A Reason to Believe Read Online Free Page B

loved her anyway.)
    My grade school teachers did what all great teachers do—expand your mind, your vision, and your world—and none more so than Eddie Quaintance, my sixth-grade instructor. She was tall, milk-chocolate brown, and supremely confident. In her early thirties, she epitomized maturity and experience. She was pretty, in the way aperson who is self-composed always seems attractive. Our class was large, maybe thirty kids, but she brooked no nonsense. She was firm and had a reputation for being the toughest grader—and disciplinarian—at Terrell. Rhonda confirmed some of those rumors before I got to the class, having been in her class the year before. We were all a little afraid of her.
    Hormones start to bubble in sixth-graders, and acting out was the custom for many students anyway, so quite a few teachers seemed to spend most of their time just keeping order. Not Mrs. Quaintance. Her presence alone commanded order. She could cut you a look that made you shrink from whatever tomfoolery you were up to or considering. If that were not enough, she had a wooden paddle, inscribed with the words
Board of Education
, and a storage room nearby where she confidently applied the paddle to an errant student’s backside. Our ill-fitting clothes, our runny noses, and our broken homes were no excuse. She was all about learning, which for her was more than facts and figures. It was about imagination.
    Mrs. Quaintance made me aspire to live as a citizen of the world. She had traveled to Germany to visit her son, who was working there, and she taught us all to count and greet one another in German. She took us to see
The Sound of Music
and used it both to enchant us and to teach us about the rise of the Nazis in Europe. She took us on another trip to the Chicago Lyric Opera; I had no idea what they were singing about, but I was completely enthralledwith the music and pageantry and remain so today. She made achievement and urbanity seem natural for us poor, black South Siders. It was a gift I still cherish.
    That year, I entered a regional essay writing contest on “Father of the Year.” I wrote about Gram—and won. I wrote a similar essay about Poppy. I now realize that I wrote to gain the attention and approval of the adults who were most remote, yet most important, in my life.
    From Terrell, we went to middle school at DuSable Upper Grade Center. The classes were in DuSable High School—a mammoth, grimy, brick and limestone building that seemed to have mile-long hallways. (I now know they were just average for a large urban high school.) By the late 1960s, the Blackstone Rangers and the Disciples, two rival gangs, were growing and competing. Part of their initiation seemed to involve assaulting the young, well-intentioned white teachers at DuSable, like the math instructor who was whacked in the head by a bat-wielding, would-be gangbanger.
    Indeed, the tumult that had swept through the neighborhood had taken root in my school. Nearly forty kids filled every class, and the teacher’s job was primarily to maintain order. Police hovered at every intersection in the hallways, and bicycle chains secured the outside doors. To go from one building to the other during class, you had to slip a pass under the door so the officer on duty could slide the chains off. Many of the glass windows had been shattered by the riots and replaced by Plexiglas or plywood.
    Going to DuSable involved a longer walk from home, and the gangs made those walks treacherous. I was routinely “jumped,” my lunch money or school supplies stolen, mostly because I was a “good” kid. I was also at risk for not being black enough, a mark of authenticity conferred on those with the darkest skin. Color consciousness among black people is an ancient issue, but after Dr. King’s death, the militancy in some black circles only intensified the intolerance toward African Americans who were comparatively fair. I was meek, bookish, bashful, and, in some