6.
We all got herded into this conference room next to the principal’s office where Danny’s mother was already seated behind this long table with some cops and other security standing by right next to her. She was too big to sit up against it the right way, so she’d turned to the side—she looked like Jabba the Hut in drag, I swear. Just this big, quivering mass of mean, fat meat.
And as soon as I sat down, she glowered at me like she was trying to kill me with super staring powers or something. Scary as hell.
And the black cop of the duo went, “Leo DiCaprio! Wuzzup, bruh?”
That was new. Made more sense than Johnny Depp, though—I’m blond, for one thing. And I have green eyes—of course, I have no idea what color DiCaprio’s are.
But he was just playing with me, the cop. To make Big Mama even madder, probably.
“The man of the hour,” the Mexican cop said, taking out his little notepad. “Colton James, right?”
“Yessir.”
“That’s a cowboy name right there,” he said with this little twinkle in it.
I could tell he was the charmer of the two. The one who got to do most of the “interrogations” because he could sound all personable and genuinely interested. So I decided to shoot the breeze, too. It might win me a few points to fall back on if things got weird. I mean even more weird.
“Got a few in the family,” I told him. “Bronc and bull riders. Bad ones.”
That gave everybody but Big Mama something to chuckle about.
And the cop said, “Tough bastards, man—that explains a lot,” before getting down to, “So, let’s hear your version, pardner. For the record.”
“My boy ain’t here to give his side!” Big Mama said.
“Your boy’ll get his chance over there where we took ‘im.”
She puffed up like one of those little fish with the quills on it.
“And you had no business takin’ ‘im nowhere—he needs medical attention!”
“We’ve got a clinic over there, ma’am.”
She scowled and said, “You call that a clinic, what you got over there? They couldn’t even put a Band Aid on straight. My boy got injuries! Course you don’t give a damn…”
“If you don’t calm down’n’ let us do what we gotta do, we’ll come knockin’ on your door over the holidays,” the black cop said. And then he grinned and went, “Ho, ho, ho!”
Big Mama narrowed her eyes. And the black cop’s face went all stony, too—he had definitely perfected his “game over, bitch” glare. And if there is one thing my people respect, it’s someone they know they can’t bob and weave around. Or shouldn’t even try to. Since we don’t win often, the smartest of us know which battles to fight. The majority of us fight because we figure we’ve got nothing left to lose, though. I couldn’t quite tell which side she was actually on, but when she smirked and sat back with a big sigh, I figured maybe she had at least one foot on the smart side.
“Okay, tough guy, you’re on,” the note pad cop said. “From the top.”
“Nothin’ much to tell,” I said. “He hit her, I put him down, he went and got a toy gun from somewhere’n’…here we are.”
“What started it, though?”
“Just…trash talk. Between him and this girl. I think he has race issues.”
“That’s puttin’ it mildly,” Delores muttered.
“He has Asperger’s,” Caldwell said.
“Yeah, and you all were s’posed to be trainin’ them kids how to handle it!” Big Mama bellowed.
“Kids aren’t counselors,” Delores snapped. “And they shouldn’t have to be. Wyatt shouldn’t have to be, either—none of us should have to be!”
“So if you got a illness or a disability or somethin’ you shouldn’t bring your little sorry ass up in here—izzat what you’re sayin’?”
Now, she’d made a valid point, for sure. But right about then I was becoming aware of something I’d been too unnerved to notice at first—this wave of reek coming off of Big Mama that actually started to make my eyes water. I could see everybody else starting to get a whiff, too—they started squirming and leaning ‘way back against their chairs trying to get away from the wall of stink rushing toward them.
I mean, I hate to say this, but she smelled like ass to infinity, as Aisha would say. I’m talking super funk, like unwashed gym socks, all the fried food she’d cooked in the past year and a lot of other kinda personal stuff I’d rather not mention. And some of that smell had to be coming from beneath her toenails—bear claws, she had. Thick, fungus’d up nails so long they curved downward almost over the flip flops she had on. I have never seen that before in my life, toe nails like that—I saw them because she’d pulled over a chair and put one leg on it that was bandaged around the ankle. I figured just the strain of carrying all that weight had sprained or broken it or something.
I don’t know how Price managed to offer up a very patient, “Alva, we are here to give our accounts of the incidents that occurred today.”
But Big Mama wasn’t having it. She turned to me and started huffing and puffing like The Little Engine That Could, and pointed one of her bratwurst fingers my way.
“And you had no business puttin’ your hands on ‘im!” she bellowed.
LeeAnn gave her this little glare and said, “He assaulted a teacher, Alva—hasn’t even been to court for that last one yet’n’ here we are again.”
“She come up behind ‘im!” Big Mama yelled. “He got a right to defend himself!”
