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“That’s a good way to look at it.”
“And the other way I look at it is, I get to break bread with a fine lady I’ve admired for a long time.”
I tried not to blush, despite feeling a little flushed.
“Dame, you never came to my class, and when you did, you just sat in the back, joked around with your friends, and wrote in your notebook,” I listed.
“I did,” he said, nodding and laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“You don’t even know what you did, do you?” The smile on his face washed away quickly. “Look, you never turned me away. You never let me act up in your class. And you always tried to include me in on what y’all was doing.”
“Well, it’s school. You’re supposed to be included. I’m a teacher.”
“You think all teachers do that?” he asked.
“I think I’d be naive if I did. But I know most try.”
A woman walking by waved at Dame and he smiled back.
“Try? Most pretend they don’t see half the kids—the bad ones. Most either treat their students like criminals or ghosts. But not you... . Man, you was trying anything to get us to sing that gospel stuff.”
“It means a lot to me,” I said as the waiter put the drinks we’d ordered on the table.
“And one day, you
were dead serious. Got mad because nobody had their handouts from the day before and people were talking. Man, me and T-Brill was cutting a fool in the back of the room and you got up and stood next to that old beat-up piano and was like, ‘You all think other schools have pianos like this? You think they have broken computers, rusty water fountains, and outdated biology labs with no biology teachers?’ And to be honest, I’d been smoking and I wasn’t listening to you before that, but when you said it, I was thinking, man, finally somebody’s talking real talk to us. And you said, ‘If you don’t care about your education, no one else will.’ You remember that?”
“Yes, I do.” It was one of the worst days of my teaching career. I’d lost complete control of my classroom and felt helpless and useless. When I came to work, I was so excited. We were supposed to be singing “Amazing Grace.” I was still a new teacher then, and I thought that the Word needed to be in each song I taught. While other schools weren’t teaching gospel music in chorus, our mostly black and Christian faculty and student body insisted upon it. It was the tradition before the government even recognized the school. And, as my first principal told me, we weren’t changing until the government came in and stopped us. They’d taken everything else from our little school and we weren’t going to let them take the last thing that was sure to teach our students about goodness.
I knew the kids would love the song and prayed all night they’d receive the message of God’s good graces. Only it was clear they weren’t. The students were so rowdy that day, they wouldn’t receive a message if God jumped out of the piano and sang the song Himself.
“When you were standing up there,” Dame continued, “I just kept thinking, when I get out of here, I’m gonna make sure we have a new piano, new water fountains, a new biology lab, and some good teachers. Good teachers like Ms. Cash.”
“Really?”
“Man, I was sixteen and high”—he laughed—“but I know truth when I see it. And that ain’t never leave me. I traveled the world and that ain’t never leave me. I knew as soon as I got my money right, I’d bring it home, so other kids don’t have to see Hay Court and McKenzie like I did. So they can dream of more than making these white folks happy every day.” He looked at the waiter, who was standing nearby, waiting obediently to take our orders. “My mama and my grandmama served these people all they lives and ain’t nobody bothered to give them nothing but trouble. Now, I’m giving them the world.”
The waiter came and took our orders after we’d heard the specials and Dame joked with him, asking if they had any hash browns covered and smothered. The waiter laughed robustly, but I was sure if it was anyone else, he would’ve stared them out of the restaurant.
The food, when it finally came, was good but scarce. I’d ordered the grilled salmon with asparagus and mashed potatoes. But what I got looked like a sticky pad, two pencils, and a dab of hand cream. There was so much white space on the plate that I tried to spread the food around to pretend there was more.
“You know, when I dreamed of eating in places like this, I never thought that rich people’s food was just like rich people,” he said.
“How so?”
“It’s skinny,” he said, and we laughed together.
“You’re quite the comedian,” I said.
“Daaaame,” a female voice oozed just as I was about to look away. Standing before us was a twentyish white girl dressed in a preppy pink sweater with a khaki skirt. Her hair was curled tight and pushed back behind her ears. “I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner, but I’m Mary Kate. I’m your biggest fan.”
“Hi, Mary Kate,” Dame said coolly. There was an awkward tone at the table. We were sitting there eating and she was standing, hovering above us. It seemed she was going nowhere.
“I downloaded your album and I was so excited when I heard you were coming home to Tuscaloosa,” she went on. “Who knew you would come over here to join us for dinner.”
“Us?” Dame repeated. “Us who?”
