Finding My Thunder (23 page)

“Would
you like to explain to the class how you used chemistry in everyday life over
the summer?” Mrs. Spencer asked, eyebrow arched.

“I
baked a cake,” I rattled off.

“Finally…someone
with an intelligent answer,” Mrs. Spencer said walking to the front of the
room.

This
brought more scoffing from
Tahlila’s
group but the
teacher’s compliment would have to be enough. She wasn’t going to discipline
them. She moved on to the next student with the next question, and I heard the same
guy call me Hillary Duck. Then Hillary Duck Fucker.

Mrs.
Spencer said, hand on bony hip, “No talking and no profanity.”

A
couple of other people looked offended that the comment wasn’t addressed.

“Stupid
ass jocks,” someone sneered.

Mrs.
Spencer said loudly, “That is enough. I will not tolerate a lack of respect for
this classroom.” She stood up nobly for the cinder block walls and the windows
and the green chalk boards.

The
minute she turned around to write on the board someone said, “Grunier fucks Danny
Boyd.”

Tahlila
looked hurt, and batted her sad eyes toward the boy who’d said it.

Mrs.
Spencer laid the chalk on the ledge and turned slowly toward the class.

She
lifted her chin. “Danny has gone off to fight for his country. Shame on you for
speaking about him that way.”

I
looked around a bit and my eyes landed on the boy who’d made the comment about
the jocks. I didn’t know him but he looked like Abby Hoffman with the white guy
fro
hair. Definitely a reader or someone who could
spout a speech on the evils of the establishment.

Maybe
he’d been near me when they’d pushed me after assembly. Maybe he’d been one of
the kids who’d also dropped books. But his arm was up, his long bony hand in
the air. “Mrs. Spencer,” he said in a voice that demanded her attention.

“Yes,”
she said leaning against the board.

“Are
we going to learn the chemical properties of LSD in this class?”

She
was blinking and staring.

Everyone
broke into laughter then, and Mrs. Spencer looked ready to cry. She ended up
throwing her eraser and screaming for us to quiet down.

Maybe
there was hope for us yet. Rebellion was in the air. You could smell it along
with the other smells, the bad lunches and the cleaners and the nervous sweat,
too many perfumes that didn’t mix, all combining to make up the smell of
boredom and rage.

At
lunch I ran to my locker to switch out books even though it was past time for
doing this. Tahlila and Lauren were mid-way down the short aisle, also at their
lockers. I hurried and threw books in, took others out. I was bent over and
someone shoved me from behind and my head crashed into my open locker door. They
were laughing when I stood and rubbed my head. Before I could stop myself I
said, “Bitches.”

It’s
like the world stopped then. One of them, a big girl, Ronnie, came back toward
me. “You call me that?”

We
were all yelled at
then
by one of the teachers. We
needed to get out of the area. The time for visiting lockers was over five
minutes before and we were in violation….

They
went to the lunchroom, moving in a pack, Ronnie flipping me off and mouthing,
“later.”

I
almost laughed. Then I did something…I don’t know where it came from. I marched
up to her and said, “I don’t do violence. I don’t pick on people because I can.
You got something to say to me about ‘later?’”

She
wasn’t prepared for me speaking to her. I was supposed to look terrorized and
scurry off, I guessed.

“Get
away from me
blackie
,” she said and someone laughed.

“Keep
your hands to yourself,” I said and I looked at them all.

They
laughed then, a couple of them moving off, Tahlila turning away and Lauren. Ronnie
looked after them and followed. But she turned back to me, confident. “Little
black
Sambo
,” she said. They guffawed at that.

I
stared after her for a minute, and they walked off casually, still laughing.

Then
I went to the art room and watched out the window. My heart was racing. I heard
Naomi again, about the immorality of receiving poor treatment from the hands of
the oppressor. She would quote from the bible and reason, You do all you can,
then you stand.

