All Day by Liza Jessie Peterson

Author:Liza Jessie Peterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science / Sociology / Urban, Social Science / Criminology, Education / Urban
Publisher: Center Street
Published: 2017-04-17T16:00:00+00:00

For lunch I usually convene in the teachers’ lounge with other staff to watch whatever blood-curdling scary movie Mr. Wilcox, aka Trinidad, has brought in for lunchtime entertainment. It’s always a horror movie. Always. Crazy how we all seem to unwind by watching the goriest, bloodiest, most heinous chop-’em-up flicks in a place filled with darkness and violence. We sit around the table with just the sunlight beaming through the windows, slightly illuminating the dismal gray room. We scream and yell and talk back to the TV screen like we’re at the movies. It’s twisted and fun.

Today I’ve skipped the Night of the Living Dead movie feature to have some quiet time and sit at my desk to eat lunch, alone. I unwrap my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and squeeze a pack of honey into my hot tea.

Officer King pops his head in. “Ms. P, no scary movie today?”

“No, not today, King. I need to clear my mind and be still for a minute.”

“We all need that every now and then,” he says as he approaches my desk. “I see you had a rough time with William today.”

My mouth is full of peanut butter and jelly so I just “mmhmm” him.

“Why you ain’t come get me? I told you let me know anytime any one of them gives you a problem. And then when I saw it was William—that’s my favorite knucklehead, right there—I was like, man, why she ain’t just come get me? I had to give him the business last year, so he knows what time it is with me. Me and him have an understanding and I can reason with that kid. You should have called me, I coulda fixed it.” It felt like King must have said “me” about ten times. I think he’s a little upset I didn’t ring my damsel-in-distress bell for him to come save me and fix the problem. My older sister once told me that alpha males like to play the role of rescuer and fixer-upper.

I hand King the orange slip. “Lemme see what this jughead did,” King says as he reads out loud what I wrote on the report. “‘Who the hell you talking to?’” King gives me a blank stare that makes me feel like the incredible shrinking woman. It sounds petty now. “That’s what he said to you?” King asks a simple question, but the subtext, mixed with the dumb look he gives me, is more like, “You’re writing him up for this trivial bullshit? Really? You can’t be serious.”

I feel silly. I try to put it in context for him. “I know that’s not a big deal and it’s hardly a threat, and it probably sounds like I’m being dramatic, but King, this boy never does work and whenever he actually comes here, he disturbs the class all the time, all day, worse than Shahteik. If you can even imagine anybody worse than Shahteik… it’s William. And today was the last straw for me. It’s not so much what he said but how he said it.

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