They’re gone. Forever gone from Davis Middle School. They took Antonio today; Roberto went yesterday. For pot. The cops hauled them off to jail and then they were expelled.
I mean... for smoking dope?!
They were two of my favorite students. Nowhere near the best. Actually, they were both probably failing, on account of their incapability to show up before 8:30 for an 8:00 to 8:50 first period class. But, heck, if not for my older brothers ripping the sheets off my back, and my mother driving me after I’d missed the bus, I’d never had made it to school before ten. They don’t have those kinds of older brothers. And the mothers...
They’re both thirteen, maybe fourteen by now. Antonio told me once before that his oldest brother would be getting out of jail in El Salvador soon and making his way back up to Compton. Once there he’d pretty much just hang out until their stepfather was released from prison. Then, he’d kill him. Apparently the man has it coming for beating their ma while the son was locked away El Sal for triple homicide.
Antonio is just a cool, laid back dude with not an ounce of rage or hate at all. But he’s about to take a turn to a life of crap. Then again, maybe it’s not a turn. Maybe he’s been headed straight there since the day he was born.
I asked him what school he wanted to be transferred to. His options were limited. He’ll be killed, or at the very least have to fight for his - whatever it is they fight for (honor?!) if they sent him to one area. He’s Latino. That place is not. I told him that I could make calls. Maybe get him into a better school. He’s smart. Not well educated. Smart. But he said, nah. There are other schools. Not close by, but schools nonetheless.
He’s done. He’s droppin’ out.
His ma needs him to drop out anyways. He feels the pressure to help her make ends meet. She’s saddled up with too many kids that she doesn’t do anything but hang around the house all day. Visions of her wandering about the place, children of various ages sucking from her teats, hanging like Christmas ornaments. Damn the government! They don’t pay her enough to live off making babies.
He’s going to go to work full time. He’s going to do what his stepfather taught him, and what he’s been doing on a part-time basis while going to school. He’s gonna jack cars. Full time. For his ma. Because without asking him to, she’s begging him to.
Roberto, well, I don’t know as much about his home life, except for the fact that it is so wonderful he’s been living on Antonio’ couch all year. His mom, as Antonio once put it, “is way fucked up. Don’t even ask... just a bad bad person.”
Ten years from now I’m going to hate Antonio, just as I hate all the 25-year-old Antonio’s in the world today.
But when he’s sitting in the pen... or when he’s killed in a shootout like Arturo’s older bro... I want to blame someone. I want to smack his mom for ruining his life. I want to kick the shit out of the people who think it’s better to kick him out of school for smoking dope, not caring about the consequences.
But I’m really not angry.
Like my acting teacher once said, “Anger is superficial. When it hits you that hard the response must be deeper than that.”
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