“He was never in any physical danger,” Price said.
“These kids is always in physical danger—you got every kinda gang there is up in here! It’s like prison already, ‘way these thugs run this place! White kid ain’t got a chance in hell in here!”
“He pulled a gun on me!” I said. It just blurted out—I knew better, but I couldn’t help it.
“That wun no real gun--see that right there’s the problem! You let ‘em sass you like that all the damned time—and that one there? That…assistant or whatever you call ‘im? They laugh at ‘im. Laugh at ‘im!”
The black cop went, “Lady—“
But she cut him off with, “Y’all do, too! When y’all come to my house you sing a total different tune—don’t even try to deny it. Firs’ thing you tell me’s how if there was some real discipline at this school you wouldn’ have to be doin’ his job for ‘im!”
Caldwell was “having a stroke” red by then. And gripping this pen with the school’s logo and name on it so tight I thought it might break in two. But she’d found the weak link—we also like to take at least one prisoner down with us, my people. Some poor, clueless bystander. Caldwell wasn’t clueless, he just sorta believed in truth, justice and the American way and all that in a world where that shit just doesn’t fly anymore. I felt for him.
And Delores jumped in on his behalf with, “If you’d do your job we wouldn’t have to send the police to your house!”
“Oh, please! He’s callin’ me every ten minutes whinin’ about somethin’ or other! Grow some goddamned balls!”
Price finally raised a “Stop” palm and said, “That’s enough!”
But Big Mama barked, “Don’t be talkin’ to me like I’m one o’ them kids! I’m a big girl now, Miss Principal!”
I muttered, “No shit…” and shook my head.
And she gave me laser eyes again, and said, “And I have had just about enough lip from you, Pretty Boy!”
She said it like it was personal. And it was. She hated my fuckin’ face and envied the free ticket to the good life she thought it had given me. See, I represented all the “injustice” in the world in one smug, sugar coated package.
But I just looked right back at her, smiled and said, “C’mon wit it, Mama. Do your thing.”
And you could’ve heard a pin drop in there—somebody should’ve shut me up, but they all wanted to see what she’d do with that.
She did about what I expected she would. She smiled back at me like she knew where I was coming from. And where I came from, too—we had a little homecoming moment, her and me. But it didn’t slow her roll.
“Oh, I’m gonna do my thing, don’t you worry,” she assured me. “What goes around comes around, Cutie Pie! You put a hurtin’ on my boy, I’ll put a hurtin’ on you! Best believe that!”
But when I said, “Oh, you threatenin’ me now? In front o’ God, the cops and a room fulla witnesses?” her face fell a little. I’d zigged when I should’ve zagged. Confused her.
So she came at me with, “Don’t you be puttin’ words into my mouth!”
I said, “Lady, I wouldn’t put nothin’ in your mouth. Trust me,” and the black cop waved his arms and went, “Whoa, whoa, whoa—back it up, son,” even though he was clearly amused by what I’d said.
And I had worked Jabba’s last nerve. She hefted that mountain of meat around to face front, pointed that sausage finger at me and hissed, “Don’t you disrespect me, you little snot nosedson of a bitch! Who the fuck do you—“
She turned again—faster than you’d ever think she could—put her hands on the place where her hips may have started and yelled, “--are you all gonna set there’n’ let this little piss ant talk to a parent like that?! I’m already gonna sue all your asses for the beatin’ ‘e gave my boy’n’ now you’re gonna set here and let him verbally assault me?”
“The only verbal assault thus far’s been on your side o’ the table,” the note pad cop asked wearily. “Only assaults of any kind’ve been on your side o’ this thing.”
“Well, I wanna press charges! And as the parent of the one ‘e manhandled I got a right to do that, don’t I?”
“Everything we’ve seen so far? The teacher’s the only one with a legit case.”
“What the hell do you mean?!”
The note pad cop sighed and looked at Taylor.
“Do you want to press charges, ma’am?”
“Do I have a choice?” Taylor asked.
“The district is pressing charges,” Price said. “Several charges. So no, Wyatt. In this case, you don’t have a choice.”
“This is some bull crap!” Big Mama bellowed. “I got pictures of my son’ll show you we got a case!”
“And we have videos of your son that say otherwise,” LeeAnn said. “From start to finish.”
“Lookit this, now! He got two he-she’s fightin’ for ‘im!” Big Mama said with an evil smile. “Damn, boy! You must be doin’ some serious homework up in here after school!”
I was about to hit back on LeeAnn’s behalf when I felt Taylor’s hand take hold of mine. And it got all quiet again--Caldwell looked like he couldn’t even breathe for a second. Price just sort of raised her chin as if she was trying to avoid seeing our fingers knit together like that. Big Mama saw it, though.
