Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [135]
Ms. Yanelli is a worrier. In a life-defining event, the three-year old daughter of one of her good friends died of a brain tumor. For years, Ms. Yanelli restricted Little Billy’s movements even when he was with his father (e.g., forbidding them to go fishing at a local river) for fear that something might happen. She feels that her fear of losing him led her to be indulgent. She wonders if this is the source of his behavior problems at school.
I’m having so many problems with him right now. I don’t know if he’s hyperactive. I mean, I’ve gone through years of trying to find out what’s wrong with him. We’re good to him. I thought at one point maybe that’s what it is; we’re too good to him. He’s got like a mean streak in him. The more you do for him, the more you love him—he’s just got this little mean streak in him and I can’t explain it. But . . . we love him to death. He’s interested in everything. He’s always willing to go, willing to do anything. He’s a fun kid. He loves sports. . . . He plays baseball. He wants to play hockey. See, I’m the kind of mother that—I feel like I’m the one that’s wrong.
Ten-year-old Little Billy is short and pudgy and often wears long T-shirts that hang down over his pants. Still, with his closely cropped blond hair and a stud earring in his right earlobe he also has a stylish air to him. School is difficult, as he expressed when asked what he liked about his teacher, Mr. Tier:
Nothing. Well, I like that he lets you have extra recess. We always go on walks . . . He’s a fun teacher. We learn songs that he makes up, like “The Map Rap.” You can learn a lot from having fun. We have a lot of animals in our classroom. Uh, we have nine fish in a humongous tank, three hamsters . . . (Mr. Tier) used big words . . . he used words like “technically,” “obstacle.” He would use giant words sometimes.
But he also had objections:
Well, when he gets mad . . . he’ll pull somebody by the hair or their ear or hit them in the head with his fingers but it hurts. And when he does that we all go, “OW.”
When asked how Mr. Tier would describe him, he reported:
That I’m intelligent. I’m not just saying that, because I heard him say it. He would say I’m always getting my homework done. And that I’m a really nice boy and he would say that I keep my grades up.
But he also knew of his reputation:
He would say—a lot of people think I’m trouble. He would describe me as trouble, like that . . . He would say—he thinks I have problems at home.
He was aware of the tension between his parents and “the school,” noting that his mother “hates” the principal.
Billy Yanelli’s home is in an all-white neighborhood, but the street demarcating the beginning of an all-Black neighborhood is only a few blocks away. His school, Lower Richmond, is racially integrated among the students and staff. For example, his third-grade teacher, Ms. Green, was African American, as was the school counselor, Ms. Franklin, but his fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Tier, and the principal are white. At home, he mostly plays with white children (including white girls), although occasionally a Black boy from his classroom who lives only a few minutes away by foot will walk over to Billy’s house to see if he wants to play. His father had a best friend from childhood, Mitch, who is Black. Mitch is over several times per week. The stores his family frequents are overwhelmingly white; so is his baseball league.
Similar to Tyrec Taylor, Katie Brindle, and other working-class and poor children, Billy’s daily life is primarily built around playing with neighborhood children, of whom there are quite a few. In the summer his one organized sport, baseball, makes the family feel that they are extremely busy, with practices in the evenings and a game on the weekend. He enjoys it.
I like that I’m catching. I like when I get up to bat because I feel like, sometimes I feel nervous, like if there’s a really fast pitcher . . . I’m afraid I’m gonna strike out. But then, boom, boom, boom, I’m hitting one in the outfield.
Mostly, however, Little Billy