A Equals 2

“A Equals 2”

January 17, 2012

Tripping over her battered sneakers, no laces, Shelby stumbled into the classroom. For a moment, silence reigned. Then out rang the giggles and guffaws as her eyes stayed glued to the mottled, gray floor.

           “New girl’s a klutz,” someone jeered.

           “And that hair. Tangled, yellow. You own a brush?”

“And her clothes. Holes. Ragged.  She’s like the scarecrow in Wizard of Oz.”

           “Do you speak, Scarecrow?” A sharp elbow jabbed Shelby in the hip. “Oh, if she only had a brain.” A boy’s mocking chuckle, low and mean grated in her ears. She didn’t want to be here but there was nowhere else during the day.

           “That’s enough, Vickie. Shelby, you can take the seat in the middle of that row, please.”

           Shelby shuffled past the girls and boys seated along the row, who made no effort to shift their chairs forward. She sank into the chair and scraped it under forward under the table as far as it would go, looking neither right nor left. For thirty minutes of repetitive, droning ninth grade hell disguised algebra, Shelby sat frozen. She had been taught that to move or speak would make her a target. High school freshmen were monsters in the making.

           Fingers from her left side, slender, the color of her mother’s favorite chicory coffee tapped on the back of her hands, clenched on the edges on the tabletop. Shelby glanced sideways as a small stub of a pencil and a college ruled piece of paper slid towards her. Amber eyes flicked to hers then away.  

           “If A+B = 5, and B = 3, then A must be….”. Tansy?”

           At the teacher’s question, the girl on Shelby’s left went rigid. Titters of laughter rippled through the right side of the classroom, and Shelby slowly lifted her head.

           “Nobody to the left of the Mason line is going to be able to figure that one out, Miss Ellison.” Vicky sneered at Tansy and Shelby.

           Shelby felt a tap on her right shoulder and twisted to that side.  Narrowed blue eyes, blond spiked hair, crossed arms.

           “I’m Mason. I’m the line.” He jabbed his thumb into the skull patterned with the American flag stretched across his chest. “You’re to the left of the Mason line, Scarecrow. Welcome to the dark side of the room.” His thumb jerked to point to the left.  As Shelby swiveled her eyes to the left, she saw dark skin from dusky browns to ebony black. Like silent sentries of night, everyone to her left stared straight ahead, as if cast of stone.

           “Enough. I don’t tolerate this kind of talk in my classroom. Mason, see me after class.” Miss Ellison frowned as a chorus of comments:

 “Mason, you’re in such trouble,”      

 “The marines won’t want you now, dude,” tinged with laughter rang through the class.

With a sharp clap of her hand and a fierce scowl, Miss Ellison repeated her query,

           “Tansy, if A+B= 5, and B is 3, then A is…”

           “A equals 2.” The entire room gaped at Tansy.  Then the left side erupted in appreciation. A tall, thin black boy turned to high five Tansy.  The radiant beam of pride, Shelby sensed it was rare, threatened to engulf like her a wave from the left side of the classroom, before dispersing against the solid wall of raging white disbelief erected on her right side. Shelby slouched in crafted silence, eyes downcast.

           “Very good, Tansy. Next equation. If A + B = 9 and A is 5, what is B, Mason?” Miss Ellison queried onward.

           Shelby felt a slender finger push a slip of paper surreptitiously under her left thigh. She blinked her eyes shut for a second, imagining what she hoped might be written on it.

           Meet me for lunch.

           Want to come over after school?

           But Shelby knew, without looking, what the slip of paper really said. She had written and snuck it to Tansy.

           A = 2

***

           Shelby huddled against the cool crumbling bricks. Her threadbare backpack like a deflated balloon in the dappled shade. A tattered paperback cradled reverently between her knees, Shelby devoured the peanut butter and bread she had slapped together for what she expected might be the sole meal of her day. Two bruised apples sufficed for her fruit and dessert course.

