Trash Talk

Last week, my English teacher asked me to write an essay. I went to the chalkboard and wrote, S A. The other kids laughed at me, and I didn’t know why. The teacher looked mad and told me to sit back down. He also told me that instead of 500 words, my essay would have to be 1,000, because I obviously feel that I have a lot to say.

I didn’t feel like saying anything after that. I don’t even know a thousand words. Maybe not even 500. 

I wanted to ask someone in the class for help, but I was scared. They all know my English is trash. They make fun of me when I speak Swahili with my brothers, so I tell them their Swahili is just as trash as my English.

Then they beat me up.

So I didn’t ask for any help that day. I just sat at the back of the classroom, looking down at my papers, wiping them off whenever a drop of water fell on them. My eyes started doing that when we left Africa. They haven’t stopped for two years.

When the bell rang, I had so many tears that I didn’t see the other teacher coming in. I just heard Mr. Carter saying, “Look what this kid wrote when I asked for an essay.” Then I was so embarrassed I started to run out of the room. Before I got to the hallway, I heard a woman saying, “Which kid?”

I was already gone. 

During lunch period, I went to the library. School lunches are too expensive for my family, so I just bring whatever I find in our kitchen and I eat it where no other kids can see me. Usually the teachers don’t see me either. There was one who came into the library every day at lunch period, just like me. She always had a plate of food and a cup of tea. She always sat at the table in the geography section, far away from the kids’ books. But that day, she came to my table.

She took the chair next to me and said, “What are you eating?” 

“Sombe,” I said, pointing to the green stuff in my bowl. Then I pointed to the cold ball of boiled maize. “And ugali.”

“Interesting.” She put her nose near the sombe. “It doesn’t smell like anything.”

“It smells good when it’s hot.”

“What about the ugali? Is it supposed to be hard like that?”

I shook my head. “It’s supposed to be soft so you can roll it around in your fingers like this.” I showed her how we roll it. “But it gets hard when it’s cold, and then it’s trash.”

“Would you like to heat it up?”

I didn’t exactly understand the question.

She picked up her cup of tea. “Come on. I’ll show you the teacher’s lounge.” I got up and followed her, but before we left the library, she stopped. She looked at me and smiled. Her smile was nice. “You’ll need to bring your food with you.”

I went back to get my bowl, then walked fast to catch up with her. 

“I don’t really like to use microwaves, but some leftovers just aren’t good cold, and we don’t have a stove here. Plus, who wants to spend half their lunch break at a stove?”

Everything she said sounded good, but I still didn’t know what it meant. She stopped walking again. We were at the door to the teachers’ room, but instead of opening it, she looked at me for a while. “Do you know what a microwave is?”

“Maybe if I see it I’ll know.”

“Ah,” she said, laughing a little, then unlocking the door. When we went inside, I thought there would be people everywhere, but the room was empty.

“Where are all the teachers?” I asked.

“Probably still in their classrooms. Nobody has time to take a real break around here. That’s why we have a microwave--get the food hot, get it in your stomach, then get back to work.”

Her hand was on top of this thing on the countertop that looked like an old TV. Like the one we had back in Africa. But the screen had a handle on it, and when she pulled it, the whole thing opened. The inside was empty like this room.

I think she could tell that I was still confused, because then she explained: “You put your food inside here, and when you push the buttons, it makes it hot.”

Now I understood. Well, a little.

She had to show me which buttons to use, and how to open the door when it was done. I was still kind of confused. I’d never seen food get hot so fast before, except if it was on fire.

“You don’t have a microwave at home?”

“No,” I said. “Just a stove. Our house is trash.”

She laughed. “It’s probably better that way. Microwaves aren’t so great for your health, even if they are convenient.”

“What’s ‘convenient’?” I never ask people to explain words to me anymore. I don’t want them to think I’m stupid. But this teacher didn’t make me feel stupid at all.

“Convenient means that something is quick and easy and you don’t have to go very far to get it.”

“That’s America. In Africa we had to walk far for everything.”

“Yeah, I suppose a lot of things here are more convenient.” She was smiling, but she looked kind of sad. “Convenient isn’t always good, though.”

I had been thinking about something. “Is tea convenient?”

Her smile got bigger. “Do you like tea?”

“We always had tea in Africa.”

