“Sorry about the mess. But, you know, if I want ’em to keep the school clean I can’t complain about this room until Friday after lunch.”
“I understand,” she said. “May I have a seat?”
“Please do.” I was thinking that Newgate never asked permission for anything. He’d stand up if you didn’t offer a seat and nurse a grudge against you from then on.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” I asked.
“No thank you. I am very happy that you’re back, Mr. Rawlins,” she said. “You know the faculty and the students talk a lot about you.”
“They do?”
“Yes. It seems that they’ve come to rely on you for many problems that have nothing to do with the maintenance of the plant. Many of the women teachers, some men too, say that they depend on you for discipline when some of the more aggressive students have problems.”
Ada Masters had a mild way about her. She was small and unthreatening. In that manner she had gotten more out of her new charges than harsh-mouthed Newgate ever could.
It was true that students and teachers alike came to me when there was a problem. I was a black man in charge at a black school. No boy student was big enough to challenge me and the parents trusted me more than they did the white teachers. I was well read too. I’d perused every textbook in the school and often found myself instructing the kids on how to do their homework and even how to use the library.
I never neglected my own work, at least not until the past few weeks. It was coming up on the first-year anniversary of the death of my friend, Raymond Alexander. I felt responsible for Raymond’s death. He had been trying to steer clear of trouble but he helped me out one last time and got a bullet in the chest. His wife, EttaMae Harris, carried him out of the hospital just before they were about to declare him dead. I’d been looking for him, for his grave if that’s where he was, but Etta had disappeared and there were only whispered rumors that Ray hadn’t actually died but had gone back to Texas or up to the Bay Area or down in Mexico.
Lately I had been spending afternoons roaming around the city looking for clues about EttaMae or Raymond, who most people knew as Mouse.
I thought that the new principal had walked me around to gently let it drop that I shouldn’t miss any more days, but then I realized that she was going to stop me from working outside of the job description for the supervising senior head custodian.
“I wanted to thank you,” she said.
I girded myself thinking that this was the soft caress before the slaughtering knife.
“…for taking such good care of the school.”
“Say what?” I said.
“You have been the spine of Sojourner Truth,” Mrs. Masters said.
“I have?”
“You know you have. There are paintings of you in the art class, letters from thankful parents on file in the main office. The only negative notices are the job evaluation reports from Principal Newgate. He thought that you were insolent and insubordinate. I suppose that if he had been a better principal some future artist might have drawn him.”
“Oh they did,” I assured her. “There were quite a few portraits of Principal Newgate that I’ve had to wash off of the children’s rest room walls. If he had found them I would have probably got a transfer letter in there too.”
Mrs. Masters’s laugh was hushed but hardy. She covered her mouth and leaned forward in her chair. A tear rolled down her cheek.
“Easy?” It was a man’s voice.
At the door stood Jackson Blue, himself a living doorway into another dimension of my life.
Mrs. Masters straightened up and wiped the tear from her face.
“You have work to do, Mr. Rawlins,” she said. “Come up to the office tomorrow morning and we’ll talk about what you think I need to pay attention to here at Truth, as you call it.”
She got to her feet and walked to the door. Jackson stepped out of the way and they both made graceful little bows with their heads. When she walked out Jackson closed the door behind her.
“What the hell are you doing here, Jackson? This is my job.”
“You walked in on me just a few weeks ago, brother,” Jackson replied. “At least I didn’t knock at the door and yell out that I was the cops.”
He was right. I had pulled that tasteless joke on him.
“So what do you want, man? You know that woman you just chased outta here is my new boss.”
Jackson snaked into the chair that Masters had vacated. He clasped his hands together and started rocking to and fro. He was a short man with small bones. His face was slender, sharp, and very dark. He wore black jeans, a black T-shirt, and gray rubber-soled shoes with no socks.
“Well?” I asked.
“It ain’t good, man.”
“Listen,” I said. “If I can’t cover it with a mop and a buck-et’a soapy water you don’t even need to tell me. My street days are over.”
“Jewelle MacDonald.”
Jackson stared at me with certainty. He knew he had me hooked.
