"The Day of an Anomaly" by Melissa Geiger

I am a twenty five year old whitewoman. I am married with no children and I have a college degree. I live in an inner city neighborhood called Binghampton, fondly known as “The Bing.” I am an anomaly in my neighborhood. This is a day in the life of an anomaly.

I wake up and roam around my 800 square foot house, the standard size for most houses on our street and begin to get ready for my day. As I leave my house I double check to make sure my doors are locked and I wave to my neighbor Huah who is cycling on a stationary bike located on the front porch. He is Vietnamese and we mostly communicate through hi’s and the exchange of food (he makes amazing egg rolls). I pull out of the driveway and wave to Sondra my other neighbor who is standing on the corner of our block greeting passing cars with a smile and a wave. This is her corner and she greets people every morning and afternoon. It is her way to reclaim the streets, to renew them from the prostitution she once used to sell. God changed her and now she uses her corner to spread the love of Jesus instead of sex.

I drive one mile to the high school where I volunteer, passing many people walking or waiting at the bus stop. Poplar is a main drag through “The Bing” and to other parts of Memphis. Even though public transportation is new to me it is not at all new to the people who use these buses to get where they need to go everyday.

At the high school I am greeted by a random metal detector check and uniformed high school students going from class to class. I arrive during their fourth period. I make my way through the kids, down the stairs to the art room. I get a lot of stares and many students ask if I am a student or a teacher. I volunteer by assisting the art teacher in her art 1 and 2 classes, which usually have twenty four to twenty seven students in them. I try to be an extra pair of hands and eyes to her and the kids. I also spend this time trying to engage the kids to get to know them on a personal level. In my first class there are two white kids, one is in foster care is dearly in need of acceptance, and looks a lot to me for affirmation. Thomas is habitually absent, and since the schools only attendance policy is that a child cannot miss more than ten consecutive days of school.

Half way through the day I need to use the rest room, but to do this I must run up the stairs to the bathroom that is in the main office. This is because due to smoking, sex and other things all the restrooms in the building are locked. The teacher I work with does not have a key so kids who need to use the restroom must get a hall pass, interrupt the class down the hall to get the key, return the key and come back to class. This process overwhelms me, so I usually try and hold it till I get home.

Many students in the class struggle with basics like grammar, using rulers, and writing skills, but they excel in the art program. They feel they have a freedom here that they do not get in any of their other classes. They all aspire to go to college, Deon wants to become an architect and Brahiem wants to become a pharmacist. They dream of studying abroad and owning homes outside of Binghampton. On the other side of this coin there are two girls in this same class who are pregnant at sixteen and seventeen. There is another girl who usually gives up on herself before she even gets started. Most have little self confidence. They all have big dreams but they cannot get the education necessary to equip them for those dreams.

In the next class I work mostly with a girl one on one. Bianca is a quiet girl, very sweet; she hates art and would rather be playing basketball. She rarely says more than two words to me the entire class. My goal is to pry through her shell and get her to speak full sentences to me. This class period is split, with lunch in between and sometimes we have trouble with students not coming back after lunch. There are a lot of bright kids in this class: Corey, a football player who writes beautiful poetry and Terello is a self taught fashion designer who with the right help could really go places. On the other hand there is one girl in particular who sticks out to me and struggles constantly with her self worth. She believes she never does anything worth complimenting and puts herself down a lot. She has made great strides in her work though, and she is a very beautiful girl.

As the third class rolls around the end of the day draws near. This means the students are easily distracted and a little rowdy; they are also the largest class which only adds to the chaos. This class also has the tendency to blow off their work. They have trouble focusing and want to tease me about how to use the word “crunk” in a sentence. I laugh and have fun with them.

As I leave school I stop quickly at the grocery store. This store is a central location for a lot of people because it caters to all types: my neighborhood, many college kids, and a fairly nice suburb that is near by. This store is about two miles from my home and considering the next one is about five miles further, I shop here. Due to the fact this is the only grocery store central to these three areas, it is constantly packed. This tends to irritate me. Even going there at one pm in the middle of the week, like I am now, you can expect five lanes to be open and each line to be about four people deep. The aisles are hard to maneuver with so many people and I usually leave the grocery store quite frustrated.

I pull into my driveway and look across the street to the neighborhood park. It is flourishing with activity; there is a Latino soccer game going, throngs of kids playing unaccompanied on the play ground, and women walking laps on the sidewalk. It is a nice day so I grab my book and sit on the porch swing and wave at some neighbors. Huah is cutting his grass up to an imaginary line in the exact middle of the front yard. This is where his yard ends and the yard of his duplex neighbor begins. This makes me smile because the neighbor’s grass is already very long and this makes it appear even more so. This also makes our yard look bad and in need of a mow.

When John gets home we eat dinner and decide to take a walk around the community. We stop and play around with some young boys who call John, “coach.” My husband helped coach a flag football league with some boys in the neighborhood and the name stuck. The boys look up to him. I expect this is because they do not receive much male attention at home. We continue walking, saying “hi” to people sitting on their porches and offer help to a couple loading things into their car. We meet another couple and chat for a second. We begin to wander home as it gets darker; we walk in the street to avoid broken sidewalks. When we get home John makes sure the tool box on his truck is locked (an unlocked tool box is merely an invitation to steal). We sit on the porch swing and enjoy the night like the rest of the community. Later we head inside, lock the door, spend the rest of the evening together, and get ready to begin again tomorrow.

December, 2008