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Never A Day Quiet ( 2989 words)
KCWise
MassachusettsRegistered User regular
MassachusettsRegistered User regular
I'm working on this piece for submission--one of two that I'm polishing this week. While the conversation in the story is central, I'm worried that it might be too much dialogue. I'm excited about your feedback! I hated the spacing when I cut and paste into this box, so I hope that the formatting is ok. If I broke any rules, I'm sorry!
The smell of salty pork boiling in water filled the apartment, though its origin was not his kitchen. Daytime television invaded his otherwise quite area through the space between the door and the carpeted floor of his bedroom. He was sitting on his bed instead of at a desk, he was reading a book instead of listening to a lecture, and he was taping his pen on an empty college-ruled page rather than writing notes on it.
It was day six of ten.
The vacuum now drowned out the sound of people winning money on a game show. This made him suck his teeth and lean back onto the wall that served as his twin bed’s headboard. He closed his eyes, resting his hands on his stomach, waiting for the moment for his door to swing open and for his mother to start in on him again.
Last week’s vocabulary words, already notated and written in contextual sentences, danced between his ears. A practice test for the high school entrance exam was coming soon. He was missing his free tutored classes this week. He was missing the opportunity to be the best he could be, so that he could have a real score to work with and improve on.
The sound of the vacuum inched ever closer and its bump onto his closed door opened his eyes and pulled him out of the slumber that had been pawing at him. The door opened to his mother, still in her uniform from her overnight train shift. “Boy, I know you aren’t sleeping.”
“No, mama.”
“Come do that work at the table, Victor. I want to watch you get it done before I get some sleep.”
“Yes, mama.” The tone of both parties had been respectful. Hers was firm, yet warm. His was resigned.
He picked up the notebooks, packets, and books. Folders full of missed work had been brought over by apologetic classmates. In them were notes from teachers—some annoyed, some sympathetic, some apathetic. There were also smuggled notes from classmates with the daily gossip. Mama having confiscated his cell phone and watching him like a hawk on the computer, he hadn’t been able to log in to the cyber gathering places to gather the latest news.
“What are you working on?” His mother yelled over the ancient vacuum, her first second-hand internet purchase, a relic bought from some woman in one of the northern suburbs. They drove 40 minutes out of town to go pick up this thing from an old woman in a parking lot. The woman simply snatched the money and turned her back without saying a word.
“Civics!” Victor projected over the machine.
“I’m almost done. Hold on a second!” She had rolled the thing into her own bedroom now. There were a total of 700 square feet to their two bedroom apartment, yet to vacuum still took an eternity. She clicked it off with a “whooo” and a groan. “Lord, I don’t know why I don’t have you do that.”
“Because you say I don’t do it right.” Victor mumbled, his balled fist obscuring his mouth while it held his heavy head.
“Sit up,” his mother directed. “And you don’t do it right. I’m going to have to teach you, seeing as you have all this time on your hands.”
To this, Victor only sighed.
His mother grunted as she bent over to wrap the cord around the vacuum cleaner, the grey cotton of her uniform stretching to accommodate her curvy figure, the belt straining to keep the pants above the crack of her behind. Victor averted his eyes when is mother’s tattoo peeked from under the black undershirt that she was wearing; The face of panther observed him for a brief moment before she stood and rolled the machine into the front closet.
“So what are you working on again, baby?” She asked as she limped over to the table, sitting down heavily.
“Civics.” Victor replied. He had opened the book to the appropriate chapter: Federal Leadership.
“Lordy. Not my subject. Give me some math, and I’m all about it, but this…”
“I know. It’s so confusing.” He sat back in frustration, staring at the book. “And Mr. Peters doesn’t make it any better.”
“Look. I know that you two don’t get along, but you are going to have to learn how to get through this year. You need to pass this class. You need to get out of seventh grade so that we can keep this party moving.” With that, she was up again, grabbing the remote off of their frayed and cigarette burned couch and then muting the television.
“He’s not going to pass me. He’s going to do everything he can to make sure I don’t make it.”
“He can’t do that. Teachers can’t do that.” His mother said, annoyed with the excuses. She limped toward the kitchen. “Ms. Cee Cee must be making greens. She’s stinking up the whole hall. You want pork chops or chicken for dinner, baby?”
His stomach growled. “Pork chops.”
“Pork chops what?”
“Pork chops, please.” Victor could hear the sound of the freezer opening, the echo of its emptiness but for a scant few items, and the soft thud of the foam tray containing two frozen pork chops hit the kitchen counter. “This man wants me to learn about power, but he wants to pretend that he doesn’t have any.”
