Okay, check it out: Knight High has two theaters—one is basically the auditorium, where most of the big musicals and plays (including that raggedy one I was in last fall) are performed, and the other is a much smaller one that used to be something else (either a mini-library or a faculty dining room, I forget which) before it was converted to what it is today: the Black Box Theater. Called the Black Box, for short. It even looks like a box from a distance: it’s a giant cube with black wooden walls on the outside. The Black Box is basically where the “special” school plays are performed—you know, the plays that aren’t afraid to be a Lyft for the Big Issues that are too heavy for the auditorium to pick up: racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. It’s the school-stage version of niche networks like BET, Lifetime, and Here. Black Box is student-run, with a faculty member or two serving as the guide-on-the-side, and it gets its funding from any “leftovers that the auditorium was too full to gobble up,” to quote my sister, who’s been the assistant director of the treasury since last year.
Well, a couple of days ago, in the evening hours after school, a bunch of kids went up to the third floor and painted the entire Black Box white. Then they wrote, in black letters, on the entrance door:
welcome to the white box!
The following restrictions apply:
No Chocolate
No Spice
No Curry
No Rice
Because Knight High’s hallway cameras are stupidly timed to shut off every day at three-thirty in the afternoon and come back on the next morning, we don’t know for sure who did it, but we have a couple of guesses. One possibility is this racist-ass group called the Day Backers, founded and led by Leona’s raggedy-ass boyfriend Wilk. They were the mofos who sprayed foam at our Rainbow Relief station last month before scampering away like the pebble-balled punks they are. Another possibility is this new group called WAP: depending on who you ask, the shit stands for either White And Proud or White American Prince. (I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s both.) Nobody seems to know exactly how many members they have, but they identify themselves to each other by wearing a small blank white button, which they pin to the inside of the bottom of their shirt: if somebody rolls up to them and whispers, “Are you WAP?” they either say no or they flip up the bottom of their shirt and show the white button.
During lunch this afternoon Regina and I went to the principal’s office to complain. Mr. Woolery told us he was looking into it because, “Vandalism will not be tolerated here.”
Regina told him, “But Mr. Woolery, this is more than just vandalism. This is a hate crime.”
The space between Mr. Woolery’s eyebrows did the confusion crinkle and he said, “Hate crime?”
My sister glanced at me the way she does when she thinks the person she’s talking to is an idiot, then she looked back at the principal and told him, “Didn’t you see what they wrote on the door? It said: ‘No Chocolate, No Spice, No Curry, No Rice.’”
Mr. Woolery looked like he was waiting for a punch line that had already passed him by. He said, “That’s food. What does that have to do with a hate crime?”
My sister gave me the Glance again, then told him, “They’re basically saying: ‘No Blacks, No Latinxs, No Indians, No Asians.’”
Regina spent the next five minutes explaining to him why “Spice” meant Latinxs, “Curry” meant Indians, and “Rice” meant Asians, and even though he got it, he still didn’t quite Get It.
He said, “Okay, I see, but unless they specify Blacks, Latinxs, Indians, and Asians, I can’t treat it like a hate crime. Vandalism—yes. Racism—I’m just not convinced.”
My sister said, “They changed the color of a whole theater from black to white and called it ‘The White Box,’ and you don’t think it’s racism?”
Mr. Woolery kind of shrugged. “Sorry. I just don’t.” He cleared his throat and shuffled some papers on his desk. “Now, if there’s nothing else, I really need to get back to work here.”
Shaking her head, Regina stood up. She and I walked out of his office; just as we were about to leave the outer office, I could overhear Mr. Woolery tell his secretary, “I swear to God, I can’t wait till this fucking election is over.”
As my sister and I headed to the caf, I said, “So what’re you gonna do?”
She said, “What needs to be done.”
I said, “And what’s that?”
She gave it a little mind time, then said, “I need you to hook me up with, like, seven or eight cans of paint of all different colors, but no white. You think you can have ’em for me by lunchtime tomorrow?”
I said, “I don’t know. I can try.”
As it turned out, I was better at this Trying business than I’d thought, because by the beginning of lunchtime today, there I was, rolling a cart of eight paint cans (and a dozen paintbrushes) toward my sister, who was standing in the middle of the third-floor hallway, just a few feet away from the White Box. As much as I wish I could tell you I got all that paint because I’m the Wondrous Amazing Incredible PaintMan™, I gotta stay in Real City and say that I got it simply because Ms. Daniels, the art teacher, is down with the Regina Regime.
When my sister saw the paint cans and brushes, she nodded and said, “That’s what’s up.”
Then she unzipped her bookbag and took out a blue bullhorn that Narmeen had talked her uncle—an ex-cop—into lending her.
Looking into my paint cart, Regina asked, “What’re the colors?”
I pointed at the cans and said, “We got yellow, red, blue, orange, green, pink, gray, and brown.”
My sister smiled at me and raised her fist for a bump. “You the man, Ules.”
After we fist-bumped, Regina turned on the bullhorn, which spit out a long starter screech that damn near chewed up my eardrums.