           The sunlight across her feet shifted, and Shelby cringed. Tansy and the tall, thin black boy rounded the corner.

           “Where else could she have gone to Ronald?”

           “Beats me.”

           Shelby hugged her knees and wondered if she could turn invisible.

           “Can Ronald and I sit with you? This is one of our favorite spots to eat lunch.” Tansy’s voice, soft and hesitant caused Shelby to raise her gaze.

           “We’ve never ate here be-“  Ronald began.

Tansy cuffed Ronald on the back of his head.

Shelby quelled a laugh.

“Oh. Right,” Ronald said. “Can we just sit?” He folded his long frame beside Shelby. Tansy perched cross-legged across from them.

Ronald removed a soggy peanut butter sandwich from his paper bag. “So, guess you’re pretty good at math?” Next came two apples, pristine compared to Shelby’s, two pudding cups and a thermos.  “I’m on the basketball team. Practice tonight will run all this off me.”

“My cousin and me,” Tansy pointed to Ronald, “we could use help with math. He wants to go to college on a basketball scholarship or the marines and I want to be a nurse. But math is … well.” Tansy shrugged.

“I’ll help.” Shelby blurted out the words, surprised they came from her, “but-“

“Look if this about-“ Ronald started.

 Shelby interrupted him with an agitated brush of her fingers through her stringy hair. “It’s about me being homeless and living out of my mom’s car. If my stepdad ever finds us again…”

Tansy’s mouth curved, a dimple flaring in her left cheek.

“That smile always means trouble.” Ronald muttered through a milk mustache.

“I’ve got a plan” Tansy crowed, “you’ll move into my room, your mom into the garage. My mom needs the company and the help. It’s just us now. I’ve always wanted a sister. A equals 2.”

Eight years later

“Relax, man. We’re not at Camp Leatherneck anymore.” The strong grip on Mason’s shoulder loosened as his breathing settled. His head pounded in rhythm to the rap beat blasting outside his apartment window. A shout, loud noises and he fought for floorspace alongside Ronald. Both men folded their arms overhead.

“Don’t go turtle on me, dude.” Mason yelled above the mounting fracas outside their urban apartment window, battling his instinct to curl up in a fetal position.

“PTSD, just never fucking ends, does it?” Ronald asked, unbending to rub his eyes.

“Guess not. So thanks, buddy, for carting my bullet-ridden head and ass out of that firefight in Garmsir. I’m blaming you because I’m alive to try and sink through my floor. And sucking my thumb is only moments away. What the hell kind of riot is going down outside my window anyway?” Mason began to relax, one muscle at a time.

“Our window. And that riot, you dumb ass, is a protest over the death of George Floyd.” Ronald rolled to his knees and crawled to the window sill. “Most of the signs say “Black Lives Matter’”. Admiration filled his voice.

 Mason sifted through a jumble of memories: enlisting in the marines, purgatory disguised as basic training, hell in the form of deployment to Afghanistan. The constant throughout all those visuals? Ronald. When had he stopped thinking of Ronald as a black man and merely as his brother?

“Let’s go.” Mason  unrolled and gained his unsteady feet, extended a shaking hand to Ronald.

Ronald swayed, rocking on his heels.  “Go where?”

“Who had the memory loss here? Pay attention. We are going to protest.”

Ronald stared at him.  “You don’t do well in crowds.”

Mason gulped. “Yeah, well. This is important. Black lives matter. Yours matters. To me.”

Another loud noise rang out and both men struggled to stay standing as clamor rang through the thin walls. Then, Ronald grinned, a huge grin, that Mason couldn’t remember seeing in the decade he’d known him.

A staggered lunge,  a man hug neither would ever admit to initiating and they were out the door.

“If something happens, remember our code?” Ronald prompted Mason. During their time with the Marines, they’d established a “safe” code, in order to cue each other that they were mentally or physically safe.

“A equals 2, my brother.” Mason relaxed at his code recall.

“A equals 2, my man. We are the “A” team of 2.”  