His mother was opening and closing cabinets, selecting other items to stretch the meal. “Now you know that power is a thing at Hill Prep.”
“But that’s what I mean. How am I the one who is wrong for pointing out that he has power?”
No answer came from the kitchen, only more opening and closing of cabinet doors.
Victor shook his head in resignation and started reading. He looked at a picture of the Capitol Building and the Supreme Court. “They even made the buildings look like them.”
He heard his mother chuckle at that. “Boy, stop.”
He was encouraged by the laughter. He took some notes and kept reading.
“You know, son, sometimes the most powerful people are the ones who are quiet.” His mother’s voice came from the kitchen after a few minutes.
Victor stopped his reading cold, dismayed. “What?”
“Quiet. Not silent. Just quiet, you know? Powerful people know what to say and when to say it.”
“But what about the people who spoke up often? What about all those folks you are always talking about during Black History Month? What about-“
“There is a difference. They were great leaders. They were chosen to do great things.” The refrigerator door opened and closed.
“So, what? What? I’m just supposed to sit back and let them just be right?”
The uncomfortable sigh that came from his mother was loud enough to be heard from the kitchen. “Your education is so important to me, baby-“
“Yeah, so when I fight for it, you’d think you’d be cool.”
“Watch your tone with me. What did your fighting get you? What education are you getting right now? You’ll be out of school two whole weeks by the time this is through.”
To this he had no answer. He let his head hang for a second. “They tried to make Ms. Jackson quiet. And look what happened to her.”
To this, his mother returned to her son at the table and sat. “Look, what you saw-“
“They tried to make her quiet, but she-“
“They did make her quiet. She’s fired. If she had been quiet, she might still be there.”
He took a deep breath and looked his mother in the eye. “Wow. I can’t really believe you right now, mom.”
His mother stood, walking aimlessly around their small apartment. “I’m not saying that you should take everything that they throw at you. I’m just saying that part of school is about learning when it is ok to fight and speak up and when it is better to sit down and shut up.”
“So when Mr. Houston told Ms. Jackson that she didn’t know her place, that she was wrong to advocate about Cheryl’s hair and headband, that she should have just said ‘ok,’ and gone back to her classroom? If a foreman on the T told you that you didn’t know you place after you reported the misconduct of another train operator, would you just be ok with that?”
His mother didn’t look at him. “I’m just saying-“
“Saying what, mama? I thought you said that we all need to speak up and do better. You wouldn’t advocate for yourself? Wouldn’t speak truth when it was required?”
“I’m just saying that it’s hard for us. That truth is hard to speak when there is so much at stake.”
“Didn’t you tell me that the truth was worth everything? That nothing was more important?” Now Victor was standing. He was light headed with confusion. “So are you saying that Ms. Jackson was wrong to tell the truth?”
“I’m saying that Ms. Jackson knows that Mr. Houston has problems. We all know that Mr. Houston has problems. Mr. Houston has taken that tone with me, with some of your friends, with some of their parents. He talks to Black people that way. And we don’t like it. She knew that.”
“Yeah, she knew that, so this time she decided not to let him talk to her that way. Because he shouldn’t talk to any of us that way, Mama. She was his co-worker.”
“We’re not co-workers to them, baby.”
“But she was.”
“But she wasn’t, baby.”
There was a silence, Mother looking at son in sadness. Son fuming, shaking his head in anger and shock. “So when White people who have power choose to be racist, we should just be ok with that? Are White people racist to you on the T, Mama?”
“Do you know how hard I work to keep you clothed? Keep you fed?”
“Are White people racist to you on the T, Mama?”
“Don’t you understand that if I get fired, if they choose to let me go, that we’ve got nothing? That we lose everything?”
“Are White people racist to you on the T, Mama?”
Mother retreated to the kitchen, fists clenched. She didn’t limp this time. Son sat down at the kitchen table, exhausted. The silence absorbed the air in the room. Mother took out a box of store-brand macaroni and cheese and prepared it for lunch. Son flipped through the pages of his book, reading about the power that some people enjoy through eyes that blurred with occasional hot tears.
Mother eventually put a bowl of processed cheese and pasta in front of him. Victor grabbed it in silence and shoveled spoonful after spoonful into his mouth.
“White people are racist to me on the T, son.” His mother broke the silence after finishing her own bowl. “If I spoke up and out every single time someone said something stupid to me, we’d be hungry every day.”
“But you know that’s not why I’m mad.”
She hesitated for a moment. She understood why her son was angry. “And sometimes I’m silent,” she conceded, “even when I shouldn’t be. Because feeding, clothing, and housing you is more important to me than justice.”
