All of the Above (3 page)
On the back of an order pad, I do a quick sketch. “We got a new math club at school,” I tell Willy Q. “Trying to break a world record. They elected me Prez. Gonna take different colors of paper and make them into little shapes that look like this.” I hold up my drawing. “See?”
“That's a pyramid,” my daddy says.
“No.” I show him. “Tetrahedron. All triangles, see?”
My daddy smacks my arm. “Don't you get too smart for Willy Q's Barbecue,” he tells me. “‘Cause we don't need smart, we need sales.”
He crosses his arms and squints at me. “How long this club gonna last, Marcel? You got a job to do—hope you ain't forgetting that.”
I give him Marcel's special Turn-on-the-Charm-and-Give-Them-the-Big-Pearly-Whites smile. Same smile I use for when the grill's too slow or we got too many people waiting in line. “Ain't gonna last very long, teacher says. Not that long.”
Willy Q don't fall for that smile, though.
“Better not,” he warns, getting up and going back to the grill. “Break's over. Get back to work, Marcel.”
S
INGING THE
B
LUES
B
ARBECUE
S
AUCE
¼cup brown sugar
½cup ketchup
1/3 cup white vinegar
4 tablespoons olive oil
¼cup water
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
½ teaspoon salt
¼cup molasses
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons sweet hot mustard
Combine all ingredients and bring to a boil. Simmer 15 minutes, stirring occasionally until sauce is sweet and singing the blues.
Math problem to solve:
Each level of a tetrahedron increases by a factor of four. So, in order to build a bigger tetrahedron, the students at Washington Middle School will need to add a new level and make four times as many pieces. If the California tetrahedron had 4,096 pieces, how many pieces will the Washington Middle School students need to make?
Forget this. That's what I feel like telling Collins. We're sitting in the guidance office and Collins says that I'm going to fail math for the first grading period because I'm not passing his tests or turning in any of the homework. He shows me all the empty boxes in his grade book.
Like I care about those empty boxes.
“I'm very concerned about you,” he tells me. He puts on that sad-eyed look that teachers use to show they're concerned when they're really not. They're just worrying about handing out too many F's and looking like bad teachers.
I stare at the window behind Collins and think about how good it would feel to jump out that window and send all that glass flying into the air like one of those jagged comic book pictures with the word
CRASH
written above it. Get out of school, Collins’ class, all the other dumb teachers’ classes—and never come back.
Collins says if I start coming more often to his math club after school, he might let me pass the first grading period with a D. “We need a lot more help with the project,” he says, leaning back in his chair and waiting for me to answer. “So, James, what do you think? Would you consider doing that or not?”
I think about telling Collins—gimme an F. That I'd rather fail. That I don't feel like doing his dumb math homework or making his dumb pyramid, either. Most days, I got better things to do after school than sit with a bunch of losers. Even Terrell says he's thinking of dropping out because the girls are nothing special to look at.
But I decide to play Collins’ little game. “How many days a week do I have to keep coming to the club to pass math?”
The teacher's eyes waver, like he hadn't thought of being asked this question. “Every day you don't turn in your math homework,” he answers finally.
“And how long I gotta stay?”
“Well …” Collins’ eyes glance toward the clock. “Four o'clock, how about that?”
“Ain't staying past 3:45,” I reply, staring out the window again. “I got a life, you know, and it ain't here in school.”
Collins shakes his head and gives me the sad-eyes look again. He starts into a long speech about how he wishes he could make me see that my life would be so much different if I realized that school was a way out.
“You've got such a talent for art,” he says. “Don't you see that? You could go to college someday, or art school.…”
I've heard this speech from teachers so many times I could give it myself. What they don't get is, I don't like school, and I'm already good in art and there's nothing else I feel like learning about it. They should see the wall of drawings I got at my uncle's place if they think I need to learn something.
I snooze and count sheep in my head until Collins finishes.
“Can't stay until four,” I repeat again when he's done talking. “Gotta be home by four. I got rules.”
That rules excuse was just a lie, of course. I didn't have no rules. Not one. Me and my brother, DJ, lived with our uncle, who didn't care what we did. The real reason that I had to be back by four was that DJ and his friends always showed up at my uncle's place around then and sometimes they'd let me hang out with them, if they didn't have plans—plans meaning something they didn't want me being a part of.
Most of my brother's friends were the kind of people you wouldn't want to mess with if you saw them on the street, especially Markese. He'd been kicked out of school already for the stuff he'd done. Wouldn't that be nice, right? But the others were cool to me. When they saw me in the hall at school, they'd slam into my shoulder and say “Hey, little brother —wake up, what's happening?” Two more years and I'd be the one slamming into shoulders just like DJ and the others. The hallway would move apart to let me pass—
Collins closes his grade book with a thump, which brings me back to where we were at. “All right, James,” he says with a sigh. “If you keep coming to the math club and stay until 3:45—not 3:30, or 3:35, or 3:42 and a half—I'll give you a passing homework grade. But just for this marking period. And you have to show up every day the club meets, do you understand that?”
“Ain't coming on Saturday and Sunday,” I say. “No way.”
Collins gives me a look. “You know what I meant.”
