John With the Perfectly Square Teeth

My body is in Inglewood, but my mind is in my kitchen.

I'm walking up to the Happy Home for Boys in South LA, but I'm thinking about the conversation I had with my roommate while sitting at our dining table a few days before. This has been happening a lot lately, my thoughts drifting and skipping in place and time. Kendra was making a polenta dish, her hands deep in a green bowl, her yellow hair twisted atop her head and held in place with a wooden chopstick.

"Do you ever feel guilty?" she asked me then. "About living in Santa Monica when all your kids live in places like Compton?

I only paused for a beat, swallowing milky tea from the mug in my hands.

"No," I said. "I feel like it's good sometimes to have that separation."

I like Santa Monica mostly because it is usually 15 degrees cooler than the rest of the city. I like the curtain of gray cloud that separates me from the sun in the mornings, moving lazily away from the ocean, in no rush to disappear into the day. I like that I shiver as I step out of the car after work in the evenings, that the air smells a little like the sea the closer you walk toward Main Street.

And the colors. Santa Monica is plum and green and azure. South LA, under the Indian Summer's brash sun, is white, beige - the colors of desert bone or disappearing bars of soap. It's hot, uncomfortable. I dive into my car and toward its stream of air conditioning, cold air from thin black vents.

Like now, approaching this house to meet with a new client, a boy named John. It's 9 o'clock in the morning, but the heat hangs waiting in the air. I'm already moving slowly, hoping to find some relief inside. This is a group home, and group homes always make me shudder a little bit - 6, 8, 10 girls or boys in one house, usually there because they're on Probation or have some sort of problem that makes it difficult to place them in a foster home. The kitchen is usually stocked with generic-brand cereal with names like Cruncheos or Corn Bitz. The furniture looks a few decades old, frayed and tattered. And the kids seem the most unhappy and the least trusting.

But John walks into the living room and smiles big at me. His teeth are perfect white squares. I shake his hand and introduce myself, noticing that his left eye is lazy.

"It's really nice to meet you," he says, squeezing my hand. Later, while staring at my computer screen, I will find out that he is bipolar and is reported to have severe anger issues. But I don't know this yet.

He's wearing grey high-top sneakers and a graphic t-shirt, and the staff member who studied my ID badge suspiciously when I walked in orders him to pull up his jeans. He does, rolling his eyes at me.

We sit down across from each other and I begin filling out paperwork, neatly writing his information in blue ink.

"And when's your birthday, John?" I ask.

"10/25/93," he answers quickly. These kids are accustomed to being identified by their date of birth, and I notice they always answer that way. I would have said October twenty fifth, nineteen ninety-three.

"And what's the name of this group home, again?" I ask. I've never been here before.

"Happy Home for Boys," he replies. "Wanna know a secret though?" He lowers his voice and leans in. "Nobody here is that happy." He smiles at me again, and I grin back.

I begin asking him about his goals, his plans for college, where he sees himself in five years. He gives each question a few moments of thought, although he clearly has big dreams for himself.

"What's one goal you've set for yourself for the future?" I ask, without looking up.

He pauses. "To get out of the system. To finish high school. And graduate from college. And to get a job where I can help people like me." I glance up at him, and his face is determined. Something inside me stirs.

"And what are some skills you have? Things you think you're good at?"

He runs a hand over the arm of the couch. "I can rollerblade real good. And I can garden. And I'm really good at skateboarding."

"Who taught you to garden?" I ask him. He shrugs.

"This lady I used to stay with." A second passes. "Hey, you look like you like to party," he says.

I continue scribbling in the thick packet, shake my head no.

"What do you do then? You sit at home and play Scrabble or something?" he asks. "On a Friday night?"

"I do love Scrabble," I say, keeping my voice flat. Talking about my weekend activities seems inappropriate.

"Who do you play with?" he asks. Before I can answer, he is launching into a story about beating his school English teacher at Scrabble, how astounded she was that he won.

"And you still in college? Like, you live in a little apartment with like, 7 other people?" he asks me.

"John, we really need to finish this paperwork." I smile at him.

His eyes crinkle and he flashes his teeth. "You seem like a really nice person," he says.

"Thank you," I say, my voice softening. "You seem pretty nice yourself. Now, let's keep going with these questions."

After we finish the packet of questions, I give him a series of reading and spelling tests, which cause him to jut out his tongue in concentration. He has difficulty pronouncing gigantic and executive, even though he is starting the 12th grade in a few weeks.

"Okay, we're going to start on the math portion of the test," I tell him. "Each problem is adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing. Please write your answers in simplest form on the line provided. You will have fifteen minutes to complete this portion of the test. I'll let you know when your time is almost up."

I hand him a pencil and pull out my cell phone.

"You starting the timer on your phone?" he asks me.

I look at him. I bought my phone in 2004, in my sophomore year of college.

"Oh, I don't think my phone even has a timer. I'm just looking at the time so I know when you started."

He pulls his black Samsung phone from his pocket and punches in a few buttons. He places it in front of me, the clock counting back from 15:00.

"There you go," he says, the perfectly square teeth visible again.

I smile back. "Thank you."

While he works through the math problems, muttering numbers under his breath, counting on his fingers, I look around the room. There's a shelf of old Encyclopedias from the 80s and black and white photos of Tupac taped to the walls. In the corner, a dry erase board that's a constant in all the group homes I visit - the name of each boy, his Social Worker, his school written in sloppy cursive writing.

When his cell phone beeps and he hands the pencil back to me, I ask to see one of the staff members to sign his medical consent forms. She is sitting at a table in the kitchen, playing Apples to Apples with two other boys. She introduces herself as Miz. Lankershim.

The other two boys, one wearing a Sean John shirt and the other with fat cheeks, are telling John a story about blowing up a condom like a balloon. They say the condom came from a sex-ed class. John glances over at me.

"You guys, do you not notice the two ladies in the room? Have respect for Jennifer and Miz. Lankershim."

Mrs. Lankershim rolls her eyes at me. She's finished signing the forms and I hand John my business card.

"Give me a call if you have any questions," I say. "Otherwise, I'll see you when the program starts in two weeks."

He studies the card in his hand. "And I can call you on this number here? You'll answer?" he asks.

"Yes, of course. Anytime."

He walks me to the door, unlocking the screen and holding it open for me.

"Thanks for coming, Jennifer," he says, with a smile and a wink. "Maybe you'll let me beat you at a game of Scrabble sometime soon."