Covering my ears, I said, “Damn, that thing’s no joke.”
My sister nodded and said, “Good, ’cause I ain’t trying to make ’em laugh. It’s time for this school to get schooled.” She pointed at the paint cans. “You do the lids, I’ll do the kids.”
I nodded and started popping off the lids while she spoke into the bullhorn.
“GOOD AFTERNOON, EVERYONE,” she announced. “MY NAME IS REGINA GATES AND I’M ONE OF THE THREE CANDIDATES RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT. AS MANY OF YOU HAVE PROBABLY NOTICED BY NOW, OUR BELOVED BLACK BOX THEATER HERE ON THE THIRD FLOOR WAS PAINTED COMPLETELY WHITE YESTERDAY BY A HATE GROUP HERE AT THE SCHOOL. AND THIS HATE GROUP WROTE ON THE DOOR: ‘NO CHOCOLATE, NO SPICE, NO CURRY, NO RICE.’ AS MANY OF YOU KNOW, THAT’S THEIR WAY OF SAYING, ‘NO BLACKS, NO LATINXS, NO INDIANS, NO ASIANS.’ IF YOU FIND THIS UNACCEPTABLE, IF THIS MAKES YOU MAD, IF YOU WANNA LET THESE HATERS KNOW THEY’RE NOT WELCOME HERE, THEN ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE THIRD-FLOOR HALLWAY RIGHT NOW, PICK UP A PAINTBRUSH, DIP IT INTO THE PAINT CAN OF YOUR FAVORITE COLOR, AND FLICK THE BRUSH AGAINST THOSE UGLY WORDS ON THE DOOR. IF ENOUGH OF YOU DO THIS, THOSE UGLY WORDS WILL END UP GETTING COVERED BY EIGHT DIFFERENT BEAUTIFUL COLORS. THOSE OF YOU WHO HEAR ME: GET UP FROM YOUR DESK AND COME OUT HERE TO THE THIRD-FLOOR HALLWAY AND HELP ME COVER THIS HATE WITH EIGHT—EIGHT BEAUTIFUL COLORS. THEN GO DOWN TO THE SECOND FLOOR AND THE FIRST FLOOR AND THE CAFETERIA AND GATHER ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND TELL THEM TO COME UP HERE AND DO THE SAME THING. COVER THE HATE WITH EIGHT. WE GOT YELLOW, WE GOT GREEN, WE GOT BROWN, WE GOT BLUE, WE GOT RED, WE GOT ORANGE, WE GOT GRAY, WE GOT PINK. JUST DIP THE BRUSH INTO YOUR FAVORITE COLOR AND FLICK IT AGAINST THE HATE. COVER THE HATE WITH EIGHT.”
As my sister bull-horned, more and more kids started milling through the hallway or out of their Enrichment classes and moving toward her.
In the meantime Narmeen and Marilyn had joined up with us, and they started helping me hand the paintbrushes to the kids.
Following my sister’s instructions, each kid dipped the brush into one of the cans and flicked the brush toward the words on the White Box door, peppering the No Chocolate, No Spice, etc. with their color. When they were done, I or Narmeen or Marilyn quickly told them, “Great, now go find as many of your friends as you can and tell ’em to do the same thing!” and they nodded and ran off, in pursuit of other peeps who were down.
In the first five minutes, about a dozen kids rolled up to us and flicked.
Ten minutes into it, about twenty kids started rolling up to us.
And as the lunch hour got longer, so did the crowd size.
The bigger the crowd got, the faster Narmeen, Marilyn, and I had to hustle to make sure everybody dipped & flicked.
And the whole time, Regina stayed on that bullhorn, repeating her announcement on a loop, changing it up every now and then with inserts like: “COME ON, HURRY, WE ONLY HAVE THIS ONE LUNCH HOUR TO COMPLETELY COVER UP THE HATE ON THAT DOOR” or “IF YOU’RE TIRED OF PEOPLE BEING MEAN, START WITH GREEN; IF YOU WANT THIS SCHOOL TO BE MELLOW, START WITH YELLOW; IF YOU WANNA BE AROUND PEOPLE WHO THINK, START WITH PINK; IF YOU WANT LOVE TO BE FOUND, START WITH BROWN; IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY, START WITH GRAY; IF YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO DO, START WITH BLUE; IF YOU WANNA PUT HATE TO BED, START WITH RED; AND IF YOU’RE LIKE ME AND DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL RHYMES WITH ORANGE, START WITH ORANGE.”
By the twenty-five-minute mark, you couldn’t see the No Chocolate, No Spice, etc. words anymore: they were completely sheeted over by red/blue/gray/green/brown/yellow/orange/pink splotches. But kids still kept coming up and flicking. They started targeting their flicks toward the other words on the door: welcome to the white box! and the following restrictions apply.
“THAT’S IT,” my sister bull-horned, “KEEP FLICKING TILL THIS WHOLE ENTIRE BOX IS DIFFERENT COLORS.”
