A Hope in the Unseen (20 page)

More important, each school on Cedric’s list has an asterisk next to it, indicating the offer of some scholarship money. Cedric flips through the four pages of student names and sees that plenty of the colleges have no accompanying asterisks. He, like everyone here, knows that that means plenty of the senior class’s select sixty-four won’t be going anywhere next fall.

Money is crucial. Acceptance to college is meaningless for many kids at Ballou without financial aid. And for Cedric this glorious list means a sort of financial redemption, representing—in the case of Brown, at least—an annual scholarship just shy of $20,000, about what his mother makes a year.

So there it is: his row of asterisks for everyone to see. It’s a delicate issue, and Cedric knows to keep his mouth shut. He spots James Davis walking away from the auditorium and decides to check the list before calling out to him. James was accepted to his first choice, Florida A&M. There are no asterisks.

Cedric knows James was hoping for a scholarship. He looks up and winces, thankful that James has vanished in the crowd. Florida A&M’s scholarship—a special prize based on both merit and need—is, in fact,
an afterthought on Cedric’s own sterling list. He wishes he could just give it to James, but he knows it doesn’t work that way.

He puts the awards booklet in his backpack and makes his way through the halls, sensing that a largely theoretical separation between himself and most of his classmates has suddenly become painfully literal.

As the day passes, he feels edgy and watchful, detecting some extra bile in the comments and stares to which he’s grown accustomed. In the late afternoon, he bumps into Jack Davis, James’s equally huge twin, near the boys’ bathroom. Jack is usually cordial, due, Cedric figures, to his passing friendship with James. No more. “Brown University,” says Jack darkly. “You can’t hang there Cedric. You probably won’t last a year there. Definitely won’t last two. No way. You’ll be coming right back.”

Cedric says nothing, looking away, just shaking his head. This is the last guy he wants to get into an altercation with, especially on this day of victory.

As May wanes, the whole senior class seems locked in a fitful finale, taking the final tally of dismal achievement and stunted opportunity into the hot summer. It’s a bad time for kids to feel desperate and dispirited. When the weather warms and the streets start to fill with kids cutting school and meeting peers who are long beyond formal schooling, the season of mayhem begins in Southeast. Just two days after the awards ceremony, a hail of gunfire was pumped into a parked car—just a block from Cedric and Barbara’s apartment building—killing two men and critically injuring a three-year-old boy who later died.

Onto these streets, graduating seniors are about to spill, accentuating the divide between a few haves looking forward to summer preparations for college and a vast army of have-nots, looking at a first summer of official, out-of-school, get-a-job reality.

Cedric, always attentive to potential threats, has spent the two weeks since the awards ceremony with his face frozen in an innocuous half-smile, trying to look utterly neutral and inert, shrugging a lot as though all his good fortune stems from some sort of clerical error. It’s just the most recent of many poses Cedric has affected since he got into Brown. Once word got out about his acceptance, he noticed a grimness
start to come over his antagonists in the halls. It was easier to be the headstrong monk, a boy on a long-shot mission, before he’d actually won anything. With the prize in hand, he realized his single-minded drive came across as aloof cockiness; his painful martyrdom suddenly looked like self-nomination for sainthood. So he toned it down, not telling anyone about the Clarence Thomas meeting. Not discussing his preparations for Brown. Not talking too much about the awards. Pride, he knows, can get you killed in a place like this.

But with only a few weeks of school left, he’s not sure he can keep up this exhausting, aw-shucks facade for much longer.

In Advanced Physics class on an afternoon at the end of May, Cedric—in the front row, as usual—tries to stay focused on his worksheet as Mr. Momen leaves the room.

A moment later, he sees a large hand plunge over his shoulder. It’s James Davis, snatching Cedric’s Texas Instruments T-18 calculator, a prize Cedric got a year ago from the math department for academic achievement. James hustles to his desk in the back of the room, saying over his shoulder, “You don’t need a calculator anyway.”

Cedric shakes his head in exasperation. He just can’t keep his tongue tied any longer.

“James, I need my calculator,” says Cedric, clearly impatient.

James ignores him.

“Muthafucka, give me my calculator,” he says, now loud enough that everyone is looking up. “Look, I don’t feel like playing all the time, bitch.”