As I walk out the door, I can't help grinning to myself and jumping up to high-five the top of the door frame. “See ya later, Mr. Collins,” I call out. “You have a good weekend now.”
See, Collins may be a math teacher, but he ain't very smart. All I said was that I would show up from 3:00 to 3:45. Didn't agree to do nothing for the club. So I could waste forty-five minutes drawing comics in the back of the classroom, and he'd still have to let me pass math. Man—DJ and his friends would say—you a genius.
And I was.
Another math problem to solve:
If seven students and their math teacher worked on building the giant tetrahedron from 3:00 to 4:00, Monday through Friday, and each person made about 30 small tetrahedrons an hour, how long would it be until they reached their goal of 16,384? Extra credit: What if it is not that easy?
Nothing gets past Sergeant Willy Q. Williams.
I'm a Vietnam vet, so I seen it all, you know what I mean? I was in the Army for fourteen years. So I know a thing or two about kids. Seen kids not much older than my son go to war, get shot up, and die. That's what I'm always telling Marcel. He may think he's smarter than me. He may think he can pull the wool over my eyes—but nothing gets by Willy Q. Williams.
When I see Marcel coming in late to work again—the third time in a week—I pick up the phone we use for taking orders and call his school. I ain't gonna listen to another smooth excuse about why he's late. I know the streets and I know everybody in this neighborhood, good and bad, and I'll find out where he's been and what he's been up to, and he'll think twice before lying to me again. And if he's doing drugs or hanging out with the wrong crowd, he'll be sweating over the grill at Willy Q's Barbecue for the rest of his life.
A lady answers at the school.
“Good afternoon,” I say, “this is Marcel Williams’ father, Willy Q. There a math class meeting there?”
The lady says no, not that she knows about. There's basketball practice and cheerleading; that's all.
I start counting on my fingers. One lie.
“There a Mr. Collins there? A math teacher?”
I wait for her to say no, there's nobody named Collins either. But she says hold on, she'll page him on the loudspeaker. A customer walks up to the take-out window, but I tell him to hang on and I stay on the line waiting. When Mr. Collins finally picks up the phone, I can tell right away that he's a white guy. About forty or fifty years old maybe. Least that's what he sounds like.
I tell him I'm calling to check if my son is in an after-school math club of his, because that's what he's telling me, and I want to find out if that's true or not. And I have to admit that it surprises me a little to hear the teacher answer yes, it's true.
“What's the purpose of this club?” I ask. “Does Marcel need extra help in math? He failing or something?”
Mr. Collins says no.
“This for some kind of test that kids need to graduate?”
Mr. Collins says no.
“This just some kind of self-esteem club like they're always pushing these days, to make black kids feel good about themselves?”
Mr. Collins says no, the kids are learning geometry and trying to break a math record set by a school in California.
Same story Marcel gave me.
“Now, maybe some kids have time to stay after school and break math records, but my son doesn't.” I say this in a respectful tone of voice, though. I tell Mr. Collins that if it wasn't for our barbecue place, me and my son wouldn't have a roof over our heads or food in our mouths. I can't run the place alone, I explain, not with how much business we get. I need my son here every day, helping me after school. I expect that you can understand that.
Mr. Collins tries to make me change my mind. He wants me to let Marcel stay for the club once or twice a week. “Maybe you have some days that are slower than others,” he tries to argue. “Marcel is a big part of the team, and we'd hate to lose him.”
I tell the teacher that I'm a Vietnam vet and being a soldier taught me that responsibility always comes first. Marcel's responsibility is to work at the Barbecue. When you're a soldier, you learn to do what you have to do, not what you want to do, and that's the way I'm trying to raise my son, I say.
“Now”—I glance over at the customer who is getting impatient—“what time is school dismissed every day, Mr. Collins?” After he answers 3:25, I thank him for speaking to me and tell him to be sure that Marcel leaves school at that exact time each afternoon. “I'll be waiting right here for him,” I finish.
I got Slow Burn Sauce cooking inside me. The kind of sauce that gets hotter after you swallow it. Hotter and hotter. Like flames licking up the inside of a house.
We don't aim to please nobody at Willy Q's Barbecue, ma'am. We got the worst food in the whole state of Ohio. Maybe the entire world. No hot sauce. No mild sauce. Nothing. You have a terrible day, too, ma'am, and don't you ever come back.
That's what I'd like to say.
Instead I smack some ribs over on the grill and slop sauce on them. Won't look at Willy Q. Won't talk to him neither. Let him disappear in a puff of smoke. Wouldn't care.
Ain't spending the rest of my life working at Willy Q's Barbecue. Saying sweet things to customers who don't deserve sweet. Smiling like I care about selling rib bones and chicken wings and pig meat.
Ain't joining the Army either, like my daddy thinks. Won't salute nobody. Least of all, him.
I'm gonna be a comedian. Or a Hollywood actor. Here comes Marcel Williams. The movie star. Can't you hear them saying that? Big black stretch limo. Hot girls on each arm. Ain't he something? they'll say.
Willy Q doesn't want me staying for the math group anymore. He says I gotta be at work every day by 3:30. Mr. Collins bent the truth about what time school lets out, just to get my daddy to believe that. “But at least you can stay with us for twenty minutes or so after school,” Mr. Collins said, trying to make me feel good.