Friday, September 08, 2006
Help! Black Girl Alone At Midnight!
In September Navah started her new White school. She came from a mostly Black/Latino school with a progressive curriculum where half the parents wore Assata and Che t-shirts and the other half simply believed in the groundbreaking idea that even kids in the 'hood deserved music, art, and not to attend a school that prepares them for a trade (read institutions called School of Medical Technology that train future home attendants of the world).
On her second week of pre-k at her old school, she pronounced her puffy 'fro to be a "brown cloud" and her skin"the color of chocolate chip cookies." This was after a previous year of begging for blonde Barbies.
On every birthday at her old school, parents came and told their child's birth story. The Pre-Kindergarten teacher would ask, "Now was little Sundiata pushed out of your vagina, or did he have to be cut out of your belly?" And the four-year-olds would stare up at you in wonder, chin in hand, waiting for an answer.
The problem was Navah didn't learn to read. Or add. Or make a heading at the top of a notebook page. And we started worrying she would become a statistic disguised in a Che t-shirt.
The lack of structure at the old school gave my child the chance to drift. And, like her mama, given the chance to float, she will do so -- and high. The philosophy of the school was that children should focus on what they love. That seemed to be fashion for Navah. But half way through a drawing of a fabulous cheetah print gown, she would forget what she was doing and wander off to the block area leaving the garment chopped off at the waist. I pictured her glamorous model strutting down a Milan runway with half a dress and a naked c00chee.
I started off by being annoyed and angry at Navah. "Concentrate," I would yell during reading practice. "If you look more closely at the words, you can make out the sound!" But that was making her cry and my stomach churn so bad I needed to scratch myself inside. The school refused to offer her reading help -- it was too conventional, and they claimed she didn't need it. You see, Navah seemed rather high functioning compared to other kids in the school. That wasn't that difficult considering one of her best friends was a starving vegan child who spent most of each day obssessing on how to find chocolate to taste and her other friend came to school weekly with stories of how his dad was in jail for some random misdemeanor.
In the middle of the first grade I got her evaluated, and the psychologist started off with "She is a very sweet girl."
Mmmm Mmmm, I thought, there's a problem. Apparently my very sweet girl was in fact, below in her reading and writing skills, verbal skills, reasoning skills --- skills and more skills. Direct instruction was the prescription from the shrink. It was too early to tell, but they predicted possible learning disabilities lurking in my little genius' head.
I visited schools. Some were so white, I could count every chip in the cookie. But worse, in one, kids sat at desks, staring at the chalkboard, while the teacher shouted directions to draw a perfect letter "J". "Hat on top, SWOOP, at the bottom," she said, mimicking the trunk of an elephant. In the back of the classroom, I saw a little me. She was fat. The paisleys on her little shirt were stretched so far from her belly bulge they resembled splatters. She had stray crumbs on one cheek, and her mind was some place good. Not with the J at all. Maybe she was dreaming of her own cheetah gown. But if I had asked her the teacher's name at that point she would have stared at me, mouth agape, without an answer. That one got crossed off the list.
Finally I found another progressive school on the White side of town. The curriculum seemed fabulous. During the visit, my friend and I began ticking off the number of kids of color in each classroom. There were very few, and what kids of color were there seemed to come from alternoland -- adopted Asian kids, biracial Black kids, kids who were a quarter Burmese, products of Peace Corps love connections. But mostly they were White kids with hippy parents who we later learned lived in fabulous Upper West Side apartments thanks to their trustfunds. Most importantly, the school promised Reading Recovery, occupational therapy for backward writing, etc. We decided to give it a try.
On the first day of school Navah came home looking a little disoriented. We ate dinner alone together in the dim living room at the coffee table. I waited for her to talk. I didn't want to barrage her with questions. We talked about why Raven Simone seems to favor froofie feathers around most of her jacket collars. We talked about why my bike was so tall. And then we were quiet. Finally she looked at me and said,
"Ma, do you know what it is like to be the only black girl in a classroom?"
"Uh, no," I said with a shy smile on my white face.
"It's like being all alone at midnight. And everbody forgot about you."
She just looked at me, waiting for a reason. Why had I dragged her away from her friends and their games of dozens and her lovely afterschool where all the kids sit on each other's laps and take Hip Hop dance and African Drum for electives?
I asked her why she felt alone. She said that nobody liked Cheetah Girls. She said nobody was cute. Nobody was fun. Nobody knew how to do Chicken Noodle Soup. And then she said nobody wanted to be her friend. That was as simply as she could put it.
