an excerpt
from
The Donkey Show
- Chapter Eight
-
White Bitch
By Michael Patrick Welch
-1-
My cruiser beats any NO bus to anywhere by at
least 15-minutes, and biking to Magnolia mornings means I get
to sleep in. But today January’s air feels like God’s
hot breath, and pumping my legs would drown my shirt, so this
morning I rose early to utilize air-conditioned Public Transportation.
After showering, I dressed in nicer-than-normal
clothes, since these wouldn’t be ruined with sweat. I
also hoped they might command more classroom respect…
Then I plucked a book from the cabinet under my sink and moseyed
across shaded Esplanade to buy a chicory coffee and wait for
the bus. The coffee in my mouth burned the same temperature
as the sun on my skin, reminding me that I’d forgotten
to apply sunscreen; the little cancer on my temple throbbed
pink with lust for the rays. The last time the FLA doctor froze
it off he warned, “If it comes back again we’ll
have to cut it out.” Without Health Insurance,
surgery will cost the equivalent of one month’s upper-middle-class
Costa Rican living; this cancer threatens to eat my vacation.
But there wasn’t time to run back to My Room for SPF 35,
so I held my hand over the spot until the bus arrived.
Before I’d finished even a chapter of my
book, the Esplanade bus had me to the end-of-the-line in the
Central Business District, where our lack of skyscrapers lets
the tourists forget what happened in New York this year; despite
The War they have indeed arrived, but were now sleeping off
last night’s Bourbon Street in their hotel beds. I walked
beside only local businessmen and women across The Neutral Ground,
down to where the mossy St. Charles streetcar would take me
the rest of the way Uptown. The streetcar is another example
of NO suffering for its quaintness; two miles on the car from
Canal to Magnolia High can burn up three chapters of a book.
The upside is you’ll never wait more than ten minutes
for one to show up --- while the fucking bus, who knows? That’s
why after waiting twenty minutes this morning, I knew the car
must be dead again…
Onward toward Magazine --- where the bus rolls
Uptown quicker, but stops farther away from the school --- the
fresh morning-air fought The Quarter’s hot beer and vomit
smell. Work-mornings, when everyone downtown heads slowly toward
somewhere they’d rather not be going, all Canal is gray:
the buildings, the sidewalks, the Ignatius J. Reiley statue
that isn’t nearly fat enough, the gray sky, gray moods,
and all of it reflected and duplicated by miles of storefront
picture windows. Approaching the two-block stretch where every
window holds captive thousands of pairs of overpriced tennis
shoes --- each pair as unique in color and architecture as the
houses on Esplanade --- I spotted De’von far ahead. Not
Big De’von from The Donkey Show, the little closeted one
from my class. I hung back, watching him dance and point at
shoes in the windows and scream about them to a darker boy twice
his height. De’von’s new braids and the tall boy’s
terrycloth headband were the only signs of individuality juxtaposed
against their tan-and-white Magnolia uniforms. Today they even
conceded to the plain black shoes the school demands; many days
they walk to school in their expensive, socially-mandatory G-Nikes,
carrying their plain blacks in their bookbags and changing just
outside the metal detector. Then once inside their classrooms,
they slip their blacks off and their G-Nikes back on, until
the bell buzzes and they trade back, to step out into the hall
where Mr. Land would suspend them for breaking dress code.
With De’von and his tall friend gazing in
Shoe Wonder, I was forced to walk extra slow and stop many times
to avoid catching up. During one pause twenty-feet away, I thought
of Big De’von at The Donkey Show last night, pissed because
his table of 12, “Poor-ass, redneck, white trash motherfuhuhuhs…”
weren’t ordering four courses and $200 bottles of wine,
then throwing half of it away like a lot of our customers. His
table seemed to be having a great time, but against the gold-trimmed
staircase Big De’von complained of their poverty until
finally I asked him, “What’s wrong with being poor
man?”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with being poor,
just don’t come up in here wasting my time with it, y’eard
me?”
“They have every right to save up for one
big night out.”
“But look how they dressed! They dressed
so…” he squinted disgusted behind his gold rims.
