Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part XLVII)

Although schools emphasize endings and moving on (when the bell rings students put aside their work and go on to the next subject), Waterways looked at publication not as an end product, but as a step in the learning process. Many alternative high school students were in constant transition. Many Offsite Educational Services (OES) teachers were able to combine the Waterways publications with their classroom assignments. Waterways was designed to assist the classroom teacher, who would also be addressing the needs of the host site. The first publication from OES's Upper West Side Manhattan DAYTOP site opened with “Don’t Waste Your Life” -- which the class voted to use as the name of their magazine.

My name is David. My age is 16. I was born in October 1970. I was once a drug user. I used to use crack combined with weed. It is called “ruler”. I used it once and then twice until it became a habit. I used it every day ($200 to $300 a day). I would go out and steal things like radios, clocks, gold, etc. I also used to steal from my stepfather until one day I got a job in a crack house making $400 a day. When I got the pay it was all gone within five hours. I would smoke it up in rulers. One day I made about $800 and by the next morning it was gone! When I went home my chest was hurting a lot. I thought I might die. I began to say to myself, “I am going to die.”
My heart was beating very fast so I went outside. It was about 7 a.m. and I robbed a school teacher to get more. I got caught and I was very scared because I knew I was going to jail. My mother came and got me from the precinct. The next day I told my mother I needed help. I wanted to become drug-free and that is how I got into DAYTOP. Before smoking crack I got so thin that I was 130 pounds and a size 28. I am proud to say today I’ve gained weight (155 pounds and a size 31). Give me a couple of days and I will wear a size 32 and weigh 170 pounds! Guaranteed! I hope you don’t do crack because it is wack.

Then came “Changes” by Lucas:

Changing from getting high to being straight
Just as love changes into hate.
Life and my problems seem different today;
No more drugs to chase them away.
Courage has changed to fear.
My crutch is no longer here.
No. It’s very clear to me.
Change can control my destiny.
Adjusting to my new way,
I will change with every day.

The next issue of Don’t Waste Your Life opened with Those Winter Mornings by David (after he read Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden)

Every morning my mother wakes me by yelling out -- “It’s 7:30.
Time to get up.”
That is why I hate her.
‘Cause I would for once like to sleep to 8:00.
Maybe 8:15.
But,
She wakes me up anyway.

It was followed by Amanda’s poem, “Life”

Life is made of many things
But it has two meanings.
Life of joy and life of pain.
You have them both,
but they’re not the same.
All want one, the one of fun,
But that way there’s nothing done.
No one wants the one of pain,
For it is a lonely lane.
Life is hard
And life is fun
For both
Two meanings join as one.

Later that year, Amanda died tragically, and the first issue of Streams was dedicated to her.

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part XLVI)

Misael, a student at Island Academy, who had been truant through most of his school career, was labeled by the schools as uneducable and mentally retarded. That changed after the school based support team read the stories he told me his story in the computer room. As he spoke I typed out his words. He took the printout to his dorm, worked with a C.O., and brought it back with his suggested revisions.

Have you ever been in the boy scouts when you were a kid? I was...

I want to talk about the Always Crazy Crew Posse. My story of a posse that can’t be stopped. Yes, it’s the ACC Posse from Brooklyn at Coney Island.

The ACC is like a little army because we lie to fight wars. Yes. We do carry the pump shotguns, the thirty thirty Winchesters and the sawed off double barrels and the 25 automatic. Yes, to be in the posse you can’t be a chump. You’ve got to go all out. You’ve got to fight with all of us. Then you’ve got to get initiated... firewhippings on your back. You know... when you get whipped by everybody five times.

I started when my big brother (He’s the second leader of the ACC) heard me ask if I could join the posse. He told me yes, but you have to listen and learn what to do. He told me you can’t be scared of fighting. You can’t be scared of shooting. You can’t be scared of getting hurt and no ratting on where we get the guns if you get busted.

So I said yes and I took the whole test. This was no joke. It was no school. It was an army war.

The first tumble I had was at the Marlborough Projects. Yes, it started at Kaiser Park. A crew from Marlborough threw a jam at Kaiser Park. There was one girl from Marlborough who’d invited us to the party. She said there wouldn’t be any fighting. So me and the boys said alright. Everything would be peaceful, but don’t let them try to front on us. ‘Cause if they try to front on us we’re going to bust out wide open.