Curse words, spoken often between boys of this age in this place, may or may not mean anything. That’s for James to decide. And today he clearly decides they mean plenty. His jaw muscles bulge, squaring his wide face. He pushes himself up from the desk and rushes up the aisle, thundering forward, his compressed rage rising like lava until his full bulk is leaning over Cedric, who has barely managed to swivel sideways in his chair.

“Who the fuck you talking to?” James yells, ready to blow.

Cedric is stunned, but it’s already gone too far to back down.

“To you,” he says, trying to make it sound tough. The words are
barely out when James’s forty-eight-inch shoulders begin to swivel and a huge, wrecking-ball fist flies forward right into Cedric’s heart, as the smaller boy, still sitting, finds the wind flying from his lungs, shoulders folding forward, his chest caving under the force.

A split second passes and Cedric begins to rise, barely, trying to catch his breath and muster some response. LaCountiss and two other girls jump in between the boys. Two boys—one graced with a stamped ticket out of here—standing face-to-face, eyes afire, in this world turned upside down.

At lunch hour two weeks later, Cedric—standing at the entrance to the teachers’ lounge—reaches inside the collar of his shirt to touch the bruise on his chest. The bump has gone down and it’s now just a dull ache when he presses on it. He looks over at LaCountiss Spinner, sitting with Constance Thompson, an English teacher and senior class adviser who must read over all the speeches for graduation. He keeps his impatience in check, trying to quietly wait for his turn. Her path to sterling grades bore little resemblance to his, insofar as the social codes for girls at Ballou are slightly less restrictive than they are for boys. For a girl to be a “goody” or a “whitey” by wanting to do well and leave everyone behind is not considered as serious a disrespect to the less fortunate as it is for a boy. A straight-arrow boy who thinks “he’s better than other people” can get taken down with violence. A girl of the same mien can be taken down with sex, making her a prize for a tough guy who can exhibit irresistible charms. While, as a result, most top students at schools like Ballou are girls, LaCountiss never needed the type of lofty goals Cedric had to hold on to in order to push against a fierce headwind. She will go on to an unremarkable institution—Marymount University, nearby in the Virginia suburbs, which offered her a full scholarship. Never thought much about big, renowned universities. Never had a reason to.

But that’s fare for next fall. At Ballou, at least, LaCountiss finishes first in line. Cedric’s rear-guard assault—based on acing more advanced, higher-credit classes in the past two years—wasn’t enough to overcome a few B’s he got in ninth grade. LaCountiss, with straight A’s throughout, edged him out by a grade-point fraction for valedictorian.

“That looks just fine, LaCountiss. It’s a very nice speech,” Ms. Thompson says as LaCountiss, placid and nonconfrontational to the end, smiles softly and slips out.

Cedric plops down in the empty chair and drops his latest draft before Ms. Thompson. He’s already seen her three times over the past four days. His speech doesn’t seem to be changing much between drafts.

“It’s just not there yet, Cedric,” she says. She doesn’t know Cedric very well, never had him in class, but she knows he doesn’t take ultimatums well. “Give it another try. Why not talk, maybe, about some of the friends you made at Ballou.”

He nods, lips pursed. “All right then,” he says, as they agree to meet later in the afternoon. “But don’t expect much.”

There is only one day until graduation. Underclassmen are still in school; seniors have been finished with classes, for the most part, for a week. Tomorrow, Cedric is going to have to stand and deliver before the class.

And he has written a spiteful speech.

The question: what to do? The message, quietly passed down a few days ago from the principal’s office to a handful of teachers involved in graduation planning, is blunt: he can’t stand and give that angry, bitter speech to tomorrow’s assemblage of parents, members of the school board, Mayor Barry, and God knows who else. Simply can’t happen. Somebody do something.

After lunch, Cedric ducks his head into the classroom of Shirley Briscoe, his senior English teacher. She’s sitting at her desk, trying to stay cool in a blue flowered summer dress. It’s a sweltering afternoon, and she’s grading some of her last papers, their edges fluttering in the breeze from a huge platform fan.

“Oh, Cedric,” she says, pleased to see him. She’s retiring in a few days after nearly three decades at Ballou, having seen the school slowly deteriorate from a clean, promising place to its current disarray. “I hear you’re working on your speech.”

He slumps down in a chair in front of her desk, his back to the fan.

“Guess everybody knows it’s not going too good,” he says with a doleful laugh and passes it across to her.