“At least if a nigga poor, he’s still dipped in
hundreds a dollars a gear.”
Aside from his occasional, “I’m a
gangsta!” flare-ups, I like Big De’von; his Comic
Timing is impeccable. But after months in a school with no Principal
or math teacher but hundreds of backpacks full of not books
but $100 tennis shoes, I had to challenge him: “I dunno
man, I think that’s fuckin horrible that people would
spend all their money on shoes and shit that just does not matter.”
“Well…” he went serious, “If
life don’t matter…” he shrugged his square
white shoulders and brisked away, back out to the dining room
to handle his business.
Because of the weight of the topic, I didn’t
broach it with De’von again. But watching Little De’von
leer into Canal’s Shoe Windows, part of me wanted to re-open
the case. Part of me wanted to ask Little De’von, ‘Who
told y’all that life doesn’t matter?’ But,
the rest of me did not --- as much for him as for me; he wouldn’t
be happy to see me, and who knows what he thinks he could get
away with outside of class? So, far away I waited as they crept
along the windows slowly, like studying constellations, until
finally I began feeling silly, and worrying I’d miss the
bus. I inhaled deep lungs-full of NO, then proceeded to pepper-step,
toward-then-past De’von and his friend, staring straight
down Canal, focusing on that tired group of bus-riders up there,
aiming right for them and then...
“Hey, Mista Patrick!”
Except now he sounded like he liked me, for some
reason… “Why you ain’t got your bike today?”
he asked with the same sweet concern given to me at the dead
trolley stop by that old women who advised, “Oh please
get y’self a hat, baby; you know Redheads don’t
need no nasty sun on they face.”
“I just didn’t feel like sweating
today,” I answered Little De’von, slowing next to
him. “What are y’all up to?”
“Same as you,” he answered. The kids
ride the public bus to school, not the yellow kind. I’ve
never seen a yellow bus here. And I’ve never asked why.
Over his head I nodded hello to his tall friend,
who didn’t respond, just projected loud distrust. Silent,
we three walked parallel to each other and our gray reflections
in the windows until I interrupted, “So your braids look
cool man. Who did em?”
“One of my bitches,” he giggled down
the morning streets.
“Don’t call girls ‘bitches’,
man,” I reprimanded, then thought of Michael and the other
gay waiters and their affectionate, “Bitch,” “Girl,”
“Baby.” More silent walking... Then I asked De’von,
“So, what should I do in class today? What should I teach?
The bike-ride to school is usually when I decide what to teach
y’all --- I usually have it figured it out by around Lee
Circle.”
“Not to tell you your job Mista Patrick,”
De’von said, resting long skinny fingers in the crook
of my arm, “but you should use more preparation than that.”
Removing his hand he added, “And you need to quit sayin
‘Y’all’. Why you all the time tryna talk black?”
Up there, his silent friend nodded agreement and
lit a cigarette. As he puffed I remembered him: last week I
was standing outside my classroom rounding up stragglers when
he passed, his empty fingers in a V at his lips as he’d
asked me, “I can get a smoke?” Kids don’t
hide that from us anymore either.
“’Y’all’ is not a black-owned
word,” I defended.
“’Y’all’ ain’t a
word, period,” De’von claimed. “So you shouldn’t
be usin it since you suppose to be our writin teachuh?”
“I don’t agree, man; did you know
that of all the languages in the world, only our boring, shitty
King’s English…”
“Quit cursin,” he warned.
“…doesn’t have a word to address
an entire group,” I continued, repeating a mini linguistics
lecture Brad had once given me. “In English, the only
thing we have is, ‘You guys,’ which sounds much
worse than, ‘Y’all.’ ‘Y’all’
sounds nice, homey. I grew up in The South; I’m used to
“Y’all”. So, as far as I’m concerned
‘Y’all’ is a fuckin word.”
“You need to quit fuckin cursin!”
De’von screeched, the way I do in class when I have to
repeat myself. Then he returned to smiling and biting his lip.