I
wanted to stand. In my boots. I laughed to think they were made for walking,
like the dumb song Nancy Sinatra sang that got in you if you listened. But I’d
never had a voice with those girls…in their midst. They were older this year. We
were older. Was there conscience in there? Black
Sambo
?
I supposed this came from living with Naomi. I couldn’t allow her to suffer for
taking me in. I had to stop this here…at the school. And if I couldn’t….

They
had my bag. It made me furious.

I
tried to think of what Danny was doing, and if he thought my love note was
stupid or weird…or if he got it, if he’d put it somewhere and when he needed to
feel something of home…or me…the time we’d shared, the words…it would stand for
that, like a presence. I remembered how it felt just yesterday to put my arms
around him. I could do anything, work out any problem. I wasn’t going to let
them take that from me today. Or ever.

When
I went to my locker after lunch it was dumped there, my bag from the airport. My
locker door was open and over everything…my stuff. All of it was damaged—my
book torn, my money ripped to shreds, lotion, lid-off, empty, candy bar just a
wrapper, clean T-shirt ripped cause I’d brought it just in case, toothbrush
snapped in half, transistor radio crushed. Of course they took the battery. Stupid
stuff. The bag itself had been ripped through with scissors. This bag had been
Mama’s.

“Who
did this?” I jumped a little when I looked behind and Mrs. Spencer stood there.

“I…don’t
know,” I said. I knew it would be futile to accuse them.

“You
need to report this in the office,” she said.

I
didn’t answer, just kept cleaning.

“Are…you
friends with Danny?” she asked and my weird-o-meter went off. He’d said he’d
been hit on by teachers.

“Yes,”
I mumbled.

“I
thought Tahlila and him…I thought they were…getting…married?” she said.

I
looked up at her. Way too much interest in her face. When I didn’t answer but
just stared she seemed to get a little jumpy. “Well, clean it up,” she said, as
if I wasn’t. Then she walked away.

“Holy…cow,”
I whispered. I gathered the pieces of money together in a pile and put those in
my purse. People climbed over me to get to their lockers. I heard laughing. But
several asked me what happened. I just kept my head down and kept cleaning it
up and said, “Someone shredded everything in my bag.” A couple of them asked
who and I said, “I can’t say.”
 

When
I was finished I took it to the trashcan in the hall and dumped it in there. I
heard laughing again. “Look kind of natural dumping that trash there,” Ronnie
said and others laughed.

I
went to the restroom and asked a girl to get off the sink so I could wash my
hands. She was a lower classman so she slowly slid off and I washed and thought
of how that bag looked in the trash, and a day when it was on Mama’s arm, a
good day when we’d walked to the square, and she swung it back and forth
sometimes and we were playing the movie star game we’d made up where I gave her
three clues and she had to guess the movie star….the bell rang and I gathered
my stuff and went back out.

I
walked swiftly to my next class, Advanced English. I had never had a class with
Tahlila in my entire school experience and now I had two. Ronnie, who was my own
age, was also in there and she sat behind Tahlila.

I
had a couple of girls come up to me before class started and express anger at
what happened to me at my locker. They were seniors, but outcasts like me. They’d
gone hippie over the summer looked like. “That’s bullshit,” one of them,
Hannah, said loudly slamming her books on her desk. Hannah had developed early,
got these huge boobs in eighth grade and she had suffered for it. I’d heard the
ridicule in the lunchroom or at assemblies. She learned to walk fast, wear big
tops and keep her books over her chest when possible.

But
something had happened to her, and she wore a peasant blouse and a denim skirt,
and when she bent over you could see cleavage and she didn’t seem to care at
all.

“Someone
needs to take those bitches down,” she said and her friend laughed like that
was the best idea she’d ever heard.

“Shut
up,” Ronnie said, but Tahlila kept her eyes straight as if she had no idea who
they were talking about.