Her eyes wander down the page, reading his scrawl: “I’ve had to achieve at Ballou without much help …. What did I learn? Watch out for the Dreambusters. You know who they are. Dreambusters are everywhere. Students, teachers, and administrators who said ‘You can’t, you won’t.’ … Dreambusters follow you all over this part of town … you got to fight them … you’ve got to get them before they get you,” and on and on.

She looks up. “Maybe you want to start with something positive, something hopeful. What are some other lessons you’ve learned?”

“Well, be cautious about picking your friends ’cause not everybody wants you to succeed.”

“Okay, I suppose,” she says. “An important message, I think I’m hearing, is not only to watch out for the Dreambusters, but also, and maybe more important, is that you have to keep those dreams in sight and hold on tight to them.”

Cedric considers this for a moment. She opens an English textbook on her desk, spins it, and slides it to him, “Remember this poem from class?”

It’s a Langston Hughes poem called “Dreams,” and Cedric reads the first line: “Hold fast to Dreams, for if dreams die life is a broken winged bird … ”

His face softens.

“Yeah, this might work. Uh-huh.”

He thinks for a minute. “I guess,” he says, trying to summon conviction, “that every person has a dream to walk across that stage at graduation.” Even as he says it, he feels guilty. Of course, the other kids have dreams, but over the last four years it was easier not to think about that—it made his big dreams seem bigger and his journey seem more heroic, like he was truly different from the rest of them in some fundamental way.

Ms. Briscoe smiles at him. “‘A dream to walk across that stage’ … that sounds pretty good,” she says, nodding, not wanting to make him suspicious by being too enthusiastic. “I think you’d feel good saying something like that.”

Soon he’s off to a quiet place to start scribbling. Two hours later, in a conference room next to Dr. Jones’s office, Ms. Thompson reads it
and gives her assent. “A little rough,” she says, anxious to get home, “but it might work. Okay. It’s fine to say what you feel, Cedric, up to a point. But you have to think about what other kids feel, too.”

C
larence Taylor is neatly lining up just-washed beakers, storing everything for the summer, when Cedric wanders in, befuddled, as though he’s looking for something he’d left here.

“Oh, hi Mr. Taylor,” he says softly.

“Well, hi there,” says Clarence, trying not to sound too surprised or delighted, but hinting at both. Over the past six months, they have grown apart. Cedric thought Clarence was pushing him too hard, not allowing him to breathe and enjoy the victory of Brown’s acceptance. And Clarence, a complete workaholic himself, didn’t know how to turn the pressure down a notch.

Now, after no contact since winter, they are alone. Cedric’s explanation for stopping by is that he’d just gotten approval on his graduation speech and he “has some time to kill.” He eases into a favorite desk near the window and Clarence begins puttering around, as always, in perpetual motion. There’s so much ground to cover and so little time that Clarence chooses carefully, asking first about his mom, about graduation coming up, and about classes Cedric plans to take next year at Brown.

They joke about some of the younger honor students coming up, mostly girls and one promising sophomore boy. “They keep coming,” says Cedric.

“But none quite like you,” Clarence lets slip but then catches himself, not wanting to get sentimental. It’s his role, he tries to remind himself, to be left behind. It’s enough, he remembers telling Cedric last year, that you “get to see them grow, right there in front of you.” But he’s not letting go—not quite yet.

“Hey! Wait,” Clarence chirps. “Did I tell you about the Boston Marathon in April? About what happened?”

Cedric starts to laugh in anticipation. “NO! Oh my Gaawwwd. What?”

It’s a doozy, an allegorical gem, and Clarence lays it out sweet and
long and full of relish, about how he was coming up past the statue of Johnny Kelley, the ancient Boston marathoner who won the race in the 1930s and ran it into the 1990s (“a hard, ‘never say die’ old coot, that Kelly”) and “I look over and this woman is running alongside me.” They’d exchanged nods a few miles back and so then started to talk again, puffing away. She was white and a judge in Boston, and she was tiring. “Oh yes, Cedric, she was flagging, that judge, and she tells me that she’s got a friend that lives right near here in one of the nice houses” near the marathon route. And how “she was thinking of running right over to that friend’s house right now, getting something cool to drink and calling it quits …. And I told her, ‘Yes, Ma’am, I’m feeling that way too, sometimes you feel too tired to go on … but you got to reach deeper for inspiration.’”