Vulnerable (2 page)

He dropped his eyes to the newspaper and said, “French.”

“The bowl or a cup?” The waitress shrugged subtly, her mind playing with the idea that he was different now; aloof.

“Bowl.” He purposely avoided eye contact. He stated,
“C'est tout.”
Rawn preferred that she not hover.

With a tight smile, the waitress departed swiftly, and her very gentle scent—jasmine or lavender, Rawn did not really know—caressed the air. When he first laid eyes on her, he decided that a man had to ease into the waitress. She was unapproachable, and not because she was cold or standoffish. There was something about her. The standard line—whatever a man generally used to get the attention of a very attractive woman—would not work on this one. She was classy, and more importantly, comfortable in her skin. She was complicated—if not mysterious—because she was not average.

Minutes later she carefully placed his French roast café au lait on the table, and Jean-Pierre's to-die-for chocolate croissant. “Here you go,” she said. “Anything else?” She pressed her plump lips together as if doing so kept her thoughts buried deep inside her head.

“I'm good.” Rawn sensed the waitress wanted to say something to him. He had learned the look, the demeanor. He assumed she was like most people who struggled to be appropriate. But what exactly was
appropriate?

When the waitress left his table, she was so poised, so graceful. She stopped at the table next to Rawn's, and in a sincere voice inquired if the customers enjoyed their croque monsieur and whether they were ready for their check. Once, a little more than a year ago, Rawn ran into the waitress at PCC. Comfortably dressed in well-fitted jeans, her cropped lime-colored chenille sweater exposed a small butterfly tattoo slightly left of her navel. Before approaching her, Rawn observed the waitress leisurely walking through the aisles of the market. A subtle detail made her eye-catching; a
je ne sais quoi
-ness. When he finally managed enough nerve to approach her, they held a casual conversation for a while, talking and laughing so effortlessly in a way that happened when two people naturally clicked. No pretense, no façade, no status-dropping nonsense like where-did-you-go-to-school and what-do-you-do? When he inquired about her to Jean-Pierre, the Frenchman offered nothing more than the waitress lived in Seattle, and her name was Imani.

Rawn was attracted to Imani the very first time he laid eyes on her. On at least one occasion he sensed the attraction was mutual, and then out of the blue, she disappeared. A good year had come and gone since he last saw Imani, and it only struck him that particular morning. He had been suspended between the present and what used to be.

Without thinking, he reached for the small silver spoon and scooped up a sand-colored, miniature rock-shaped sugar cube in the porcelain container on the table. He dropped it into the bowl of steamy warm milk and black, strong coffee Jean-Pierre had imported from France and brewed in a French press. It was a bold aroma. Rawn sipped his café au lait mindlessly, slowly, and occasionally picked at his croissant. He studied Imani working the vibrant room with natural ease, and handled the demands of the
dot-com entrepreneurs, Rowena and Sean, with such ingrained finesse. It was her spirit that resided over the room, and Imani brought class to the place. By no means was Café Neuf a hole in the wall. The bakery-café had a unique ambience: thick planked dark wooded tables, and Patrick Bruel music that did not interfere with the energetic conversations that most often took place at the intimately situated tables. Part of its charm was that Jean-Pierre, and any help that worked for him, greeted and took orders for customers in French. While Rawn observed Imani closely, it became apparent to him that there was very little about her he did not find engaging. Standing, and taking one last sip of his café au lait, he considered, for one split-second, what his fate might have been had he been courageous enough to ask her out at least once. He was hoping to slip out of Café Neuf unseen.

It started to rain when he crawled into his Jeep Wrangler, tossing the
Times
and his satchel to the passenger's seat. Turning over the engine, it occurred to Rawn that he forgot to grab his umbrella before leaving the apartment. A year ago he walked to work, and it was something he only recognized recently—not so long ago he cherished the beauty of the day as it took shape: the rhythm of business owners washing down sidewalks and opening up; runners putting in their time before the demands of life took over; city centre residents walking their dogs; and morning dew on the grass. It was the first touch of a new day; still innocent, still filled with expectation. Eventually he decided to drive to work because when he took the ferry people stared; rarely was he fully present and aware of how the day evolved. Instead he spent more time mentally negotiating between this and that.

