m going to get the one in the fifth to beat you up, he said.” He was a black kid like James, but very light skinned, the color of an under done pancake, James thought. He had brown curls. He was large with snot caked under his nose. There were mostly black and Mexican children in the class, some mixed race children like this kid, two Asian children, one from mainland China and one from India.
“I was just playing, Jamie. I don’t have no sister in the third grade, and I don’t have no sister in the fifth grade. I don’t know no smart people. Let’s shake.” James punched him as hard as I could on his arm.
“Ow!” he said, “I said was just playing!” He sobbed. “Forget you!” he said and ran off. “Ow!” he said again as he ran away.
Mrs. Jones showed us how to line up after recess, so that they came back in the same order that in order to sit in their same classroom rows. They sat back their rows that Mrs. Jones had spent the morning teaching them. Mrs. Jones read to them from a story book, holding the book up now and then so that they could see the pictures, of little white kids, white like Mrs. Jones. White like the two white kids, whiter than the whiter looking kid he punched, no one looking anything like James. James kept track of the meanness’s inflicted on him, as though one day there could be a reckoning.
Mrs. Jones stood up occasionally to hold the book very high so that the children could all see the pictures, stopping the story just to make sure, and pointing at the pictures. The book had a picture of a house to go with white people, a family of white people with yellow hair. They lived in a house on a lane lined with trees. The children went to school and they had a dog in a yard.
The next day Mrs. Jones talked about the family in a village. She talked about their village, how there were farmers in the fields, and she stood up and showed them pictures. Since seeing only white people in her books happened two days in a row, James grew to believe there was some otherness to his family, because they were left out of the books. James felt the meanness and hated them back, along with Mrs. Jones.
He could not feel anything like grief or sadness without losing his ability to sit in the classroom and answer Mrs. Jones’ questions. He saw how the two white kids in the class glanced around at the rest of them without saying anything the first few times the meanness’s happened. After that, they stopped glancing. And he looked over at the kid from the schoolyard, the one he punched in the arm on the first day.
He measured the unfairness and felt cheated out of something that should have been his, and he kept counting the wrongs as he hated that family in the book and hated all of the people in the story of the village. And the fields in the village. He looked down at the floor and worried about his family because it felt awful to him to think that his parents knew about these things like not being in books, about having to try to be more like white people, smiling when things felt wrong without saying anything. So he kept counting, Because how could parents know, and not talk about it to teachers who might do what they wanted to do with people like him and his family who were not in books? And what about his mother, who tried to get him placed ahead, and how about the principal, and the secretary, all of them who said nothing while Mrs. Jones smiled?
He looked around at the few white kids in the classroom, as they listened to the stories, unbothered. They cheered up as though they liked listening to Mrs. Jones reading. James knew for certain that his books were much better, and yet, he still wanted to look into the mirror and see if he could find out what was wrong with him, to make Mrs. Jones pretend like there was no meanness to what she did, for her to keep reading and showing picture after picture, and not say where any of the other people were in the world. He wondered if he was bad. He wondered if one day, her stupid smile would stop forever.
© Ann Marie Davis 2020 all rights reserved