Blue Valentine

They were swinging, hard.  Like all fist fights, everything was fine until it was not, and when it was not, you knew it.

I hadn't been around too many fist fights until I started teaching.  In high school teaching, they could be pretty awful.  Blood on the walls, people pinned to the floors, mayhem.  Threats of even more violence, things that go home on the bus and to the neighborhoods, guns, group attacks.

We walked back from the city-run auditorium, shepherding our kids to the Center after they practiced their Black History performance.  It is a joyous time that has filled me with pride for the past two years.  It is enlightening and celebratory, a presentation of African-American contribution that has often gone uncelebrated.

I heard something familiar, something unwanted, and started to run.
They were going to hurt each other.  My favorite fourth grader, who was now in sixth, and our troubled fifth grader had erupted in a brawl.  The only other adult close by was another woman, and she was trying to pull them apart.  They are large boys, and they were angry.
I yelled their names, knowing I wouldn't grab either of them because I wouldn't be able to separate them.  A mysterious man from the community ran in, and grabbed Jiinow by the waist, pulling him off.
"Go to the Center!" Ms. Harmon yelled at Jiinow.
"Take Mumar with you," she instructed.
"Mumar, let's go, come with me, you're not in trouble, but I need you to come...."
I know him, and I know that he is not sound.  He growled.  They were both crying, faces pulled with rage.  I knew what he would do, that time he ran away from the school, flight, flight, flight...
"An adult is speaking to you...." the mysterious man said lowly.
He ran.
Their enraged faces flashed in my mind, over and over again. The tears, the humiliation.  The abject pain.

"I'm going to Saudi Arabia."  Anward announced the next morning.
"To the Haj."
"You're kidding, that's amazing!"
"I will get to smell the stone," he announced, peppering his words with perfectly pronounced Arabic words that adding a flavor to his description.
"But you know, I'm a Kurd.  My Arabic sucks.  I hope it's okay."

"I might just need to go on a junket...."  my boss at the Center announced, as we walked back from the Black History performance the following day.
"I don't have plans for the vacation, but I really might need to take a junket somewhere...."