“Well, you’re about to have it here. And as a matter of fact, it’s extremely convenient.” She took a teacup out of a cabinet, filled it with water from the sink, and put it in the microwave. I asked her which button to push, then I watched the cup until the water started bubbling. I pulled the handle and tried to take the cup out, but the whole thing was hot. Even the handle burned my fingers a little.

“Ow!” I said. “You’re right. Convenient is trash.”

She was taking something out of a little box, and she stopped in the middle to laugh at me. It was a nice laugh though, not a mean one. “You won’t think so when you get to enjoy a cup of tea on your lunch period. That, my friend, is anything but trash.” The thing she pulled out of the box was a tiny bag full of tea leaves, hanging from a string. She dropped it into my cup. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Mossi.”

She shook her head. “I don’t like it.”

I looked at the floor. “Nobody likes it.”

“I mean I like the name, but it isn’t right for you. I’m gonna call you Trash Talk.”

Still looking at the floor, I smiled. “Then I’ll just call you Teacup.”

When she handed me the cup of tea, the steam went into my face and it smelled like home. I looked up at her blue eyes, and they reminded me of the sky in Africa. I smiled more. 

“Thanks, Teacup.”

We both brought our tea back to the library. “Are you going to stay here until recess is over?” Teacup asked me.

“Yeah. You can stay with me if you want.”

“I wish I could, but my break is just about done. I’ve got five minutes to shovel down my lunch before I have to go back to class.”

“What!?” I couldn’t believe her break was so short.

“Yep,” she said, starting to eat. “It’s trash.” 

“No, no, it’s not trash. You have to teach the kids. But…” 

She looked up at me. “What?”

“Are you a good teacher?”

“I think so,” she laughed. “I hope so. Why?”

“Because my English teacher...he’s not good. I still don’t know how to read English.”

“You don’t?”

“No, only little words. But I want to read a lot more. And...I have to write a thousand words this week. Can you help me?” As soon as I said it, I felt bad about asking her. Her lunch break was so short. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s not convenient. You need time to make tea and heat up your food.”

She hadn’t finished eating yet, but she stood up. “I’ll heat yours up too. Leave it in my classroom tomorrow morning, and it will be ready when you meet me here at lunch time.”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I am that there will be a hot cup of tea on the table for you.”

I smiled bigger than ever. “Okay.”

She picked up all her stuff and started to walk away. “Room 202 is mine. Look around the library,” she said on her way out the door, “and pick a book that you want to read.”

I didn’t have to look. There was a book I’d been wanting to read for a long time.

“Journey to the Center of the Earth?” Teacup asked me the next day. She looked very surprised.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s cool.”

“But…” She opened the book and started turning pages. “It’s not easy to read. At all.”

I took the book back from her, and put my head down. “You’re right. I won’t be able to read a book like this. I’ll go look at the kindergarten books.”

“Kindergarten?”

“You know--the grade where they teach you how to read. I missed it, so I have to start over.”

I stood up, but Teacup grabbed my arm. “How long have you been here in the U.S., Mossi?”

“The U.S.?”

“America.”

“Oh. Like two years.”

“So you came when you were 10?”

“Yeah. I was too old to go to kindergarten.”

She pulled on my arm and made me sit back down. “Then you’re certainly too old for it now. No kindergarten books. If you want to read Jules Verne, then I will teach you to read it even if it takes all year.”

“What’s Jules Verne?”

She put her face in her hands. “Why weren’t you placed with a reading specialist?” I didn’t know the answer, so it’s good that she didn’t wait for me to answer. She just pointed to some words on the front of the book. “Try to read that. If you get it wrong, it’s okay.”

I tried, and this is what it sounded like: “Joo-less Vair-nay.”

“So you can read?”

“I can read Swahili.”

“And if those words were in Swahili, that’s what they would sound like?”

Those words were not like Swahili at all, but I still said: “Yeah, I guess.”

She smiled. “All right. So all we need to do is practice reading the letters the way they sound in English.”

All of a sudden I felt so tired, and I wanted to give up before we even started. “But they sound so weird--and they’re always changing!”

“Give me an example.”

“The letter E. When you say the alphabet, you say ‘ee’, but when it’s in a word, it sounds like ‘eh’!”

She was starting to understand. “Like in the word...essay?”

I put my head on the table. Now I knew: Teacup was the other teacher who came into Mr. Carter’s classroom yesterday. She saw what I wrote on the chalkboard. “Just like that,” I said. “Why do you say ‘ess’ when you say the letter?”

