SAFIYA

JANUARY 10, 2022

Fact: The level playing field does not exist.

Alternative fact: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.…”

I was still fuming about my conversation with Hardy as I grabbed my notebook for my current events class. The entire senior class did independent projects for the last semester, so our course load was light—mine especially, since I’d already met my graduation requirements. I’d planned on cruising through this semester without too much homework, academic drama, or lost sleep. Ha ha. Joke’s on me.

I loved Mr. Terkel’s current events class, though. The irony of him teaching this course was that he’s approximately seven hundred years old. Still, that gave him an encyclopedic knowledge of history because he was always complaining that America looked at current events in a vacuum. “The past is prologue” was one of his favorite cryptic aphorisms, which he doled out like candy on Halloween.

I took my seat at the large, round oak table in the center of the room as Mr. Terkel stepped to the old chalkboard and pulled down the movie screen. His classroom was one of the originals. There was stained glass in the windows that filtered the midday light through prisms of blues and reds. The wood floors creaked from age and unevenness. The room even had some sort of historical society designation that alumni applied for. They would’ve flipped out if we tried to change anything. I got the importance of preserving history, but this school needed to change with the world around it, and some alumni gave the distinct impression that they wanted to make it back into what it was: Make DuSable Great Again. As if being a fossil were something to aspire to. Attempts at progress or inclusion can anger people when they’ve never had to compete on a level playing field. Maybe that was why they didn’t want to fix our crooked floors.

Mr. Terkel was pretty spry for an old guy. His white wrinkly skin, messy silver hair, and tweed vests gave him a frazzled academic look. We all complained about his tough grading, but he was one of the most beloved teachers at DuSable. Our own absentminded, somewhat radical professor who always wore red socks. He was one thing about the past I wanted to keep. And judging by his speech patterns, he was around when the school was founded 120 years ago.

He cleared a week of phlegm from his throat. “Gentle people of Current Events. In my many years of teaching this class, it has been rare indeed to have a moment like this, where the topic I want to discuss is an event that has occurred right here at our school.” He looked at me and nodded. “Welcome back, Ms. Mirza. Glad you could be with us.”

Oh no. I’d spaced out for a second while he was talking, my mind drifting to Richard’s visit, then to that heady incense smell that kept floating in and out of my presence, and the sounds like whispers on the wind, even when I was inside. I shook my head to snap myself out of it.

Mr. Terkel clicked the remote in his hand, and a slide of the hacked post flashed onto the screen. Then he clicked again to a slide of the Swallow your poison flyer. I sank lower into my seat, feeling the weight of every pair of eyeballs in the room on me. Finally, he clicked one last time and left my photo of the graffitied swastika on the screen.

Welp. I guess no one was going to let me lie low today.

Mr. Terkel continued. “Now, moments before class, the administration sent out another faculty email alert asking us to keep quiet and carry on as if our own Spectator hadn’t been hacked by this so-called Ghost Skin. As if this heinous Nazi symbol hadn’t been painted on our school. As if a smoke bomb hadn’t gone off in the bathroom. Of course, it has also been decades since I listened to direct fiat of this or any other school administration. That, my young friends, is the benefit of old age and tenure. Perhaps we should’ve spoken about this on the day it occurred, but I’d hoped we’d have a culprit and an explanation by now. So… this incendiary post was merely nine lines long, and yet I find that we could talk about it for the entire week—unpacking its claims and debunking the myths therein. Let’s begin there.”

God. I’m not going to have a moment where I’m not being forced to think about this. Nine lines that set everything in motion. That got me even higher on the principal’s shit list. That had our journalism teacher walking on eggshells. Had some students terrified that the next incident was going to be more than a smoke bomb, even more violent than a swastika. My question-riddled anxiety was running full steam ahead. DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT $200.

“For now, I’m particularly interested in this phrase: ‘This school is where free speech goes to die.’ Yes, it’s hackneyed, and yet it is also this Ghost Skin’s, um, dare we call it a thesis? What are your thoughts as to the veracity of this statement? Who’d like to begin?”

Mr. Terkel made eye contact with me but didn’t call on me, which I was thankful for. There were only thirteen students in Current Events, so I wasn’t going to be able to hide forever, but I wanted to hear what other people were thinking.

Rachel was in the class, too, and she piped up. “I think it’s BS. I mean, whoever wrote that is obviously a racist. Snowflakes? Fawning multiculturalists? Please. And if it was the swastika guy—which we assume it is, right?—he’s an anti-Semitic white nationalist, too.”

“That’s not what Mr. Terkel asked,” Nate burst out. He sat directly across from me, but I don’t think I’d ever genuinely looked at him. He had the lean body of a long-distance runner and perpetual dark circles under his eyes that were magnified beneath his fancy new green plastic glasses. Before this class, I don’t think we’d ever spoken. “He asked if this school is where free speech goes to die. And the answer is yes.” Joel, the school’s single source for various stolen pharmaceuticals and Nate’s best friend, high-fived him and laughed.

A bunch of kids started speaking at once, and I watched a sly smile spread across Mr. Terkel’s face. He loved arguments but tried not to let them get out of control. He raised a hand to calm the class. “Explain, Nate.”