Should she be able to read and compete in her future, or should she be self affirmed and emotionally nurtured? Are they mutually exclusive? We won't move her before June, but we are still seeking answers.
On her second week of pre-k at her old school, she pronounced her puffy 'fro to be a "brown cloud" and her skin"the color of chocolate chip cookies." This was after a previous year of begging for blonde Barbies.
On every birthday at her old school, parents came and told their child's birth story. The Pre-Kindergarten teacher would ask, "Now was little Sundiata pushed out of your vagina, or did he have to be cut out of your belly?" And the four-year-olds would stare up at you in wonder, chin in hand, waiting for an answer.
The problem was Navah didn't learn to read. Or add. Or make a heading at the top of a notebook page. And we started worrying she would become a statistic disguised in a Che t-shirt.
The lack of structure at the old school gave my child the chance to drift. And, like her mama, given the chance to float, she will do so -- and high. The philosophy of the school was that children should focus on what they love. That seemed to be fashion for Navah. But half way through a drawing of a fabulous cheetah print gown, she would forget what she was doing and wander off to the block area leaving the garment chopped off at the waist. I pictured her glamorous model strutting down a Milan runway with half a dress and a naked c00chee.
I started off by being annoyed and angry at Navah. "Concentrate," I would yell during reading practice. "If you look more closely at the words, you can make out the sound!" But that was making her cry and my stomach churn so bad I needed to scratch myself inside. The school refused to offer her reading help -- it was too conventional, and they claimed she didn't need it. You see, Navah seemed rather high functioning compared to other kids in the school. That wasn't that difficult considering one of her best friends was a starving vegan child who spent most of each day obssessing on how to find chocolate to taste and her other friend came to school weekly with stories of how his dad was in jail for some random misdemeanor.
In the middle of the first grade I got her evaluated, and the psychologist started off with "She is a very sweet girl."
Mmmm Mmmm, I thought, there's a problem. Apparently my very sweet girl was in fact, below in her reading and writing skills, verbal skills, reasoning skills --- skills and more skills. Direct instruction was the prescription from the shrink. It was too early to tell, but they predicted possible learning disabilities lurking in my little genius' head.
I visited schools. Some were so white, I could count every chip in the cookie. But worse, in one, kids sat at desks, staring at the chalkboard, while the teacher shouted directions to draw a perfect letter "J". "Hat on top, SWOOP, at the bottom," she said, mimicking the trunk of an elephant. In the back of the classroom, I saw a little me. She was fat. The paisleys on her little shirt were stretched so far from her belly bulge they resembled splatters. She had stray crumbs on one cheek, and her mind was some place good. Not with the J at all. Maybe she was dreaming of her own cheetah gown. But if I had asked her the teacher's name at that point she would have stared at me, mouth agape, without an answer. That one got crossed off the list.
Finally I found another progressive school on the White side of town. The curriculum seemed fabulous. During the visit, my friend and I began ticking off the number of kids of color in each classroom. There were very few, and what kids of color were there seemed to come from alternoland -- adopted Asian kids, biracial Black kids, kids who were a quarter Burmese, products of Peace Corps love connections. But mostly they were White kids with hippy parents who we later learned lived in fabulous Upper West Side apartments thanks to their trustfunds. Most importantly, the school promised Reading Recovery, occupational therapy for backward writing, etc. We decided to give it a try.
On the first day of school Navah came home looking a little disoriented. We ate dinner alone together in the dim living room at the coffee table. I waited for her to talk. I didn't want to barrage her with questions. We talked about why Raven Simone seems to favor froofie feathers around most of her jacket collars. We talked about why my bike was so tall. And then we were quiet. Finally she looked at me and said,
"Ma, do you know what it is like to be the only black girl in a classroom?"
"Uh, no," I said with a shy smile on my white face.
"It's like being all alone at midnight. And everbody forgot about you."
She just looked at me, waiting for a reason. Why had I dragged her away from her friends and their games of dozens and her lovely afterschool where all the kids sit on each other's laps and take Hip Hop dance and African Drum for electives?
I asked her why she felt alone. She said that nobody liked Cheetah Girls. She said nobody was cute. Nobody was fun. Nobody knew how to do Chicken Noodle Soup. And then she said nobody wanted to be her friend. That was as simply as she could put it.
