Photo is of Vining School, Billerica, which was standing in its original form, even up until 2021.
See, you were the only Black kid in the whole damn school,
and the teacher had to split us up because of how hard
we laughed together. Sure, there were the two Black teachers,
Miss George and Mrs. Thompson—beautiful and funny, and all
the kids said they were the best teachers in that beaten-
down place of early learning. But truth be told, I was scared
of Miss George who yelled a lot. I'd had too much of that at home.
But my mother, oh my beautiful, worn-down mother—one day,
Mrs. Thompson took her to church, and the way my mother
came back, finally living, certain that music was the heart
of the Lord, and I saw this infinitesimal spark I’d never seen
behind her serious eyes! And decades later, I understood,
when I visited the first AME and how, when the choir came to sing,
and the preacher came to preach, they were not joking,
and if you did not feel the presence of at least some kind of God
Almighty, then honey, you just weren’t listening. And I remember
that book by Maya Angelou, the one I read in middle school, I Know
Why The Caged Bird Sings, how it sings for freedom,
and The Contender with the poem inside, and why those novels plucked
strings in my own frail heart and made me wish I’d seen Maya
when she visited our college. But I was already so very tired by then,
and I had to go to work, and besides, there would be so very many people there.
But if there’s one thing I could tell her, one thing I could tell
Langston Hughes and Charles and Mrs. Thompson, and others
whose names I might have forgotten by now, it’s how much I needed
them when I was behind my own barren bars, and whether
I am a raisin in the sun, or a caged bird set free, I still will never know,
but I want to say thank you for giving me what you probably could not afford,
what it is I suddenly remembered this morning, that one day, the kids laughed
at me: “Kathy and Charles sitting in a tree…K-I-S-S-I-N-G” and how
I didn’t care, and how for me, the usually quiet one, the one who'd disappointed
the teacher (who, in her defense, was really just trying to teach) how for me,
that was a big, bold move. And perhaps I should have said something different,
something braver or more outspoken, because everyone said you were
the brilliant one, and rumor had it you went on to Harvard, but I was only
nine or ten, and the world was already filled with so many voices, I could barely
think. But I’m saying something now, Charles, and I’m saying it a little clearer:
You were worth getting in trouble for. You were worth having my seat moved
for, though how I missed you when it happened. You were worth standing
in the corner for, and if I had to do it again—chubby, younger, too-tall me,
me with the braids and too-straight hair, afraid of all the noises—I would.
Thank you for making me laugh when laughter was all I had. Thank you
for being my friend. Thank you for telling me about things we can’t talk
about now, how Black hair is different from white hair, how you were so good
at math when I still added on my fingers, and how they said you were gifted.
I hope you made it to Harvard, Charles. I hope you made it out alive.
Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, copyright March 17, 2024, all rights reserved
Posted in Katherine's Coffeehouse
