From my book

ENEMIES

            Jon Anaya and Miguel Salazar were born to hate each other.  Jon was a Sureno.  Miguel was a Norteno.  Their homeboys hated each other.  Their families dogged one another in the supermarket.  There had been vicious fights in local parks and empty streets.  Each of their friends had suffered a bruise or broken bone or stab wound or death.  I’d sat Jon and Miguel together in a group activity once and they had started angrily screaming at each other, letting everyone in the classroom, especially me, know that they couldn’t stand to be near the other, that they would never, ever, under any condition at all, share space.  I’d moved them apart quickly.  It was my first year of teaching and my heart would leap out of my chest whenever voices were raised.  All I  cared about was having a quiet classroom, an environment that appeared orderly, safe, where it appeared real learning could and would take place.  I thought learning could only take place in silence. 

            In any other classroom this eruption might have ended there.  But this was my classroom, and I discovered that I wasn’t comfortable with the idea that there could be two individuals who thought they hated each other so fiercely without knowing absolutely anything about the other.  Their hate was all in their heads, not in their veins.  They grew up accepting a certain reality that was grounded nowhere in my reality.   They couldn’t learn anything in my class if they thought they hated each other.  Instead of focusing on my work, their days were composed of glaring threateningly over at one another, throwing pen caps and wads of paper when they got a chance behind my back, tripping the other on his way to the pencil sharpener, knocking into each other as they left the class.  All that was on their minds was how to make the life of the other worse, which ironically was the most powerful thing they had in common.  No one else in my class could learn anything either while Jon and Miguel hated each other.  Instead of focusing on my work, their days were made up of shrinking in their desks as Jon made threats to bring a knife to school, or watching papers fly across the classroom behind my back, or laughing as one person got tripped.  And I couldn’t teach, because I couldn’t bring myself to believe that plot and characterization could help develop the future of a Norteno who was determined to be dead or in jail before he even left the 10^th grade. 

            I had to teach them that you had to learn to work with people you didn’t like.  I had to teach them that their hatred was grounded in the false beliefs of a group that would ruin them.  And I had to teach myself that I could.

            So I sat them together in another group activity.  They demanded separation.  I said their grade depended on them working together.  They both took the F.

            Days later, I sat them together again, warning that they would fail if they didn’t learn to work together.  They both took the F.

            I tried several more times with the same result, watching their grades tumble to the point where it would be almost impossible for them to have a chance at passing.  Frustrated at them and angry with myself, something must have snapped.  The next time I grouped them, and awaited the anticipated sounds of derision.  When it came, I shrugged and said, “Whatever.  You do the same as each other anyway, it’s surprising you don’t get along.”  They stopped short for a second and eyed me oddly before eyeing each other and finally sitting down on opposite sides of the group silently, arms crossed.  

            But they hadn’t moved.   

            The reading that day was about how prejudices were instilled through families, and the students needed to make a list of the beliefs that were handed down to them through their parents.  The other students came up with a considerable list as Jon and Miguel sat and stared at the clock. 

I sauntered up, touching Jon’s shoulder lightly, saying, “You haven’t added anything.” 

He swallowed and shook my hand off, simmering in his silence as I stood behind him for a few seconds before going off to check on another group.  When I came back, the word “Hatred” had been added.  I asked who had added it and Crystal nodded at Jon, whose eyes were carefully avoiding mine.  “Nice,” I concluded, and then looked at Miguel.  “What about you?” 

He sighed and shook his head, his knee bouncing up and down underneath the desk. 

“Come on, Miguel,” I prodded, “get yourself on that paper.  What can you add?” 

A moment of silence.  Another sigh.  Then, “He took mine.”

“What?”

“He took what I was gonna say,” Miguel scoffed, leaning back in his seat and jerking his head in Jon’s direction. 

I nodded.  “Interesting.”

They stared at me, arms crossed, as I slowly wandered away.

FRIENDS

            Jon and Miguel never became buddies or friends in my class.  But they learned to tolerate one another.  They learned how to listen to the other’s ideas and comments.  They learned how to share space.  There developed an agreement between them that they would never argue again in my class, and that soon developed into an understanding that they wouldn’t ever fight each other at school or on the streets.  It’s not like they smiled at each other in the hallways, but they didn’t mug each other either, saving their pissy frowns and ugly taunts for others who they didn’t know.  Then Jon’s cousin shot one of Miguel’s brothers, and the pressure was on for retaliation.  Not only did Norteno blood have to shed Sureno blood, but Salazar blood needed to shed Anaya blood.  Miguel felt the heat.  

            A fight broke out between the Nortenos and Surenos on a Saturday night in October, and Miguel and Jon spotted each other across the street.  Miguel felt one of his brothers handing him the gun, and he grasped the cold steel in his sweaty palm, feeling the weight of the gun, the weight of expectation resting on his back.  Jon stared back at him calmly, the fight seeming to occur around him, not involving him, allowing Miguel time to raise the gun, to take aim, to pull the trigger, to hear an empty click, to glance down at the gun, to fumble with the safety, to hear a resounding boom reverberate against the cars on the street, to look up and see Jon’s unmoving body on the bloody asphalt, to tuck the gun into his pants, to run and run and to ignore the lifting of a weight off his back as he joined his family in a victoriously empty yell.