The Fence - Dick Lehr [16]
Smut was in the fifth grade riding the bus to elementary school one day when he saw a girl he could not take his eyes off. “It was her hair, man, her silky hair. Everything about her, she was so smart.” The girl was named Indira Pierce, and she was also in the fifth grade. Slowly, on bus rides, the two became friendly, and then Smut made his move in the sixth grade. He passed Indira a note on the bus. It had two questions on it:
“Do you like me? Circle Y or N.
“Do you want to be my girlfriend? Circle Y or N.”
Indira circled yes to both. “It was on!” said Smut. They were together from that moment on—all through school and into adulthood. Indira was an anchor in Smut’s life.
They rode the same yellow bus from Boston, but actually went to different elementary schools. Both were enrolled in the state-funded METCO program, where kids from Boston were bused to schools in the suburbs. Mattie Brown wanted Smut to have a chance at a better education than the troubled Boston school system would provide. “The suburban schools had more to offer,” she said. “Kids were more advantaged out there.”
Smut and Indira went to school in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Wellesley was known as a W town, the nickname for a trio of affluent, mostly white communities just outside the city: Wellesley, Wayland, and Weston. The daily bus ride from Smut’s house to school was just about eighteen miles, but in so many ways Mattapan and Wellesley were different planets. Once, a teacher took Smut aside and talked to him about his nickname. She said Smut was demeaning and not a good nickname, in terms of his self-esteem and identity. She encouraged him to drop it.
Smut listened respectfully. “When I got home from school I said to everyone, ‘I don’t want you callin’ me Smut anymore. No more! My teacher said Smut is a dirty name.”
Mattie was taken aback by how upset her son was. She told him if that’s what he wanted, so be it. But then her girlfriend, the one who’d first come up with the name, would have none of it. “She starts sayin’, ‘We call you Smut, you like it or not! You is Smut.’”
Smut later came to see his teacher was well-intentioned but off the mark. He saw it as an example of a culture clash, the teacher’s misunderstanding of street talk and black vernacular, or Ebonics. “Like ‘phat,’” said Smut. “‘Phat’ doesn’t mean fat, ugly. ‘Phat’ means cool. And ‘Smut’ doesn’t mean dirty. ‘Smut’ means love.”
In Wellesley, Smut became friends with a boy his age named Derek Roman. In the eighth grade, the two got jobs at a local supermarket as “bag boys.” For the skinny kid from Mattapan, the job meant status. “That was the biggest thing,” said Smut. “I was the only kid in eighth grade with a job.” Indira was impressed. “She was really on me then,” he said. “‘My baby got a job!’ she’d say.”
In junior high Smut occasionally spent the night at the Romans. He sometimes tagged along on family outings, like fishing, and envied the boys’ closeness with their father. “That’s what I wanted with my father.”
At home, Bobby Brown made clear his disappointment with his son and would hit him regularly. One time his father yelled at him for putting too much milk on his cereal. Another time he got whacked when his father found fault with the way he raked leaves. “He’d snap,” said Smut. “He’d tell me, ‘You ain’t ever gonna be shit.’” Mattie tried to referee and shield Smut from her husband’s habit of demeaning him, but to no avail.
It was true Smut did not shine in the classroom. He was much more likely to have his head in a comic book than a schoolbook. He never earned good grades. Mattie had her son tested for learning disabilities, but none was diagnosed. “He was just so itchy—he couldn’t sit still,” she said. Smut was disruptive. “He was the class clown—always doing things to keep the other kids laughing.” The behavior led to umpteen meetings at school. “I always heard the same thing,” Mattie said. “Robert was a clown and troublemaker, but they liked him.” Teachers told Mattie that Smut listened to them when