Q Clearance, Page 4

  He would surely have taken the cab if the light hadn't changed, because he disliked the bus with a visceral loathing. It was not only that buses were hot and crowded and dirty, but being on a bus constituted a kind of invasion of his privacy. When he boarded the metal container, he was thrusting himself into contact, and sometimes confrontation, with people he was not equipped to deal with, who did not play by his rules. They babbled and squabbled, their children squawled, they sweated, they smelled, they pressed against one another and stared out the tinted glass as if everything was perfectly normal. Now and then, one of them would address him, which—even if the address was as innocuous as "Is this seat taken?"—could unnerve him and trigger a stammer that could evolve quickly into an anxiety rush that could, if unallayed, mushroom into a full-blown panic attack.

  This morning, the bus arrived promptly and took Burnham down M Street, across the bridge and down Pennsylvania Avenue without incident. A waif from, say, the Cots wolds might have felt threatened by the two black teenagers who played a cassette deck at peak volume and said to any passenger who glanced their way, "Loud enough for you, muhfuh?"; or by the slender man in black suit, black shoes, black tie and starched white shirt who was running a column of figures on a calculator but kept making errors every time the bus joggled, and as he started the column anew sang atonally, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so"; or by the elderly man in hat and raincoat who clutched between his knees a sign with which he was going to picket the White House:

  HUSBANDS UNITE

  You have nothing to lose

  but your

  BALLS

  Throw off those apron strings!

  BEAG.L

  (Gynophobes International)

  But to the urban sensibility, even one as finely tuned as Burnham's, these were phenomena to be noticed and avoided but not feared.

  Burnham and the man with the sign got off at the same stop, 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, the comer just to the north of the White House complex. Burnham held the door until the man could angle his big placard free of the bus.

  By way of thanks, the man looked into Burnham's eyes and whispered fervently, "Beware! They're following you."

  Startled, Burnham took a step backward and said, "Who?" And then, seeing the psychotic glow in the man's eyes, Burnham was embarrassed that he had been suckered into even momentary discomfort.

  "You've got the wrong man." He laughed uneasily. "I'm not worth following."

  The man's eyes widened—in surprise or umbrage, Burnham didn't know which—and he hoisted his sign and spun around and marched off.

  THREE

  Ivy Peniston felt like kicking the old rummy, she was so angry. He slumbered on the sidewalk beneath a blanket of yesterday's Post's sports section and beside a brace of Thunderbird empties. But kicking a rummy wouldn't do any good, wouldn't help Jerome, wouldn't even make her feel better for more than about ten seconds.

  Jesus wept, Jerome! Typing! How could you do this to me? How could you do this to you? How could you flunk typing?

  Typing can't be any big thing, just one letter after another till they make a word, then one word after another till they make a sentence, and so on till you do the right number in the right amount of time. I even bought you lessons!

  She stepped around the rummy, and the lateral movement shot a twinge of pain through her bad knee and reminded her to remind Jerome to borrow an Ace bandage or one of those basketball kneepads for her from the gym.

  She turned the comer onto N.E. 12th Street. There was no bus in sight, so she reached inside her shopping bag and felt around for her watch. You never wore a watch in this neighborhood, that was the law. A watch, displayed, was fair game. And you never carried a purse. Same law. But a shopping bag was all right—a shopping bag was out of bounds. It said you were a poor person, and nobody but the real bottom of the barrel of junkies would knock over a truly poor person. Especially a truly poor black person. Especially a truly poor black female person with a limp. If one of those scum did go after you, usually someone would pop out of a doorway or from a store or a parked car and pummel the junkie away, which no one would think of doing if you wore a watch or carried a purse.

  Ten o'clock, the secretary had said. It was twenty of. She could wait for a bus that would drop her in front of the school, or she could walk. A bus was quicker once you got on it, but at this time of day you could wait half an hour for one to come by, and for this appointment she could not afford to be late. Four years of Jerome's life were tied up in this appointment. Maybe more. Maybe his whole life. And a big piece of hers. So she walked.

