Born to Run

I felt something strange on my leg.  I looked down and saw the feral child, the one that clearly has problems, the one that climbs under her desk and stays there during the first days of kindergarten.  Her tongue was out, connected to my shin.  She screams.  If you ask her to do the slightest thing, she refuses.
I laughed in my head at a professor I had recently that didn't know what EBD meant, but pretended to.  I was looking at it. Then, I wiped hand sanitizer all over my leg.  I'm already sick.

"Do the owls still come to your back yard?"  one of Karen students whispered to me.  I have to push-in to a lot of my classes now.
"Yes...they came this summer...." I whispered back.

I heard a growling noise, like the devil.  It was coming from the kindergartener in front of me.

I drove to school in the beginning morning light.  I saw a dog, dead, lying next to the road.  Its chest was white and its sides were medium brown.  It was dead.  She was dead.  He was dead.  I tried to re-direct my thoughts.  I tried to think to heaven and hope that whatever happened to him was quick and painless.

"Do you ever hear Ms. Patrick screaming?" my students asked me.
"No, and I'm surprised by that.  I have seen students crying outside her trailer, though."  I responded.

Hiccuping, chocking, bawling.  Feral, hollow screams.  Back by the woods where the trailers are, where the snakes come out of the creek and lie on the black top.  While she screamed 'crybaby' at them and demeaned them.  Called them 'boy', asked if they were 'man enough' fight her.  I saw that.  And, I will never let that happen to you.  I'll fight her myself if I have to.

"Ms. Wagner, I know you don't want to hear this...."
"It's okay, mami, tell me...."
"I saw a dog that looks like yours, looks like Lola, on the side of the road today...."

"I saw her too, Patricia.  It was a sad thing.  Let's hope the best for her..., we have to think of other things."

I watched people washing the ancient "warrior" Native American mascot painting off of the front of the school window.

"Why do you think they are doing that?"  Alejandro asked me.
"Why do you?" I questioned back.
"I have no idea."
"I might be wrong, but, I guess that a lot of people find using humans as mascots inappropriate.  But again, I might be wrong."
"Yeah, " he answered,
"who knows?"

Love is Strange

"When I saw the pool, I thought it would be cold. But Vaaman told me it was heated.  I am upper middle class.  From India.  And I felt guilty.  Later, I decided I would own that pool."

I am back in school.  I try to keep my heart and mind high.  I sat down for the first faculty meeting breakfast, after getting the only rudimentary vegan food available, which I am not asshole about because thankfully something was there, when our principal instructed us to pray.  That, I will not do.  I'll take your milk-fat laden watered down grits, a piece of bread and a cup of black coffee, but I will not pray to god. Or do the pledge, either.  

I got a trailer.  It has a metal outer-casing and walls made of cardboard.  I have not had my own teaching space in eight years.  I was thrilled.  It was everything I wanted.  I ripped the old butcher paper off of the walls, knowing that there would be holes underneath.  I scrubbed the white board, though permanent marker never comes off. I dragged 1950s school furniture all over the place until the custodians got mad.  I put it all back because they have a harder job than I do. I scrubbed and scrubbed.  And then, a random county worker showed up and fixed the hole in the floor.  And a second man walked in, Vietnamese, saw me with my international students, and repaired all of the fucked up lights in the ceiling and put covers on them, so that none of the kids would be hit by falling tubes.

"My dad....isn't a criminal...." the sobbing child stammered, face red and covered in tears.  I looked at the T.V. and wondered for a minute why Maria was on it, then realized the terrorized girl wasn't my student.  

I was pretty jazzed about the trailer and put a picture of it up online.  A girl I've known, for really a lot of my life, responded to my picture of the trailer:  That looks like my elementary school.

Back in the way back days, the 80s, every middle class parent locked up their kids into "rehabs" if they were struggling.  It happened to my sister.  My first boyfriend, when I was in tenth grade, had gone through more than one.  And this nice lady, the girl that I've known, that is the same age as I am, was put in one of those "rehabs" when she was twelve.  It's a long story.  It's going to take me a minute to explain it to you, Kitty.  

And, she recognized the beat up trailer.  It must be at least forty years old.  And she was snatched from there soon after.  A child. 

I am struggling with my work load.  I sat in the kindergarten classroom, watching a boy who is not on my caseload.  His hair was tied up tight, and he pulled up his alphabet strip and bit it.  He looked like the Grinch.  

I cleaned the trailer.  I store snacks in there, because I am sort of trying to work on myself.  I put them in a plastic box, fearing rats. 

"You're in the trailer now?"  a co-worker asked me.

"Yaaas.  It the bomb."  I responded.

'What do ya think about snakes?'

I stopped.  What the fuck are you talking about?  Our principal took the stage.  There is a creek behind the trailers.  We have snakes.

"So I  ran behind the whole place and put snake be gone all over, but,  be careful!"

I can't do this.  

I tip toed through the Cafetorium, trying not to fuck up the custodians' work.  I saw my main man, Carl.  

"Gosh, this it the calm before the storm," I mentioned in passing.

"You just gotta learn to dance in the rain."  he responded,

And I will.  I will.  I will.  I will.