“See there? Y’all done made his woman all jealous!” she said—pronounced it “WOE- man.” And squeezed those fat arms across those big bazongas looking all smug.
“Oh, Alva, cone on, huh?” Price said, folding her arms and shaking her head.
“Well, he’s got a attitude, but ‘e’s a cutie pie, in’e?” Big Mama said. And then she smiled at Taylor and went, “I’m not mad atcha, honey. Gon’ get you some!”
And before I could open up that can o’ whup ass, Taylor went, “Okay!” like she was calling “time” on the field or something.
Everybody at the table blinked. I mean, the gloves were off. Little Mama was pissed. And she turned those big crystal blues Jabba’s way without a hint of fear. I was sad when she let my hand go—I was likin’ this little “woe-man.”
“I mean, is this an investigation or a Honey Boo Boo audition?” she asked the cops. “Tell me now, before I start thinking we’re here to actually make some decisions or something.”
“Well, ma’am, we’re just trying to sort things out right now,” the note pad cop said.
“All I’ve seen so far is her bullying everybody while you guys sit there wondering what hit you,” Taylor told them. “And if the district’s doing all the legal business, I don’t even have to be here, do I?”
“We will need witness statements,” the notepad cop said. “And the two of you—you and Mr. James, there—will be named as victims.”
Big Mama smiled like the Cheshire cat and said, “Oh, she don’t want no parts o’ that! She jus’ wants to go on home’n’ let ‘er little boy toy put some honey on her boo boo--in’ ‘at right, baby girl?”
Taylor narrowed her eyes and said, “You ignorant, insufferable bitch!”
And Delores lit up like a little Christmas tree and went, “Oooooooo, git it girl,” like a proud mother.
“Oh, I’m gittin’,” Taylor teased her—smiling, just like Big Mama.
And then she looked at Caldwell and said, “Outta here!”
And as she strutted out on the meeting, me and Delores went after her. And that’s when she let her real feelings show.
She hissed out, “Fuckin’ cow,” and grabbed up all her hair and started braiding it with a vengeance. Like she was getting ready for a fight or something.
“Girl, don’t have a stroke up in here today,” Delores teased her. “Slow down! Get your breath!”
Taylor stopped and stood there in the middle of the hallway looking like she was counting to ten. And Delores went over and put a hand on her shoulder.
“There you go, baby—just breathe.”
“Why do they do it?! You can’t beat that kind of crazy—when are they going to get that?” Taylor cried. “The cops didn’t even say anything!”
And then turned to me and said, “Don’t you even think about going back in there—she’s no fool, kiddo! I know that’s hard to believe but I know her ‘way too well. She’ll keep blurting out nasty nonsense ‘til you do say something she can call verbal assault. I know that family.”
“So do I,” I told her. “In a way.”
She tilted her head like a confused puppy. And I laughed and said, “I come from that.”
“No, you don’t!”
“Dogpatch born and bred--you don’t know Dogpatch, do you?”
“You’re from Marana?” Delores said—they were both shocked as shit.
“Old Marana, yeah. Tires on the roof, yard fulla cars and old washing machines, alla that. So I know that woman. May be related to that woman.”
“That’s disturbing,” Taylor said. Sincerely.
“Yeah, but that means I could go toe to toe with her, no problem.”
“Ooooo, honey you don’t wanna get nowhere near that woman’s toes!” Delores said. And that made us all laugh.
Taylor was a lot calmer after that. She secured the end of her braid with this hair tie she apparently kept on her wrist all the time and said, “Come get your books. If you still care at all.”
“I have to care.”
“Yes, well, promise me you’ll talk to someone about that over the holidays,” she said. Her eyes sloped at the outside corners naturally, but when she said that, they looked like they were going to melt right down her cheeks. And they were such a beautiful, glistening blue and all—broke my heart.
“We’ve tried. A dozen times,” I had to tell her.
She started walking again—very determined stride.
“Well, try harder,” she told me. I was almost afraid she was going to stop and grab my hand again.
“This is the Titanic, kiddo,” she continued. And then she smiled and said, “He called you Leo DiCaprio, right?”
“He died at the end, remember?”
She looked at me in that pleading way again, and said, “Not without a fight.”
“And you shouldn’t go down with the ship, either,” Delores said. “I have told you time and time again to find out about retiring at the end o’ the year like me’n’ all those others. You have saved enough souls for one lifetime!”
Taylor stopped again. And put her hands on her little hips.
“Delores, how many times have we had this conversation?”
“You could at least start lookin’ into it!”
“I don’t have a Herbert at home, okay? With the pension and the benefits and the--”
“Girl, don’t start that bull crap with me! You could have a Herbert if you wanted one—talk some sense into this woman, son!”