  George Washington Carver High School had been built of red brick which, with age and dirt, had darkened to the color of dried blood. It had turrets and gables and grime-gray windows, and it had always seemed to Ivy to be less suited as a temple of learning than as what folks back home called a “funny house"—an asylum for the criminally insane.

  There was a mirror in the principal's office, and Ivy stopped to run a check on herself. She licked a couple of hairs down and tucked away a bra strap and was pleased: The edifice showed age and hard use—the shoulders were weary, and maybe there was a bit too much padding on the trunk— but none of that could conceal the woman of good breeding and proud bearing who lived within.

  The principal impressed Ivy right away by not keeping her waiting. She was on time; so was he. The signs were good.

  He was a round, jocund, black M.Ed, from the University of Pennsylvania named Luther Joslin, and he wore bifocals that kept trying to escape his ears and slide off the plateau of the end of his nose. He offered her a seat, closed the door, sat at his desk and opened a file folder.

  "You come from Bermuda?"

  "Way back when," she replied, politely but briefly enough (she hoped) to discourage small talk.

  "Why did you come up here?" Mr. Joslin would not be denied.

  "My husband worked here," she lied. The truth was, she had been impregnated by a lieutenant (JG) stationed at the U.S. Naval base in Bermuda, whom she had bullied into marrying her so their child could have the option of choosing American citizenship—an option she exercised on behalf of the fruit of their loins, ne Jerome, as soon as it became apparent that he was destined to outgrow the capacity of the Bermuda school system to instruct him in the subjects in which he was gifted. ,

  My mind, Ivy had decided, may not be a terrible thing to waste, but Jerome's is.

  "What does your husband do?" asked Mr. Joslin.

  "Did." She lowered her eyes. "He's gone now."

  "I'm sorry. Why don't you go back?"

  What is this man? Ivy wondered. A schoolmaster or an immigration officer? "I'm an American citizen. So's Jerome. There's no going back."

  "But don't you miss the climate? The flowers? Bougainvillea. Oleander." Mr. Joslin sniffed the stale air.

  She didn't miss them, so she said, "No."

  "I've always wanted to go there, to live there, where we—black people, that is—are the majority, can make our own laws and respect our own culture and live lives of natural. ..."

  The man's slipped a gear. Ivy concluded. He thinks Bermuda's some kind of nigger heaven.

  "... and every man can pluck papaya from his neighbor's tree."

  And get his fingers chopped into itsy-bitsy pieces. . . .

  "Ah well, perhaps when I retire." Mr. Joslin smiled dreamily, but his smile faded as he saw Ivy looking at him as if he was a fungus growing between her toes. "Yes. Well. Enough about me. What seems to be the problem?" He consulted the file folder on his desk.

  "The problem is that someone told Jerome he isn't going to graduate."

  Mr. Joslin hesitated, following his finger down a sheet of paper in the folder. "Yes. Apparently so."

  "Because he didn't pass typing."

  "Correct."

  "Typing."

  "Yes. Typing."

  "Jerome has three A's, a B-plus and a B-minus. He took an extra-credit half year of mechanical dr
awing and got an A-minus."

  "True. A good student all around. But he failed typing."

  "Mr. Joslin, look at Jerome's grades in his computer courses. All A's. How do you program a computer? By typing in information. Jerome can type. He just can't type on a dead machine, a machine that won't answer back and take the game the next step. A typewriter's a baby toy for Jerome. It doesn't interest him; he can't concentrate on it."

  "I see. What you're saying is, he lacks discipline."

  Ivy took a deep breath, to swallow the "Bullshit!" that wanted to escape, "No, sir, he doesn't. He does all his school work, he works after school and on weekends programming computers—typing on computers. He doesn't lack any discipline."

  "Then let's just say," Mr. Joslin smiled a smarmy smile, "that he lacks the discipline for typing."

  "So you won't give him a diploma."

  "I can't. The rules say every student must pass a term of typing. The board considers it a necessary skill, like reading."

  "But suppose you have a higher skill, like programming computers. Jerome'll never have to be a typist."

  Mr. Joslin folded his hands and leaned forward on his desk and began, with patronizing serenity, "Mrs. Peniston. ..."