Over the past month he developed a routine: Rawn composed himself and went through the mental exercise to deal with the students he taught in South Seattle that persuaded him on day-one
that they were absolutely indifferent to learning. He turned up Dante Godreau playing on his CD player. It took several rings before he recognized that his cellular demanded his attention. Rawn was still not used to having a cellular. “Hello?” Grinning, he said, “Khalil! Hey, man. Yeah, I'm about to cross the floating bridge.” Rawn listened thoughtfully to his best friend while concentrating on the traffic leading into the overcast, silver-colored city. “Hell yeah, it's raining,” he joked. “My flight leaves at ten. Well, check your e-mail, bro. I sent my itinerary to you last night. Cool.” Unexpectedly, he began to feel a burst of excitement about heading to L.A. for the weekend. “See you then. Definitely. Later, man.”

Rawn had not quite come to terms with teaching in the hood. Be that as it may, when the opportunity was presented to him, he had not received offers which corresponded favorably with his qualifications; thus could not bring himself to turn down the one teaching position offered to him. Nothing from his teaching past prepared him for hallways flooded with boisterous, loud, and ill-mannered students. His perception of urban youth was swiftly revised. Hearing “nigga” casually fall off the tongues of not only black but Asian and Latino students troubled Rawn deeply. He was accustomed to being around born-and-bred-for-success kids.

The first day he taught at his new school, he asked his bored and tattooed eighth-graders if anyone wished to open the discussion of “separate but equal.” Each student looked pokerfaced, bored. Girls admired their nails polished with dramatic colors like fuchsia and citron green, while the boys talked to each other or perused
Vibe
and
Spin
, fantasizing about their own images gracing the publications someday. Lamentably, becoming a hip-hop artist was the only dream they trusted. Rawn's pressing goal was to get each student to recognize their potential. As an educator he wanted every student who entered his classroom to realize their individuality,
and the potential they had to influence history based solely on their unique participation. There was a point when Rawn learned that his responsibility was to take raw talent and give it energy, spirit,
life
. Every student whom he taught should have entered the classroom already aware she or he was a rising star no matter their background. Without that principle he feared he would fail his students, because he had yet to acquire the skills to pilot a young person who lacked at least a scintilla of hope. A dim spark was sufficient to work with; still, Rawn needed the student to have a little faith in the process.

It did not take a week for him to finally get it: these students did not relate to his ideas. And when he submitted his reading list the first week of school, reluctantly it was approved. But true to form, the students were unmotivated as ever when he announced to his literature class that they would read Richard Wright's
Native Son
the first half of the semester. Furthermore, in three weeks there would be a class discussion on Part I of the novel, along with a typed, 300-word essay each student was expected to hand in by the end of the class hour. Moans and groans erupted throughout the classroom. After only a week at his new school, Rawn had a good sense about the type of young minds he was there to penetrate, and they were not even close to being ready to read the classics.
Romeo and Who?
they would ask. In truth, Shakespeare was way too deep.

Rawn had not discovered the reward that came with teaching overactive and combative eighth-graders. And the students were not used to a black schoolteacher who dressed all
GQ;
his parlance did not harmonize with theirs, and he told them like a broken record that they could not listen to music on their headphones while in class. Moreover, they were not comfortable with being challenged with philosophy and whatnot. While they knew every
track by heart on popular music CDs, they never even heard of J. Edgar Hoover.

Something changed a week ago.

“Twisted? Tiananmen Square. Can you open up the discussion?”

“Tannum what?”

“Tiananmen
Square.” Rawn studied the student closely.

Twisted slumped deeper into the seat. He lowered his eyes to the empty desk.

“Luis?
Roe v. Wade.”

