On the Come Up(16)

“Oh,” says Jay. “They throw them all on the floor, huh?”

Silence.

Dr. Rhodes clears her throat. “Again, Brianna was not cooperative. I was told she was argumentative and aggressive. This is not the first time we’ve had behavioral issues with her.”

Here we go.

“What are you trying to say?” Jay asks.

“Today’s behavior follows a pattern—”

“Yes, a pattern of my daughter being targeted—”

“Again, no one is targeting—”

“Do the white girls who make slick comments get sent to your office every other week too?” Jay asks.

“Mrs. Jackson, Brianna is frequently aggressive—”

Aggressive. One word, three syllables. Rhymes with excessive.

I’m so excessive, that I’m aggressive.

“Aggressive” is used to describe me a lot. It’s supposed to mean threatening, but I’ve never threatened anybody. I just say stuff that my teachers don’t like. All of them except Mrs. Murray, who happens to be my only black teacher. There was the time in history class during Black History Month. I asked Mr. Kincaid why we don’t ever talk about black people before slavery. His pale cheeks reddened.

“Because we’re following a lesson plan, Brianna,” he said.

“Yeah, but don’t you come up with the lesson plans?” I asked.

“I will not tolerate outbursts in class.”

“I’m just saying, don’t act like black people didn’t exist before—”

He told me to go to the office. Wrote me up as being “aggressive.”

Fiction class. Mrs. Burns was talking about the literary canon, and I rolled my eyes because all the books sounded boring as shit. She asked if there was a problem, and I told her exactly that, just without saying “as shit.” She sent me to the office. I mumbled something under my breath on the way out, and she wrote me up for aggressive behavior.

Can’t forget the incident in my theater elective. We’d done the same scene one hundred times. Mr. Ito told us to start from the top yet again. I sucked my teeth and went, “Oh my God,” throwing my hands at my sides. My script flew from my grasp and hit him. He swore I intentionally threw it. That got me a two-day suspension.

That’s all from this year. Freshman year and sophomore year were full of incidents, too. Now I’ve got another under my belt.

“Per school policy, Brianna will have to serve a three-day suspension for selling banned items on school property without permission,” Dr. Rhodes says. She zips up my backpack and hands it to me.

We go into the hallway just as the bell for second period rings. Classroom doors open, and it seems like everybody and their momma pour into the halls. I get second glances I’ve never gotten before, and stares and whispers.

I’m no longer invisible, but now I wish I was.

I’m quiet on the ride home.

Hoodlum. One word, two syllables. Can be made to rhyme with a lot of things. Synonyms: thug, delinquent, hooligan, lowlife, gangster, and, according to Long, Brianna.

Can’t no good come, From this hoodlum.

Nah. Fuck that word.

Fuck that school.

Fuck all of this.

I stare at what’s left of the Garden. We’re on Clover Street, which used to be one of the busiest streets in Garden Heights, but ever since the riots, there’s a bunch of charred rubble and boarded-up buildings. The Mega Dollar Store was one of the first to get hit. Cellular Express got looted first and then burned down. Shop ’n Save burned down to the frame, and now we have to go to the Walmart on the edge of the Garden or the little store over on the west if we wanna get groceries.

I’m a hoodlum from a bunch of nothing.

“Doubt they’ll ever fix this mess,” Jay says. “It’s like they want us to remember what happens when we step out of line.” She glances over at me. “You okay, Bookie?”

According to my granddaddy, Jacksons don’t cry—we suck it up and deal with it. Doesn’t matter how much my eyes burn. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No, you didn’t,” Jay says. “You had every right to keep your backpack. But Bri . . . Promise me, if that ever happens again, you’ll do what they tell you to do.”

“What?”

“Bad things can happen, baby. People like that sometimes abuse their power.”

“So I don’t have any power?”

“You have more than you know. But in moments like that, I—” She swallows. “I need you to act as if you don’t have any. Once you’re safely out of the situation, then we’ll handle it. But I need you safely out of the situation. Okay?”

This is like that talk she gave me about the cops. Do whatever they tell you to do, she said. Don’t make them think you’re a threat. Basically, weaken myself and take whatever’s thrown at me so I can survive that moment.

I’m starting to think it doesn’t matter what I do. I’ll still be whatever people think I am. “They’re always on my case at that school.”

“I know,” Jay says. “And it’s not fair. But you only have to get through two more years, baby. All these incidents . . . we can’t risk you getting expelled, Bri. If that means keeping your mouth shut, I need you to do it.”