CHAPTER EIGHT
KOLLIE THREW THE FIRST PUNCH.
Midway through the academic excellence assembly, while Kollie was seated on the stage waiting his turn at the mic to read the essay Ms. Jackson loved so much, he saw Clark push Sonja off the fourth row of the bleachers. She landed with an unceremonious thud and screamed, interrupting the principal’s long monotone speech on the importance of focus and integrity in classwork.
“What the hell is wrong with you niggas?” Aisha yelled, leaping down two aisles of the bleachers to help her friend.
“You stupid jungle bitch,” Henry snapped back.
Sonja was moaning on the gym floor, holding her right thigh in pain. Several teachers were looking on in confusion, barely masking their fear.
Before he could think about it, Kollie was off the stage, on the ground, and running toward Sonja. When he got to her, he saw that her face was stained with tears, and that her left shoe had fallen off.
“I’m okay,” she said to him as he leaned into her. “I’m okay.” She was wearing a spotless white cropped shirt and tight blue jeans, and she smelled of flowers.
“Hey, ma. Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes.” She nodded. “I just . . . need some help getting up, that’s all.”
It was the longest private exchange they had ever had.
He nodded and held out his hand. She smiled at him and was moving her hand to meet his when Clark shouted, “Keep your hands off her, you sick monkey nigger.”
Kollie flinched and then grasped Sonja’s hand.
“I said hands off! Or I will beat you and your tiny black dick all the way back to—”
Kollie dropped Sonja’s hand, stood up, and lunged at Clark with all his might. He found that his fist was endowed with a kind of terrible force that stunned everyone around him. In his mind, he saw white hands pummeling Clark in the stomach, heard him wheezing in pain, then crumpling down the locker room wall, defeated. His ears rang with the bitter twang of Eddie’s voice: I’m the one in charge here, the one who you can either talk to respectfully or beg for your goddamn life. He shook his head, to shoo it away. Who’s the fucking pussy now, you little nigger? the voice said louder. It was Eddie’s voice. It was his voice.
Kollie sat alone in the living room later that night, the glare of the television his only companion in the house. His parents were both working, and Angel was at a friend’s place, working on some project.
“Yes, Bill, we’re reporting live here from Brooklyn Center High School tonight, from the scene of a brutal fight that broke out between students at an all-school assembly this afternoon,” said a young white woman dressed in a button-up white dress shirt and gray blazer. She was standing in front of the main doors to the school, which you could barely see, it was so dark now.
Kollie leaned over and turned up the volume.
The newscast cut back to the middle-aged white anchor in the studio, speaking to the television monitor behind him.
“Liz, I understand that the school’s director of security was wounded in the altercation, as well, is that right?”
The young woman pressed the hearing device in her right ear and scrunched her face, ostensibly listening to the anchor’s question as it traveled through the digital ether. “Yes, that’s right, Bill,” she said after a moment. “He was trying to break things up and restore the assembly to some kind of normalcy, when he got caught up in the fight. I’m actually standing right here with him now, as he has agreed to tell us a little bit about what happened.”
Kollie gripped his right hand with his left as the camera panned to the woman’s right to bring the image of Eddie into focus. That motherfucker found a way to weasel himself into everything.
Eddie leaned into the microphone. A blue bar on the screen read, EDWARD VAZER, DIRECTOR OF SECURITY, BROOKLYN CENTER HIGH, below him. “Yeah, well, the disruption started out as one between two students, but unfortunately evolved into a melee with more than ten. We had to take one student away on a stretcher, and three more were hospitalized. The student who started the incident has been suspended—”
Kollie sucked his teeth. He didn’t know that Eddie was even capable of using words like melee and disruption. Maybe someone had coached him before his big on-screen debut. He laughed at the thought, despite himself. These white people were crazy; he wouldn’t put it past them.
“And you were injured as well, is that right?” the reporter was asking him.
The camera pulled back to show Eddie’s right arm in a sling.
“Yeah, I’m all right,” he said, bravado rolling off him. “I had a few injuries that needed tending to at the hospital, nothing serious. I should be all healed up in a few days. The main thing is that we effectively stopped the fight and prevented further injury to students—most of whom were simply gathered for a regular assembly at the school and had no interest in participating in or witnessing violence.” Eddie looked directly at the camera then, carefully enunciating each word. “We take student safety very seriously here at Brooklyn Center High School. In fact, it is our top—”
Kollie leapt up off the chair and screamed at the screen, “Bullshit!” He brought his face so close to Eddie’s, spit was flying on the image of the other man’s face. “You lying piece of dog shit! Don’t give a fuck about me, Clark, or nobody in that fucking school!” He could still feel Eddie’s hands on him, strong-arming him to the ground away from Clark, twisting his arm so hard he feared it would break. And then finally, when things had calmed, being handcuffed, and dragged up again to standing, whipped around to see Eddie’s self-satisfied face staring into his, saying, “That’s enough, now, son.” I’m not your goddamn son! his brain had screamed, but his mouth and body were too wracked with pain and exhaustion to say it.
Bill the anchorman was now talking to Eddie. “We talked to some students there tonight who preferred to remain anonymous and did not want to appear on camera, who said that the atmosphere at the school has been very tense there for some time now—especially between the African American and African immigrant students.”
Eddie’s mouth pinched into a thin line, which caused Kollie to snort. “Oh, you don’t like that, do you, you little pussy? Somebody talking truth on your employer, shitting on your paycheck-oh?” He took a step back from the TV and crossed his arms.
“No, I wouldn’t characterize it that way at all,” he said quietly.
“Eh-menh!” Kollie exclaimed.
“There have been some tensions at the school, certainly, but I would say no more than what you might find at any other, normal school.”
“Bullshit,” Kollie said again.
“Okay,” said Bill back in the studio. “Okay.”
“Look, we’ve got kids with all kinds of issues, with difficult family lives, poverty and violence, and they don’t know the best way to deal with their problems. Which is why a limited few resort to violence, and have ruined it for everyone, on this occasion. But the principal is working hard on her new zero-tolerance-of-violence platform, and these disruptive elements will be dealt with, are being dealt with.” Eddie focused his needlelike green eyes outward, and Kollie swore he could feel them pressing on him, pushing on his skin for blood. “They have been removed, so that they can no longer endanger innocent bystanders, who are here to learn and positively contribute to our community.”
Kollie shivered involuntarily. His parents had not heard yet about the suspension, or his phone would already be blowing up with more than texts from Lovie and Tetee. From Angel, who was hiding out at a friend’s house. The school had surely left messages for his parents, but they could only check their phones on the rare breaks at work. There would be hell to pay when they did, however. Especially since he had sent Clark to the hospital.
“And I want all your viewers to hear me clearly when I say this, Bill: Brooklyn Center High is a safe place for all. This was an isolated incident, which we have now contained. We never have and never will condone violence here. Our number one concern is creating a safe, welcoming, and engaging learning environment for our students,” said Eddie.
Kollie couldn’t listen anymore. He leaned over and turned off the television. Then he massaged his right knuckles, which he had bruised from punching Clark so hard and so many times, and closed his eyes.