  That's right. Ivy thought, look down on me. Motherfucker.

  "... educational theory is based on the concept of building blocks. You must build a foundation on which the rest of the structure can stand. One or two weak blocks, and the entire building falls. The board considers typing one of those essential blocks." He paused, waiting for the great weight of his wisdom to penetrate. "But don't worry."

  "Don't worry! That Jerome's not gonna graduate? That after four years he's not gonna have a diploma? Don't worry?"

  "Please, Mrs. Peniston." Mr. Joslin held up a hand, as if to calm her with his aura. "There's a solution to everything. All Jerome has to do is repeat his typing course this summer and pass the test in September. He'll get his diploma then."

  Ivy squeezed the fingers of her left hand with the fingers of her right so hard that she made the joints crack. She felt a strange battle going on in her head between the forces of reason and the gremlins of recklessness. She had to fight to keep from calling Joslin a stupid twit.

  "Mr. Joslin," she said with strained calm, "have you heard of a company called DTCo.?"

  "Of course. Used to be DataTech."

  "DTCo. has a few jobs open in what they call their affirmative-action program. They'll take a computer whiz like

  Jerome and pay him ten dollars an hour for the summer. That's four hundred dollars a week, Mr. Joslin. About twice what I make."

  "That's great."

  "Then, in the fall, they'll send Jerome to college and train him for four years and pay for everything, and all he has to do is agree to work for DTCo. for the first three years out of college. It's like ROTC. Maybe he can become a systems analyst, then maybe a senior systems analyst, and maybe make forty thousand dollars every year."

  "That's what it's all about," Mr. Joslin said.

  "But you see"—soon, Ivy knew, she would either weep or scream—"they won't take Jerome, they won't even let Jerome compete for the job, without a high-school diploma."

  "Oh."

  "And by the fall, the jobs'll be full."

  "I see."

  "So what I'm asking you is, you have this boy's life in your hands, you have his ticket, I'm just asking you if you'll bend the rules."

  Joslin looked uncomfortable, sweaty. He said, "I can't."

  "I beg you. Pass him in typing."

  "No." He shook his head. "It's unfair."

  ''Unfair? Unfair to who? What about unfair to Jerome? You want to let one stupid-ass rule destroy a boy's life?"

  "Really, Mrs. Peniston ..."

  "Really what? It isn't like he can't read. It isn't like he can't count. I don't care what the board says. Suppose they said you had to pass knitting. Would that be fair?"

  Mr. Joslin spread his hands. "I don't make the rules."

  Ivy fought to compose herself one final time.

  "Mr. Joslin, I am a poor person. I am a . . ." She paused, commanding herself not to abase herself by playing the black fugue. "... an immigrant. I work for a living. I have a son who has a chance to make his way—more, to make a contribution. Aren't we the kind of people this country says it wants to help?"

  "Indeed. And it does. It gives you ..."

  "Except when it really counts." Ivy stood, and the movement freed her, let slip the dogs of war. "You could do it, Joslin. You could, but you won't. And you know why? 'Cause you're scared shitless." She walked to the door.

  Joslin was wary. He would have been frightened if she had stayed seated. A shopping bag could contain anything, A gun. Mace. A Molotov cocktail. But she had gone to the door, so he felt safe saying, "I'm sorry you refuse to understand."

  "I understand okay." She opened the door. "I understand that you stink."

  Outside, Ivy sat on the dirty red brick steps and closed her eyes, squeezing back tears of rage. For a few seconds she let herself wallow in a mire of venom and self-pity, hating Joslin and her Navy man and Washington and the United States and poverty and being black.

  Then a hand touched her shoulder and a voice said, "You okay, lady?"

  She opened her eyes and looked into the face of a tall boy with a bookbag slung over his shoulder, who said, "Need a Pepsi?"

  "No." Ivy shook her head. "Thank you."

  "There's a machine inside."

  Ivy nodded. The boy bounced up the steps. "Hey!" she called after him, and he stopped. "Did you pass typing?"

  "Don't take it till next year. But I will, no problem." The boy grinned.

