A friend of mine from my youth, Tina, lived in subsidized housing near the private high school I attended. Tina and other kids from the neighborhood would hang out at the same pizzerias, parks, bodegas, and smoke cigarettes on the same stoops that my friends did. As was the trend "in the street," some of us formed into "crews" and "posses." Tina, five other girls and myself formed a crew called "Outlandos D'Amor," which boldly translated into "outlaws of Love." Well, we were fifteen. Our crew name was printed on the back of lavender sweatshirts with our "tag" name on the front. We cut the necks low so the sweatshirts would hang below our shoulders revealing the straps of tank tops. It was Manhattan, it was the eighties, rap was in its playful boastful stages and we played it on our boom boxes while we smoked and danced on the stoops, snickering at crotchety elders who grumbled about the noise. And maybe, in some ways, we grew up too fast.

Tina received some funding to attend a strict all-girls parochial school in mid-town. She would return to her apartment building dressed in the requisite plaid uniform, her head down so not to be noticed, hands deep in her pockets, a child making a beeline to her apartment. Soon she would reappear with her sweatshirt, tight jeans and high-top sneakers. Tina had a big smile, a smart mouth, and eager laugh. She was able to act convincingly tough around girls from other crews who "messed with us." Since I understood, but could not imitate street code, I envied this. Tina was far more effective than I was in switching codes. When we were alone her voice would soften and she would tell me her secrets and dreams -- about boys she liked and books she liked. There were places she wanted to see and go. My friend Tina was a closet reader and a romantic.

Once, as she made her beeline to her apartment, I could see, even as she buried her face in her jacket, that she was fighting back tears. I followed Tina and urged her to express what was wrong. If I could only remember the words, name the words, small and ugly, but I can only remember my shock and her shock and her face and the concept: Her teacher had, without warning, placed her in remedial classes and, while scolding her for some minor offense, weaved in comments about Tina being dark and dumb.

I had my own problems with teachers and frustrations with high school. Sometimes Tina and I would skip out and walk the city streets. We would laugh at how seriously people took themselves, then listen to street musicians, talk with strangers. Regularly men would hoot or whistle or sneer, "Ya think you're too good for me, bitch?" I glued my eyes to the pavement but Tina would handle them with a sharp glare or a flip of her middle finger.

Tina's sexual behavior was not unusual, even tame for our crowd, yet the overtly sexual name-calling she experienced was extreme. I attribute the routine verbal abuse to a few things: Tina physically developed more quickly than many of us, and there was a certain neediness that she projected. This may have been threatening to these young men, still unsure of their own sexuality. However, I believe much of it was connected to race. Projected onto Tina through language and attitude were some of the worst stereotypes of the Black woman as sexual object. This was a posture the neighborhood boys, of varied race and classes, seemed to foster. As for Tina, she, like the rest of us, was a kid seeking her identity, intellectually and sexually. Yet she was singled out for rejection and insult over and over, especially -- and increasingly -- by the kids from the housing project. At one point I noticed a scrawl written on a much-used public phone near my school. It read "if you want a good time call ----": Tina's number. My friends and I crossed it out. It reappeared. We crossed it out. It reappeared. And so on.

I recall that the summer before our senior year relations with Tina, an only child, and her mother, who was single, became tense. Frequently pizzas they had not ordered arrived at the house, for which they had no money to pay. And the prank phone calls were numerous and crude. The warm relationship that Tina and her mother shared, despite financial strains and no extended family for emotional or fiscal support, deteriorated as neither could understand the roots of the harassment. Tina's mother came to believe it was the result of actions by her daughter. I do not know if either consciously perceived the harassment to be based in racist ideology, as I now believe it was. Outlandos D'Amor was disbanded -- except in jest -- after a silly and frightening "rumble" with the infamous Fallen Angels of 28th Street. There were many changes in our social routine and attitude toward school as my friends began applying to college. Although I boldly declared I would skip college to travel in India and write books, my meager savings from waiting tables and walking dogs implied that this was unlikely. So reluctantly, perhaps inevitably, I pursued college after all. Tina, despite her ugly experience in high school, applied with less reluctance than I and was accepted into various city and state colleges.

I planned to major in creative writing and film, and at the time held no interest in practical skills or community work. Tina, however, had her own plan. She told me one night when she slept over. She had just read a book called Up the Down Staircase, which depicted how an underpaid, unprepared teacher fought against all apparent odds to win the trust of kids left to rot in a prison-like, urban public school. She related to the isolation and anger that the kids felt – and to the passion of the teacher. Then Tina leaned over to my bed to announce that she too would be a teacher. I found this to be a curious and unpleasant vocation to desire.

"But Tina, I thought you hated school!"

She acknowledged the truth of this but explained, "None of my teachers tried to understand us; they said we were stupid. Class was never fun. But this teacher cared. She understood. I think I could do that. I think I'd be a good teacher."

I imagined her wit, warmth, and the intimidating glare that she was able to posture. Yes, she probably would be good. And I borrowed the book.

Soon after a gang of us were walking, talking, laughing in the New York streets. Tina was not her gregarious self, but distracted and nervous. I too was distracted, but in a hopeful way: it was my last spring before college and in this spring I could smell all the springs of my life. In the mingling of the fading warm air of the afternoon with the cooler night breeze, I felt infinite possibility. The city streets pulsed under the strides of strange and beautiful people, shops were still open, and cars, honking uproariously, streamed to the horizon. Old friends together who would soon part: shadows, music, dancing light.

