just the right balance of innocence and dryness to zing it right in there.
“It’s just my family tree,” he said lamely. “You know, one of the shakier branches.”
Mrs. Bondo fleetingly smiled down at her folders and that minute, almost secretive smile gave him some insight into her discomfited restraint; she had made the difficult decision to let the students deal with him and his sprawling drug drama on their own, trusting that at least one of the kids would rise to the occasion and set him right.
He felt chastened but also fascinated; he couldn’t imagine being in possession of such restraint himself.
Nonetheless he wanted a second shot at getting it right;
had
to get it right.
“OK, what do we have, ten minutes? Forget that story. It’s too, it’s too everything. Real quick—here’s a snapshot from Hopewell back in the day, a real bite-size quickie, no beginning, no end.
“Growing up, there was a guy in my building, a black guy named Eddie Paris. Eddie was a motorman on the PATH train, and he had two girls, I forget their names, and two sons, Winston and Terrance, who everybody called Dub and Prince, don’t ask me why. Prince, the oldest kid, was really something else. He went to Incarnation, the Catholic high school on Hurley Street, number one in his class, Honor Society, captain of the track team, which came in second in the state one year, captain of the fencing team, you know, competitive dueling, and on top of everything else? He could sing. And I mean sing—not hip-hop not head-banger not rock and roll but
sing
. . .” Drawing blanks.
“He would give concerts. Recitals. Anyways, a snapshot. 1976. I’m sixteen, high school junior right here at Paulus Hook. Prince is a senior at Incarnation. On this particular spring day I’m in my bedroom doing my homework, and I hear an argument down in the street. I look out my window and it’s Prince and his dad, Eddie Paris, down there, lots of hand waving, lots of shouting, and Prince, this great, great kid is . . . He’s got tears running down his face.
“And I hear Eddie shouting at him, ‘If I could I would, Terrance, but I have
four
children, not just you so I
can’t.
’
“At which point, Prince grabs his head, turns and, still crying, he just starts running blind up the Hopewell hill, this track star kid flying like a rocket, bawling his eyes out. And that’s it. Just that . . .” Making them come to him.
But shy, incurious or simply too spaced out from the first story, they didn’t take the bait, and it killed him.
“OK. Three minutes left. Your first assignment. Go home and find a photograph of someone in your family, Mom, Dad, Grandma, the cat, whoever. Except that the photo has to have been taken before you were born. And I want you to write me something involving that individual and what I want to know is, where did they go, what did they do right after the photographer said thank you. And don’t ask. Make it up. Use what you heard about them from back in the day. OK?
“Two minutes. I have some good news, I have some bad news.” And Ray brought up a number of paperbacks, spread them out across the table. “One to a customer, from me to you. That’s the good news. Bad news is that you have to read them. No book report, just read it.
“And let me just say something about these particular books. They’re mostly written by people who grew up without the advantages, some in cities, some rural—hard lives all around. And, the reason I chose them for you was because I feel that we read to learn new things, sure, absolutely, but more often than not, what we really get out of the good books we read is self-recognition. We read and discover stuff about life that we already knew, except that we didn’t
know
we knew it until we read it in a particular book. And this self-recognition, this discovering ourselves in the writings of others can be very exciting, can make us feel a little less isolated inside our own thing
“It’s just my family tree,” he said lamely. “You know, one of the shakier branches.”
Mrs. Bondo fleetingly smiled down at her folders and that minute, almost secretive smile gave him some insight into her discomfited restraint; she had made the difficult decision to let the students deal with him and his sprawling drug drama on their own, trusting that at least one of the kids would rise to the occasion and set him right.
He felt chastened but also fascinated; he couldn’t imagine being in possession of such restraint himself.
Nonetheless he wanted a second shot at getting it right;
had
to get it right.
“OK, what do we have, ten minutes? Forget that story. It’s too, it’s too everything. Real quick—here’s a snapshot from Hopewell back in the day, a real bite-size quickie, no beginning, no end.
“Growing up, there was a guy in my building, a black guy named Eddie Paris. Eddie was a motorman on the PATH train, and he had two girls, I forget their names, and two sons, Winston and Terrance, who everybody called Dub and Prince, don’t ask me why. Prince, the oldest kid, was really something else. He went to Incarnation, the Catholic high school on Hurley Street, number one in his class, Honor Society, captain of the track team, which came in second in the state one year, captain of the fencing team, you know, competitive dueling, and on top of everything else? He could sing. And I mean sing—not hip-hop not head-banger not rock and roll but
sing
. . .” Drawing blanks.
“He would give concerts. Recitals. Anyways, a snapshot. 1976. I’m sixteen, high school junior right here at Paulus Hook. Prince is a senior at Incarnation. On this particular spring day I’m in my bedroom doing my homework, and I hear an argument down in the street. I look out my window and it’s Prince and his dad, Eddie Paris, down there, lots of hand waving, lots of shouting, and Prince, this great, great kid is . . . He’s got tears running down his face.
“And I hear Eddie shouting at him, ‘If I could I would, Terrance, but I have
four
children, not just you so I
can’t.
’
“At which point, Prince grabs his head, turns and, still crying, he just starts running blind up the Hopewell hill, this track star kid flying like a rocket, bawling his eyes out. And that’s it. Just that . . .” Making them come to him.
But shy, incurious or simply too spaced out from the first story, they didn’t take the bait, and it killed him.
“OK. Three minutes left. Your first assignment. Go home and find a photograph of someone in your family, Mom, Dad, Grandma, the cat, whoever. Except that the photo has to have been taken before you were born. And I want you to write me something involving that individual and what I want to know is, where did they go, what did they do right after the photographer said thank you. And don’t ask. Make it up. Use what you heard about them from back in the day. OK?
“Two minutes. I have some good news, I have some bad news.” And Ray brought up a number of paperbacks, spread them out across the table. “One to a customer, from me to you. That’s the good news. Bad news is that you have to read them. No book report, just read it.
“And let me just say something about these particular books. They’re mostly written by people who grew up without the advantages, some in cities, some rural—hard lives all around. And, the reason I chose them for you was because I feel that we read to learn new things, sure, absolutely, but more often than not, what we really get out of the good books we read is self-recognition. We read and discover stuff about life that we already knew, except that we didn’t
know
we knew it until we read it in a particular book. And this self-recognition, this discovering ourselves in the writings of others can be very exciting, can make us feel a little less isolated inside our own thing
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