“We’re blind,” Toni said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the things I hear from the girls.”
My sister was trapped in her room with our father again—I had to leave.
I walked out of the room, turned the corner, walked down the hallway past my classroom, and past the front office. I left the building. I went to the courtyard and sat on a bench. There was no shade. The sun was warm, arrogantly so. The rims of the basketball courts had been tampered with, the front ends slanting toward the ground, from kids hanging on them. Next to me was a garden enclosed by a chain-link fence.
I imagined my sister at school, a preteen Ga Jeh hanging out with friends at lunch, gossiping about boys, pretending the night before was just a bad dream. When she’d arrive home, later that night, she’d see the boogeyman again, this time with the lights on.
I was eight or nine when it started. My room was directly across the hallway from my sister’s, a footstep separating her door from mine. I wanted to empower that young Dickson, give him a weapon. I’d been old enough to pick up a knife but had chased the wrong tormenter.
I dropped to the ground and did knuckle push-ups on the concrete. My knuckles reddened and were dirty. I banged my fist against the edge of the bench until I cut my knuckles, the blood mixing with dirt.
It was a few weeks into the start of the semester, and I’d thrown myself deeper into work. As a teacher at June Jordan, we already had plenty to do, had the advisor role on top of teaching, but I’d volunteered for more: volunteered for the School Culture Committee, the Academic Equity Committee, the Hiring Committee, chaired our Humanities Department, signed up to lead a yearlong professional development program for the staff, and agreed to mentor a student teacher. The shit was exhausting.
I’d come home and still have papers to grade, lessons to plan, and parents to call, the mothers and fathers of advisees who’d gotten kicked out of class. The conversations could turn lengthy. Parents often vented to me, but I had enough family drama of my own.
One day, I was running a discussion in class on abortion. A student was making a case that it was murder. I jotted down his points, as I did during all class discussions, but the student, Peter, began to ramble, veering off on tangents. He had a disability that made him walk with a limp and drag his foot. On top of that, he had a speech impediment. Words came out nasally. He’d tested out of special education, but he wasn’t trying to merely fit in. He wanted to be the most popular kid on campus. During lunch, Peter would jump into freestyle rap cyphers—and win. When we brought Challenge Day to the school, and they led us through a set of cross-the-line questions, Peter, a Chinese kid, crossed the line to identify not only as Asian but also Latino and African American. He claimed he had friends of all stripes; thus, he identified with (as) them. “It doesn’t work like that,” I’d tried to explain, but Peter wouldn’t be swayed.
I quit writing Peter’s repetitive points. Murder, we got it. Usually, I’d refocus him or move on to the next student, but I found myself doodling. An outline of a face, its mouth opened wide as though gasping for air. I began to fantasize about killing my father. It’d been a recurring daydream.
Bah Ba was asleep in his bed; my hands hovering over his neck. He awakens and tries to squirm away, but I throw him to the floor. I pounce on his back, press my weight on him, and sink my hips low to the ground. I had a piece of string in my hand that’d been snipped from my mother’s spool of string. Ga Jeh and I would cut string from this spool to play Cat’s Cradle. I loop the cotton string around Bah Ba’s neck and pull. The string turns into wire, a garrote. It cuts into his skin. He tries to shake his head free. His panting eventually trails off, and this pleases me. I pull harder.
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” a student screamed at Peter. It was Roxanne, who shouted all her sentences. She could make, “Can I borrow a piece of paper?” sound violent—she would’ve been a natural Cantonese speaker—but when she’d realize she was too loud, she’d flash an innocent smile and apologize earnestly. This wasn’t that sort of shout.
“It’s still a life, Roxy,” Peter snapped back.
“If it is, then you might as well say condoms are killing life!” Roxanne stood up from her desk. “You gonna say birth control should be against the law too? No, didn’t think so!”
An “oooh” erupted in the class.
I checked the clock. “Roxanne had the last word,” I said to the class.“It’s time to go. Make sure you grab a handout.” I placed a stack of papers on the table in the middle of the room, which all the desks faced.
“Wait,” Peter said. “I get to respond. She asked me a question.”
“Didn’t you hear Lam?” Roxanne said. “Time’s up!”
“All you who think it’s OK—” Peter stood up and shouted like he was a preacher on a corner downtown. He accidently knocked over his two-liter bottle on the floor. The kid drank a lot of soda.
“It’s over.” I glared at him, but he wasn’t looking. He was trying to pick up his bottle. I couldn’t find my stapler. It was my go-to method for getting their attention or shutting them up. I’d tap the stapler three times against the edge of the table. The teacher next door used a Zen meditation chime.
“What if your parents had aborted you?” Peter said to the class,
