Free A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind Page A

classes are often nearly empty, especially as the days grow warmer, and he is left to learn in this awkward question-and-response style across a sea of unoccupied desks. Most of the time, he’s simply reciting, calling out a subject heading from the text or a worksheet. He knows he’s not developing the analytical skills that come from complex class discussions and thoughtful reasoning.
    A few hours later, after the day’s dismissal bell rings, he files into Mr. Taylor’s empty room behind Tanya Parker, a skinny, shy math/scienceclassmate, and the ever present LaTisha. They chat about some great Timberland boots Cedric saw in a magazine, a kid who punched a teacher, and a math/science classmate of theirs—a C student—who is now living at a homeless shelter.
    While Cedric remains guarded about discussing his application to MIT (fearing, already, the ridicule if he’s rejected) he begins to talk around it, near it, mentioning how, someday, he’d like to go to “some Ivy League or whatever.”
    LaTisha and Tanya both balk. LaTisha says she’s planning to go to the University of the District of Columbia, or UDC, a middling, financially troubled school that accepts almost any graduate of a D.C. public high school. Tanya is not certain. She adjusts her eyeglasses and says, “I’ll probably go local.”
    Cedric tries to explain. “It’s just that I’ve sacrificed so much. You know, giving over my whole life to schoolwork and then just going to UDC. I mean, come on now. I’d get laughed at.”
    LaTisha smirks. “You don’t even know where some of those Ivy schools are at,” she says. “All those Yales and things. You ain’t been there.”
    “I know where they are,” Cedric counters, tentatively. From the corner of his eye, he sees Mr. Taylor move from the adjacent lab area into the connecting doorway, eavesdropping.
    “Yeah, where Harvard at … huh?” LaTisha probes.
    “It’s, you know, in Boston,” says Cedric.
    “Ivy League?” she says with a flourish. “Why do you want to go so far away from here, somewhere you ain’t even seen?” LaTisha keeps on him, talking faster now. “See, what kind of fool spends his life trying to go somewhere he ain’t even seen or has no idea about. Damn, you may not even like it. Then what? Your life be ruined.”
    Mr. Taylor’s shoe taps the linoleum, and LaTisha turns. “Oh, hi, Mr. Taylor,” she says, all effervescence. As the afternoon wanes, she and the silent Tanya take off for a 4:30 city bus. Cedric, brow furrowed, stays behind.
    Mr. Taylor shuffles some papers on the lab table at the front of the room, waiting for the boy to speak.
    “I saw you listening,” Cedric says.
    Mr. Taylor saunters around the desk, his dusty black wing tips squeaking.
    “You didn’t have much to say to LaTisha,” he says. “What about all that?”
    “I could never dream about, like going to UDC or Howard, or Maryland or wherever,” Cedric says. “It just wouldn’t be worth what I’ve been through.”
    Mr. Taylor nods and oomphs his body into the desk chair next to Cedric, like he’s squeezing into a tuba. “I know there are people you want to prove things to,” he tells the boy in a confidential whisper.
    “NO, NO,” Cedric shakes his head. “Don’t go there. It’s not that.” But Mr. Taylor presses forward. “It’s all right to feel like you want to show people, so long as that’s not all you want, so long as you don’t think that will really change anything. Proving things to the other kids or, let’s say, to your father, won’t make them like you or apologize to you. It won’t make them cheer you on.”
    Mr. Taylor rises with a groan, cleans a few worksheets off the wide black-slate windowsill, and folds shut his grade book, glancing over once as Cedric mulls over his last offering.
    Cedric looks at the teacher for a moment. The mention of Cedric Gilliam, always a lurking presence in his son’s life but rarely spoken of, pricks at Cedric’s rage, as