Chapter Four: Tre
While awaiting his first class, Hamper looks through the gated window at seagulls cawing in the distance as they glide in lazy thermals above East Harlem rooftops. When they dive into the school yard like fighter aircraft behind the custodian’s trail of greasy spillage as he drags big vinyl bags of trash across the yard to the curb, he gets curious. A garbage truck arrives and the collector shoos the hungry gulls away as he tosses bags into the back of the old, lumbering truck. The sound of car horns and cawing gulls mingle into a dull cacophony as the sanitation man raises his hands and yells. Hamper can only imagine what he says.
“Fuck you?”
The fourth grade class arrives like a well trained militia, two perfectly parallel lines march in unison, stop on a dime, and attend their homeroom teacher’s every word.
“Are you substituting for Mrs. Burnside?” the teacher asks him.
“Yes,” Unwin says.
“Let me know how they behave. They’ve had a lot of attention lately and now they need to settle back down. I’ll take them to lunch after dance, only if they behave. This is your first day I hear.”
“Yes,” Unwin replies.
“Good luck,” she shoots him a knowing glance before walking down the noisy hallway.
“Or you’ll be sorry,” replays inside Unwin’s head as he directs his waist high charges to sit in a circle. He counts twenty-four little bodies as they enter the doorway to sit on the floor.
“Good morning boys and girls, I’m Mr. Unwin. I’ll be substituting for your teacher Mrs. Burnside,” he says as he walks around the circumference of the imperfect circle so they can all see him.
“Today I will talk about the history of dance and how important it has been and still is to our culture and the importance of creative expression.”
Within seconds of the completion of his sentence a ripple of movement and squirms is discerned and it engenders a mild collective wave of motion.
“Stillness is to movement as silence is to sound,” Hamper goes on, “so if we’re still and silent we’ll have a great class, and everybody can go to lunch. OK?”
As the circled sea of seated children begins to surge and their restlessness rises, Hamper wonders how long the circle will remain unbroken.
“Can we dance?” Tre asks.
And then it breaks.
The honeymoon is over as a cascading chorus of energetic voices cry in unison, “Yes, can we?”
“We can we dance outside,” Tre begs his substitute teacher. “Yes? Please? Can we? Outside in the yard? Please?”
“There is greasy spillage in the yard,” Hamper says confidently as gulls return and fly up by the gate window sills to eat scraps of food.
“What is greasy spillage? a girl asks.
The wiry fourth grade rock star imitates them with wing-spread gestures as they hover and flutter outside the gated window. There is a temporary lull in the skirmish between teacher and students as they all stare in amazement at the close proximity of the creatures.
“I am a bird,” Tre says jumping away from the window and dancing like a swooping gull. His movement frightens them and they scatter over the yard and disappear in the distance over the East Harlem rooftops.
“You scared them away,” a student accuses Tre who defiantly lifts his arms and transforms into an airborne creature dancing around the room. as Hamper chases after him. “It’s not fair,” he complains, “Ms. Burnside, lets us dance.”
A sudden knock and opening of the door catches Tre careening around the classroom, Hamper scampering after him, and his classmates laugh uncontrollably. “Just as I thought,” his teacher says. “Tre, you will not be going to lunch with the class. You will stay with me this period.”
The tiny dancer stops short and starts to cry, “It’s not fair,” he yells. “It’s not fair.”
He kicks over a chair as his classmates exit the room without him and head to lunch.
“And I’ll be calling your grandmother…again,” she badgers.
Unwin closed the classroom door, straightened the chairs, then on second thought arranged them in rows and stared out the gated window. He felt caged and free.