"Does it hurt?!" someone asked.
"No, no, I'm just afraid to look."
I let go of my finger. Blood smeared my hands. They all gasped again. The kids in that class can be real assholes. I'm surprised they don't drink blood. One grabbed the first aid kit and put a band aid on my finger. Another kid, an especially violent one, bolted out of the classroom. I had no idea why. Looking for a pitchfork to finish the job? He ran back in, holding a small, wet paper towel to clean the blood off of my hand. I was surprised. It was actually one of the nicest moments I've had with that group in a year and a half of teaching them. I always knew that they needed to see blood.
Dau looked beautiful. And excited. More than excited, as if she couldn't stop smiling, her perfect white teeth shining against her dark skin. I have always loved her. She was in my class during my second semester of teaching. I taught her again the following year. She insisted on having my cell phone number on the last day of class. I was reluctant, but gave it to her, though she was a student. I was so glad I did. I followed her through graduation and the frightening period when I lost her. I always remember standing in the nearest "town" in the Arizona desert that had a cell phone signal and calling my old principal, the one I hated, to tell her that Dau was in trouble, she needed help, her financial aid for college had fallen through and she didn't know what to do. The principal that claimed to mentor her because it would look good to have a Sudanese mentee. I couldn't do anything and my principal didn't do anything and I couldn't find Dau when I came back to Atlanta.
I clicked play on the parranda You Tube video for the kids learning about Puerto Rican Christmas. "Will METH make you do this?" it asked, showing a guy with no shirt on sitting on a cruddy bed. "How much will I get for this?" he asked the man unzipping his pants. Oh shit. I put my hand over the light shining from the projector and tried to get the volume down. "There's a guy with no shirt on in the video!" some kid exclaimed. Great.
"It looks like the seller is going to accept your offer, he just has to return it in writing!" our realtor announced. I went out to my car. It made a horrible noise and became difficult to steer. I pushed on to the beer store, because I am dedicated like that. "I've heard that new power steering is really expensive" my sister stated, plunking down on my decrepit porch furniture and opening a beer. Great. The idea of having to buy a car terrifies me. I have never even had a car payment. What the fuck was I doing buying a house?
I looked at Dau as she rode in the backseat of my sister's car as we drove her to the airport to catch a flight to Australia. She hadn't seen her sister since they left Sudan and got scattered across the world. She hadn't been abroad in more than a decade, when she took a boat up the Red Sea from Sudan to Egypt, got trapped there in September 11th, Arabic as a primary language limbo and finally arrived in the U.S. via Germany where she was placed in the public school system without knowing a word of English or even the Roman alphabet. As she walked through the airport, her white teeth shining and her dark skin accented by the red leather jacket she wore, the names of her nieces and nephews that she would soon meet air brushed on her long nails, total strangers were smiling at her.
They couldn't avoid the light.
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