Attack of the Black Rectangles, page 6
“We can take it,” I say.
Marci gives me a silly look. “We don’t have to take it. We’ll just complain if she targets us. I mean, we didn’t do anything wrong.”
Denis sighs. “We told on her.”
“She’s a grown-up,” I say. “This isn’t elementary school. I mean—well—you know what I mean.”
“We have a lot to do now,” Marci says. “I don’t care if she’s mean to us. I want new books. I’ll do what it takes to get them.” Denis and I nod and mutter different versions of agreement.
When we get back to class, Ms. Sett has the lights off and has a video cued on the whiteboard. “We have a day off school on Monday,” Ms. Sett says. “Let’s talk about why!”
She starts the video about Christopher Columbus. It’s all the same stuff we learned in second grade. How he got here in 1492 and “discovered” America, how one of his three ships wrecked off the coast of Hispaniola, and how he was considered a hero in Spain. Nothing about how Columbus harmed the Indigenous population from the minute he landed. Nothing about how a person can’t “discover” a place that was already there and populated by people who already knew about it.
I keep hoping that the video will say something more honest toward the end, but the narrator only closes with the rhyme we all learned when we were seven: In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue …
The minute it’s over, I put my hand up.
Ms. Sett says, “Mac?”
“I would like to talk about the truth about Christopher Columbus,” I say.
She nods.
I continue, “He enslaved, tortured, and murdered Native people and I don’t think we should consider him a hero anymore. I don’t think we should have done that in the first place.”
“That’s a valid opinion,” Ms. Sett says. “But without Columbus, we wouldn’t be here, right? And I don’t know about you, but I like living here.”
“That’s colonization, not discovery,” Marci points out. I’m glad she says it because I need time to gather my argument.
“I like living here,” I say, “but I also know that if someone showed up tomorrow the way Columbus did, and took you and your friends and made you slaves, sold your young daughters, or killed a bunch of your family, you probably wouldn’t be okay with it.”
“He didn’t make anyone slaves,” Aaron scoffs.
Ms. Sett huffs through her nostrils and rolls her eyes. “This is really a discussion for high school. Or college.”
“The truth is a discussion for high school or college?” I ask, and as the words come out of my mouth, I realize I am not in full control of them. Something happened to me in the principal’s office. I’m mad again. “Anyway, you said this classroom was like college on the first day of school. Why wait?”
“He didn’t make anyone slaves,” Aaron says again.
I turn to him. “Yes, Aaron, he did. First he took women and gave them to the sailors on his ships. Day one. Imagine he took your sister and gave her to strangers.”
Hannah Do looks uncomfortable. I didn’t want to be so blunt, but it’s hard to suppress a superpower.
“Plus,” I say, “he then enslaved the men in every place he found. He brought diseases that killed more than half the populations he came into contact with, and then when the slaves tried to revolt, he killed them and paraded their bodies through the streets. That was in the Dominican Republic, if you want to know. He was governor there.”
The classroom is quiet.
Ms. Sett puts her hands together in a sarcastic soft clap and speaks slowly. “Again, Mac, I think this is a history lesson for when you’re older. For now, let’s just do our worksheets and get this lesson over with, okay?”
“So you want us to learn lies?” I ask. I am way too mad right now and I know I’m being disrespectful. I know better, but if she doesn’t respect us enough to let us read regular words in a book, I don’t see why I should respect her while she teaches lies.
“He didn’t give women to sailors,” Aaron says.
“Aaron, be quiet,” Ms. Sett says. She looks suddenly awkward.
“You know,” I say to her. “You know the truth but you don’t want to teach it.”
“We’ll discuss it during recess,” she says. “Here in my room.”
I think I just got recess detention for telling the truth.
“Detention?” I ask.
She ignores me. “Let’s get these worksheets done and we can move on to the geography of the Caribbean! I even have my own pictures from three different islands!”
I say it again. “Detention?”
She ignores me a second time.
“Open your computers and start on the two lessons in there. You have fifteen minutes.”
I don’t like being ignored. It’s like pretending something isn’t happening when it is. While the other kids do their schoolwork, I use the search engine to look up if there’s a word for pretending something isn’t happening when it is.
I make a bullet-pointed list of terms for it.
Gloss over
Sweep aside
Kick something into the long grass
Turn a blind eye
Look the other way
My favorite is the one in the middle. So many things in my life this week have been kicked into the long grass, I feel like I live in the long grass. My skin gets itchy just thinking about it.
Recess detention is more long grass. Ms. Sett either forgets she gave it to me or she remembers and leaves me here by myself to think about why we shouldn’t learn the truth about Columbus in sixth grade. Deep down I worry about how mad I am again, and I know the reason I got recess detention was because I couldn’t control my mouth earlier and I wonder if that leads to smashing mugs.
Then, twenty minutes in, she comes through the door and sits down at my pod of tables. I look at her and have this hole where my respect used to be. I don’t get how all my grace just disappeared today. But when I look at her, I can only see her sitting down and crossing out passages in books with a marker.