She laughed. “How would you like us to say it?”

“In Swahili it’s ‘say’. It sounds the same as when it’s at the beginning of a word--we don’t change it.”

“Then ‘say’ is what we will say. No more letter ‘ess’--at least not until next week. And while we’re at it, why don’t you teach me how to say all the other letters in Swahili?”

I picked myself up and looked at her. “I thought you were teaching me English?”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “Sometimes, my friend, you have to learn before you can teach.”

The next day was Friday, and that made me sad. The weekend was coming, and Teacup wouldn’t be teaching me for two days. I sipped my tea, and she sipped hers. 

“Read it again,” she told me, pointing to the same two words on the front of my library book.

“Jules Verne,” I said.

She squinted at me. “How did you know it was supposed to sound like that?”

“I pretended that the L was next to the S, and the U was next to the E. When U is with E, it sounds like ‘oo’. Just like in Swahili.”

“And when U is with me, I is happy.” She gave me a high-five. I just looked at her.

“What?”

“It’s a joke. Like how you wrote the letters S and A when Mr. Carter asked you to write ‘essay’.”

“That wasn’t a joke.”

“But it made me smile.”

After she told me that, I smiled too. The kids in my class laughed just to be mean, but Teacup was laughing because it sounded like a joke to her.

“When U R with me,” I said, taking out my notebook and writing some letters, “I… C… Y… English is funny.”

“That’s a good one,” she said, reading the paper, then taking my pencil. “Do U… C… Y… N… S… A… is an important thing to write?”

I just took the paper and wrote, No.

“Obviously you do, because you just expressed what you thought in writing. There must be something you think about so much, you’d be able to write a thousand words about it.”

“They wouldn’t be spelled right.”

“Learning to spell right takes time, especially in English. But feeling confident that you can write an essay even without knowing how to spell? That you can do by next week.”

I wrote another word that I knew. How?

“Just like you’re doing now. Take the thoughts that are inside that brain, and put them on the paper. Even if they’re not perfect.”

“Thoughts about what?”

“What did Mr. Carter tell you to write?”

“He said to write about something I want.”

“So what do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

Teacup looked at me for a long time. Then she picked up her plate and her tea and her books, and stood up. “Yes, you do. And by Monday, so will Mr. Carter.”

It’s Friday again. We met in the library every day this week, me and Teacup, just like last week. I turned in my essay on Monday, but it took Mr. Carter five days to grade. Maybe he couldn’t even read it, because the spelling was so bad.

When he gave the paper back to me, I was scared. I couldn’t open it. I waited until lunch, and then asked Teacup to open it. She looked at the top of the page, frowning. “What grade do you usually get in English?”

I couldn’t look at her when I said it. “D minus.”

Her frown turned into a smile. “Congratulations, Trash Talk. You earned every bit of this C.”

“What?!” I grabbed the paper from her hand. It was real. I had a C. In English!

“Can I look at what you wrote?” she asked me.

“No,” I said. “I don’t trust you.”

I thought she was going to cry. “Why not?”

I laughed, so loud that the librarian told me to be quiet. “I’m just kidding! Of course you can read it!”

Teacup laughed and started reading it out loud. But not too loud. We were still in the library. This is what I wrote:

Why I want to go to the center of the earth

By Mossi Amani

I want to go to the center of the earth bekause if I dig vary far, for a vary long time, I will be in Africa. You can fly thare two, or take a bote, and it wood be more kunvinyent. But I want to dig insted, because kunvenyent is not alwaze good. In America evrything is kunvinyent, but pepole are not happyer. Teachers have mikrowaves in thare room, but thare brakes are vary short. Meny pepole here dont have a lot of time. But if you use yore time to help uther pepole, you will be happy. When I livd in Africa...

After Teacup read that part, a drop of water hit the page. It was not from my eye. It was from hers. “Is it trash?” I asked.

“No. It’s you. But now,” she said, folding up the paper, “I want to hear it from you instead of the paper. What was life like in Africa?”

I told her all about it. How we didn’t have microwaves and tea bags, but we had time to be with our families. We walked to the market together, cooked together, drank tea together but without the little bag. It made me miss my life in Africa.

Just before her break was over, she told me: “I think it’s about time we started digging to the center of the earth.” Then she went back to her classroom.

I took the library book out of my backpack, and opened it to page 1. If I can write a thousand words and get a C, then one day, I know I can read Jules Verne.