All-Bright Court by Connie Rose Porter Read Free Book Online Page B

himself from a particle, or article, or something. His teacher would put a sentence on the board like
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When the black cat crept around the corner of the white fence, the brown and tan spotted dog gave chase.
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    and Isaac would say, “That dog stupid to be chasing a black cat. Don’t he know black cats bad luck?” Then he would be asked to be quiet, to just do his work or leave the room.
    And he was always being asked to draw three-dimensional pictures of boxes and rectangles, and to measure lines, and to find the area of a square.
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If a man has 77 cords of wood, and his neighbor borrows 10 and burns them, only to discover he had 32 cords of wood in his own barn, how many cords would the man and his neighbor each have if the neighbor returned the wood he borrowed?
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    Isaac could not bear it. There were too many numbers and words thrown together. He would start wondering what a cord was, and why the neighbor borrowed wood if he already had wood, and why couldn’t the neighbor borrow more wood than the man had? That was a real test for negative numbers. And why didn’t the neighbor just chop down a tree in the first place, and how could the neighbor return wood that he burned, anyway?
    He was thrown out of school for three days because of negative numbers.
    Isaac knew very well there were negative numbers, but he wasn’t interested in them. The teacher told him to think of them as money.
    â€œThey not money. If we going to talk about money, let’s talk about money.”
    â€œWell, O.K.,” the teacher said. She handed Isaac ten pennies, and Isaac put them in his pants pocket.
    â€œNow let me have them back,” the teacher said, and she put out her hand.
    â€œNaw, man. You a Indian giver. They mines.”
    â€œIsaac, stop this. Work with me on this one. Give me the pennies.”
    Isaac dug into his pocket and retrieved the change.
    â€œSee, now I’m in debt for ten pennies. I started with zero. Now I’m minus ten.”
    â€œThat ain’t right. Them your ten pennies, and you took ’em back. Indian giver,” Isaac said.
    â€œMaybe this will help,” the teacher said. She put the money in his pocket. “Let’s pretend for a minute. Work with me now. Let’s say you owned the pennies—”
    â€œThen I was robbed,” Isaac said. “Talking ’bout give you the money. That’s robbery where I come from.”
    â€œIsaac, be serious. You have to let me help you.”
    Isaac sighed. “All right.”
    â€œNow, you owned the money, and then
loaned
them to me, and I spent them. Since I started with zero, I would owe you ten less than I have. Let’s say then that my husband gave me twenty pennies, and I paid you back, how many would I have?” the teacher asked.
    â€œTen,” Isaac said.
    â€œVery good!” the teacher bellowed.
    But Isaac would have none of it. In a fit, he tore down the number line over the chalkboard and ripped it up. “Isaac crazy,” the students screamed, and then he got three days’ suspension.
    But as long as Isaac was quiet, his teachers didn’t bother him. He asked to be excused almost every period to go to the bathroom, or get a drink, or blow his nose. He roamed the halls.
    Down in the bowels of the school Isaac saw enormous furnaces that roared like dragons. In another part of the basement he found cots and cans of food, gigantic silver cans covered with dust. They were big enough to be eaten by monsters, he thought. Why, a monster could eat the cans whole.
    Once a year the whole school went to visit the cots and cans. Isaac loved the air-raid drill. In case of a war, everyone would stay down there and eat the canned food and sleep on the cots. But there were only about fifty cots, and three hundred people could fit in the shelter. A yellow and black sign at the entrance to the shelter told you that. Isaac knew there were more than five hundred