Shades and Other Stories (eBook)

24/7

Diane was coming out of the back of the school building around 4:30. Her Ford 500 was one of the only two cars left in the parking lot. The other one was the basketball coach’s car. She was there late again working on trying to complete an IEP. She wasn’t done, and the principal, Ms. Adams, was probably going to send her another nasty email tomorrow, but she didn’t care. It was just a document, a formality—unlike having to deal with the real child the document was about on a daily basis. Her plans right now were very simple: She was going to go home, take her dogs for a walk, and go to bed.

As she pulled out of the parking lot, she spied a couple boys standing on the corner. She wasn’t really paying much attention, but then the boys started waving at her. Oh my gosh, she thought. It was Fabian (aka Polo) and Eric! They were there waiting for her.

She stopped and lowered her passenger window. “What in the heck are you two doing?” she asked.

Like the children they were, they stuck their heads into the window, looking a lot like her dogs would look when she got home. Fabian had on a baseball cap turned to one side, a fake gold chain, and, of course, a polo shirt and shorts. As usual, Eric’s hair was perfectly quaffed.

“Take us to Dairy Queen, Ms. O’Malley,” he said.

“Yeah, Ms. O’Malley,” Polo echoed. “You said you’d take us again.”

She had no idea how long they had been standing on that corner waiting for her. School was out over two hours ago. She was exhausted, but she didn’t have the heart to say no to her to little sweethearts. Actually, they weren’t that young (both fifteen) and rarely were sweethearts at all. She had them in class three periods a day, and like with her other special needs students, it was a constant struggle for her to keep them in a seat, to keep them off their cell phone, and to try to teach them something—anything—in spite of their intellectual and/or emotional and behavioral issues. Eric and Polo were typical of some of the male students that she taught: low functioning, poorly motivated nonreaders who, outside of school, were somehow involved in gang life.

“Okay, I wasn’t planning on having company,” she said. “But you’ll have to do some work at my house to earn the treat.”

“No problem,” Eric said.

“Bet,” Polo agreed, and they both jumped into her backseat.

Polo and Eric were quite a pair. They were both freshmen, but Polo looked older. He was an incredibly cute black teenager who always dressed nice in polo outfits and is well-groomed in spite of the fact that his grandmother, who he lived with, probably didn’t have much. He was about a half a foot taller than Eric, who, unlike Polo, was small, frail-looking and white. Because of the way his hair was cut, he reminded Diane of Rumpelstiltskin—or Prince Valiant. Eric had introduced her to his mother and step-father. His mother, a white woman, had on a house arrest ankle bracelet. His step-father, a black man, smelled of alcohol. Polo, on the other hand, had Diane pick him up at a house that wasn’t his (she wouldn’t have known this if Eric hadn’t told her).

Polo and Eric didn’t say much during the ride to her house in the suburbs. Mostly they both just looked out the window at the scenery as she drove on the expressway home. At one point she caught glimpse of Eric looking at himself in the rearview mirror.

“Does my hair look okay, Ms. O’Malley?” he asked.

“Your hair looks great,” she said.

“You be trippin’ ‘bout that hair,” Polo said.

“I ain’t trippin’. I just wanna know if it looks right.”

“Man, your hair looks like a damn mop.”

“Yeah, well least it ain’t all kinky like yours.”

“Boy, you better shut up or I’ll beat the mess outta you.”

They went back and forth for a while, but then that died down. Diane was never quite sure when they were having a serious argument or not. Their disagreements had been far worse than this in the past, but nothing ever seemed to pull them apart for long.

Diane lived in Crete. When she and her husband bought their house there over twenty years ago, it was pretty much an all-white community. Then blacks started moving in, and, of course, some whites started moving out. When she and her husband decided on getting a divorce, he wanted to sell, too. But Diane insisted on keeping the house, so she bought her husband out and raised their two children there. Black people lived in several houses on her block, and some were nicer houses than hers. She wanted to expose Polo and Eric to the fact that just because black people started to move into a nice suburban community, white flight wasn’t always inevitable. (There was even a public golf course next door where people of all races played.) Polo and Eric took it all in, but Diane wasn’t sure that they understood her purpose.