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part XLV)

Ronald King became a Waterways’ teaching artist after having served a sentence for a juvenile crime. He earned a diploma while incarcerated, studying writing and psychology. He joined Mark Crawford and Matthew Hejna-Luque to publish, Connections, a literary magazine. Poets in the Schools hired him to teach poetry to young women at the Hegeman Diagnostic Reception Center in East New York, Brooklyn and he also worked with Louis Reyes Rivera. His Waterways assignment was as teacher at the Rose M. Singer High School in the woman’s house of detention on Riker’s Island. He used his skills to teach and counsel. His student, Dorothy, was published in Streams 3.

Young Mothers in Jail
by Dorothy Jasper

Sweet mothers, jail moms
With stomachs big and round
Full of so much life
In such a place, a state of
Bars and slamming doors
Hard core times, young mothers
Babes with babies. Pretty moms
Used and abused. Jailed mothers
Hope your babies stay free.

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part XLIV)

Another incarcerated student, who worked with Matthew Hejna, wrote under the pseudonym of José Respeto. He published “A Day in the Life” in the Winter ’91 issue of Strictly Business. He begins his story of 24 hours at 7:30 a.m. on a school day.

What’s up, man? You wasn’t getting up at 7:30 in the morning in New York, but if I don’t get up now the C.O. will be by my cell in about five minutes and then I’ll have to answer to him. Man, if he ain’t have that badge on his chest he won’t be shit. If I was in New York... Damn the world, damn this place and everyone in it. Got to brush my teeth, wash my face and comb my hair. Got my fly clothes on. Gots to show brothers I’m living large. Yup, got the fly kicks on too. I’m looking proper.

Time to walk out for school. Hold up, let me just flex in the mirror right quick and make sure everything is in the right place. Yup, just as I thought. Oh man, almost forgot the burner. Can’t go nowhere without my burner. Just in case a brother try and front. Alright got some brothers checking me out. How do they do it? Oh yeah, just keep your arms pretty much still. Don’t swing ‘em, just move your shoulders and bop to the side a little. Yeah, now you got the walk, let’s work on the face I’m gonna wear for the rest of the day. Okay, keep your jaws tight, squint your eyes a little. Now, drop your eyebrows. That’s it. I’m on a roll now. Man, am I a trooper or what? Yeah, that’ll put fear in their heart. They won’t even look at me no more. They better not.

Man, I hate walking in a damn line, like we’re in grade school or something. We’re passing another house. Look hard. You ain’t new to this. A little more on the walk...right, riiight. What’s that? Mod 11? Man, them brothers are ass! Get ready, if any jump off, just keep swinging. Keep on looking hard. Yeah, they know better. Our house is the chop shop. I really could do without the riot squad though. The riot squad. Man, listen...if I was in New York...

Man, these teachers be bugging out. What I need to know all this geometry stuff for? As long as I can count my money, I’m straight. Man, what I need to come to school for anyway? I wasn’t going to school in New York. Well, I was, but it sure wasn’t for no geometry--them girls was fly. These teachers be looking good, too. Man, if I was in New York...

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part XLIII)

William was a student incarcerated on Rikers Island. He came to Matthew Hejna’s Waterways editorial meetings with a story he was working on in the dorm. “Murder, He Wrote” was first published in Strictly Business (Vol. 4 No. 1) and then anthologized in Streams 7. The location was the South Bronx where the narrator related a psychological exploration of crime and punishment.

We walked in past a bunch of tires, a place where bums sometimes sleep. A lot of burnt cars were around, underneath the train tracks from where the 6 train comes out of the tunnel. This place was known to me and my man as the car cemetery. In there was a little of something: crack bottles, needles, old rags, human waste and dead dogs that either got shot or electrocuted. It was also a place to get rid of people, so my partner knew someone was going to die that night, he just never thought it was going to be him.

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After he finished talking I pulled out my 38, and told him to keep walking. When he saw the gun he looked at me and knew one of us wasn’t walking out of there alive. “Why man, why me?” I remember the look in his eyes. Scared. Desperate. As if he was going out of his mind. All that came out of his mouth were begs, “Let me go, man, please, Columbia, let me go.”

“Shut up, man,” I told him, not out of anger but because his words were making me think twice about it. I felt tears accumulating in my eyes and then rolling down my face. “It’s me, kid, top of the world. Just me,” I said.

“I love you man. We are all we got.”

“Yo, Gee, I got to think of me. We all got to go someday. Your time just ended. Nothing personal, just business.”

“I’m scared, man, I don’t know what’s on the other side. Let me live, give me a chance,” was the last thing he said.

