Luke is trying to figure out what is funny. For weeks, during fill-in-the-blank songs and chants, he fills in with “Oatmeal,” his favorite food.
Blow the Balloon:
“What color was your balloon, Luke?”
“Oatmeal.”
Johnny Get Your Hair Cut:
“Luke, what should Johnny get that is JUST like what you are wearing?”
“Oatmeal.”
What’ll We Do with the Baby:
“Luke, what should we wrap the baby in?”
“Oatmeal.”
Luke deadpans it, though he hasn’t got it perfectly flat – he lets a breath of Caribbean lilt lift its edges. If he knew what a rimshot was, Luke would want one to land just where silence flattens the last of “L” as it narrows through his looped tongue.
Luke has a second area of inquiry – he’s not just interested in what’s funny, but also in perfecting a look of fatigued despair. He has discovered that by releasing all tension in the orbicularis oculi (eyelid muscles) and gazing out into the classroom with eyes unfocused, open but drooping, he can appear as dismal as he probably feels. He performs this look, at drop-off, for his mother who rolls her own eyes in loving, exasperated response. He performs this look for me. I kneel down and take his yielding hand in mine, “Luke, do you look sad? Do you look sleepy?” “Mmm. Sad.” Sad but stoic at the same time. Pent up sad – boarded up sad! Moved away and not returning sad.
We know some things about Luke. He has food allergies, and a vigilantly selective ‘palate’ (brain, tongue, soul.) For months he rejected all school meals and resisted absolutely the notion that he would ever incorporate the food of this place – stuff that represents the absence of Mama – into his own, lonely body. Luke spent the first several months in the classroom doing very little, very quietly. Enervated by hunger and wishing to avoid all distractions from his tenuous inner image of Mama, Luke moved hardly at all. He sometimes sat for 30 minutes jabbing weakly at a heap of play dough – chipping away at the lump, slowly dispersing its bulk as he scattered the minutes of the school day.
We know other things about Luke. He misses his absent father and loves his mother with reserved intensity. We know that Luke’s mother is now working as a nanny for two white children who live close by our school; he is sad that she has sent him to spend his days with us. We don’t know what Luke thinks about all of this – he may just think: Oatmeal. Or he may be thinking home and school, home and school, black and white, black and white.
One day, instead of saying “Oatmeal” for his fill-in-the-blank filler, Luke says, “Black.” When I ask Luke, later, at the drawing table, what color he will begin with, he says, “Black.” It doesn’t matter that he then picks up a purple pencil and guides it loosely around and around the paper. His statement is, “Black,” my response is, “Yes.” I don't crowd it, out loud, at least, with good Black, bold Black, handsome, happy Black.
I don’t know what “Black” means for Luke, could it be the color of receding and advancing at the same time? I remember, in childhood, feeling the power of dark night, receding, advancing and I remember the feeling of hiding, fading back, in order to be found. The less Luke reveals, the more narrow his range of communication, the more I advance to find him. I remember noticing differences in hugs and kisses, and who thought what was funny before I noticed differences in skin color.
Then, Black is over and it’s time for Brown. We are making cookies for Dorothea’s birthday. I call several children at a time to come and add ingredients to the wide steel bowl. Luke tips half a cup of soymilk in. Olenka tilts hers in and glossy molasses threads down. We stir and stir and mix, the dry stuff and the wet. The white salt and powdery soda, buff wheat flour, brown sugar, and blackstrap molasses cling and blend into dough. Luke says, “It’s Brown. Like me.” “Yes,” I say, “beautiful, delicious brown.” I want to acknowledge and affirm Luke and the connection he has made, but am immediately unhappy: Brown is good because I want to eat it? Luke is good because he’s like a cookie? To make matters worse, I later find the cookies are not very good. They are ok. Only two children – and Luke is definitely not one of them – will eat these classroom cookies. But Luke. He’s good, he’s sad, he doesn’t figure out being funny. He doesn't ask me for a hug, he suspends himself, over there, like a shirt on a hanger, waiting for arms to come. I ask him, "Would you like a hug?" "Mmhm." So we do.