After entering Diane’s house, she had to hold off her dogs from jumping all over Polo and Eric, especially her pit bull puppy.

“Shit, not again,” her live-in said from the living room couch, where he was sitting drinking a beer and watching TV.

“Yes, Ben, they’re here again,” she said. “They’re going to do some work around the house before I take them to Dairy Queen. You could help out, but I know that probably asking too much.”

“Rough day today,” Ben said. “Only two fares. I’m just gonna sit here and be depressed.”

As the boys pet the dogs and Ben continued to watch a mindless show on cable TV, Diane went into her bedroom and changed into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. She had no idea why she and Ben were still together. He was much younger and good looking and seemed to enjoy having sex with her. Other than sex, though, they had little in common. He didn’t even like hockey or the Blackhawks, which were two of her passions.

While still in her room, she received text messages, one from her son who said he wasn’t going to be home for dinner, the other from her daughter saying that she was hoping to come visit this weekend. Sometimes she got annoyed with her daughter because now that she had a new job and was living downtown, she was always so busy scheduling time with other people and doing other things and because she would jump whenever her father wanted to see her. Once in a while Diane would think, what about me? Where do I come in in all this planning and running around? But overall she had a great relationship with Nadine, who never judged her for inviting students into her home.

As for her son, it was probably better that he wasn’t going to see Polo and Eric that evening. Jason was far less understanding than Nadine. He just didn’t get why Diane would spend money on these two boys—money she really didn’t have to spare.

Diane wasn’t close to being broke or anything like that, but she was struggling. She had an underwater mortgage, her Ford was her dad’s car, and she still owed huge college loan debts for her children. At one time she was making over a 100K as a high-level administrator at a special education school, but then she got into some trouble with the new principal (ironically it had something to do with Diane having driven a student somewhere), so she lost that job and had to take a SPED teaching position at the low-income neighborhood Chicago public school she was now working at, where she was making a little less than $60,000 a year.

But she never minded spending what she did on Polo and Eric. It was always well worth it when she saw the look of innocence on both their faces, a look she rarely if ever saw when they were at school.

When Diane came out of the room, she asked the boys if they were ready to do some work outside. She asked this question—in part—to try to make Ben feel guilty because he really was the one who should have been doing the work to help pay his way for living in her house for practically nothing. But it didn’t work. Ben just stayed on the couch staring at the TV and sipping from his bottle of beer.

She and the boys went outside and into the garage to get her ladder. She had started cleaning out her gutters last weekend but wasn’t able to finish, so this would be a perfect job for the boys to keep them busy, along with helping her out at the same time.

The boys took turns climbing up the ladder with a big lawn bag that they almost had filled up with leaves within a half hour.

“You guys are doing a great job,” she told them. “I think it’s about time to head for Dairy Queen.”

“No, not yet, Ms. O’Malley,” Eric said. “We’re almost done.”

“Yeah, Ms. O’Malley,” Polo said. “Just a few more times up the ladder and that’ll be it.”

Then, to her great surprise, Ben came outside with the dogs.

“Oh wow, decided to join the human race, huh?” she said to him.

That even got him to smile.

Eric was about to head back up the ladder, but Ben stopped him.

“You two play with the dogs while I finish up,” he told the boys.

“You sure?” Polo asked. “’Cause we got this.”

“Go ahead—you’re just kids. Have a little fun why don’t ya.”

After Ben was finished with the gutters, he came down and let the dogs off their leashes so that the boys could run around with them in Diane’s spacious back yard. Ben even joined in, playing and laughing.

Diane stood on her cement porch with her hands on her hips. She was pleased that this visit was working out so well.

They had finally made it to the local Dairy Queen. The...