This
was practically insurrection. I had never heard the jocks spoken against before
today in two separate classes. The teacher entered and caught the tail end of
it and asked what was going on. Hippie girl Hannah said, “Someone ruined
everything in Hilly
Grunier’s
purse and dumped it all
over her locker and on the floor cause in this school only a handful of people
have all the rights and they do whatever the
eff
….they
want.”

“You
will watch your language in this class young lady,” Mr. Tremont said. He was
around forty and was so pale it was said he had leukemia. He did usually
disappear from the classroom sometime in the year for mysterious absences. He
usually sat during class and taught grand things like he didn’t even remember
we were in the room. I’d had him for English Two last year.

We
were all quiet then. As I looked around, with the exception of Tahlila and
Ronnie, there weren’t any of their followers. There were probably a few who
would do anything to be noticed by them, but they had not emerged in the
conversation Hannah had opened up.

Mr.
Tremont was going through notebooks seeming to be searching for something. I
thought he’d let the subject drop but he finally said, “And Hillary Grunier,
that is you back there is it not?”

Everyone
looked at me. Hannah nodded at me like I needed encouragement to speak up. “Yes.”

“Stand
up,” he said.

I
stood.

“You
were the source of trouble in another classroom this morning?”

Teacher’s
lounge. They told each other everything. I had never had a platform before. I
didn’t want to blow it. “No, I didn’t cause it,” I said and I could feel
Hannah’s interest.

“I
suggest you remember you are here to learn and leave all the drama at home
where it belongs,” he said, wiping over his mouth with a burgundy silk
handkerchief.

Hannah
was squirming and I could feel her getting ready to respond.

“Mr.
Tremont,” I said, “I’m not responsible for the actions of others when I have
done nothing to provoke those actions. I’m here to get an education, not to be
asked…if I still have my cherry, not to be called black
Sambo
,
not to be pushed and shoved, and not to have the private contents of my
“stolen” purse ruined and dumped all over my locker.”

“Right
on!” Hannah yelled followed by furious clapping. Her friend, Penny, also got
involved and clapped with her. A couple of the quieter boys turned and grinned
hugely at me. I wished white
Abbie
-fro was in there,
but he wasn’t.

“That’s
the kind of crap we have at this school,” Hannah said. “I had my ass grabbed in
the lunch line,” then to Ronnie she said, “by your Neanderthal jock-ass boyfriend.
I puked by the way,” then back to the teacher, “I’m sick of this dump. Power to
the people,” she said.

“Get
out,” Mr. Tremont said pulling onto his feet. His two hands were splayed
against his desk. “Get to the office and tell them you used profanity in my
classroom even though you’d been warned,” he said.

“Happily!”
she yelled. “Hope I get some extra credit!” Then she stopped at Ronnie’s desk,
“You and your bitches did that to her purse. I swear you’ll get yours.”

Ronnie
stood, “Get away from me you whore.”

Mr.
Tremont got in between them and yelled for Hannah to get out.

“She
just called me a whore,” she said, her voice rising high with incredulity. “I’m
not going unless she has to go with me.”

“I’m
not going anywhere with you,” Ronnie scoffed.

“Silence,”
Mr. Tremont said. “You will go to the office at once, Hannah, or I will send
for security and they will escort you down,” Tremont said.

It
was a stare off for a bit.

Slowly
Hannah slid down the wall beside Ronnie’s desk. From a seated position she said.
“Send for them then. I’m staging a sit-in to protest the injustice in this
school. If there’s a law it should be for everyone or it’s imperialism.”

Penny
quickly moved across the room and sat beside Hannah. I was next, but I heard a
couple of others getting out of their desks.

Mr.
Tremont tried screaming at everyone to get back. He succeeded in chasing one of
the girls to her desk before she could get very far. Then he told the same girl
to go for Principal Brown and the girl said, “No sir.”

Flustered,
he had to grab one of the boys, tiny Tim
Felan
who
had never really developed and Tremont practically threw him toward the door
and said, “Get Brown and tell him to bring security.”

