After taking a few deep breaths I reached for the door handle, slipped out of the car, and began to timidly walk toward the large institutional building. It was my first day of tutoring and I felt a twinge of uncertainty about what to expect. After checking in and receiving the visitors badge which fairly screamed “look at me, I’m not from ‘round here,” I walked along the dank halls to the math room where noise poured forth. I slipped in and introduced myself to the teacher. Immediately heads turned and eyes focused on me.
“Oh gurl, you here to tuta? You can come right over here!”
“Gurl I suck at math, I need you baby.”
The teacher kept rambling on, explaining the class’s daily procedure but I couldn’t focus. Instead the phrases and whistles filled my ears and I wanted to bolt towards the door or sink through the floor—it would have been ended my embarrassment quicker. Instead I pasted a smile on my face and sat down eager to not be the focus of so many people’s attention.
The room was lit by fluorescent bulbs, painted grey, and had brightly colored posters of multiplication tables pasted to the walls to serve as the only decoration. A far cry from my school experience where sunlight streamed through windows and students were able to gaze out at the mountains beyond them.
“Man, I don’t understand why you gotta be so rude and take my paper away! I aint been cheatin!”
Back to reality. The teacher was wrapping up his warm-up exercise as I glanced over at the guy beside me who was slowly unwrapping an ACE bandage from his leg.
“What happened?” I posed the question hoping to start some form of polite conversation, anything to distract myself from just how much I stood out as the only white person and one of the few females in the room.
“Car wreck.” Was the short response followed by a smirk.
“Huh.” I let my face show my doubt.
“What, you don’t believe me?”
“Nope, I don’t think that’s what happened at all, but if that’s what you want to say that’s alright with me.”
He shook his head at me. “That ain’t what happened at all. I just think it makes for a better story, but how’d you know I was lying?”
“Easy, just had to look at your face.”
“You want to see it?” I nodded, and slowly the ACE bandage and tale simultaneously unwound.
“I got shot. It hit a main artery, broke one of my bones, and now I have a rod in my leg.” By now the leg was bare. A four by five inch square of his leg looked like it had been carved out and then crudely slapped back on. The skin graft was finally healing.
“I don’t take no pain meds and I can walk on it just fine. I miss dancing though.”
“What kind of dancing did you do?”
“It sure as hell wasn’t ballet, I can tell you that. But the thing I miss most is playing basketball. I used to play everywhere anytime I wasn’t workin’, but now even that’s gone.”
At age nineteen he’s grateful to be alive and remarked that he could now stand on both legs instead of one leg to shoot a basket. At age nineteen I’m grateful to have spent a week with friends exploring an island in southern Georgia where we hiked over fifty miles. The sharp contrast between our realities is sickening.
“Where you from?”
“Oh down south, North Carolina.”
“I know where I’m gonna head next time I get some vacation time den.”
I internally cringe and recognize my discussion window closing.
“Yea, yea, it’s really pretty there. I’m going to see who needs help.” And I slip away to another table.
After three hours of walking nineteen to twenty-five years olds through the basics of multiplication and fractions. I emerge into the sunlight, walking past students as I head for the gate.
“When you comin back?” Rings out the question.
“Next week,” I answer before continuing my solitary walk out toward the chain link fence that bears more than minimal resemblance to one that would surround a prison. I slip back into my car, shut the door and sit with thoughts spiraling out of control.
I have the freedom to leave the facility, they do not. I have the freedom to hop in my car and drive back to my private, Dutch, Christian college where I am surrounded by children of businessmen and other successful professionals. I am living a life that they will never experience. And how do I mentally rectify the fact that the two exist simultaneously?
Breathe in. Breathe out.
-Alice Keyes
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