I wish I could get over it like that…“I
didn’t curse nearly as much until I started teaching y’all,”
I told him. We paused at the bus stop. “And you guys curse
way more than I do.”
“So. We kids,” he justified, his thin
arms shoving me toward a pile of garbage on the curb.
We laughed together and I pointed out, “Hey!
We get along pretty well outside of class.”
Picking at the end of his braids and nodding agreement,
his head looked like a bell being rung. “We could always
get along if you didn’t be acting so stupid in class,”
he said then cackled like a dolphin, and I hoped that someday
he’ll be comfortable enough to make that sound all the
time.
Then he interrupted my idealism: “Ooooh,
by-the-way Mista Patrick: the class is fuckin mad at you; you
didn’t go on that field trip with us Thursday!”
The VP only told me about the damn trip three
days before, at that meeting where that Teacher Lady ran out
cursing. They expected me to be ready to take the children out
in public in just three days? Very unfair I thought, but then
realized, looking around me at The Meeting, that all the other
teachers had already known about the trip before then, before
me. At that I assumed I’d failed to pay attention at some
key point, and so concealed my ignorance by taking silent notes:
- Bus leaves Magnolia @ 10 a.m.
- Kids go to McDonough 35 to see a play (that some other Creative
Writing Teacher’s kids wrote? What the fuck? How did that
teacher get THAT to happen?)
- Bus returns to Magnolia @ 1 p.m.
- Tell the kids to bring lunches.
- NEED parental permission & insurance forms (or they cannot
go)
- VP says: “Invite them all. But if they’re behavior
problems, don't pull they teeth."
But near the end of The Meeting, just before that
Teacher Lady ran out in her storm of spit and anger, I discerned
from their discussion that I’ve been missing out on some
kind of teacher-wide email newsletter thing, for months; so
that’s how they all seem to know what to do, and why…
No one’s ever asked for my email address, and The Vice
Principal won’t answer any of my questions until I’m
asking them into her real live ear. And even then... I’m
being left out. But rather than anger, this hard evidence of
the darkness I’m kept in lifted pounds from my soul, and
I jotted down:
- This isn’t all my fault…
“You ain’t even show up for class!”
De’von continued, leaning against the metal signs reading
N.O. Transit Authority on top, and underneath: Parade Route:
3 p.m. to midnight. “Someone from The School Board had
to come down and got us.”
“Who?”
“A lady.”
“Black lady with big blonde curly hair?
A big fine girl?”
“That’s her but she ain’t fine.”
“The hell she ain’t.”
“She too light-skinneded.”
“How’d she take you without parental
permission?”
“What that mean?”
“Your parents didn’t sign permission
slips?”
“No, that blonde lady let us sign em ourselves.”
He pointed a limp finger in my face: “And she said you
was the only teacher that didn't show up.”
My face flushed as The Tchapatoulous Bus rolled
up and De’von and his stoic friend ascended its metal
stairs without saying goodbye. “Hey wait, why are you
taking this one?” I shouted after them. “The Magazine
bus goes straight down to the…”
“You wanna wait, keep waitin, baby,”
he batted his eyelashes.
“Does this one go to the school?”
But he disappeared inside the bus. I paid $1.25
to follow him to the back and immediately realize that, sitting
among his similarly uniformed friends, I’d taken excess
liberty; they didn’t want me there. De’von would
no longer acknowledge me. I removed my book from my backpack
and read, looking even more out-of-place among the kids.
- 2 -
Bike-ridden, there are plenty chunks of the city,
separate personalities, that I haven’t even glimpsed;
I learn my safe bus and bike routes then never deviate. I knew
that the Magazine bus would have shot us straight to Magnolia
High, so every time I felt the meandering Tchapatoulous take
a turn I glanced up from my book to find us in another section
of town where I’ve never been. Eventually I tried to ignore
the turns and not look up at all because I didn’t want
to think about it and get pissed at De’von for leading
me astray. I just kept my nose down, assuming we’d get
there eventually, knowing that no matter how engrossed I got
in reading I’d eventually sense the kids stand up, and
follow them off.
