Downward Dog

"I love modulars."  Mowliid announced randomly.

I gazed at the bright eyed boy, small for his age, with consistently the cleanest clothes I think I have ever seen.  Why he loved the trailer at school was a mystery.
"Why do you love modulars?"
"THEY are good buildings."
"Okay...."
"AND, they can go on a truck."
"And be moved to a new location?"
"YES." he answered definitively, a look of satisfaction on his face for having explained himself fully. 

I have nearly completed a Soberuary, or a booze-free January.  At times, I feel like the Seinfeld episode when George Costanza gave up sex and became hyper-intelligent.  Other times, I feel overstimulated by the extra activities I do in my new-style quest for healthy living. 

I stared at a book that leaned against the white board in one of my classes.  Its cover had one of those famous Dust Bowl photos of skinny, rugged white people, looking strained.  The title, MIGRANT WOMAN, was emblazoned across the front.  I wondered why people viewed poor white migrant workers as valiant but poor brown migrant workers as takers. 

"Did you show them what child abuse was?" one of my students asked, snickering.
"Don't make me come over there...." I responded, laughing.
"Are you going to turn the car around?"
"Don't make me turn this car around, I'll give you something to cry about...."
"Do you want something to cry about?"
The whole class was laughing.  They love my stories about popular, parent sayings from the seventies. 

Next, I'd like them to try one of those old metal slides in the summer while wearing shorts. 

The Day of Kings

"When does the tree come down?"
"You have to wait until after Epiphany.  At least Catholics do."
"What's Epiphany?"
"The day the three kings arrived with weird shit like mir for the child-God Jesus."

"I saw a picture of my mom IN FRONT OF A CHRISTMAS TREE."  Shanika informed me during tutoring, eyes wide.
I blanked for a moment.  And?
"She used to celebrate it...."  Shanika added, in a whisper.
She says that they don't celebrate any holidays at all anymore, but that the lack of commemoration is religiously based.  Sometimes I wonder if it's actually poverty based, or a complete rejection of material things in a quest for purity, influenced by their circumstances.

Maryan showed me a small, clear stone with some sort of object in the middle of it.  It was the second time in two days that she had shown it to me.  I knew she loved it, but I couldn't figure out why.  She would only tell me that her sister gave it to her.  This time, she held the stone up so that I could get a better look at it.
A small, pink imprint of a baby's foot was in the middle of the stone.
"It's for the baby."  she told me, her mysterious eyes locked on mine.
"For the baby that died."
She turned the stone over and over in her hand, then quickly obscured it somewhere under her hijab.

The circular machine arched over my head.  It made a swooshing noise over and over that reminded me of the contraption in "Contact" that Jodie Foster tried to go to space in.  My right arm was bandaged from a blood extraction.  An IV with a strange, coiled tube extended from my left arm.
"Okay, I'm going to start, and I'll stay here to monitor.  You will notice a metallic taste in the back of your throat, you will flush and you will feel like you have to urinate.  Don't worry, you won't.  Here we go."
He activated the IV, paused, and left the room.
"Don't breathe.  Don't swallow."  an automated, authoritative voice commanded.
I began to roll backward through the tube-like machine.
I stared straight up, watching the radioactive symbol on the machine begin to glow brightly as I passed through the tube.

"Rafa has died.  He will be buried the sixth of January."  Rafa.  Probably our closest friend in Tijuana.  Why?  How?  My breath caught in my throat.  He was gone.  Rafa was gone.  It seemed impossible.  They were burying him on the Day of Kings.  The Day of Kings.

I ran through the Housing Authority, chasing a runaway ball.  The air was almost Spring-like after days of below freezing temperatures.  The kids cheered and laughed, waiting for my return with the ball.  As I rounded the fence and down the hill to the ball, I realized a huge smile had spread across my face.   I couldn't have stopped it if I tried.

"Thank you for the apartments, thank you for the apartments, thank for the apartments...." repeated over and over in my head as I turned and ran back to the kids with the ball, hair sailing in the breeze.