“Or your cousin’s first algebra answer in ninth grade.  Depends on who’s asking.” Mason fist bumped Ronald. With a defiant slam of the door, they were absorbed in the crowd.

  Five minutes later, Mason fought not to shake as the absorbed him into its mass. He glanced to Ronald expecting to find at least trepidation in his friend’s face, but an enthusiastic slap to his shoulder assured him that fear owned only him.

“Black Lives Matter” a fifty-ish white woman declared  almost nose to nose with him.

“Damn right,” Mason growled back. Sweat rolled down his back and he could feel its irregular path at the small of his spine. Defiant scars that defined him.

                       Hold the line, son. The Mason line. We’re against blacks. I don’t ever want to see you pass a basketball to that boy Ronald again. I’ll beat the shit out of you if you do.

           The words echoed in his mind, the phantom pain of the scars from the beatings across his back. When he turned eighteen, he enlisted with the Marines, Ronald by his side. He lost a father and gained a brother, a trade he never regretted. Through Ronald and the Marines he had formed the opinion that skin color is like eye color – there’s a rainbow of shades throughout the world and stupidity was judging anyone by the color of their anything.

           A space opened to his left, towards the line of police and Mason slid into it, noticing Ronald caught up in a discussion with several of the protestors and someone with a microphone.

“Go ahead, arrest me! I’m a nurse, a first responder. You get COVID tomorrow, who’s going to be treating your sick, brute ass then?”  A hand on the shoulder pulled her back a step and the eyebrows under the shield relaxed a fraction.

“Tansy calm down. This is supposed to be a peaceful protest.” Mason struggled  through the crowd to get closer, the name, Tansy, triggering a fleeting memory. He caught Ronald’s gaze but the crowd shifted between them before he could signal his friend to close up.

           “You know this…woman?” Mason strained to catch the words from the cop and then he recognized Shelby standing tall at Tansy’s side, their arms linked in unity.

            He grinned as Shelby widened her stance, causing her white medical jacket to shift over her scrubs.

“Yes. She’s my sister.”

           “Must have been different parents.” The sneer under the face shield changed to a smirk.

Mason’s grin morphed into a scowl. He signaled Ronald of upcoming trouble. Ronald’s gaze found Shelby and the officer as he began to thread his way towards Mason.

            “Is that supposed to be some kind of racial crack, you asshole? No wonder calm and peaceful protests go unheard.”  Shelby arched closer to the face shield, her voice at shouting level. Slender black fingers linked with white and guided Shelby a pace back as the police officer glared.

“Why, Dr. Shelby, my sister, I believe you are…angry!” Tansy’s amused tones reached Mason and in his peripheral vision, Ronald’s head swiveled towards the women at Tansy’s voice.

“You bet I am!” Mason could hear the rage infused in Shelby’s voice as the crowd of protestors undulated and pressed closer around them. The police line shifted together and then forward, like a restless snake uncoiling for a strike. Tansy yanked on their linked hands to pull Shelby backwards from the police line again.

“You need to move, now.” The line of shields nudged closer to Tansy and Shelby.

“Move where?” Tansy’s tone, calm and reasonable reassured Mason as he fought his way closer.  “Why?’

“Now.” “Now.”

 Gunfire.

 A black hail of bullets pelted the crowd. Tansy raced toward Mason’s position. Shelby cried out and stumbled. Ronald tackled her, covering her body with his.

A hail of rubber bullets arced around Mason. He ducked and weaved. In a desperate burst of speed he caught Tansy around the waist.  They tumbled to the asphalt in a pile of intermingled white and black limbs.  Mason groaned at their jolting stop. Tansy’s elbow snaked out of the pile and caught Mason’s jaw.

“Get off. Me.” Tansy shoved at him.

“Tansy, it’s-“ Tansy’s fist struck him in the temple. Mason’s vision wavered, the bullet crease from Garmsir across his forehead searing in agony.

“A equals 2.” Mason muttered into Tansy’s ear. Then Mason’s world went…black.