Her son sat back, listening to the words, allowing their gravity.
“And I’m asking you, sometimes,” his mother continued, “to consider this when you see injustice in the world. Self-preservation is more important than justice, sometimes.”
“So people like Ms. Jackson shouldn’t speak up when we’re abused?”
“Ms. Jackson would better serve you and Cheryl if she were still employed. Ms. Jackson let herself get swept up. Telling Mr. Houston that he’s a racist isn’t going to fix him. Telling Mr. Houston that he’s a racist only makes him worse. Ms. Jackson didn’t do you any favors.”
“There were only four Black teachers in the whole school and she was the only one with the courage to stand up for us!”
“And now there are only three Black teachers in the school who are smart enough to know when to speak and when to sit.”
Victor sucked his teeth, stood up, and walked to the kitchen to get more food.
“And you know what? Calling Mr. Peters an ass don’t help Mr. Peters, either.” His mother said to him after he returned.
“I didn’t call him an ass. I called what he said asinine. I used our week’s vocabulary word from Reading class correctly in context.”
“You made a fool out of a man who already doesn’t’ like you. You provoked him and he exercised his power. You did the same thing with Mr. Houston, and he did the same in turn. You have no power, yet you use your mouth as if you do.”
Victor smirked. “They keep giving me these weapons, how do they expect me not to use them?”
His mother was not amused. “You have no power. These weapons do nothing. Furthermore, they can take the weapons away. That’s why you are here instead of at school. You cripple yourself every time you give them the opportunity to send you home.”
That, too, had gravity. He let the words sit on him, stifle him for a moment.
“I deserve better than them.”
His mother choked back tears. “I know you do. But you deserve better than the city schools, too, and I can’t afford to send you to the private schools. These charter schools, they are the best we’ve got.”
She was practically pleading. She knew when she enrolled her son that this was his last, best chance to get out of their building. It was his only chance to do better than she. She knew he watched her struggle, she knew that he didn’t want to struggle like this in his own adulthood. Winning that lottery for his seat at Hill Prep was a miracle. That miracle was worth all of the sacrifices, even the ones to their dignity. “Hill Prep is your best chance. If you do what they say, if they send you to college, if you do well, you can go back and use all of their weapons against them. I can’t do that for you, baby. I don’t know how to get there.”
“So, just because you didn’t go to college, they get to treat us both poorly on the promise that they can get me there?”
His mother shrugged, frowned. “Something like that.” She got up with a yawn, it was long past her bedtime. She needed to get this sleep in now so that she could make her son dinner, get a few more hours of sleep, and be ready for her shift at three in the morning. “I’m sorry, son.” Was all she could offer him before retreating to her room.
He washed the used bowls in the kitchen sink, scrubbing especially hard at some moments before rinsing and putting them on the drying rack. He stared out of the kitchen window five stories down at the courtyard where working-aged men were playing basketball, shirtless in the early spring sun. He heard a police siren in the distance. He wondered what Ms. Jackson was doing at the moment.
“Probably studying,” he said to the window. He wanted to be like Ms. Jackson. He didn’t want to be quiet.
He turned to the table where his books lay. He deserved better than who they were and what they gave him, and he longed to show them each and every day. When he was done working, about the time when his mother emerged to prepare their dinner, he turned to his notebooks. Taking out a few colorful sharpies that he’d borrowed from his girlfriend, he began to re-label his notebooks. On each one of them, in bold letters, he wrote “Never a day quiet. Never a day.”
###
He had been greeted with great whoops of welcome and congratulations when he arrived at the bus stop and again as he boarded the bus to school. While he smiled and slapped hands with good friends, he didn’t participate in the games that he had before.
The bus snaked through narrow neighborhood streets, former cow paths and walking trails as legend would have it. The bus got louder as the bus rushed down Blue Hill Avenue before cutting over to Columbus Avenue and into Roxbury. As the bus began the steep ascent up the great hill that housed his school building, the bus got quiet. The school day had truly begun. And there, in the distance, under an umbrella and with clipboard in hand stood Mr. Houston in his usual spot. He was always the “cheerful” greeter, ready to invite incoming children to start their day.
“I’m not even ready to deal with him this morning.” Victor heard one of his friends say behind him.
“Me neither.” A girl said in front.
The doors opened, and the children shuffled out, already demoralized by the mere sight of the straight faced man on the sidewalk.
“Good morning.” Mr. Houston grunted with slight irritation to every three students who got off the bus.
Finally, Victor descended to the curb, looking Mr. Houston in the eye with each step taken.
