Psych

5. School

‘I don’t think this is necessary, Aunt Janice,’ Sineas told her as he loaded his brown leather backpack with textbooks after breakfast. They were in the kitchen.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll love it there.’ She kissed his cheek before she carried the empty plates to the sink. She was still in her white cotton nightdress. Her hair was done in an afro. It was rather untidy which meant she had not taken her morning shower yet. Sineas, on the other hand, was wearing a black leather jacket with a red polyester interior. He was also wearing blue denim jeans and black sneakers. His hair was a small, thick well-combed afro. 

‘But there was nothing wrong with the home-schooling,’ he pointed out. Eleven years of it and now you change your mind?’

‘Did you not hear what Doctor Jacob said? You need human interaction, you need friends, you need…’

‘A life, I get it, but, Aunt Janice, Doctor Jacob is just a money-hungry quack seeking suckers to suck money dry from.’

She leaned her back against the sink. The open nightdress exposed a little more than he needed to see. She looked very tired. Now a waitress at the local café, Coffee Kings, two blocks down the road, she often came home very late working nightshifts. Her perky lips twitched. 

She sighed then said, ‘I get it, Sineas, I get it. You’re still mad at him because he gave the report to the judge that your mother was mentally unwell.’

‘And she’s been in the Looney bin for eleven years because of his “professional analysis”. But this isn’t about him or my mother. This is about going to a school to learn about stuff I already know about. That’s basically what school is; the greatest scam of all time. You go there to learn things you already knew but just didn’t care about. Irrelevant junk that won’t have anything to do with the job I’ll get in the public sphere. My grades have never been disappointing, Aunt Janice.’

She grabbed the dish towel from the towel rack on the wall just above the sink. She wiped her hands as she walked up to him. She stared concernedly at him, their eyes the same level. He had grown quite a lot over the past eleven years. ‘It’s not your grades that I’m worried about, Sin.’ She gave him a pat on the head then walked back to the sink. ‘Pack your lunch or we’re going to be late.’

He sighed in indignation and reached for a red lunchbox on the kitchen table beside his bag.

Several minutes later, Sineas and his aunt were in the backseat of a taxicab on their way to Malrich High School. As he lazily looked out the window he could see old white people taking their usual morning jogs and walks. They looked like they had no care in the world as they casually made their strides along the pavements. 

They arrived at the first traffic lights and to the right he could see the café Aunt Janice worked in. Coffee Kings. He could use some coffee, he thought. Anything to distract him from the approaching terrors that he imagined were going to welcome him at the school. As soon as the traffic lights turned green, the cabdriver swerved the steering wheel like he was auditioning for Formula-One-Racing. The car sped off for a couple more hundred metres before it stopped at another pair of traffic lights. 

The houses in Malrich were a little too huddled together. Unlike in his former neighbourhood, Breechwood, the houses here had no gates at all as if they had found the cure for crime years ago. In front of almost every house was a perfect green lawn, sprinklers hissing here and there as if warning people to take off their shoes. White people. There were so many of them. Trying to find a black person in Malrich was like trying to find the letter “I” in the word “never”. He sighed for probably the hundredth time as he stared blankly out the window. Green. The car made a left turn and it sped off again. Silence had reigned between him and his aunt along the journey. She had finally decided to wash her face, combed her hair and put on her waitress uniform: a small black leather skirt with a white t-shirt bearing the trademark logo of a steaming coffee mug with a golden crown above it. She never wore any make up. She just applied Vaseline and she was good to go. She was now looking on ahead at the road as Sineas looked out the window, his chin in his palm. 

She noticed the frustrated and disapproving look on his face. ‘Don't worry; you’ll soon realize that it’s for the best.’

Silence.

‘I mean; this is grade twelve, how bad can it be?’

Silence.

She sighed impatiently, ‘Come on, Sin, talk to me.’

More silence as he pretended to be busy, rubbing his forefinger against the door handle.

‘Even a cough would be fine. Just say something.’

‘Like what? Like how this is a very bad idea because I think I’ve said it twenty-three times already.’

‘Sin, human beings are social creatures. They need interaction, laughter, a meaningful role in society…’

‘Concerning interaction, I have you to talk to. Laughter? I laughed four days ago when that kid fell off his bike and laughed twice as hard when he cursed me for it. And as for, “a meaningful role in society”, I think my existence is meaningful enough.’

‘Don’t you want to meet new people? Make friends?’ She hoped the idea would encourage him.

‘I have a friend…’

‘Leave me out of this, Sin.’

‘Come on, Aunt Janice. I’m leaving for college next year, can’t I just get home-schooled for that short period?’ he pleaded.

‘I don’t think you should have even asked that. College has an even more complex atmosphere than high school. Socially, high school will prepare you for it.’

He leaned his back into his seat, his gaze towards the roof of the car. He directed his face towards her. ‘Can’t we at least…take a vote?’ he asked her in desperation.

‘There are only two of us here, Sineas.’

‘The cabdriver’s on my team.’

The cabdriver pretended not to hear him. He just made another grunt and pressed his foot harder on the accelerator.

‘Don’t worry, son. After today, you’re going to love it, I promise,’ she said.

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Then you’ll love it tomorrow.’

They finally pulled up by the school. The building was exactly to their right. The building was quite big, its walls painted a royal blue. There were two massive pillars just by the entrance. A small concrete path led to the steps and a hive of students was buzzing its way on it heading straight towards the building. Sineas could not spot a single black student anywhere. Around the path for what seemed like miles were a well trimmed lawn and a fairly large, bronze statue of The Thinker. To the right of the statue were hundreds of tables lined with benches. Just a little farther behind the school, he could see a fence covering what looked like a tennis court…or was it a basketball court? He honestly did not care. Most of the students were walking in pairs and they were all white. WHY? His head was stung with a very sharp pain. He truly felt out of place. How could his aunt even afford to send him to such a place? He grabbed his backpack from the floor of the car then the door handle.

‘Sineas.’ She grabbed his shoulder.