And
that’s how power to the people at Ludicrous High was born.

Finding My Thunder 36

The
sit-in lasted until the bell rang for next class. In the meantime we sitters
articulated our concerns over the unequal treatment of the students of
Ludicrous High. Hannah was the most vocal. She was dating a college guy and
that was the difference in her. She had attended various sit-ins over the
summer and also engaged in lots of free sex and drug use, but that was
secondary to her new understanding of the political, social and moral struggle
people were experiencing all around us. She was eighteen and had been arrested
in Memphis even. She was the immediate and natural leader.

So
when Principal Boxer came with one of the coaches acting as the security
Tremont threatened us with, Hannah ended up speaking heatedly to these two from
the floor, a dozen of us lined out alongside of her.

“The
class distinction in place in this school had to change,” she said.

The
principal reiterated his speech from assembly.

Ronnie
piped up and said, “I’m proud to be American and I didn’t come to school to be
held against my will so a bunch of Communists could spew their hatred.”

“
Narc
,” Penny coughed into her hand and everyone laughed.

Tahlila
silently cried and Principal Boxer patted her back right over the back of her
bra.

“
Coppin
’ a feel,” Penny coughed this time, and we got to
laughing so hard we couldn’t control ourselves. Penny lay over on her side and
just let go. We got very loud then.

Principal
Brown let Tahlila and Ronnie leave the room early.
 

That
made us laugh even more.

Principal
Brown demanded silence at once.

He
said he was separating us from some of our class leaders to protect us from one
another.

Hannah
said he was protecting them and thereby empowering them to continue their
persecution, racism, intolerance for anyone different, exploitation of the less
fortunate, the more intelligent, and the individualistic, artistic, deep
thinking masses they oppressed. Furthermore, he was a part of the oppressive
system, he was the establishment the revolution was out to transform. She finished
this with, “Power to the People, baby.”

I
was in awe and Principal Brown looked flummoxed.

Shortly
after that the bell rang and our sit-in was over. Everyone needed to pee after
all that laughing. My head ached from where it had hit the locker and my elbow
was killing me from first period, and I’d lost some personal property and had
degrading comments made to me, but all-in-all it was turning in to a great day.

On
the walk home I was deep in my thoughts. My life had gotten so different from
what I’d imagined it would be. I wondered what the future held but I wasn’t
dreading it so much.

Hannah
and Penny along with
Beuford
made my school days fly.
The girls were seniors though so that meant I didn’t see them as often as I’d
like to. But in Mr. Tremont’s class Hannah kept us thoroughly entertained and
informed and Ronnie had to keep her mouth shut or be shown up for the idiot she
was.

“Try
reading something other than “True Confessions Magazine,” dimwit,” Hannah had
said after Ronnie shared her life goal with the class of working with retarded
children but only if they were little girls in pretty dresses.

Of
course Hannah had more to say, “You’re the retarded girl in the dress…and it
ain’t pretty.” It was, however, Ronnie’s cheerleading uniform, the garment of
the high priestesses of the school. But we were almost falling out of our desks
laughing.

I
wished I could smoke again. Hannah and Penny smoked…everything, but also
cigarettes. They were very free sexually as well. Hannah had an open
relationship with her boyfriend and not the usual kind where he cheated and she
sat home and cried, but one where if she wasn’t with him, or occasionally when
she was, she was with another guy. “Love,” she explained to me and Penny while
they were smoking and I was trying to get a whiff, “can’t be boxed…or
contained.” I’d heard this before…like everywhere…and from Robert. “Our parents
show us the repressive behavior of trying to spend their lives with just one
person. Look how miserable they are. It never, ever works. It’s not natural and
it breeds jealousy and betrayal and lying because we’re meant to love a lot of
people. It’s built in. It goes all the way back to evolution and survival.”