But I finished my whole book before that could
happen... To avoid eye contact with the kids I looked up, reading
the ads tacked over the bus’ windows; one for our restaurant
read, “[The Donkey Show], where the locals go to eat.”
As if that wouldn’t scare away locals… Reading similar
sentiments in every other ad, I knew I was late for school.
And this after already missing that Field Trip FUCK! I needed
to know what time it was, but not as much as I needed to avoid
asking De’von to see his watch... And I ended up hating
him and myself again by the time the bus driver shouted, “End
of the line!” nowhere near the school.
In some warehouse district under the blessed gray
shade of oaks, I followed De’von and his three tall, skinny
friends off the bus. They walked 20-feet ahead of me down the
broken street, punching each other. My nerves ticked with the
late clock and if I’d have known where we were exactly
I would’ve fucking ran to the school. But I was forced
to follow, trying and let go of my anxiety by thinking about
how crazy it is to worry about being late for Magnolia, of all
the godforsaken jobs. I’m probably already fired anyway
for missing the field trip...
To his credit, once-a-block De’von glanced
back --- to make sure I was still following them, it seemed,
rather than because he hoped I wouldn’t be. When they
finally stopped I stopped too, and we all waited under an anonymous
tree until another bus pulled up. Climbing aboard, I noticed
the kids all handing the driver Transfers they’d bought
back on the Tchapatoulous bus: proof that they’d known
exactly where we were(n’t) going from the beginning. I
paid a fresh $1.25 and sat seats and seats and rows away from
them. But now De’von wanted to talk to me. If only for
the benefit of his friends, he yelled through the empty bus,
“That field trip was fun though, Mista Patrick! Me and
Cedar broke off!”
“Where’d you go?” I asked, using
my Inside Voice.
He didn’t answer. But whether he didn’t
want to answer or he just didn’t hear me over the engine,
I wasn’t going to repeat myself. I concentrated on the
new bus’ ads until one of his friends asked him, “So
what’d y’all do when you broke off, woadie?”
“Talked to girls, baby,” De’von
smiled. As he proceeded to detail his and Cedar’s female
conquests, I studied him as acutely as I’ve ever studied
Mizzy or anyone else, and I caught no trace of self-doubt in
his bravado. Then finally he turned back to me: “We even
left the school, Mista Patrick!”
“What! No.” Man, I’m fucking
fired... The kids laughed at my facial reaction. I ignored them,
asking De’von: “Where’d y’all go?”
“None of your fuckin business,” he
smiled. “Y’white bitch.”
- 4 -
De’von and I made it to class 20-minutes
late and all but one of my six kids were silently downloading
and printing song lyrics from the internet; as the printouts
were born, Gaysha --- maroon ropes piled atop her head --- read
loudly to the other kids; it was that song Mizzy and I sing
to each other in The Dish Pit. Still I commanded, “All
right, computers off.” I walked to my desk, but didn’t
sit down. The kids continued staring into their monitors, pounding
it out, keyboards clacking along and the loud printer rat-tat-tat-tat-tat
like the sound of some War Room. Gaysha continued her lyrical
instruction.
“Please, turn the computers off. I’m
here now,” I demanded, pleaded. The printer was so much
louder than it used to be; the computers were brand new my first
day. Magnolia has so many other needs; I don’t know how
New Computers got on the list before New Principal and New Math
Teacher. By now the plates of the plastic mice are cracked loose
like road-killed turtles, and in whiteout on the sides of the
monitors, tribal markings warn, “10th W/D keep da fuckout.”
I snatched the pages from Gaysha’s hand…
“You fuckin trippin man!” she yelled
and glared.
I continued past her to each computer desk, reaching
over each students’ shoulders to kill their machines.
Each child yelled up into my adam’s apple when their monitor
blackened. I was ensuring a rough rest-of-the-class, I knew
it, but it’s the littlest Power Rushes that can drag you
the furthest without your permission; sometimes I understand
Mr. Land’s questionable smile.