I suddenly noticed Tina wasn't with us. I left the group and backtracked for my friend. I found her crouched and rocking in the middle of the sidewalk. She rejected my efforts to talk with her and just rocked back and forth. Eventually I sent her home in a taxi. I remember her face staring ahead, as if unaware of her surroundings. Tina was not able to understand her fears and anger, much less communicate them. I later heard that when Tina returned home, communication with her mother deteriorated, resulting in a physical fight. Tina hurled objects from her bedroom window on the twelfth floor. Her mother called the police who, possibly because Tina's mother did not want to press charges, referred her elsewhere.

I had chosen my college. High school was over and the summer days felt a strange betwixt and between space, both nostalgic and anticipatory. I did not see Tina for some days and then a mutual friend called me. She explained. Tina was in Bellevue, diagnosed with schizophrenia.

I went to visit. The ward was huge, coed, full of elderly men roaming and rocking, unwashed, hitting their own bodies. Drugs were routinely distributed in small plastic cups. Apparently these drugs dried the mouth so that the patients contorted their faces and stuck out their tongues. It was as though their tongues were seeking water from an indoor rain. I found Tina, seventeen, the only child in this ward, slumped in a chair; her expression was as if she dwelled in empty space. I vaguely realized that the infamous Bellevue would forever mark Tina, on paper and in her mind. How could she forget that she was sent here, that she was not only a slut and dark and dumb, but crazy?

Dazed, rocking and mumbling, her tongue probing the air.

I tried not to turn from Tina. I would purchase large decadent cookies, a treat for which we used to scrounge change. For a time she shoved them away, but after a few visits some interest in the cookies was renewed, as was interest in magazines, TV, books. Her drug dosage was decreased. More than ever she stood in stark and disturbing contrast to those around her, and eventually she was moved to a different ward where there were other teenagers. Why wasn't she sent there sooner? No room? A bureaucratic slip? What was the doctors' rationale for her placement? How did that one careless decision or casual mistake affect my young friend's life?

Eventually Tina received weekend passes "to go out." By the time I left for college Tina had been released from Bellevue. The last time I saw her before leaving she claimed to be positive about the future, but her words and mannerisms were more self-conscious and guarded than I had known them to be before.

Tina took college classes but seldom finished them. Sometimes she worked in retail, but those jobs didn't last for long. When it became difficult, she went to the place where she seemed to feel more safe: Bellevue's, or later St. Vincent's, psychiatric ward. At first the stays were short. Then, during my junior year, my mother called to say she had heard from Tina. Tina had been in a public rehab facility withdrawing from cocaine addiction. She was pregnant. Now relocated from rehab to one of the mental wards, she was receiving electric shock treatment. Throughout this ordeal Tina had been unable to contact her mother. Her mother's phone was disconnected. She appeared to have moved.

Tina later found her mother living with a boyfriend who refused to let Tina live with them.

A baby boy was born. Miraculously, despite cocaine and alcohol and series of electric shock treatments inflicted on his mother's body, the boy was healthy.

The young man grew up with a foster family. He and Tina do see each other and have a relationship. At the time I write this, it has been fifteen years since Tina, at seventeen, was first sent to Bellevue. As I moved around the country, my mother would occasionally receive a call from Tina -- usually when she is in an institution. Tina says she is fine and looking forward to being reunited with her son, now in his late teens. My mother describes Tina's voice as distant, shell-like. Tina tells my mother that she and I were "always there" for her. Like family. She thanks us. Really, I was hardly ever there.

I have rationalized why I cannot help or reach her, and walked, or slowly slid, away. But it haunts me. Here's why:

I know my friend from childhood is as intelligent as I am or probably you. I remember her quick wit, her ease with math, and I remember her as an astute reader. Tina is critical and intuitive and I know that at some point she had a love for life.

As for Tina's location in the mental institution, I believe that it became her haven from the very stigma that it carries in the "outside" world of work, school, and social interaction. Although Tina may genuinely suffer from a mental illness, I do not believe the illness was merely chemical.

What I do believe is that she endured both the subtlest and most overt forms of gnarled racial prejudice, of belittling sexism and classism. These infused her every living day. She was a child in an environment of tremendous social, economic, and sexual pressure. She tried to make sense of it, fit into it, and toughed it out for years. She was a kind and sensitive person subjected to random cruelty. I wonder how things would have turned out for this young woman if she had a supportive community, an extended family, empathetic teachers, or a school that aimed to empower their students through critical thinking. I believe few teenagers could carry the burden of perpetual insult to the mind and body and not express significant confusion and pain. I believe Tina's response of anger, fear, and withdrawal from routine irrational racist harassment and sexual objectification was a natural withdrawal and, quite possibly, a very sane response to insane social circumstances.

So, here is my recurring question. The reader will note that it is phrased as a statement. That is because the question mark reduces my query to something trite, something easily answerable:

Today I am a teacher. Tina is not.

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About the Author: Julie Bolt recently began a career as an Assistant Professor at Bronx Community College. Current and upcoming publications include the journals The Fifth Street Review, The Sidewalk's End, Mastodon Dentist, Slow Trains Literary Magazine, Literary Visions, Radical Teacher, Nupenz, and Apollo's Lyre. After several years living and teaching in California, Arizona, and New Mexico, she has returned to her hometown New York City with a husband, son, and two dogs in tow.

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Copyright 2005 by Julie Bolt - No reproduction without express permission from the author.

Letter to the Author: Julie Bolt at Juliethebolt@aol.com

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