She
was very curious about my life. Everything that made me a reject with
Tahlila’s
crowd gave me a high pedigree with Hannah. I was
part black, check. I lived with my black grandmother, check. She did good works
in Snyder Town, check. I attended an all black church, double check. I was
despised by the jocks, double check. I had suffered oppression and unlawful
treatment by the jocks, triple check. My father had disowned me, cheated me out
of my inheritance, and moved in a new family, quadruple check.

Hannah’s
life work was to ferret out injustice. In the bible, there is a powerful woman
judge named Deborah. Deborah judges the entire nation of Israel under a palm
tree. She calls it the Palm of Deborah. Naomi would say, “Leave it to a woman
to judge a nation under a tree. Moses had to have a Temple it took thousands of
people to build. But Deborah? Pull up some sand and tell me your woes and I
will give you the wisdom of God Himself. With iced tea I make myself.”

Naomi
called her living room the Palm of Naomi when folks come to talk. “Come into
the Palm of Naomi,” she says and she laughs and I can hear the ice clinking in
the glasses.

And
Hannah, she reminded me so much of my grandmother the way she could put her
finger on it and call it out. She was the Deborah of Ludicrous High.

My
first letter from Danny arrived fourteen days from his departure. I came home
and checked the mail just like always. There it was, sitting in the box like
God had sent me a golden goose who laid an egg and it was in the shape of that
white envelope.

I
made a noise, some kind of squeal and took everything in the house and dropped
it all and ran to my room and shut the door and kissed that envelope and jumped
up and down. I carefully opened it because that return address was in the
corner with his social security number that I’d have to use in every address on
the front of the envelope and I memorized it before I had the letter out in his
beautiful hand and I kissed the pages and a picture fell out. It was him
slouching on a set of bleachers, laying back on his elbows and smirking at the
camera. He wore a white T-shirt and fatigue pants. There was a bruise or scrape
on his cheek. It was him. I stared at it…I don’t know how long, everything in
me screaming love.

Oh,
I wanted him. I wanted him in my arms. Nothing else mattered. I would never
want anyone but him, not ever.

“Oh
my heart, my heart,” I whispered as my eyes started to devour his words. I was
on my bed, on my stomach, his picture propped on my pillow so I could stare at
him as I read.

He
hated the army. He hated it. The letter was vile, full of cursing. He hated his
sergeant, the drills, the food, the constant degrading and screaming, the whole
thing.

I
didn’t expect him to hate it so much. I thought he’d fall right in seeing as he
was kind of a joiner, but no. Hate.

Then
he got to it…he was living in constant worry for me, worry that I was being
treated badly. He wanted me to write him every day. He was going crazy not
hearing from me. He needed to hear from me. He had always needed me. He wanted
me so badly. He lived on the memories…he went to sleep thinking of each word,
each touch. He was an idiot to have broken with me and wasted time but he
thought it was the right thing. I was the only one who made sense to him, what
he felt for me, it was the realest thing in his life. He would never forgive
someone if they hurt me.

He
would get a break when he finished basic before they shipped him to Nam and he
was counting the days, the minutes until he could be with me. And he wanted to
be with me in every way possible before he left. He was done holding back. If I
didn’t feel the same I had to let him know. They told them to break it off with
their girlfriends back home. They told them that statistically girls didn’t
wait and it was harder to get a Dear John in combat, even life threatening. So
break it off now, they said.

Fuck
them, he said. But if there was any doubt, or anyone else I had to tell him
now. He wanted to know how I felt. Everything. He didn’t want me to hold back
either.

He
wanted to know how I got to the airport. He wanted the whole story. Had I seen
Sooner? Dickens or Annie? He wanted to know everything. He wanted me to write
him every day. He understood if I couldn’t, but as much as I could. He wanted all
the details no matter how stupid I thought they were. He wanted pictures of me.
Any and all.

