I have no name. Only a number.
I sit in the back row. The desk next to me is open. The one in front of me is taken by a girl with soft skin. I know her well from the back, for I have gotten lost many times in the darkness of her long, straight hair.
The teacher seems nice but I don’t know her name and she doesn’t know mine. She talks a lot but her words don’t make sense to me. Some in the class nod their heads when she talks. Others just look down. She doesn’t look my way much. She has sometimes asked me for an answer, though I am quick to say that I have none to give. And now she asks me less.
The lady said we are learning a lot, though I cannot say what. She said we would need to know this for college someday. I will not be going to college but I am sure she is right. I find that the things we learn in school are not like the things I learn at home.
The lady has never used my first name, though she did assign me a number. She made us memorize it.
I wish that she knew me better. If she did, she would know that I don’t talk much but that I am a kind person and that I want to learn. I want to be smart like her.
If she knew me, she would know that I am named after my grandfather, a giant of a man who stole away his days in the bowels of the Homestead Works, the ashen and fiery steel mills along the waterfront in Pittsburgh. She would know that I am strong like him.
If she knew me, she would know that I can catch any ball of any type better than any boy on the street. That I can take apart just about anything in my garage and put it back together again. That I started my own lawn business last summer and that I mow seven lawns on the weekends. That I had $317 saved up before my mom used some of it.
If she knew me, she would know that I am tired, though it’s true that I am not yet a man. She would know that I am tired because I stay up late in my room and dream the lives of others, with all my lights out, pretending not to hear the doors slam in the other rooms. The smell of cigarettes under my door. She would also know that I am not old enough to drive but I can keep a car straight on the road, late at night, by holding Dad’s shoulders steady from the back seat. She would know why I am so tired.
If she knew me, should would know that I wish I were like the other boys, the ones in the front rows. And she would know that I know that they are not smarter than me. She just calls on them more.
If she asked, I guess I would tell her that I am just trying to survive school until they tell me I don’t have to go anymore. Actually, come to think of it, maybe school is just trying to survive me.
I wish it were not so.
In the meantime, I think I will stay here and remain quiet. It feels safer that way, in the back row, staring once again at a girl whose name I don’t know.
