False Cognates (1991)
Photo: Library of Congress. Loose Canons
“I don’t understand.”
Mr. Morris removed the boy’s paper from its folder and placed it on his desk. He looked up at the slender brown man in the ill-fitting suit fidgeting uncomfortably in the seat across from him. The boy’s father, Mr. Jenkins:
“It’s just I know my son… I mean I know what he is capable of.”
Mr. Morris nodded. Trying to explain to pitifully confused parents why their child had failed was surely the least pleasant of his duties as assistant dean of West Wesley Preparatory School. The situation was always that much more difficult when the boy in question was like this one and clearly bright. If troubled. Mr. Morris had reviewed the boy’s file and was convinced that the mistakes in his current work were intentional. But they were still mistakes.
“Uncle J was not a killer. He didn’t even no that man. They thought they could frame him because he had a reputation, because the police new he sold drugs. But that didn’t mean he was a killer. He just gave folks what they needed to dull the pane.”
“Now, Mr. Jenkins. I want you to know that we at West Wesley do not consider these scores to reflect, in an absolute sense, your son’s intelligence. But it is simply not possible for William to retain his current scholarship with grades like these.”
“Uncle J. was smart. He always made a prophet.”
Mr. Jenkins winced and clutched his stomach. If the information on William’s original application was correct, then the man was an attorney of some sort. William was not, as he claimed, from “the streets” but rather the undesirable edge of a comfortable suburb, one of five African Americans carefully selected by the scholarship committee to walk the corridors of West Wesley without mop, spatula, or competitive benefits. Much of what the boy had written was therefore lies. But sometimes there was a deeper truth to lies, if only in the need for them.
“Walked out the wrong door one knight is all that happened. Turned down the wrong alley and saw something he wasn’t supposed to sea. A mad swirl of dark shadows, clenched fists wrapped around pulled back triggers. A circle of seven angry gangsters and the barrel of a gun standing over an other man down.”
“I have circled all of the relevant passages so that—”
“I see them,” Mr. Jenkins said. He picked up the paper and held it in front of his face.
Mr. Morris stared at a blank page.
“A lot of folks would have just kept walking if they saw something like that. A lot of folks would have turned and ran. But Uncle J wasn’t like a lot of folks. He couldn’t stand to see no man pray upon the week.”
While Mr. Jenkins read, Mr. Morris considered his appearance: the jittery movements, the hunched shoulders, the frayed cuffs of his jacket. This was the fifth time this year a parent had been called in to discuss the boy’s academic performance yet only the first time Mr. Jenkins had seen fit to show up for the appointment. Mr. Morris knew from experience that very often when young boys took such precipitous downturns it was in response to negative stimuli in the home, a fact which made the decision to revoke the child’s scholarship all the more heartless, his own relationship to that decision so untenable.
“Let me reiterate, Mr. Jenkins. This is not an expulsion. Should the boy’s grades improve by the end of the semester, you have my assurance. I will personally see to it that his scholarship is reinstated.”
“‘Stay out of this,’ those gangsters shouted and pointed to the won lying at their feat. ‘This fool ain’t nothing but a worthless junkie. He ain’t your problem and this ain’t your fight.’”
“He’s got a lot of words in here saying two things at once,” Mr. Jenkins said finally.
Mr. Morris nodded. Actually, they said three