I said nothing. Not one thing. In fact, I was trying to be invisible.
So Delores said, “She’s good lookin’ for her age—nice little shape…”
“Okay, Mrs. Inappropriate! Let’s get back to the subject at hand!” Taylor said.
“That is the subject at hand! You need to quit waitin’ for Mr. Right and find you a Mr. Right Now at least!”
“That won’t help me retire any sooner!”
“It’ll keep you from goin’ crazy ‘til you can!”
Taylor started power walking behind that one.
“I cannot afford it, okay?!” she told Delores. “I have withdrawn my pension money from almost every district I left to pay for moving to the next one or to tide me over ‘til the next job came along—I have lived paycheck to paycheck for most of my adult life! I mean, right now I have exactly $20 in my savings account. Just about enough to put a down payment on a steak, maybe!”
She shoved open an exit door, looked back and Delores and said, “So years from now, while you and Herbert are sitting in his and hers rocking chairs on the porch of that little beach house in Belize, I will slump over and die of old age in some classroom somewhere, dear heart.”
“That’s disturbing,” I said.
Taylor smiled a little. But the smile went away when Caldwell came trotting up looking all distressed.
“Kenny, that was disgraceful. And you just sat there even when she was attacking you!”
“C’mon! You answer back, it fuels the fire.”
“Well, if you can’t stop ‘er you don’t have to sit there and listen to her!”
“Yeah, I do. We’re the ones they pay to sit there and listen to her. Her and all of the others just like her. So you don’t have to.”
I was impressed—a little fire from the Caldwell man. But Taylor wasn’t impressed at all.
“Oh, but I did have to!” she told him. “And I have a feeling we’ll be hearing a lot more from her. In fact, I bet the school board’s already sending out letters ordering us to come to a mediation or some…ridiculous meeting that won’t do a damned bit o’ good.”
“They’ve asked to speak to Price’n’ me.”
“God—why?!”
“Well, you know. She says we bend over backwards for all the black and brown kids, but—“
“You bend over and kiss her ass is what you do!”
Caldwell startled like he’d heard a loud noise.
And Taylor said, “Oh, just…I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Really.”
“No, you…have every right to…” he said. Leaving whatever she had a right to do or feel or think to our imaginations.
And then he said, “I just…wanted to see if…” and that thought just trailed off, too.
“Oh, I’m fine. Don’t you worry,” Taylor said. There was a little sass in her voice again.
And all he could come up with was this really lame little, “Well…” that just petered out like all the other things he hadn’t quite been able to say all the way.
So Taylor took pity on him and said, “Look…let’s…talk after the holidays.”
“Well, don’t worry about any of this Danny stuff,” he said. “They broke it up just now. I guess they need Alva down at Juvie. But you’re covered, okay? It’s all gonna be handled by our lawyers here. The judge’ll set a date ‘way past the holidays, pro’bly. He’s got another court date already.”
“Well, thanks for letting me know. Really. I appreciate your concern.”
He nodded and just sort of stood there with this really odd expression like he knew he should leave but just didn’t want to. So Taylor said, “Over the river and through the woods, right? Grandmother’s house?”
He woke up a little and give a slightly nervous smile.
“Wisconsin, yeah. What were we thinkin’?”
“Well, the kids’ll get some snow, maybe.”
“I know we’re not gonna stand up here talkin’ about the weather,” Delores said.
“No, I uh…I just wanted…”
“Man, go on back there’n’ deal with that crazy woman, please?”
He gave a halfhearted smile and said, “She’s suing everybody she says.”
“There goes that $20!” Taylor said—Delores and I cracked up. Caldwell just sort of …hung there. And then he just smiled faintly and left.
“What did you do to that man at that damned workshop?” Delores teased Taylor, after he’d gone his way and we were back on our way, too.
“One drink.”
“I better get the name o’ that drink,” Delores said. “Give Herbert a little taste, see if it gets his pilot light goin’ again.”
Taylor glared at her like mothers do at kids who cuss in front of somebody.
And Delores looked over at me and said, “Oh, this child here could teach Herbert a thing or two--one o’ them old souls been here plenty o’ times before.”
“So I’ve been told,” I said. Because I have been told that all my life by all kinds of people. In fact, this one black woman who cooks for us told me I was some kind of thing they used to believe in down South. Asked me if I was born with my eyes open—I was, too. Apparently it means you’re not a baby, really. You’re somebody who died, coming back again.
Or it can mean you have the gift of “sight” or being psychic, was another thing I was told—I feel like they’re the same thing, though. If you’ve been here enough times you probably just know from experience what’s going to go down all the time. I’m not sure I believe in any of it, to be honest—if it were true, I would’ve been ready for all the shit that hit the fan next.
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