Reading with Patrick

Kuo returned to Patrick’s family’s house one evening to pick up the cigarettes. His mother, Mary, was there asked about Patrick’s court date, while holding Cherish. Kuo told her about the delay to February. Mary told Kuo that Patrick described Kuo as an angel watching over the family. She also said that she believed that God was watching over them.

Mary talked to Kuo about her new job as a cook at the retirement home. Mary described her boss as a sweet man, but the other women she worked with didn’t trust him because he was so good to them, even giving them a two-dollar raise. Mary told Kuo about another boss the women had had who called them the n-word and how obsequious they had been toward this woman. Mary said that Black folks around Helena expected to be treated like dogs.

Kuo asked how Mary felt after Patrick’s arrest. Mary said that she didn’t sleep for weeks afterward. Then, she met Marcus’s mother—Ms. Carly, who only lived a few blocks away. Ms. Carly talked about how violent Marcus sometimes was with her. Patrick, on the other hand, had never been violent, though James liked to see him behave that way. Mary suspected that the fight ensued because Patrick “was trying to impress his father” (187).

Kuo recalled that there were two stories about the knife: Patrick said that it was on the porch, while the police wrote that he went into the house to get it. Mary insisted that things happened for a reason. Patrick was hanging around with a boy named Harrison whose entire family was addicted to heroin. Kuo thought about how Patrick’s uncle killed his great-aunt during a drug high. In Mary’s eyes, prison was a better fate than addiction.

Kuo next went to see Rob who reported that Marcus’s blood alcohol level that night was over three times the legal limit. Rob asked Kuo to go to the police station to get Marcus’s records. While reading through them, she saw that Marcus had been picked up for a series of minor infractions. In all of them, he had been drunk and aggressive. Rob recognized the last name. Rob once defended Ms. Carly, who robbed a house with one of her sons and had taken a DVD player.

Kuo reported the news about Marcus’s blood alcohol level during her next visit to Patrick. She asked if Patrick thought about calling the police. He treated this like an absurd question; all the police in Helena did was smoke marijuana and deal drugs. Additionally, they knew James, which prejudiced them against Patrick.

The new year passed. During the Martin Luther King Day holiday, Helena had a parade. A store posted a sign saying that businesses would be closed for Martin Luther King and Robert E. Lee’s birthdays. Twenty-five years earlier, Arkansas passed a law combining both days into a state holiday. When Kuo asked Patrick about Dr. King, he compared the civil rights leader to Jesus. Kuo worried that he didn’t know about the many ordinary, nameless people who were essential to the Civil Rights Movement.

The following day, Kuo brought in a copy of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Patrick didn’t know who Douglass was and didn’t know when the Civil War had started. He did know, however, that the war was about slavery. He read the preface by William Lloyd Garrison and was surprised that a White man from that time cared so much about Black people. Patrick read about Douglass’s admission of ignorance and about not knowing his mother. Kuo worried that Patrick would be bored by the book and that the language would sound too antiquated or stilted, but he was absorbed and read half of the volume within one week. Later, he wrote a list comparing himself to a slave. He noted his ignorance, being in jail, being deprived of things, how difficult it was to be Black and successful in America, and how hardly anyone cares when Black people are killed.

When they read the passage in which Douglass described his initial instruction under Mrs. Auld, Patrick told Kuo that this reminded him of their relationship. While reading the book, Patrick practiced writing passages in his own words.

As Kuo packed up to leave, she told him that she picked up cigarettes for him at the store. Patrick asked for the packet at the house. Kuo wondered what the difference was and became suspicious. Later, she went to Patrick’s house and obtained the package he wanted. For the first time, she noticed that the package had been opened and resealed with Scotch tape. When she opened it, marijuana leaves flitted out. She worried about getting admitted to the California Bar if they ever learned about this. Her friend Danny advised her to stay away from James and to destroy the package.

The next day, Kuo angrily told Patrick that she found out about his ruse. After expressing her anger at him, she rose and left, leaving his homework on the table. She returned the next morning and accepted his work when he handed it to her. She apologized for losing her temper the day before and admitted that she couldn’t relate to anything about Patrick’s situation. Patrick told her about how his father ran a dope house when he was little and went to prison. However, his father was also good to him, and he was present. He taught Patrick how to fix things and how to draw. Kuo resolved to stop bringing Patrick cigarettes, and he no longer asked for them.

Patrick and Kuo continued to read Douglass. They reached the portion of the narrative when his education did, indeed, make him sullen. When they read about masters getting slaves drunk on gin as a trick to make them discontented with their freedom, Patrick groaned in response. Kuo had not anticipated that Patrick would respond so viscerally to Douglass’s narrative. Patrick began to take on more of Douglass’s aspect in Kuo’s eyes: reading in jail, without a table or a light, enforcing discipline in himself while everyone at the jail waited for him to break.