“Mr. Wilkes. Welcome back. I trust that you’ll be making different choices from now until the end of the school year?” The tall man looked down at the child with a triumphant smirk.
Victor returned it and extended a hand. “I’ll be doing something like that, Mr. Houston. You’ll see.”
Teacher took student’s hand, albeit with an air of suspicion. Never blinking, student squeezed and shook, happy to have risen to the challenge and looking forward to the day when they would shake hands as true equals. His smile extended as he made the commitment to himself. Equals or better, he told himself. One day, he knew, they’d be equals or better.
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Some suggestions:
--some of these are stylistic changes, but they're intended to get you thinking in terms of making the story more dynamic. If you can shed as many of the passive descriptions and the "was"es and the "had"s, I think this story would read smoother, and it's set in a perfect place to really draw in the reader.
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Thanks for reading, TS, and thank you for the suggestion. I'll go back an tighten--wordiness is a problem for me. I really like your suggestion-- --especially. I'll see where I can emulate.
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Theme: I think you probably overstate the theme to a dangerous degree, to the point that it gets preachy and righteous. If you tone down the actual thematic statements, and instead lead the reader in the direction that will let them ruminate on the conversation instead of the preaching, most will naturally come to the conclusion you want them to come to. So instead of lines like: followed by and reiterated by Victor further thinking about how he's going to be treated, then following through with that thought by writing "Never a Day Quiet" on his textbooks, you can instead have Victor staring out the window, thinking about what Ms. Jackson is doing at that moment, followed by a small smile and then the "Never a Day Quiet" stuff, but none of the internal monologue.
The effect is the same, or very nearly so, with almost an entire paragraph cut out.
Grammar/Spelling: There are several instances of weird word usage, what I mostly take as unconventional but stylistic choices, and I can't fault you for that. In the last paragraph, for instance, you use student and teacher almost as pronouns, or as placemarkers for more than just this particular student and this particular teacher. I like that. It works really well.
Other areas it seems out of place, like some instances of "Mother" tossed around. It's almost like the story enters a first person narrative for a sentence, for Victor to refer in his head to his mother as simply "Mother".
Spelling, you've got a few errors here and there. "quite" instead of "quiet" "taping" instead of "tapping" I'm confident that a future revision will catch most of these, just thought I'd point out that there are some of them.
Syntax: Mostly this is in the way you handle dialogue markers. It's a very standard practice that the "he says, said she" modifiers before or after dialogue will be part of the same sentence as the dialogue it is signifying. So instead of: Most people go with "Me neither," a girl said in front. They are technically part of the same sentence, since whatever happens in dialogue is almost like a prepositional phrase on the entire sentence. Dependent on the bits outside the quotation marks, and thus part of the same sentence.
Again, this is one of those areas that a lot of people stick to their guns and choose that as a stylistic thing, but I like to bring it up because you said you're going to submit for publication, and I know from some hard-won experience that deviations from the norm on syntax are often instant rejections.
Dialogue: The dialogue flows pretty naturally between the mother and son, and since so much of this piece does depend on the dialogue I'm glad to see it at least feels natural. I think you can, like the narrative, tighten the dialogue up so that it's not so busy and overstated.
For example:
Might look better and more natural with some slur or slang. Most people, especially a mother and son comfortable around each other, will be a lot less formal in the comfort of their own home.
"They should stop giving me weapons if they don't want me using them," Victor said, a smirk creasing his lips.
His mother did not even crack a smile. "These 'weapons' are nothing. They don't give you power, because they can be taken away. You're here instead of at school, after all. Every time you give them a reason to punish you, you're losing another weapon."
_____
All in all I found it good, and if you can go through and tighten things up, drop some of the directness of the message and let the subtlety and nuance guide the reader a bit more, you'll have something pretty special.
Language is like a martial art; if you have a strong foundation, feel free to improvise.
Thanks again. I look forward to returning the favor in the near future!
Just remember that you can pass a message without becoming preachy. The trick is to make the reader think, not tell them what to think. If your message is clear from context rather than from directness, people will get it, and they'll tend to feel a greater connection with the story because they "understood" it versus just absorbed information.
A friend of mine - whose opinion on writing I trust and admire immensely, because it's so much more informed than mine - once told me that (and I'm paraphrasing here): The more direct your message, and the less room for interpretation and contemplation you leave, the less likely anyone is to remember the message, or read your story more than once. It's a signal to the reader that your story is only meant to be read once, otherwise known as a throwaway tale.
Language is like a martial art; if you have a strong foundation, feel free to improvise.