“I wish you wouldn’t challenge me in front of everyone like that,” she says. “I have a job to do and I must do it properly. Don’t get me wrong—I know what Columbus did and I know what you’re talking about. I just can’t teach that stuff to kids this age.”
“We’re twelve,” I say.
“That’s young.”
“It’s six years from adulthood.”
“True, but this is an elementary school. Your parents and the other parents of students in this class wouldn’t appreciate that.”
“Mine would,” I argue.
This is when the bell chimes and we can hear kids in the hallways. Ms. Sett gets up and smiles and says, “I do understand that you come from a house that’s different from the other kids’. But please try to just keep what you learn at home out of my lessons.” The hole where my respect used to be gets bigger when she says what you learn at home in that tone.
“So the Earth can be flat?” I ask. This is kinda mean to bring up Aaron like this. I know it. I don’t care. She just made it sound like my family is weird for talking about real things.
She looks at me like she doesn’t get it and moves to her desk, sits down, and rummages through a pile of papers there, acting again like this isn’t a big deal.
I explain, “I have to leave the truth at home, but Aaron James gets to say the Earth is flat in front of a geography teacher?”
She grimaces—like she’s making a hard decision. I hope the decision is to stop teaching lies, but she also could have gas from her lunch.
“The class knows Earth is round,” she finally says.
“But they don’t know the truth about Columbus, which is why it’s important to talk about it.”
“They’ll figure it out. Same as you guys figured out the words in The Devil’s Arithmetic, right?” she says, leveling me with a look over her glasses.
I’m speechless as the room fills up with my classmates.
I look at Hannah, who’s just sat down next to me.
I feel a little dizzy and not like myself.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
I say I’m fine, but really I’m mad again. Between the crazy rules around here, my dad being, well, my dad, and now this, I’m done hoping adults do the right thing. I’m done thinking they have our best interests at heart. Except for Mom and Grandad, I think they all live in the long grass, even if they know they shouldn’t.
A few minutes later, my group sits around the lit circle table. I lean into Marci and Denis.
“She knows,” I whisper. “She just said something to me about how we know what the words are in the book.”
Both of them frown a little.
“Huh,” Marci says. “Well, this probably isn’t the first time she’s censored books. She obviously doesn’t care.” Marci still has that little smile she had in the principal’s office this morning. Grandad would say she has spark.
Denis says, “Why would she? She’s always been Ms. Laura Samuel Sett, right? From the paper?”
“True,” I say.
“We should talk to her,” Marci says.
“Why?” Denis asks.
“Because maybe it’s time to talk to the actual person who caused the problem?” she says. Spark.
Hannah says, “She’ll be here after school today. I’m staying to make up a quiz.” We all look at her like she just landed here, but she and Aaron have been listening this whole time.
Marci turns back to me and Denis and says, “We should talk to her today, then.”
“Group six? Is there anything you need?” Ms. Sett asks from her desk.
We look over and say variations of “Sorry” and then look busy.
I pull out my book but I can’t stop looking at Marci. Her hair is really shiny today.
“Dude, you okay?” Denis whispers.
I give him a thumbs-up and can’t find any words. I seem to be filled with a feeling I can’t talk about. It’s like the opposite of mad. I didn’t know it was possible to feel opposite things at the same time like this. It makes me feel like there’s a tug-of-war in my stomach.
I ignore it and reread chapter five.
In chapter five, Hannah, the main character, continues to try to tell the people she has time-traveled to in Lublin, Poland, that she is not from their place or time, but they continue to think she is a girl named Chaya. No one believes her or seems to care. It frustrates me the same as talking to Dr. McKenny this morning.
When Marci comes in from chorus practice later that afternoon, she looks happy about something bigger than usual.
Denis asks, “Why are you smiling?”
Marci shrugs and puts her notebooks into her backpack.
She probably likes some guy who’s in chorus with her. I can’t sing in tune and I don’t really listen to music and Marci is in love with every pop song and oldies and even punk rock, which she says is the language of people who fight oppression.
We all get our backpacks together and get ready for the walker dismissal announcement. When it comes, the other students leave and we go to Ms. Sett’s desk and stand there until she looks up.
“Hello, three musketeers,” she says.
“We wanted to talk to you about the book,” I say.
Denis adds, “We didn’t want to get you in trouble.”
“We just wanted to get new books and raise awareness about censorship,” Marci says.
Ms. Sett laughs a little under her breath. “I don’t mind at all,” she says. “You’ll learn, as you grow up, that adults in your life seem to be doing things you think are wrong, but really we’re helping you.”
“Wait,” I say.
Marci says, “Censoring books isn’t helpful. For anyone.”
“Yeah,” Denis adds nervously.
“No one is keeping you from reading the book,” Ms. Sett says. “You’re reading the book.”
I think Marci might explode at that, but instead she remains calm and says, “You censored it. Which means you made a decision about what we can and can’t read. It’s unconstitutional.”
