The Patriots' Club

22

Of course, they couldn’t stop talking about the mugging.

“Calm down, you guys,” said Jennifer Dance. She sat on the front of her desk, legs dangling. “One at a time. Remember, once someone else starts talking, keep your thoughts to yourself until they’ve finished.”

“Yo, Miss Dance.” A tall, fleshy Hispanic boy with a crew cut and a green tear tattooed at the corner of his eye stood up.

“Yes, Hector, go ahead.” Then, to the rest of the class: “It’s Hector’s turn. Everyone give him your attention.”

“Yeah, like shut up,” added Hector with real venom, casting his eyes around him. “So, Miss Dance, like I’m wondering, if it was this razor-sharp knife, why didn’t it cut right through your arm? I mean, like deep, like you guttin’ a cat or somethin’.” He shot his buddy a glance. “Ten stitches, man. I could do better than that.”

“Thank you for your comment, Hector, but I think I’ve already answered that. I don’t know why he didn’t hurt me worse. Just lucky, I guess.”

“ ‘Cuz you good-lookin’,” a voice rumbled from the back of the room. “Them boys wanted to slam yo’ ass.”

Jenny stood and walked briskly down the aisle. It was a normal-size classroom, one student per desk, blackboards running the length of each wall, map cartridges she’d never even thought of using, hanging behind her desk. She stopped in front of a hulking young man seated in the last row.

“That’s enough, Maurice,” she said firmly.

Maurice Gates shrugged his massive shoulders and dropped his eyes to the floor as if he didn’t know what the big deal was about. He was a huge kid, well over six feet, at least 220 pounds, braided gold necklace hanging outside his football jersey (in defiance of school rules against jewelry), his baseball cap turned halfway to the back.

“Jes’ the truth,” he said. “You a good-lookin’ woman. Wanted to get him some gash. ‘At’s all. Know’d you’d like it, so he didn’t want to mess you up real bad.”

“Stand up,” said Jenny.

Maurice looked up at her with sleepy eyes.

“Stand up,” she repeated, softer this time. The classroom was all about control. Lose your temper and you’d already lost the battle.

“Yes, ma’am.” Maurice rose to his feet with enough moans and grimaces to do Job proud.

“Mr. Gates,” she said, “women are not bitches. They are not ‘ho’s,’ or ‘gashes.’ Is that clear? We, females, do not live in a constant state of arousal. And if we did, we wouldn’t require the attentions of a crude, chauvinistic musclehead like yourself.”

“You go, girl,” said one of the students in the back row.

Maurice shifted on his feet, his face a blank, as Jenny continued. “You have been in my class for two weeks now,” she said, standing toe-to-toe with him. “At least once a day, I have asked you to refrain from using offensive language. If I can’t teach you algebra in this classroom, I would, at least, like to teach you respect. Next time I have to waste a second of the class’s time keeping your butt in line-one second-I’ll have you kicked out of school.” She delivered the last part on her tiptoes, her mouth a few inches from Mr. Maurice Gates’s ear. “Your attendance here is a condition of your release from Rikers. So unless you want a ticket right back there, you’ll sit down, shut up, and keep your comments about the superior sex to yourself.”

Jenny stared into the boy’s eyes, seeing hate flare in the way his eyelids twitched, sensing his anger at being humiliated in front of his classmates. The kids called him Mo-fo, and they used the words with all due deference. Make no mistake, he was an angry, volatile young man. His case files pretty much came out and said that he’d been a player in several unsolved homicides. But Jenny couldn’t worry about that. She had a class to teach. Order to keep. She owed the kids that much. “Sit down,” she said.

For a second or two, Maurice Gates remained standing. Finally, he bunched his shoulders and sat.

The hush in the classroom lasted ten seconds.

“We were discussing what an appropriate punishment might be for mugging someone,” Jenny said, retaking her place at the head of the class. “Remember, I got my watch back. All I got was a little cut and very scared.”

“You popped one of ’em, too.”

“Yes, I did,” said Jenny, adding a little swagger to her step. “A right hook.” A few of her knuckles were swollen and painful to the touch.

She checked the clock. Nine-thirty. Her school planner called for her to teach math and English before recess. Math was a goner. She still had hopes for salvaging English. She was reading the class “The Most Dangerous Game,” the story where a mad hunter sets men loose on his private jungle island to track down and kill. There were plenty of metaphors in the story that the kids could relate to, especially at the end when “the Man” gets his comeuppance.

“Twenty years,” someone shouted. “Sing Sing.”

“Nah, ten, but no parole.”

“Ten years?” asked Jenny. “For grabbing a watch and giving someone a little cut? Don’t you guys find that kind of harsh?”

“Hell no.” It was Maurice Gates. “How else you think they gonna learn?”

“Excuse me, Maurice, do you have a comment?”

The supersized teenager nodded. “You got to teach those muscleheads a lesson,” he said, eyes boring into Jenny. “You got to be tough. No mercy. Unnerstand? Less’n you want ’em to come for you in the middle of the night. They mad enough, they even cut you in your own bed. Door locked. Don’t matter. They gonna get in. Take care of bidness. You be sleepin’ alone. They gonna get in. Cut you good. Ain’t that right, Miss Dance? You got to put ’em away.”

Jenny held his eyes, wondering if she might have to go to security on this one. Don’t you dare come after me, her look said. I can take care of myself.

“Ten years,” said Hector, banging his feet on the ground.

In no time, the class raised a chant. “Ten years. Ten years.”

“Enough!” said Jenny, patting the air with her hands. She looked from face to face. Hector had robbed a bodega in his neighborhood. Lacretia had gotten into “the life” when she was twelve. For the most part, they were a decent bunch of kids. They weren’t angels, but she hoped she could just drive home what was right and what was wrong.

“Miss Dance?”

“Yes, Frankie.”

Frankie Gonzalez walked up alongside her and put his head on her shoulder. He was short, and skinny, and rubbery, the class runt and self-appointed clown. “Miss Dance,” he said again, and she knew he was making his wiseass smile. “Yo, I kill them muthafuckers they touch you.”

The class cracked up. Jenny patted his head and sent him back to his desk. “Thank you, Frankie, but I think that’s a bit extreme, not to mention against the law.”

She dropped off the desk and walked to the chalkboard. She wanted to make a list of appropriate penalties and take a vote. Crime and punishment passed for reading and writing.

Just then, the door to her classroom opened. A tall, rangy man with close-cropped gray hair and a weathered face peered in. “Miss Dance, may I have a word? Outside, please.”

Jenny put down the chalk. “I’ll be right back,” she said to the class. She smiled as she entered the corridor. A parole officer, she thought, or a cop come to tell her about one of her new charges. “Yes, what can I do for you?”

The man approached her, the smile bleeding from his face. “If you ever want to see Thomas Bolden alive again,” he said, his voice hard as a diamond, “you’ll come with me.”