On my first day of class, it took 2 hours and three buses to get to Moses Montefiore High School from where I lived. I lived on the “East Side”, an all white neighborhood near all the steel mills on the south side where I rarely saw any black people. Mom knew what kind of school Montefiore was and where it was located. I think she was happy that someone else was going to be keeping a close eye on my “incorrigible” ass. She wanted them to fix me.
Nothing in my short existence prepared me for life at Montefiore…
When I got off the bus in front of the school that Monday, A face outside the school yelled “what the fuck are you doing here, cracker?”, “Are you lost, white bread?”, ” You better take your honky ass back south, mother fucker”. It struck me like a bolt of lightning that the black kids in front of the school were talking to me. One of the bigger kids walked up to me and said “what are you doin’ here”? I said “I have to go to school here”. He said” Your cracker ass won’t last one day”. I thought, I don’t know any of these kids, why do they hate me so much? Looking back, I guess that we were all frightened of each other and the other kids viewed my appearance as an invasion of their neighborhood, their homes, their space. And they didn’t like it. I was terrified because I was used to hostility at home but not from perfect strangers. A bell rang, everyone started filing into the school, one of the kids shoved me said” get in there peckerwood, welcome to Monte Fi”. It wasn’t until later that I realized that I would to go to school in one of the most violent neighborhoods on the south side.
Once I got inside the school, the atmosphere changed completely. All chatter stopped and everyone began walking single file against the walls. There was a man with a nightstick standing in the middle of the hall shouting “Eyes forward, no talking, keep moving to your class rooms”. I figured he was a plain clothes police officer. It wasn’t until later that day I found out he was one of the teachers. Every 25 feet of so there was another teacher with a nightstick saying the same things. There were no female office employees or female students at Montefiore. As I walked down the hall, one of teachers who bore a striking resemblance to the famous wrestler Dick the Bruiser shouted “mallo, get your ass in my office!”.
He closed the door on his office and told me to have a seat. He sat down across from me. He began, “My name is Mr. Fitzpatrick. Any where outside the four wall of this office you will refer to me as Mr. Fitzpatrick. If we are here in my office, you can call me Lou. You are in one hell of mess, mister. I’m not sure who you pissed off in the school system to end up here but now you’re my problem. This place is your last chance. If you screw up here, if you cut just one class, you go right to juvenile hall, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. If you think this place is bad, juvey is ten times worse. Your life is going to be hard here because, in case you haven’t noticed yet, you are the only white kid here. Just being new here makes you a target, being a white kid here puts a bullseye on your back. All the teachers do their very best to protect all the students from harm but we can’t be everywhere all the time. In addition to being one of your teachers, I am your counselor while you are here. How long you are here is up to you. It’s all on your shoulders. If you act up, don’t do the work, they will send your skinny white ass to juvie. If you listen to me, knuckle down and get passing grades you could only be here a couple months. I am here to help you in every way I can but I am not your babysitter and I refuse to be your guardian angel. You are going to have to find a way to make it here, I can’t show you how. You are going to get your ass kicked, several times probably, just because you’re the new kid. You’re going your ass kicked because you’re the white kid too. There are kids here who will take the opportunity to take everything whitey has ever done to them out on you. If you’re not careful, you ‘ll become the Monte Fi punching bag. Watch out for the stair wells, kid. Those are the hardest for the teachers to keep an eye on. Everything you do, all the choices are up to you once you step outside my office today. I am here five days a week. I will help you but how you survive here is all on you. Good luck. Here is your class schedule. I will escort you to your first class. If you are found in the halls without a pass once class has started you’ll be written up”
I never said a word the whole time I was there in his office. I was having a hard time processing everything Mr. Fitzpatrick had to say.
I walked into class and the teacher handed me a textbook and said “take any open desk”. I tried to be as invisible as possible every class. It seemed most of my classes were on the second floor. US History was downstairs. I started down the staircase, I got pushed into a corner on the landing by about 6 kids and the biggest of them grabbed me by the neck and said “gimme your money”. I said I didn’t have any. He said “gimme that ring”. and pulled it off my finger. Yeah, I had forgotten to take that ring off before I left for school, dumb me. He turned all my pockets out while the other kids pinned me against the wall. He said ” As long as you go to school here you got to pay me everyday, cracker or I will kill your scrawny white ass”. He bashed my head against the wall hard enough I saw stars and they were gone. It was over in a flash, probably didn’t take thirty seconds start to finish. Meanwhile, all the other kids just kept walking down the stairs like nothing was wrong. I stuck my pockets back in and walked to class.
At the end of the day as we were leaving Monte Fi, the same kid grabbed me outside and said “bring me money, mother fucker or you’re dead”
I had the long bus ride home to think about how I had gotten here and what my life in the foreseeable future was going to like.
The next couple months became a kind of routine for me. I would go to school, the same group of guys would roust me for money, they would soundly kick my ass and then I would go to class. I think if had gone on too much longer, I would have killed myself. Something happened one day and I am still at a loss as to how I did it. I was going downstairs for US History and the same guys cornered me in the stairwell. Something snapped in me. When they started their normal pushing and punching, I picked the biggest kid in the group, and I hit him as hard as I could as many times as I could. They kicked my ass badly that day. But something changed after that. They didn’t come at me as much or as hard. At the end of my time at Monte Fi, I had more black friends than white much to the consternation of my entire family. I found that they had the same problems I did, that they were just as unsure, just as frightened, just as vulnerable as I was. My black friends taught me so much. Especially about my own family and how wrong they were about black people. Mom as so proud that I had picked up some of their slang and mannerisms. She called me a jive ass.
So I suddenly discovered that I could be a good student. I decided that I was going to do the very best I could while I was there. Much to my mother’s surprise, I got really good grades. I actually liked going to school at Monte Fi! I was there for almost 2 years when Mr. Fitzpatrick called me into his office one day. He said, you know you turn 16 in a few days, right? I agreed. He said well, we are going to have to cut you loose when you turn 16. I said why? He said that the schools special charter only allows for students to stay at Monte Fiore until age 16 then they must return to their local high school to finish school. I asked if they could make an exception, that I wanted to stay there and graduate. He said that his hands were tied and there was nothing he could do. He told me that he had already contacted my local high school and sent them a copy of all my records. He said that I would report to school the following Monday.
I was devastated…
I should have been happy. No more 2 hour bus rides. My new school was 2 blocks from my house. I was terrified to be the new kid again. Then I thought, I can do this and I made up my mind to be a good student at my new high school.
I reported for my first day of classes at George Washington High School. When I went to the office to get my schedule, the secretary said that I would have to meet with my guidance counselor before getting my schedule. An older woman came into the office and said “are you mallo”? She said “my name is Mrs. Klee, come with me”. she took me down the hall to her office. She sat down at her desk and when I went to sit down she said” Don’t sit, you won’t be here long enough”. She said “I have read your record and I feel that we have no place for a delinquent like you here are at Washington. You don’t belong here and never will. My suggestion is that you quit school now and learn to pump gas. I did not waste my time creating a schedule for you, so get out”. I told her that I had been a good student and had gotten good grades at Monte Fiore and could I at least have a chance? She told me to get the hell out of her office.
I had never felt that small in my life. I went home and told my mother what had happened. Her reply was “I am not surprised by anything she said, I agree completely. I don’t want your ass laying around the house now. Get a job, join the army, do something because I am tired of you being a burden”.
Thanks, mom.
The Girl Who Lives In My Heart 