Oddly though, the kids remained calm for the next
hour, calm like they’d just had sex --- I’m sure
most of them have more recently than I… Some of them were
almost friendly, showing interest in things I said. A couple
even took notes, and none argued when I handed back their Letters
to the Mayor (which I still haven’t read) and asked them
to correct grammar, spelling and punctuation, then re-write
another draft --- though I’m conflicted as to whether
their illiterate first-drafts might not deliver a more powerful
statement to The Mayor, whoever that will be.
Walking between their desks, answering their smiling
questions and feeling like a real teacher, I eventually had
to ask the room, “So what, did they give you guys Ritalin
for breakfast or something?”
“What’s that?” quiet Anthony
asked. No one else noticed my question; they were busy working.
I guess all they needed was a field trip…
“What’s what?”
“Ritalins.”
“Rita-lin,” I corrected “is
a drug to help you concentrate.”
“You know what help me concentrate?”
he asked. “Weed. They say weed suppose to make you lazy
but when I smoke it man, I want to play drums, write stories,
draw, just create shit man…that’s why I’ll
smoke the piss out some weed.” And all I could do was
nod; pot does the exact same thing for me, and since half The
Donkey Show’s Kitchen staff sells it, I’ve been
very focused lately, smoking at least five times a day. “That’s
why I should be allowed to smoke for school,” Anthony
added, smiling. “I don’t smoke for school cause
I don’t wanna get in trouble. But if I did, I’d
come in here mad focused.” Then he asked, “You take
it?”
Panic fluttered in my mouth. I stalled: “Weed?”
“Ritalins,” he corrected.
“No, I try not to take drugs made in laboratories
by white guys,” I admitted.
“True. I only take shit God makes too,”
he smiled again, before going plaintive: “But if it’s
gonna get me arrested, then maybe I should get a subscription
to Ritalin.”
“‘Prescription,’” I corrected.
“And you don’t need Ritalin, Anthony. You’re
fine.” Then, since I hadn’t received an answer to
my initial question I asked him directly, “So why are
they all acting like this today?”
“Mardi Gras comin,” he answered.
“What, Mardi Gras makes kids act good, like
The Spirit of Christmas? Like if they’re not good they
won’t get to see tourists and tits and garbage...”
“No, more like the spirit of: they fuck
around and get detentions and shit, no one ain’t marchin
in no parades, y’eard me?”
My pride waned; I thought I’d gotten through
to them. Still I managed to appreciate their anomalous tranquility
until the bell rang at 10:10 and De’von shook my hand
goodbye on his way out, causing a chain reaction of kind salutations
from every kid behind him:
“Later Mista Patrick!”
“Latuh, Pat Pat.”
“Latuh P-Diddy.”
“Latuh, cousin!”
“Latuh, Woadie.”
“Latuh Mr. Patrick!”
- 5 -
The stop for the Esplanade bus at Popeye’s
on Canal is white-hot-bright. Only after 11:30 a.m. does the
sun scoot over so that Popeye’s begrudges a sliver of
shade to protect me from cancer. So I decided to stay at Magnolia
and wait till then. My classroom was empty, my kids gone. I
sat at one of the dying computers with cigarette ashes on its
keys. Second period began 15 minutes prior, but kids still screamed
in the hall outside my door. I got up and peeked my head out
to find them leaping back-and-forth, laughing and slamdancing.
The echoey hallways were as gray as Canal, smelling clean, but
in a bad way, like an indoor swimming pool. Other teachers'
heads were out their doors too, but we deterred nothing, so
I walked down to the bathroom, chewed wads of toilet paper and
stuck them in my ears.
Back at the computer though, I could still hear
their screams, and so walked out and down to Magnolia’s
library, where I usually leave my bike during class. The library
seems like the only dry place in the city. It’s always
empty except during teacher meetings, thus it’s the only
room in the school that looks the way it should: clean posters
of black celebrities reading classic literature are taped to
the clean, tan brick; Three copies of Franzen’s The Corrections
occupy a New Arrivals shelf. The only signs of Magnolia’s
real personality are the printouts taped up at the still-healthy
computers: ‘Students are not allowed to visit rap artists’
websites and/or print out lyrics.’