I knew if I let him go I wouldn’t last three days. That’s the type of people I got involved with. To their eyes, it’s either live or die. As I talked to him, he tried a desperate move and reached for his gun, so I shot him twice in the head.

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After that I didn’t think like a rational man. I didn’t care much for human life. Whenever I felt disrespected, I pulled out the gun and shot and asked questions later. One day I was walking across the street a little drunk. I tried to jump over a low chain fence and fell. These two girls that I knew from my block started laughing at me. I don’t know what came over me, but the next thing I knew I pulled out my gun and shot at them.

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I remember I used to ask myself, “Why does he not leave me alone? He’s dead.” But the more I tried to forget about it the more I suffered. I tried to go outside, stay around people but it never worked. He haunted me. Every time I saw money, Gee’s face flashed in my mind. His blood called me day and night and I always ended up back in the car cemetery where I took his life. I used to stay there sometimes from one in the morning to sometime the next day, just smoking and drinking, crying and asking him to forgive me.

Then I got arrested. Now I think to myself how foolish I was. It was all a dream, a fantasy, nothing but a foolish lie. All that money I had and today I don’t even have a bank account. My so called friends don’t even send me a letter. They are too busy chasing their own fantasies. As for my family, well I gave them up on the first $1000 that came. I’m only 17 years old and feel older than dirt itself. To make things worse I have a 10 to 20 year sentence on my back and a criminal record the size of an atlas. I know I’m going to die in jail. I’m facing the fact because once I go up north I ain’t coming back. The brothers of people that I have killed are upstate counting the days for me to get there.

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part XLII)

Ray, an OES student at Odyssey House, wrote an account of street dancing and gangs in Brooklyn. The story ended with the death of his friend during a concert at the Atlantic Avenue Armory. “The Fast Life” was published in Streams 2.

Little David came walking up the Ave. with the Gates Ave. Posse. Little David was the youngest of the posse; for he was only fourteen. We let him hang with us, because he had a lot of heart for a young guy. Most all, he could dance his ass off.

David and I were the dancers of the group. But he and I didn’t get along too well, for the simple fact that we used to battle in dancing 24-7.

So David and the Gates Ave. Posse came up to us. We started really bugging. We started hooting and screaming, “Go Brooklyn! Go Brooklyn!”

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Later on that night, at the Armory, there was a lot of fighting going on. It was a fight for the borough of Brooklyn. It seemed like the whole borough teamed up to fight Bed/Stuy.

But they still had no wind. We were on our turf. We had a big rumble. I got caught out there with brass knuckles over my right eye. That’s why I got a scar there.

Cops came, and the crowd dispersed. A small amount of my posse made it into the Armory. So did the other posses.

Time passed by. We started enjoying ourselves. The last time I saw David, he was getting into some beef with some dude ‘cause David was freaking the dude’s girl.

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The next thing you knew, the ambulance had arrived. They went into the Armory. They came back out with David on the stretcher. Blood was gushing out of his head. They tried to stop it, but nothing worked. All of a sudden, he started having convulsions. Blood started running out of his mouth, nose and head. Then he just looked up at the sky and died.

It messed me up bad. People were screaming. The Bed/Stuy Posse started beating up everybody they saw.

I didn’t take part in it. All I thought about was a grade-A kid, who started hanging out with the wrong crowd. The streets took over. And now he is dead. I started to question myself. Will my life end like that, too?

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part XLI)

A variant on Molyneaux’s Question: Suppose a person, who did not read books, be made to read in school. Could the person learn through reading to empathize more with others and come away with a better understanding of human nature?

Students struggle with words. The printed page gives otherwise silent students a voice among their peers. It is also a challenge for many to participate.

For sixteen years Streams was distributed through alternative high school classrooms. Lorraine and Tommy’s computer correspondence was published in Streams 1. She was verbal:


I know that I talk a lot, but when you respond, I hope you can give me just as much. When I came into the computer room, the first thing I said was, “Richard, do you have a letter from my pen pal?" And he told me that you didn’t finish. Don’t make me wait too long. Well, it’s time to go. The next letter is on you.

She faulted him for not being able to keep up his part of the conversation:

Lately your letters have been getting kind of ‘relaxed’. When I take out the time to write you a descriptive, fully detailed letter, I expect you to do the same thing. I’m the kind of girl who likes a challenge and lately you haven’t satisfied that need at all. You’re gonna have to come better than you have been if you wish to continue these brief conversations.