The Night Gardener

'And they wanted to suspend Diego for that?'

'Insubordination. He wouldn't give up his phone.'

'They shouldn't have gotten up in his face to begin with.'

'I know it,' said Regina. 'But it's the rule. Anyway, you gotta act like you're upset with him, I guess. A little.'

'I'm more upset with that school.'

'I am, too.'

'I'll talk to him.' Ramone leaned over the stove. 'You know, you're burning the living shit out of that garlic.'

'Go see your son.'

Ramone kissed her on her neck, just below her ear. She smelled a little sweaty, and sweet, too. It was that body oil she liked to wear, with a touch of raspberry in it.

As Ramone walked away, he said, 'Turn that flame down some.'

'You can turn the flame down your own self,' said Regina, 'the day you step up to cook.'

Ramone went down the hall, the sound of the Thunder-birds and the Pink Ladies singing at his back, and up the stairs to the top floor.

He was having more than second thoughts about the decision to transfer Diego out to a Montgomery County school, but at the time he'd made it he felt he had run out of options. Ramone and Regina had been in agreement that the District middle in their zone was unacceptable. Physically it was in a state of perpetual disrepair, and it was always short on supplies, including pencils and paper. With the school's low lighting, many of the fluorescents and incandescents either dead or nonexistent, and the metal detectors and security personnel stationed at every working door, it resembled a prison. Sure, plenty of money got pumped into the D.C. school system, but, suspiciously, little seemed to funnel down to the kids. And the kids themselves had begun to find trouble, both in school and out. In their zone, with many parents working two jobs and others absent or just not involved in their children's lives, some of the kids had begun to go seriously off track. It wasn't the right environment for Diego, who was not the type of student to self-motivate and was, in fact, attracted to those on the tough side.

Gus Ramone had discussed all of this with his wife, intensely and in private. In the end, they both decided that it would do Diego good to be exposed to a different atmosphere. But even then, when Regina herself became adamant that they make the move, Ramone was not entirely sure that his motives for getting Diego out of the D.C. public school system were pure. The thing that played on his conscience was that the kids in their neighborhood middle school were almost all black or Hispanic.

Regardless, he and Regina had arranged the transfer. To do so, they'd set up a kind of ruse to establish residency in Montgomery County. Ramone had bought an investment property, little more than a cottage, in the then run-down downtown Silver Spring area for one hundred and ten thousand back in 1990, when Regina was teaching and they were a two-income couple. Ramone rented it to a Guatemalan roofer and his small family. He and Regina obtained a Maryland phone number for that address; the calls rolled over to their home in D.C. With that and their ownership papers on the house, they had the necessary tools to claim Maryland residence, which made Diego qualified to move.

But from the start, it seemed as if they had made a mistake. The middle school in Montgomery County had magnet students, and most of these students were white. There was less tolerance for so-called disruptive behavior in this school than there was in Diego's old school in D.C. Laughing or talking loudly in the halls or in the cafeteria was an offense that could often warrant suspension. So could being in the vicinity of, but not directly participating in, trouble. There appeared to be different sets of guidelines for Diego and his friends than for the kids in the magnet and gifted and talented classes. Those mostly white kids were being favored, Ramone surmised, because they were bringing higher test scores to the school. Everyone else in the school fell into the category of 'other.' When Regina dug and looked into it, she found that black kids in Montgomery County were suspended, demoted, or expelled at three times the rate of white kids. Something was definitely wrong there, and though neither Gus nor Regina was quick to bring up the R word, they suspected that their son's color, and the color of his friends, was indirectly related to the troublemaker tags they were being forced to wear.

All of this occurred in a school situated in a neighborhood known for its liberal activism, a place where 'Celebrate Diversity' bumper stickers were commonly displayed on cars. The days Ramone picked up his son at the school, he saw that most of the black students streaming out the doors hung together and walked in the down-street direction of the apartments,' while the white students headed for their homes on the high ground. Sometimes he would sit there behind the wheel, watching this, and he would say to himself, I made a mistake with my son.

Thing of it was, he never did know with certainty if he was doing the right thing for his kids. Those who said they did were delusional or liars. Unfortunately, the results didn't come in until the race was done.

Ramone knocked on his son's bedroom door. He knocked harder and was told to come in.

Diego was sitting on the edge of his bed, a mattress and box spring that lay frameless on the carpeted floor. The football he slept with sat beside him. He wore headphones, and as he removed them Ramone heard the sound of go-go turned up loud. Diego wore a sleeveless T, his arms thin and defined, his shoulders already as broad as a man's. He had the beginnings of a mustache, and his sideburns had been trimmed to resemble miniature daggers. His hair, shaped up every couple of weeks at the barber on 3rd, was close to the scalp and precise. His skin was a shade lighter than Regina's. He had Regina's large brown eyes and thick nose. The dimple in his chin was Ramone's.

'Wha'sup, Dad?'

'What's up with you?'

'Chillin.'

Ramone stood over him, his feet spread in the power stance, that cop thing. Diego read it, smirked, and shook his head. He got up off the bed and stood facing his father. He was only a couple of inches shorter than Ramone.

'Let me just tell it,' said Diego.

'Go ahead.'

'Today was…'

'I know.'

'It wasn't nothin serious.'

'Mom told me.'

'It's like they're singling me out, Dad.'

'Well, you gave them a reason, in the beginning.'

'True,' said Diego.

Diego had acted out when he'd first come to the school. He'd felt that he had to show the other students that the new kid wasn't soft. That he was tough, cool, and funny as well. Ramone and Regina had gotten several calls in September from exasperated teachers who said Diego was disruptive in class. Ramone had been pretty rough on him, giving him stern, threatening talks, putting him on restriction, and even pulling him from football practice, though Ramone had not gone so far as not letting him play his weekly game. The tough love seemed to have worked, or Diego had simply settled down on his own. A couple of his teachers had told Regina that Diego's behavior had improved in class, and one even said that he had the potential to become a positive influence on other students, a leader. But the negative first impression he'd left on the principal, a white woman named Ms Brewster, and her assistant, Mr Guy, had been damaging. Ramone felt that, at this point, they were targeting his son. Diego, discouraged and unmotivated, was losing interest in school. His midterm grades were lower than they had been at his school in D.C.

'Look,' said Ramone. 'You say you didn't know your phone was on, I believe you.'

'I didn't know.'

Ramone had no doubt. He and Diego had made a deal from early on: Tell the truth, Ramone said, and I won't go off on you. I'll only get angry if I think you're lying. We can deal with the rest. As far as he knew, his son had always kept up his end of the bargain.

'If you say so, I believe you,' said Ramone. 'But they've got their rules. You should've let them confiscate your phone for the day. That's where the problem came from.'