But before I could make it into my email account,
De’von came flailing into the library through a door connected
to the Main Office. Falling straight toward me he looked like
he might cry, or faint. Almost in my lap he whispered hard,
“Mista Patrick! You gotta help me, you gotta say I’m
in y’class right now! Please!”
Over the horizon of his braids, Mr. Land stalked
into the library, pointing an authoritative finger at De’von:
“This boy’s in your class right now?”
De’von’s mouth was close enough to
whisper to me, but instead he silently searched far back in
my eyes. My heart was beating like I too had been chased. I
felt as trapped as he was.
“Mister Patrick, is he in your class right
now?” Land repeated.
I couldn’t answer and Land smiled at his
impending win --- a smile interrupted when De’von’s
tall friend from the bus sprinted in through the same Office
door. Seeing Mr. Land, he jack-knifed left and out the library
door, under a picture of Shaq reading Moby Dick. Land abandoned
us to chase the kid out and down the hall. But I knew he’d
come back after he won, so I whispered fast, “De’von,
I can’t fucking believe you’d do this me, man! You
want me to fucking lie for you when every day you treat me like
shit?” Struck by my own pleading voice I wondered where
the real conflict was in my admitting to Mr. Land, ‘No,
he’s not in my class right now.’
“I know, I know, I’m sorry Mista Patrick,”
De’von wilted, nodding sadly, which surprisingly didn’t
tame me.
“You’re fucking with my job man, my
fucking paycheck!” I whisper-shouted, noticing the librarian
looking up from her desk. Still I continued. “You’re
the one who cares so much about money and shit and now you’re
fucking with my money De’von, my food, my rent, my shoes!”
I pointed to the pink bump on my temple, “My fucking cancer
surgery money, Devon! I can’t believe you’d put
me in this position. I can’t believe you’d do this
to me man!”
Then the library’s front doors swung open
and Mr. Land lumbered back in, panting but smiling bigger. He
wiped his bald head with a paper towel: “O.K. Mr. Patrick,
now is or isn’t he in your class right now?” I wished
I were bussing tables, whether of not Mizzy’s and Jude
are quitting... Staring at myself in the computer monitor, my
eyes watered. If I’m silent for long enough this will
resolve itself without me. “Don’t lie for these
kids,” Land warned me, smirking. Still my silence. Finally
Mr. Land scoffed, then back to De’von: “So, Mr.
Patrick isn’t your teacher right now.”
By now De’von understood that I wasn’t
participating, and had discounted me as an alias. A foot away,
I felt his body forget I was even there... “No, he ain’t
our teachuh, we just usin his room,” he concocted.
“‘We’ who?” Land taunted.
“Our class.”
“With what teacher?”
“I don’t member, he a new man.”
A new man… No use to either of them, I remembered
all the times De’von’s told me, “I wish you’d
get the hell out, so we could have us a new man.”
Land continued his inquiry, “You just said
this new man’s name a minute ago De’von. What was
that name you told me? Started with a P…”
“I can’t pronounce it,” De’von
claimed. “He’s Chinese. A Chinese man.”
Mr. Land smiled back to me, giving me another
chance: “Mr. Patrick?”
This time I spoke truth into Mr. Land’s
eyes: “I can’t believe you’d do this to me,
De’von.”
Mr. Land led him away. It was 10:45. I walked
out through the metal detector and into the mean sun.
....
read Chapter 13 from the
same book
....
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For three years, Michael Patrick Welch was a Staff Writer at
The St
Petersburg Times in Tampa, FLA. During those years he also began
his first ever creative writings in the form of the self-destructively
honest on-line journal, Commonplace (screwmusicforever.com/commonplace)
which, along with some entries being published at Pual Tough's
Open Letters(.net) and McSweeneys(.net), also eventually became
the author's first self-published book. Since moving to New
Orleans a coupla years back, MPW wrote a second book, a novel,
The Donkey Show, published by Equator Books (equatorbooks.com).
MPW also plays skewwed electronic indy-R&B music, as the
one-man-band White Bitch.
