Free All the Wild Children by Josh Stallings

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    My mother is coming up in the world.  She has rented us a faux-Tudor house on the good side of town.  We are driving on University Avenue headed east.  Past the gracious sprawling homes with park like gardens.  Round the bend towards the Bayshore freeway - Whiskey Gulch is just before the overpass. 
    Neon liquor store signs sing siren songs to the boat deck walking drunks.
    East Palo Alto is a world away.  And just across the interstate.  Eight concrete lanes from one of the nicest cities in America is one of its most notorious ghettos.  By 1977 it will beat out Detroit for the title of Murder Capitol, USA.  In the fall of 1973 it is just the place my big brother chose to go to school.
    Through the windshield Black faces stare out of all the other cars.  Black faces stare from the sidewalks.  Why did I agree to go to Ravenswood?  Who’s great plan was that?              
    Reverse integration, that’s what they call it.  Take the best teachers from the district, give them synthesizers and scuba diving equipment.  Ship a bunch of White kids in and see what happens.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out this plan has a few major flaws.  The most glaring being that in 1973 there are no good jobs waiting across the freeway for young Black men, and they know it.  They know it every time a cop rousts them for crossing the bridge.  They can see it in every old lady who clutches her purse to her chest when they move down University Avenue.  They can see it, and it pisses them off.  They know being White is a free pass.  That pisses them off too.  Now toss a bunch of White kids into their school, who do you think just might become the target of all that justified rage?  Yeah, great fucking plan.  Send the kids to integrate a world the adults are unwilling to. 
    1973, it all sounds good when the counselor pitches it.  Best equipment, best teachers.  I am in.  Truth is, if they had said it was hell I still would go.  Lark is there. 
    “I’ll pick you up at three.”
    “Aren’t you…”
    “First day’s bullshit.  I’ll see you at three.”
    “You’re cutting?”
    “No, no.  Field trip.  Get your ass in there.”  And he’s gone.  Kids swirl around the entrance.  Slapping five.  Shouting.  Shoving.  I’m the only White face in a sea of shades of brown.  KSOL flows from parked cars and ghetto blasters.  Curtis Mayfield i s singing Little Child for the whole town to hear.  No need to turn it down, Bayshore freeway drowns the music out before it reache s the rich banks of University Avenue.
    “Watch where the fuck you walking!”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You sure are.”  Laughter.  Then stares.
    Don’t make eye contact.
    “What you looking at White boy?”
    “Nothing.”  Eyes down.  Pulse racing. 
    A large yellow bus pulls into the lot.  Scared White faces look out the windows.  An informal line the suburbanites cling together.  The locals push in on them.  Laughing at the pale scared invaders. 
    “Josh?”  I flinch.  Regain cool.  Hope no one saw it.
    A boy dressed in a Pendleton shirt and hiking boots, touches my arm. 
    “Peter.”  Our friendship won’t survive the ninth grade.
    “Cool T-shirt.” 
    “How was Maine?”
    “Cool, my dad’s new girlfriend is a bitch.”  Our eyes dart.  Our hearts jackrabbit.  We struggle to keep it breezy.  A bell blasts.  I almost jump out of my skin.  A lanky Black kid laughs at me.  He is James.  He will be my friend later.  He will die in prison before he is twenty-one.  He is a good kid. 
     
    Across the parking lot, Lark leans on the Ford, smoking Kools, talking shit to a couple older Black guys.  He doesn’t look over at me.
    “You know where we go?”  Peter is starting to look paler than normal. 
    “They’ll tell us I guess.”  Like misaligned magnets, repulsion pushes the kids apart as the segregated sea moves into Ravenswood.
     
    “Get the fuck out of my