  "How d'you know?"

  "There's ways'."

  "How you cheat a typing test? Can't cheat a machine."

  The boy grinned again, and touched a finger to his temple and turned into the school building.

  Ivy wanted to chase him, to shake his secret from him. But she didn't, because it wouldn't do any good. To convince Jerome to cheat—even assuming she could arrange with his typing teacher for a special reexamination—would be a no-win crusade. If she succeeded, she would destroy his respect for her and for the ethical code she had bludgeoned into his head for seventeen years.

  It wasn't worth it. If there was cheating to be done, she'd have to do it for him. Without his knowing.

  She found her watch. She was on the early shift this week, but there was still plenty of time.

  She headed westward, not bothering to keep track of street numbers. She knew that if she moved west for a while she'd be near work and could orient herself then. Direction never had to be confirmed. Even in a city, her interior compass performed flawlessly, an integer in her genetic code, passed down through three centuries of island people for whom a sense of direction and a sensitivity to coming weather were life-and-death instincts. She knew innately where the sun was and which way it was going, so as she walked she could keep her mind focused on its business, leaving only one channel open to be alert for traffic lights and weirdos.

  Problem. There was no way Jerome was going to get a high school diploma from George Washington Carver High School this spring. Could she appeal to the school board? Out of the question. If Joslin wasn't about to bend the board's rules, the board wouldn't be about to go over his head to do something it wasn't inclined to do anyway.

  Problem. Without a diploma, Jerome had no chance of landing a job with DTCo. Was there anyone to appeal to at DTCo.? No.

  Problem. If Jerome didn't get the job with DTCo., he would become a statistic this summer—one of the fifty percent of black youth unemployed—because except in the broad area of numbers and machines, Jerome had the ambition and intellectual curiosity of an armchair. Ivy had had to coach him, cajole him, threaten him, into a B-minus in his English course, reading the books aloud to him, making up quizzes for him to take at home, drilling him in names by making each name a number and playing programming games with the numbers.

&nb
sp; Final problem. If Jerome became a statistic. Ivy might as well lead him to the jailhouse steps and wait for them to come out and arrest him, for it was as inevitable as high tide that someone would get hold of Jerome's itching fingers and idling mind and turn them to no good. He was naive as a puppy and playful as a kitten, which would have been fine if they lived in some place like McLean, Virginia, or Chevy Chase, Maryland, where there were things to do like tennis and golf, and where simple mischief didn't have a bad name, instead of in the Northeast ghetto, where many of the most popular games were played with toys from the Charter Arms Company and almost all frolic ended either in blood or in custody.

  Conclusion. Jerome must get a high school or high-school equivalency diploma within the next two weeks. He must have physical possession of the piece of paper, because it said, clear as day, on the DTCo. application, "Proof of eligibility will be required."

  Question. How to acquire a diploma?

  Option. Wait till graduation day and have Jerome put a stocking over his head and mug a graduating senior and steal his diploma. Rejected. Joslin would hear about it, and because he couldn't possibly be as stupid as he was bullheaded, would dope it out.

  She called up every name of every friend and acquaintance from every comer of her life—her childhood, her Navy sojourn, the people at work, her neighbors—hoping to find a clue to access any of them might have to a high school diploma.

  Nothing.

  She told herself to keep trying, reminded herself what her friend, Mr. Pym, always said: Free enterprise means you're free to help yourself, 'cause it's for sure no one else is gonna help you.

  Mr. Pym. Maybe he'd know.

  Don't be foolish, giri. He's a caterer. What's a caterer know about getting hold of a high school diploma? More'n you know, that's a bleeding fact. Besides, if he doesn't know how to do it, maybe he knows somebody who knows.

  Mr. Pym knew a lot about a lot of things you'd think he'd be bone-ignorant about. Like Bermuda customs. Last year, Christmas time, Jerome had made some video games for his Bermuda cousins— made them, out of scraps of videotape and discarded cassettes he found at work—and they seemed like perfect presents until Ivy learned that Bermuda customs wouldn't understand homemade video games and would slap a duty of about $300 on the two dozen games.