Mr. Mwila told Anthony to close the blinds while he flipped the light switch to make the room dark. There is something about sudden darkness in a classroom of twenty-four sixth graders that sets off mischief. There was giggling on one side of the room. Spitballs on the other. Then Mr. Mwila flipped the light switch on and said, “Anthony.” Anthony and Ant looked up, one guiltier than the other, although Mr. Mwila had clearly spoken to Anthony this time and not Antnee.
“I didn’t do it!” Anthony cried.
“I didn’t accuse,” Mr. Mwila said, as cool as Sidney Poitier telling off the white racist sheriff in the movie In the Heat of the Night. He pulled the plug out of the wall socket and carefully wound the cord in circles. “Anthony,” he began again, “please open the blinds.”
Anthony got up and drew the blinds open.
“Upton,” Mr. Mwila said, “please wheel the projector to the audiovisual room.” We felt his cool, but we also felt his anger underneath. We were in trouble.
“Grade six, classroom six-three . . .”
Big trouble, I thought. He had called us by our formal name, like when your mother or grandmother calls you by all of your names to keep from calling you something worse.
“Take out your math notebooks. We shall have double period math.”
Mr. Mwila didn’t raise his voice or take out the “pine board of education” like Mrs. Peterson had done time and time again. Instead, “Sidney Poitier” said, “You can’t behave as you did in the fifth grade. When you behave like the upperclassmen and upperclasswomen that you are, we’ll engage in grade-six activities. Now, notebooks on desks.”
I had yet to make a really good, face-to-face impression on my teacher, and now he was disappointed with us all. I didn’t want Mr. Mwila to catch me giggling or going, “Aw, shucks,” over having to do two periods of math.
Michael S. raised his hand and was recognized. “Mr. Mwila,” he said—and Lucy practically swooned—“it isn’t fair. Why should we all be punished because someone”—he looked at Ant—“threw the first spitball?”
“This isn’t a punishment, Michael. It’s an opportunity. If we can’t conduct ourselves with decorum during the film, we’ll jump ahead with mathematics, and what can be better than to leap ahead?” He smiled at us as though he had offered us something wonderful. “Homework tonight will be that much easier after this extra time.”
The next day after lunch, the film projector stood on its cart in the back of the room. Mr. Mwila said, “We shall try again.”
Shall was a storybook word that Uncle Darnell never used in bedtime stories of Arabian Knights or princesses locked in the tower. Shall was in one of our school assembly songs, “We Shall Overcome.” But only Mr. Mwila used shall for everyday talking. And now that I’d grown used to his voice, I couldn’t imagine him not saying shall or decorum.
Mr. Mwila made the room as dark as it could get and turned on the projector. No one wanted to “leap ahead” with more decimals, so the room was quiet.
Since separate health classes were no longer taught at our school, each sixth-grade class had to watch six health-and-safety films. Then in the spring, the sixth-grade girls watched a seventh film while the boys got an extra period of gym. The school figured our mothers could tell us everything we needed to know about the five basic food groups, the importance of hand washing, and the circulatory and digestive systems, but not whatever this film would be about. If Cecile lived with us, she wouldn’t hardly tell us about food groups or hand washing. Instead she’d write poems I’d have to figure out about all those body systems, and she’d end each poem with, “P.S. Be eleven” when I had already seen my sister being born. Big Ma cooked the food in the food groups and said, “Kids are starving in Africa, India, and China, so eat every bit.” She was more concerned about me washing dishes and scrubbing floors than keeping my own hands clean. Miss Marva Hendrix wasn’t anything to me, so I didn’t worry about what she had to tell me.
We all settled down and the reel of film rolled on.
Electric guitars picked out a lame rock-and-roll tune, and the title appeared on the screen. Our health film was about drugs. The bad kind.
First we saw teenagers at a party smoking drugs. The music was so jerky and bad, no one at the party could dance to it. Then the police came and arrested the kids, and the kids started telling the camera or us they could smoke drugs if they wanted to. Then we got the surprise of our lives. Sitting on a bed, telling us to make up our minds about the dangers of drugs, was Sonny Bono. Sonny Bono from the radio. Sonny Bono without Cher. Sonny Bono with his groovy hair and gold pajamas.
No one could have heard what he was saying because it was Sonny Bono and we were in shock. The last place we expected to find Sonny Bono was in our sixth-grade health film talking about the dangers of drugs. He was supposed to be singing “I’ve Got You Babe” and “The Beat Goes On.” Instead, his face looked serious, and his nose was big, even with that mustache, and he was telling us that despite what the teenagers said about drugs, he knew the real score.
We forgot about the double period of decimals and how we were upperclassmen and upperclasswomen. I forgot how much I wanted to make a better impression on Mr. Mwila. The boys were on their side of the classroom laughing, and I joined in with the girls on our side, singing “I’ve Got You Babe.”
Mr. Mwila stopped the film and flipped on the light switch.
“You are not ready for this film,” he said. And he was not angry but he was disappointed.
We took out our math notebooks before he told us to.