Passin Time at West Side High Page 4
When he arrived at school, Security scanned Kwinton for weapons and confiscated a broken decoy cell phone that he kept tucked in his left sock. He usually hides his primary smart phone in his underwear until he can safely transfer it into his knapsack. It’s a tactic many of my students have confessed to using.
A school officer escorted Mr. Jones to the ISS Room about twenty-five minutes after he arrived when he was caught eating a baloney sandwich in a girls’ bathroom stall near the library.
The ISS Room was a cauldron of catalysts, cultures and ethnicities that morning. The district was still in the process of hiring a second teacher to help monitor the room so I was asked to help out for the day since I did not have any scheduled appointments and knew many of the kids being placed there.
Entering the room is akin to visiting Toontown in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It’s very surreal at times.
Shriveled peels, Jolly Rancher candy wrappers, pieces of torn handouts, empty packets of ranch salad dressing and Heinz ketchup and clumps of hairball pulled from brushes were scattered all over the floor.
Only one poster was hung on the walls. It was a laminated black and white portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. with the words, ‘I have a dream,” printed underneath the photo. Someone edited the picture with a red marker. Martin was given an eye patch, pointy goatee, a mustachio and a lit joint between his lips. The words ‘Smeeze God’ were scrawled on one corner of the print and the word ‘wet’ was inserted with a caret between ‘a’ and ‘dream.’
The air smelled like orange zest, body odor and cocoa butter hand cream with a hint of melted plastic.
I noticed a condom on the ground in front of the door and stepped over it. The prophylactic was filled with chocolate milk and tied off at the end like a balloon.
It was difficult to hear anything clearly because of the volume of everyone’s voices.
I remember asking a bunch of students to whisper or use their ‘inside voices’ when I was an intern. All the kids laughed at me and one proclaimed, “What are you stupid or somethin’? Everyone knows niggas don’t listen and can’t talk quietly.”
Despite only being the second day of school, the hastily converted former teacher lounge was already overflowing with students, old furniture and appliances that the custodians had never bothered to remove over the summer.
Within minutes of their arrival at 7:30AM, some students managed to completely gut the unplugged refrigerator, removing its motor, and all metal wire and piping that could be sold to a scrap yard for money. A chalkboard was propped up against a wall because it came down when a boy tried climbing it. A girl short circuited the microwave oven when she and her male companion melted several crayons in a metal pencil sharpener that was removed from a counter.
The whole building, not just the ISS Room, was the epitome of chaos today. Some nameless bean counter at Central Office had come up with the brilliant idea last spring of outsourcing the generation of student schedules this year instead of letting individual schools create them. The proposal was quickly approved and implemented by the school board because it was estimated that the change would save the cash-strapped District over a hundred thousand dollars.
At least 60% of the students attending West Side that semester did not have a viable schedule. Nearly every record was missing several classes for many of the day’s nine periods. The wrong classes or classes taken previous years were noted on many. Some rosters did not have a room or teacher assigned to the listed course.
Instead of letting kids wander aimlessly through the halls without a functional plan, school security apprehended individuals or steered groups towards the ISS Room whenever possible. Guidance counselors could then make periodic appearances and assist students.
Amongst the droves of blameless teens waiting in ISS with deficient schedules were a number of persons who had somehow managed, through either a trick of fate or their own undoing, to get themselves assigned to ISS during the last twenty-four hours.
Rickard Jenkins, a short fellow with an unusually small head and big buggy brown eyes, was caught hiding in a third floor telecommunications closet with a set of stolen master keys. He had been expelled from school last year for punching a teacher and recording a food fight he started in the cafeteria, then posting the video on YouTube. He was presumably enrolled at another district and not supposed to be at West Side. Jenkins was waiting in ISS for his parole officer and mother to come talk to the principal.
Another boy, Charles Robertson, was caught smoking in the pool filter room. He was given five days of ISS. He took the punishment without protest because he did not want the school to say anything to his strict Jamaican parents.
Krystina Caultrane was given a day of ISS for flashing her size forty-four d-cup breasts to a group of boys between classes. She would have gotten away with it if she had not been spotted by Ms. Rivara-Rivaldo, the building principal. She happened to be walking around the corner the moment Krystina revealed her God given endowment to an awestruck audience.
In one corner of the room a group of boisterous males wearing dark green hoodies and white t-shirts were sitting around a three legged table propped against the wall. One of the boys was talking shit about gangs, fighting and doing time in the County Jail while the others listened. I did not recognize the boaster so I highly doubt he ever spent any time behind bars let alone get arrested.
Next to them were four heavy set or ‘thick’ girls engrossed in a graphically detailed conversation about the color of semen and ‘shaving their coochies’ in the shower. One of the young ladies revealed how a ‘bitch’ they all knew had a pierced clit which led into one of the girls confessing that she saw her ‘butt naked’ grandma getting ‘eaten out’ by her boyfriend on the living room couch a few weeks ago and was ‘totally grossed out’ by the experience.
I just ignored them. I’m pretty sure none of them were lying but think they were just looking for attention from others in the room, especially males. Their ring leader, Raquelle Adams, is upset because her latest baby daddy left town recently with her cousin. I received an e-mail from someone at Monroe County Human Services with a few details but need to schedule a meeting with Raquelle to discuss things. She’s only seventeen and already has two children from two different guys. I have a feeling she’s looking for a new boyfriend.
The table in the center of the room was surrounded by a Haitian, Puerto Rican, Iraqi and white guy. They were all playing poker. Two refugee girls watched them attentively; one was from Nigeria, the other was Nepalese. There was a good sized pile of dollar bills, quarters, two IPOD Shuffles, a universal cell phone charger and a bunch of starter plugs (earrings) in the center of the table.
Several sleeping students were scattered throughout the room. Most had their heads down. One was snoring pretty loud underneath her purple Aeropostale jacket and another had a thin line of drool coming out of the side of his open mouth that was gradually pooling on the desktop.
Two desks were pushed together in one spot where some red-eyed students with an overly relaxed demeanor were casually prodding through their open satchels. They pulled a big bag of Doritos, a bunch of Chinese takeout containers, a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and a jar of Skippy peanut butter out, placed them on the table, then started asking random kids in the room if they had forks and spoons that they could use. The diners even asked the ISS teacher if she could warm their food up in the main office microwave used by staff, because the one in this room was broken. Their clothes and bags reeked of skunky stench.
Seven larger boys were sitting together and talking about football practice after school.
Cory Connors, a stalky lighter skinned, effeminate male with lime green parachute pants, a Buddha belly and bright red afro split his attention between ‘play fighting’ them and h
obnobbing with a gaggle of girls who were doing their hair and nails. He wanted them to do his nails but did not like any of the colors they had.
Cory was sent to ISS first period by his English teacher because he was being loud and disruptive. The voice mail that I retrieved said that he was supposed to go to his next class at 8:24AM but Cory obviously decided ISS would be more fun.
The comfortably gay individual had a hard time keeping his hands to himself and being quiet. Random guys in the room called him a “faggot” and he just responded by punching, slapping, telling them to “fuck off, “or throwing parts of broken pencils. He appeared to be enjoying himself.
Cory and I talk frequently. He’s got lots of issues and flaunting his sexual orientation is the least of his them. The boy is amazing and always lands on his feet considering all that he’s been put through by his family. His mother murdered his step-father when she caught the guy raping her daughter. The boy was only nine years old and witnessed the brutal stabbing.
His step-father also beat and molested Cory but the teen usually downplays the gravity of the abuse he endured during our sessions and choses to talk about other subjects.
The mother was gunned down at a local laundry mat a few weeks later by her dead