Ms. Sett lets out a genuine laugh. “Oh, Marci, you need to have more fun in your life. Same goes for you,” she says, motioning to me with her head. “And in terms of constitutionality, I think you’ll find the Supreme Court has given schools some leeway about what goes on in the classroom.”
“With all due respect, we don’t plan on stopping our fight,” Marci says.
“With all due respect, I wish you luck,” Ms. Sett says. She has a look on her face like she’s enjoying this. I can’t explain it. It’s not passive-aggressive or manipulative—two definitions I learned from Grandad when Dad first moved out—but she’s, like, sure she’s right.
Hannah is waiting over by the door to take her quiz and two other kids are here, too. The three of us walk out of the room, giving Hannah high fives to her raised palm. I think we’re all holding our breath because, once we get out of the building, we all exhale big-time.
“Wow,” Marci says.
I shake my head. “She really thinks this is all fine.”
“Maybe we should just let it go,” Denis suggests. “I mean, she’s the teacher and we can’t win, right?”
“If you want to stop, you can,” I answer. “But I’m here to fight this until we get at least a little respect.”
“Exactly,” Marci agrees. I swear when she says this, my heart skips. I can’t look at her because I start to feel my cheeks going red. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
Marci walks in the direction of her house and I stand there watching her for a second or two, forgetting Denis is standing right next to me.
As Denis and I walk home, we play a bunch of rounds of BOT DUCK MAN. He wins, I think.
I don’t know. I’m not paying attention.
“You good?” Denis asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
Silence takes us over for more than a minute. I’m about to tell Denis that the thing in his bug bite from last summer is really an unhatched cat, but then Denis asks, “You like Marci, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I think she likes you, too,” he says.
“It’s so dumb. We should be— Wait. You think so?”
“You should go to the homecoming dance together,” Denis says, then smiles and peels off toward his house.
When I get home, I head right for Grandad’s flat.
Grandad is sitting on his floor cross-legged (he calls it lotus) and holding his string of beads. He tells me to join him, so I sit the way he’s sitting.
“Did she lay into you about Columbus?” he asks.
I nod and roll my eyes.
“You okay?” he asks.
I sort through my thoughts and feelings. 1. I am okay. 2. I had a heck of a day when it comes to my teacher finding out that we tattled on her, and 3. she still thinks she’s doing the right thing when she lies to us whether through videos about the Columbus myth or with a Sharpie marker. 4. I felt a lot of anger today and I don’t even know if that makes me okay or not okay. 5. But right now I feel like I’m going to throw up and that seems to be the most important thing.
“I think I like a girl,” I say. “But I really don’t because I can’t actually like this girl.”
Grandad looks serious. “Do your hands sweat?”
“Yes.”
“Do you get all swampy around her?”
“Swampy?” I ask.
“You know, everything’s damp?”
“I guess.”
“When you think about her, what does it feel like inside?”
I think about it. “Like I’m scared.”
“Oh boy,” Grandad says. “Can you eat around her?”
“Not as much as usual.”
“Does she like you back?” he asks.
“Denis says she does, but I don’t think so. I mean, she’s smart and in chorus and she plays the saxophone and she’s always talking and reading and—”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Mac. You’re a smart guy and you have lots of cool hobbies.”
“I don’t have any hobbies,” I sulk.
Grandad thinks about it for a second. “You help your dad in the garage on Saturdays. And you eat candy with me!”
“And I help my mom make awesome soup, yeah,” I say. “I know. None of those things are mine.”
“Well, what do you like to do?”
I think about it for a few seconds. “I like to be bold and change the world and stuff. Like I want to write a real history book that doesn’t lie and buy an electric car and I want to go to protests when I’m older because things need to change and my friend Marci should have the same rights as men do.”
Grandad looks at me a long time. “Ah … so it’s Marci?”
I nod.
“Let’s figure out what to protest,” Grandad says.
“Yeah.”
“I already know,” he says. “Don’t you?”
I look at him. He should know my brain isn’t working. I’m sick with whatever this is. “I could protest the homecoming dance because … uh … homecoming is stupid?”
“Ya think?” he asks. “I always thought homecoming was cool. Didn’t know you had a dance at your age, though.”
“That’s what’s stupid,” I say. “I mean, it’s a lot of pressure on kids our age.”
“I suppose, but it doesn’t seem protest-worthy,” Grandad says.
“Huh. Okay. Well, I don’t know what to protest, then.”
Grandad gives me a serious look. “I’m not going to tell you. That’s just wrong.” When I’m still quiet, he says, “It’s what you’ve been thinking about all week.”
“Oh!” I say. I mean, duh.
“Looks like you have a hobby,” he says. “In the meantime, let’s get you some records. I think you need to listen to more records.”
“Okay,” I agree.
Grandad takes three deep breaths with his eyes closed and rolls the beads on his string between his finger and thumb, stopping at the last one, and then does this praying-hands sort of thing with the beads wrapped around his hand. Once on his forehead, once on his mouth, and once on his heart. Then we get up and walk to the music store.