At about the half-hour mark, the Knightly News crew, with a microphone-clutching Coral Bleeker at the front, rolled their asses up to us; one of them was holding the camera, which he kept swinging from the flicking crowd to the theater’s dripping door and walls and back again. Coral was scrambling through the masses, trying to interview as many mofos as she could, asking them things like, “Why are you doing this?” and “What if you get in trouble?” and, “Who do you think put those words on the door?”
Right about then my sister slipped in a new interjection to her looping announcement: “AND LET’S NOT FRONT. WE ALL KNOW A LEONITE PUT THOSE UGLY WORDS ON THE DOOR. WELL, HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO SHOW THESE LEONITES WHAT YOU THINK OF THEM.”
I saw Zack Zelinka, the autistic kid from the debate who’d taken offense at Leona’s “retarded but the good retarded” comment, pushing his way through the crowd, toward the camera and Coral’s mic. I was shocked to see that he was wearing a Leonite shirt; it’s basically a white T-shirt with #leonite magic-markered in red on it. He started talking to the camera as Coral held out the mic to him. I moved closer so I could hear what he was saying.
He told the camera, “Yeah, uh, Leona Walls, if you’re out there, I bought this shirt today just so I can do this . . .”
He pulled the shirt off, ran to the paint-can cart, dipped the crumpled shirt into the green paint, then ran over to the theater’s door and smeared green over the X in box. Then he ran back to the camera and said, “Yep, yep, I did it, I did it. And you know why? Because you’re a . . . What do they call that again?—when you’re annoying but it’s the bad annoying? Oh yeah: ASSHOLE!!” Then he held up the crumpled, green-smudged Leonite shirt and said, “I will never be a Leonite!” He spit on the shirt then hurled it to the floor and stomped on it. Some people in the crowd clapped.
By the forty-minute mark, the flicking flock had swelled to about a hundred peeps; I couldn’t believe it. We just didn’t have enough paintbrushes for every mofo, and time was running the hell out, so I asked Regina what she wanted to do.
She bull-horned, “FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO CAN’T GET A PAINTBRUSH, JUST DIP YOUR HAND IN THE CAN AND SLAP YOUR HANDPRINT AGAINST THE THEATER BOX. SLAP THE HATE WITH YOUR COLOR. THAT’S IT. COME ON—SLAP THE HATE. SLAP IT. SLAP THE HATE WITH EIGHT.”
One by one, brushless kids dipped their hands in the cans, ran up to the theater box, and smacked their handprints against the door and walls. Pretty soon, even the peeps who had brushes dropped them and did the handprint thing. After a while, about forty kids were beating the hell out of that theater box with their painted hands. Some of them were even standing on medium ladders—that freak Narmeen, she always seems to know where to get a damn ladder—and smacking the top of the wall, so that almost every inch of the white box was a different color. The thumping of their hands against the wooden theater made the hallway sound like it had a heartbeat or something.
From the corner of my eye I saw a blond girl rounding a corner and stopping in her tracks. I turned and saw that it was my girlfriend. She didn’t see me. When she saw what was happening, she looked down, and sadly walked away. Before I could call out to her she’d disappeared back around the corner.
It felt like somebody had punched me in the chest.
Meanwhile Regina motioned for Coral and the camera kid to come over to her.
As the theater-box-beating continued, my sister looked into the camera and spoke into her bullhorn: “TO THE LEONITES OUT THERE, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MESS WITH ME AND MY PEEPS . . . AND TO ANY LEONITES OUT THERE WHO ARE TIRED OF ALL THE HATE-ORADE YOUR LEADER KEEPS POURIN’ OUT, IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO COME OVER TO MY SIDE . . . STOP BEING A LEONITE, AND START BEING A REGINIAN!”
My eyebrows went up. It was the first time I heard her use that. Reginian. I liked it. A lot.
Regina bull-horned to the camera, “I’LL SAY IT AGAIN. DON’T BE A LEONITE. BE A REGINIAN!”
The theater beaters turned around and started chanting “Reginian! Reginian! Reginian!”
A corner of my eye caught a line-up of teachers standing along the lockers behind us and I damn near jumped. My ass had gotten so caught up in what was happening that I’d forgotten I was in a damn school. I gave the teachers a guilty smile but they didn’t notice. They just stood there, watching the paint-splotched spectacle with expressions that were hard as hell to read. My guess is that none of them stopped it because of the dude standing at the middle of their lineup: Mr. Dranger, who was the only teacher with a small smile on his face.
Knowing that Mr. Dranger had our backs, I calmed down and turned to my sister, who was already looking at me. She seemed just as shocked by the large turnout as I was.
She and I both looked at the theater box, which was no longer white. It was now an accidental Jackson Pollock painting of eight different colors zig-zagging all over the place. It was like a rainbow had thrown up all over the theater, but it was beautiful, revolutionary vomit.
Then came the best part: my sister gave me one of her rare good-china/plastic-off-the-couch smiles. I don’t want to sound corduroy or anything, but, at that moment, I felt really proud of her.
Mangling the moment was the mental image of my girlfriend sadly walking away.
Why wasn’t she happy about the White Box’s takeover & makeover?