Should she be able to read and compete in her future, or should she be self affirmed and emotionally nurtured? Are they mutually exclusive? We won't move her before June, but we are still seeking answers.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Rampant Roaches, Flat Asses and Naked Fathers
This week my 82-year-old father fell on the floor of his bathroom and lay there for 36 hours. My husband found him naked from the waist down with a pajama top on. "Am I glad to see you!" my dad said lolling his head back to peek at Bruce. Bruce called 9-11 and then he called me with the super-zen tone so I wouldn't freak out. Pop didn't remember how or why he passed out, but he knew he couldn't get up.
When the EMS guys came they pointed to a purplish-red rash on Pop's leg. "Mr. Gewirtz, where did you get that?" they asked.
My dad looked quizically at Bruce. "Where did I get that rash?" he asked.
"Arthur, I don't know. Where did you get that?" Bruce asked; Zen tone in tact, I am sure.
"Well how about that, no one knows where the rash is from," my dad tut-tutting his teeth with his tongue in wonder as if inspecting a tree that had been knocked down in his yard by a random storm. It turns out its highly infected cellulitis with open soars that medics feared had spread to the bone.
"Viagra" was what my dad blurted out when the EMS guys asked him about his last ingested medicine. Except he was probably lying. We figured out he hadn't seen his girlfriend for three days and had probably taken his heart medicine last. "Eiiw. That means he was just bragging," my sister said to me on the phone.
"I guess that's a good sign, right?" I replied.
In the ER that night, I found my dad alone with his girlfriend and her husband. My dad is sleeping with his former student whom he taught when he was at a university in China in the '80s. Back then she was newly married and just having a son. She made my dad -- her special American professor -- the godfather of her son and then they named the child after my grandfather Shmuel(name changed for privacy) with his last name Chin (also changed). You got it -- Shmuel Chin. Hmm. Somehow her husband and my dad's then-girlfriend found nothing strange about the situation. Later the family moved from China to the States where my dad's LoveStudent became an English teachers like him. Hmm ... stalker? When my dad's wife died three years ago, Pop and LoveStudent began a raging passion -- with the help of Viagra. Somehow her husband, who doesn't speak English after 20 years in the U.S. either doesn't know or just simply doesn't care about their jaunts to Atlantic City and such. Hell, he has a kid named after a Brooklyn Jewish baker who he'd never met, I am gonna go with the latter.
Upon arrival at the ER, my sister found LoveStudent leaning over my Pop practically making out with him. Pop was barely lucid from the fall and was asking repeatedly how this all happened. Then LoveStudent pops up and says "Oh, I left my husband in the car. I'll be right back." She brings him in to the ER where the nurse says, "I can only let family." My sister assured that they were family. When I got there, my sister was out on a little break and the husband was holding my dad's hand, assuring him he would be alright. It was all a little exhausting, frankly.
The next day when my dad begins to come around to a little lucidity, I found myself alone with him and a nurse named Esther. She is in her '50s, has all of her dyed hair swooped up in a pile on top of her head, bright blue eye shadow, striped socks, green clogs and a rainbow medical shirt with paisley pants. I am guessing there are not under ten cats in her house and that she pays 10 percent of salary in vet bills. She is shuffling around adjusting wires and hooking in IV bags, and my dad is examining her closely as if she were the rash on his leg. He scans her body up and down, down and up. Reaches over to find his glasses so he can get a better gander. She weaves out of the room, one shoulder higher than the other and a little disassembled. "Her belly just sticks out. It is the most absurd thing I have ever seen. And her ASS IS FLAT. It's just the queerest thing. Her body is TOTALLY DISORGANIZED. I don't like the look of her one bit," my father says.
"You can't walk and you have bedsores on your ass. You shouldn't talk,"I said.
"Poo poo. You are right," my father says. "But poor thing, she is horrible looking.
Later LoveStudent comes in and starts talking about teaching in a decrepit Brooklyn public school. "There are cockroaches just running down the hallway. They drop from the ceiling." LoveStudent also teaches special needs kids in their homes and is paid by the city to do so. "They live in horrible homes," she says. There are rats everywhere." My dad in his bed tut-tutting his teeth again.
"That's a shame he says. Just a shame."
"I once found a roach running around in my car!" she says. "It must have come from one of their houses ... jumped into my bag or something. Now I don't bring my bags inside my house. I leave them in the car."
I guess she has a little respect for her husband after all.
