For her part Mrs. Haliburton had heard of the exciting things Mr. Bilicki was doing and
she was impressed. She saw him as an old trooper willing to move with the times, to fight
the powers for change; though she never missed an opportunity to chide him about the
absence of black males from his class.
"I don't get it," she said to him. "Help me here, Brendan. We start off with overcrowded
classrooms in the ninth grade, everybody complaining about the registers, and by the
time they get to you in their senior year, the numbers are what?…15,16 students? Where do they go? And what is it about you that apparently turns off some students, particularly
black male students…? I mean, I see all these pretty Hispanic girls in your class, but no black males. What's going on here, Brendan?"
And Brendan who liked her combative spirit, who knew she didn't mean to hold him
accountable for student attrition over the years, who was neverthless wary of the razor
of anger he sensed hidden within the folds of her humor, changed the subject and spoke
of innovations he had tried to introduce to the department; and the obstacles placed in
his way by "reactionary" people like Pete Plimpler.
Bilicki's interest in Chinua Achebe – the African connection, as he put it – really impressed her. Mrs. Haliburton was an avid reader; it was part of her book club image to walk the hallways with a hard cover edition of a famous author clasped to her breast. Stop her to enquire what she was reading, you found Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and (though not very often) Danielle Steele. If anyone said they'd never heard of these authors, an expression of dismay and censure came over Mrs. Haliburton's face.
She spoke to Noreen at the Board of Ed about Chinua Achebe, how Bilicki had asked
his students to write a book report on her work. She was smacked with chagrin when she
learned that this Chinua was a male, not a female person. "You mean all this time…"
disbelieving laughter "..you know, I was on the phone to a book store last weekend, and
the woman was telling me she had no idea who this Chinua person was."
(from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!" a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 