I asked Tiana if she would tell me more about where she grew up and where she lives now.
She said, "My mom was sick from drugs and booze. My dad was in jail. I did not know him well. I had two sisters and four brothers. The girls in my family did all the cooking and cleaning. I learned to cook rice when I was six years old. If I didn't cook, we didn't eat. We had a tiny kitchen and apartment in an old high-rise in the projects. The projects is another word for low-income housing.
"In the kitchen there was an old stool that I would pull up to the stove and stand on to cook. I carved my name in it with a pocketknife that my Gram gave me. I carried the knife in my sock to school, even though I knew it could get me into trouble." I thought, we must never carry knives to school and always tell a teacher if we see knives or weapons.
"How did you get to school?" I asked. She said, "When I was 7 years old, I learned to ride the subway to visit my Gram. We both lived in the housing projects for low income people, but in different neighborhoods.
"I used to go to visit her to get away from cooking rice."
"Wow," I said. "You rode the subway train all by yourself? I would be afraid to do that. How did you find your way to the right train?"
Again Tiana proved to me that she was 'street smart.' She listened well and had a good memory. She told me that someone helped her ride the subway the first time. After that, she looked for the color of the train routes marked with signs: blue, red, yellow, green, and orange.
Very clever!
Her school was on the red train route. Her Gram lived on the blue train route. She would ride the blue train to 180th Street, and then walk three blocks to her Gram's house. I got the impression that Tiana didn't take the train to school much. She told me she "hooked" out of school a lot, and was not proud of that. I know lots of kids think that hooking school is cool, but it isn't.
I wondered why Tiana hooked school at a young age. Maybe she had to switch trains and would get lost. It's dangerous for little kids to be riding trains by themselves. Or maybe she felt dumb because she could not read like other kids.
Sometimes when we cannot keep up with our classmates, we feel like failures.
I said, "Next week, let's look at your plan and see if we are on the right track to reach your goals."
Tiana nodded and said she would work on her word list and practice sounding out vowels. She looked for books on trains and checked one out.
I watched her and the kids drive away in a clean Goldie. It shined in the sun, as its engine clunked along. I wondered where did they drive to, so I followed them.