What's Mine and Yours(35)
A woman with gray hair and Coke-bottle glasses was first. “I hear everybody here talking about welcome. New beginnings! But what about good-byes? What about mourning?” She was met with applause, an echo of Yes! “To make room for these two hundred new kids, we’ve had to let go of two hundred kids who have been at Central since they were freshmen. All because the school board and the city have got an agenda? My daughter is losing every single one of her best friends to this new program, and she’s going to be a junior! It’s a critical year, and she’s going to have to start all over! How is that fair?”
By the end, she was shouting, and the cheers went on for so long, the principal had to stand and ask the crowd to quiet down. The deluge kept coming.
“Okay, we’re keeping our teachers; okay, class size is staying the same. That doesn’t mean this school is the same. Everybody knows it’s the students that make the school. And now we’re going to have these kids—these kids who are coming from failing schools—making up twenty-five percent of every grade. Twenty-five percent! They’re going to hold our kids back! These kids aren’t where our kids are in their education or their home training. And it may not be their fault, but it’s not my kid’s fault either!”
A meek-mannered woman with a short black bob and glasses edged to the microphone as if it caused her great pain to do so. She began in a low voice. “Everybody deserves a fair shot in life—I believe that. I always have. That’s what America is about. My son is applying for college this year, and I’ve heard it on good authority that this wasn’t random. That these kids were handpicked because they’re star students. And now, my kid’s ranking is going to fall. What has my son been working for if these new students are going to come in underneath his nose and steal everything he’s been working for, and everything we’ve all been working for? Everything we do is for him.”
“I know this isn’t about integration. It isn’t about what’s right. They put nice words in the pamphlets, but I’m not fooled. This is about money, money, money, and the city being greedy. They’re playing around with my kids’ future. Central might not hit that county quota of no more than forty percent of students on free or reduced lunch. Because we may leave. A lot of us may leave. I’m looking into private school for my girls because I can’t trust the administration here, and I can no longer trust the city I’ve lived in, and that my family has lived in, for generations, for over one hundred years!”
Gee felt Linette stir beside him. Her leg thumped underneath her, and she knotted her hands in her lap. She was nervous, and it was catching. He leaned away from her in his seat. Jade reached over to take Linette’s hand and steady her. The women locked fingers. Jade was swinging her head from side to side, disagreeing with the latest speaker at the podium. Gee knew it was only a matter of time before she burst.
Next there was a man in a plaid shirt, a long beard and sideburns. He pointed at the floor for emphasis with every sentence. He was so steady, so even, it was terrifying.
“Am I the only one who will say it? These kids could be bad kids. What about background checks? How are you going to keep our kids safe? Are we going to put in metal detectors? What about in the hallway, when my daughter is walking between her classes? And what about the parking lot? We ought to put cameras out there.”
Gee felt his vision tunnel, the room around him turn to black at the edges. He mopped his forehead with his sleeve. He was turning inward, closing up. He nearly missed Adira sliding to the microphone, her hands clasped primly in front of her, her head high.
“My name is Adira Howard, and I’ll be a junior here at Central next fall. I came tonight because I was excited. Because I want a future too—”
Gee wondered at Adira. She was stupid and brave and beautiful all at once.
“My family has been here for generations, too. And I deserve my future as much as anybody else. It hurts to know I’m not welcome here, at a school that’s only fifteen minutes away from my house, all because of the color of my skin.”
There was an encouraging whistle from the front row, and the Howards stood up, clapping for their girl. A few white grown-ups stood, too, to applaud Adira, and Gee wondered why they hadn’t spoken yet. Where were all the people who had published op-eds in the paper about the benefits of the program? Where was that majority who supported this change?
When the boos started up again, while Adira was still at the microphone, Jade sprang up to stand in line. A balding man in a crimson polo shirt was set to speak first. He shook his head for a long while before he began.
“This is not about race,” he said. “This is about fairness. We don’t have to give up our rights to the whims of whoever is in office right now. I know it must have taken guts for that little girl to stand up here and speak, but, young lady, you’re dead wrong. This has nothing to do with the color of your skin. I taught at North Carolina A&T, a historically black college, for twenty years before moving here—I am not a racist, and it’s criminal for you, or anyone, to suggest I am.”
There was hooting and screaming for the man at the microphone. The principal hammered at her podium with a gavel she hadn’t used before. The school officials fidgeted onstage, except for the black man who sat calmly on the edge of his seat, his hands folded into a steeple. His eyes were invisible behind the sheen of his glasses. Gee wondered how he managed to sit up there, with all those people watching, whether it was better to be onstage or in the crowd in moments like this. Next, it was Jade.