Luis grinned, his head shaking side-to-side. “Don't know, dawg.”

“Remove that hoodie, please.” Rawn waited, but Luis simply grinned. “Luis!”

The look he gave Rawn suggested he needed to think about it. Eventually, although with exaggerated bravado, Luis removed his hoodie which exposed a shaved head.

“Okay, listen!
Listen!
This will be the last time I say it: Everyone in this classroom knows that
Mr.
Poussaint is more appropriate. Hey, look, I can accept Poussaint. But
dawg?
Leave it outside
this
classroom. Luis?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“I want you to get this: drop the ‘whatever.' So I take it you know nothing about
Roe v. Wade.”

Luis shrugged; and he was perturbed that the man was all up in his face, making him look bad in front of his classmates.

“How about
Brown v. the Board of Education?”

With his arms crossed stiffly over his chest, Luis slumped deeper in his seat.

Rawn's eyes lingered on Luis before he stated, “Kurtis? Neil Armstrong.”

“Neil…come again, bruh?”

“Like dawg, drop the
bruh!
Who is Neil Armstrong?”

“I…I…”

“If you have no idea who Neil Armstrong is, own it.”

“Look, man. Dang. Why you gotta be all over a brother like 'at?”

Rawn met the gaze of several students in the classroom. Calmly, he walked to his worn leather satchel on the desk and pulled out a Toni Braxton CD. He held it up and said, “The first person who can tell me where you can find ‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free' can claim this CD.”

All the students were immediately attentive; some leaning for-ward to get a better look at the CD Rawn held in his hand.

“Toni?”
asked Jamaal, his always-ten-minutes-late student with one excuse after another—the bus, the rain.

“I already heard that CD!” another student said.

“Regardless…Who wants the CD?” Rawn interrupted.

“I do; I want it!” several students said in unison.

“I'm not asking you to recite the poem. I'm not asking you to name the title of the poem. I'm not even asking you to tell me what it means. It's on a plaque on one of our country's most famous statues. Come on, think about it. First person to name that statue walks out of this classroom with the CD.” Rawn, remarkably patient, waited.

Disappointed, Kurtis slumped in his seat. “Why you be like that? What huddle masses mean anyway, dude?”

Twisted threw his hands out at Rawn in frustration. Some students remarked beneath their breath, while the attention span of others swiftly waned.

Rawn had hoped the experience would demonstrate the hin-drance of lacking knowledge. Instead he acquired valuable details from his own experimentation. The students had not been giving him a hard time since the first day of school because they did not like him. They failed to answer the questions not because it was cooler
not
to, but because they had never learned about the subjects Rawn inquired about. And if they had learned any of it, the information did not stick. This had never really occurred to him before. With a slow sigh, he gazed over the classroom with a new set of eyes. For weeks Rawn went through the motions; prior to the CD exchange, he had never been that engaged with these students.

“Lakeisha, can you tell us something about Malcolm X?”

Like every other student in the classroom, with her arms crossed inflexibly over her chest, her bottom lip poked out, her body language all but stating
I have better things to do with my time!
, Lakeisha said, “Denzel played him in a movie.” She made a large bubble with her bubblegum, followed by a perceptible pop.

“Come on, Lakeisha. Surely there's more you can share. Malcolm X is a man who influenced the Civil Rights Movement in ways you may never fully appreciate, even while
you
have reaped benefits. Yes, ‘Denzel played him in a movie' ”…Rawn made air-quotes. “But seriously…”

“I guess you don't hear good, cuz I tolju what I know!”

“Now if I know somethin' 'bout X, you gotta know, Keisha!” said Twisted.

She looked over her shoulder at Twisted seated directly behind her and rolled her eyes. With an accent straight out of Brooklyn, she said, “Whu-
ever!”

Momentarily Rawn kept his eyes on Lakeisha. He took a few steps toward her seat and looked directly into her coffee brown, almond-shaped eyes and asked, “Who is Monica Lewinsky?”