He
was barely aware of his first flight ever. They were in the air before he was
really present. That’s how much my being at the airport had rattled him. He was
elated and so worried for me. He wondered what they would do to me when he got
on the plane, but he saw them leave though he was barely aware.

Write
me, he said again at the end. As soon as he could call he would, maybe in a
week. It would be on a Sunday. He’d let me know. He wanted to hear my voice. He
added that California was beautiful from what he’d seen and someday he wanted
to see it with me.

Then
he signed it, Love Danny.

I
couldn’t believe it. It exceeded my hopes, almost as if I’d gotten drunk and
wrote it myself to myself, making him say what I longed to hear…about us, not
about his hatred for the army.

His
angst was my angst. I hated to think he was already suffering with his choice. And
he wasn’t even in Nam yet. He wanted me to write
everyday
,
so I grabbed a tablet and started to write.

I
said, “I just finished your letter. When I got home from school I went straight
to the mailbox like always and when it was there I was so happy and relieved I
ran straight to my room and opened it and flopped on the bed. Thank you so much
for the picture. You’re so handsome in it. I didn’t get to tell you…I love your
hair…that song by Nina that we danced to, remember? But with your head shaved…your
eyes…well I love them too.

“I’m
okay, first off. Haven’t seen Sooner or your brother or sister yet. I will
though.”

Then
I went on to tell him about school, about the sit-in. I wanted to put his mind
at rest as much as I could. It was difficult sometimes at school, and there had
been things, but nothing I couldn’t handle so far.

When
Naomi got home I was still writing. I was on the part where I was telling him I
couldn’t wait until he was finished with basic so we could be together but that
also made me sad because it meant he was that much closer to going to war. So I
told him I was conflicted, but not about us being together in every way. I’d
been ready for that before he left, I said. I hated to put that on him, but it
was true. And that’s when Naomi appeared in my door.

She
went right to the lamp. “You’re going to ruin your eyes,” she said cause I was
writing in the dark.

I
grabbed the picture and Danny’s letter and now my own.

“I
see he wrote,” she said.

“Yes
Ma’am,” I said, trying to be patient that she’d interrupted me when I was on a
roll. She sat on the one chair.

“Hilly…I
went to the market on the square and there was an ambulance at Lonnie’s shop.”

“Yeah?”

“I
stopped there and the police told me Lonnie had an accident. Well…I saw them
roll him out on the stretcher. Didn’t look like he was conscious.”

I
stared at her and she at me.

“He
fell down some steps there…cellar steps and that other one works for him…Robert?
He said he went down there sometimes but he must of slipped. Well that one came
back from lunch, that Robert, and he thought Lonnie was still at the tavern
eating his lunch so he just didn’t think much of it. Then a few hours later he
went up the street to check and they hadn’t seen Lonnie…and he finally figured
it out and called down in that cellar and the lights were out so he got a
flashlight and saw Lonnie at the bottom of the stairs then. He’d lay there all
that time.”

I
sat up on the bed and laid the papers and Danny’s picture aside. “What did they
say? Is he going to die or something?”

“They
don’t know. They spent a long time getting him moved. There was oil on the
steps. They nearly
fell
themselves. They don’t know
how many injuries. He never did come around.”

My
hand reached for and located Danny’s picture. I held it against my thigh.

“What…what
should I do?”

“
Loreena
was there…most everyone was on the square…but they
still aren’t married, those two. But she went along. So he’s got someone
there.”

I
kept staring at her.

“You
know I heard that Robert say Lonnie was the only one ever went down there. He’d
get moody and go down there and take out the light bulbs and he wouldn’t come
up no matter how much they called. And he thought maybe that’s what this was.”

“How
often did he do that?”

“Not
too often Robert said cause Bixby asked him that. He said the last time was
after your mama died.”

That
would have meant Danny was there. He’d never mentioned such a thing. He’d never
said.

I
looked at his picture, his beautiful face, his eyes.

I
looked. He’d never mentioned that…about Lonnie.