“We don’t have freedom of speech, and we should. Students don’t leave our constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door.” Nate straightened in his chair, like he was going to rise up out of it.

“And antifa sucks!” Joel shouted, completely out of context. This was the most animated I’d ever seen him or Nate. I didn’t bother explaining how ignorant it was to say you were anti-antifa. That means you’re pro-fascist. Congratulations, you’ve just told everyone you hate freedom.

“Are you trying to quote Tinker v. Des Moines?” Rachel pointed at Nate, ignoring Joel’s outburst. “That case related to public schools. We’re private. Constitutional law doesn’t apply. Contract law does. As in, when your parents decided to fork over the cash to let you go here, they agreed to the school rules, and spewing hate is against the school rules. Which you should know, since your daddy was on the school board before he became an alderman,” she scoffed.

“Buuuurrrrn,” someone whispered a little too loudly under their breath.

Nate blushed a red so deep, it was almost purple. He opened his mouth to speak. Paused, took a breath, then said, “Believe me, I know what is hate speech and what isn’t. I’m saying whoever wrote that article might be right—some speech is protected at this school, and some isn’t.”

Joel fake coughed and muttered, “Political correctness.” Maturity was not his strong point, apparently.

I raised my hand. I couldn’t help myself. I was not in the mood for a fight. But I wasn’t going to back down.

“Ahhh, our editor in chief would like a word. Go ahead, Safiya.”

I nodded at Mr. Terkel. “Not all hate speech is protected, even in public spaces. Speech that incites violence, like from, say, neo-Nazis or even presidents, shouldn’t be. Actions have consequences—that’s one of Dr. Hardy’s favorite phrases, right?”

“Oooh. Someone’s triggered,” Joel mocked.

“Seriously. By the way, censoring people is totally un-American,” Nate spit out at me.

I felt the heat rise to my skin, like I was about to explode into a billion particles of rage. I hated how words like “un-American” were used as weapons against people of color. Like But where are you really from? And You don’t look American. Or Wow, your English is so good. But before I could respond, Rachel jumped back in.

“You sound like a fascist crybaby,” she said to Nate. “You’re the one who’s un-American. Racist!”

Everyone in the class started shouting at once. While Mr. Terkel tried to quiet us down, I saw Nate lean back in his chair, his arms crossed. “God is dead,” he said to no one, to everyone, to me, an enigmatic smile crossing his face as he exchanged glances with Joel.

“Safiya, hold up.” I turned to see Rachel jogging down the hall toward me. I’d rushed out after class. I was furious about Nate’s un-American dig and had this churning, sick feeling in my stomach.

“Hey, thanks for calling out Nate. It was the best thing about this whole day,” I said as Rachel caught up to me.

“It felt good. Not as good as punching him in the face might have felt, but less likely to get me kicked out of school.”

“Always punch Nazis, sometimes metaphorically and, when needed, literally,” I added.

“Seriously, what was up with him? Nate was like a rhetorical dumpster fire, but happening in real life. And Joel? Have you ever heard that dude speak in class? He’s absent, like, half the time.”

In terms of the school social ecosystem, Nate and Joel barely registered on any scale. Nate transferred two years ago when his family moved to the area because the alderman seat was open and his dad wanted to run for it. Nate and Joel mostly started hanging out early last semester. They were an odd pair. And mostly stuck to themselves.

This was the first class I had with both of them. Rachel was right; Joel was absent a lot. I guess truancy wasn’t such a big deal when you had rich alumni parents. And Nate—well, even though we all sat at a round table, facing each other, he kinda always faded into the woodwork. I shrugged. “Doesn’t Nate have, like, a YouTube channel? I think he mentioned that once.”

“Yeah, about birds,” Rachel explained.

“Birds? As in bird-watching?”

“He’s in my Senior Seminar.” Rachel rolled her eyes. “His senior project is a study on the birds of Jackson Park. I guess he’s like a birding celebrity? He’s been published in nature journals, and he’s been profiled in the Tribune and other places.”

“I bet colleges are going to love that. The weirder, more niche your hobbies are, the better.”

“I don’t think he has to worry about that. He doesn’t only have the alderman dad going for him; his family is Harvard legacy—multiple generations. A fact that he actually goes around sharing.” Rachel faked a gagging sound.

“Gross. But let me guess: They’re vehemently against affirmative action—”

“Except when it applies to rich white families.”

I felt a pinch in my chest when Rachel said that. There were so many ways everything was stacked in your favor if your family was white and had money. I wondered what it felt like to never have to worry about affording tuition. To not be constantly reminded of how lucky you were because you were the scholarship kid, thanks to the (strings-attached) generosity of rich families at the school. Or to always buy whatever clothes and shoes you wanted. To never be stressed about what your parents were going without so that you could go on the annual school trip to DC with all the other kids.

“Also, did you hear him muttering at the end of class?” Rachel asked. “I couldn’t figure out if he was talking under his breath to Joel or trying to make some kind of statement.”

I thought maybe I’d imagined it. But the goose bumps on my arms told me that it was too much of a coincidence to ignore. The police had never found out who mailed that threat to our mosque using the very same words that Nate mumbled at the end of class. Maybe I was being paranoid, but did it mean I was wrong?

Rachel continued. “‘God is dead’ is a hell of a way to end a conversation.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Or to start one.”