When the EMS guys came they pointed to a purplish-red rash on Pop's leg. "Mr. Gewirtz, where did you get that?" they asked.
My dad looked quizically at Bruce. "Where did I get that rash?" he asked.
"Arthur, I don't know. Where did you get that?" Bruce asked; Zen tone in tact, I am sure.
"Well how about that, no one knows where the rash is from," my dad tut-tutting his teeth with his tongue in wonder as if inspecting a tree that had been knocked down in his yard by a random storm. It turns out its highly infected cellulitis with open soars that medics feared had spread to the bone.
"Viagra" was what my dad blurted out when the EMS guys asked him about his last ingested medicine. Except he was probably lying. We figured out he hadn't seen his girlfriend for three days and had probably taken his heart medicine last. "Eiiw. That means he was just bragging," my sister said to me on the phone.
"I guess that's a good sign, right?" I replied.
In the ER that night, I found my dad alone with his girlfriend and her husband. My dad is sleeping with his former student whom he taught when he was at a university in China in the '80s. Back then she was newly married and just having a son. She made my dad -- her special American professor -- the godfather of her son and then they named the child after my grandfather Shmuel(name changed for privacy) with his last name Chin (also changed). You got it -- Shmuel Chin. Hmm. Somehow her husband and my dad's then-girlfriend found nothing strange about the situation. Later the family moved from China to the States where my dad's LoveStudent became an English teachers like him. Hmm ... stalker? When my dad's wife died three years ago, Pop and LoveStudent began a raging passion -- with the help of Viagra. Somehow her husband, who doesn't speak English after 20 years in the U.S. either doesn't know or just simply doesn't care about their jaunts to Atlantic City and such. Hell, he has a kid named after a Brooklyn Jewish baker who he'd never met, I am gonna go with the latter.
Upon arrival at the ER, my sister found LoveStudent leaning over my Pop practically making out with him. Pop was barely lucid from the fall and was asking repeatedly how this all happened. Then LoveStudent pops up and says "Oh, I left my husband in the car. I'll be right back." She brings him in to the ER where the nurse says, "I can only let family." My sister assured that they were family. When I got there, my sister was out on a little break and the husband was holding my dad's hand, assuring him he would be alright. It was all a little exhausting, frankly.
The next day when my dad begins to come around to a little lucidity, I found myself alone with him and a nurse named Esther. She is in her '50s, has all of her dyed hair swooped up in a pile on top of her head, bright blue eye shadow, striped socks, green clogs and a rainbow medical shirt with paisley pants. I am guessing there are not under ten cats in her house and that she pays 10 percent of salary in vet bills. She is shuffling around adjusting wires and hooking in IV bags, and my dad is examining her closely as if she were the rash on his leg. He scans her body up and down, down and up. Reaches over to find his glasses so he can get a better gander. She weaves out of the room, one shoulder higher than the other and a little disassembled. "Her belly just sticks out. It is the most absurd thing I have ever seen. And her ASS IS FLAT. It's just the queerest thing. Her body is TOTALLY DISORGANIZED. I don't like the look of her one bit," my father says.
"You can't walk and you have bedsores on your ass. You shouldn't talk,"I said.
"Poo poo. You are right," my father says. "But poor thing, she is horrible looking.
Later LoveStudent comes in and starts talking about teaching in a decrepit Brooklyn public school. "There are cockroaches just running down the hallway. They drop from the ceiling." LoveStudent also teaches special needs kids in their homes and is paid by the city to do so. "They live in horrible homes," she says. There are rats everywhere." My dad in his bed tut-tutting his teeth again.
"That's a shame he says. Just a shame."
"I once found a roach running around in my car!" she says. "It must have come from one of their houses ... jumped into my bag or something. Now I don't bring my bags inside my house. I leave them in the car."
I guess she has a little respect for her husband after all.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
FatChyk Mama
Today my daughter asked me if it was funny (meaning strange) for a black girl (that's her) to play with white boys (that's the little dirty t-shirt, red-headed boy that lives down the street from my mom). I immediately went in to Free-to-be-me-and-you mode. "Of course it is honey. It's ok to play with anyone who you enjoy spending time with, who shares his toys, who is nice to you, etc. I know from looking at Little Red that he ain't nice. He looks like he steals icies from children's hands after school and then doesn't even eat them. Anyway, I lied for the sake of diplomacy all the while knowing that playing with white boys ain't always as fun as it may seem.
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