Super Flower Blood Moon

I drove slowly down the street near my school, looking for Prem's house.  I parked across the street, put my mask on and stepped hesitantly from the car.  I had a bag full of drift souvenirs for Prem:  a t-shirt, hat, programs, stickers....even a piece of rubber.  I was going to leave it on the front porch, when something beside the garage caught my eye.  Prem jumped up and sprinted across the front yard then bolted straight across the street.
"Prem!"  I exclaimed.
"You could have gotten hit by a car!"
"I don't care...." he replied in his subversive whisper, his face filled with joy.  

"What happened to your eye?"  I asked Soe, after picking her up from her classroom.  A sizeable scab was resting right below her lower eyelashes.

"My mom got mad and threw her phone at me."  she responded, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

Kaw shot out of his classroom.

"Ms. Wagner, yesterday Paw Ku cried."  he whispered furtively.

"Yes, she cried." Bway Pa seconded, a concerned look on her face.

Paw Ku nodded.

"I'll tell you in the trailer."

"So, yesterday that sub we had started asking us questions after you brought us back.  Questions about where we are from.....I told him the soldiers were chasing us and that we ran....we ran to the Americans and they told my parents $2000 each for them and that I could come for free."

I stared back.  

"It is still happening."  Bway Pa added.

"The are killing people again."

The Myanmar coup has been going on for a while now.  I always wonder how both my Burmese and Karen students are taking it, but don't want to prod them to discuss it.  But, it happens anyway. 

Career day was quickly approaching.

"Me," Mashia said in response, "I just want to be a socialite."  

"Look, Aniyah, this is not an episode of Cribs!  Stop giving everyone a tour of your house!"

I stared into the computer screen at my second grade class.  Their homeroom teacher was unraveling a bit.  We all are.  

I stood on the corner watching the kids walk the rest of the way home.  The school buses roared by, but one of them was filled with screams.  The bus screeched to a halt and I saw two girls in the aisle, fist fighting.  Mya peered through the window of the bus, smiled, and held up her award for being the best music student.  The girls continued fighting behind her.

"I am going to Indiana this summer!"  Soe exclaimed.

"Wow, that's far!  Why are you going to Indiana?"  I asked.

"We are going to see the cops."  she responded. 

"My dad is going to build me a bamboo house."  Paw Ku said, a big smile on her face.  We looked at various pictures of bamboo huts and commented on which was the coolest.

"He can build them really fast.  After the army would burn ours down, he would just build it again."

"I like any politician that supports LGBTQ rights."  Bway Pa announced definitively.

"That's great, Bway Pa, you are an ally."  I answered.

"Nah, I'm not an ally.  I'm pan." she responded, a satisfied look on her face.

"And, on Sunday, blood was on my pants.  I was wearing white.  I tried to make it go away but it just kept coming."  she continued.

"Oh god, Bway Pa, I am so sorry."

"I didn't know what was happening...." she responded, and then told the ESOL class the horrors of her first period.  The boys, Kaw and Jorge, listened attentively, but were clearly baffled by what she was talking about.  

"I am VERY UNCOMFORTABLE."  she announced at the end.

"These pads suck."

"And this thing is going to happen to Paw Ku, too."

Paw Ku looked back at me, blankly.

"Okay, so we'll start with the electric slide and then do a Soul Train."

I was confused, but knew that this end of the school year video involved dancing, which I don't do.  I was only there because our principal wanted us to do it.  

The line dance started and I was lost.  I kept getting where no one was in front of me and I had no idea what to do.  It was humiliating.  I finally caught sight of one of the lunch ladies, watching me with amusement.

"I need guidance!" I scream-whispered.

"Don't worry,"  she responded.

"I got you."

Chaos in the Big Sea

"Prince Philip died." my royal watcher, Mashia, announced in a Google Classroom message.
I went to her classroom to pull her out.  We had already talked extensively about the Meghan/Harry situation in previous weeks.  She is Team William/Kate.
"Who wouldn't want to be a royal?"  she asked with a shrug during one of our previous conversations.  We had also remarked on the appearance of Prince Philip before he died, breaking into uncontrollable inappropriate laughter because of his freakish, cryptlike-alive appearance.  
As soon as she exited the classroom, she looked me directly in the eyes.
"I thought," she said before pausing, "that he would be mum...mummified."  
We both started laughing so hard I was crying.  I knew right away that she meant whatever those weird, embalmed glass cases are called that house the viewable bodies of Chairman Mao and Lenin and Ho Chi Minh.  I don't know why it was so funny, but this little third grader just has a way of cracking me the fuck up.  

"Where did the Expo go?" I asked Paw Ku.  

"It fell back there, in that crack in the bookcase."  she responded.

We both dug our fingers into the crack by the floor.

"I think I felt fur."  she commented, casually.

I ripped my hand out.  

I walk the kids that walk home from school up the hill in the afternoons.  I watch them until they get to the corner and then I walk back to school.  It's not the worst afternoon duty.  My crew is small, because most of our students opted not to return to the school building during COVID.  As we walked one day, a man came out of the overgrown woods around the school, the woods filled with old tires and trash and snakes.  He was carrying a large golf club, swinging it, while bouncing a tennis ball.  He had on long shorts with socks pulled to his knees and shower shoes.  He came toward us.  These kids aren't stupid and they side-eyed me with looks like this guy is janky.  We kept walking.  We got to the top of the hill and I turned my back on him and told the kids to walk home.  I wasn't comfortable, but I figured if he cracked anyone in the head I would prefer it was me instead of them.  

I took the day off and drove nearly an hour outside of town to got to the Drift races, without Prem.  The weather was clear and cool.  As soon as I got there, I saw that he had already blown up my phone with messages.

"Ms. Wagner, are you there?  YOU DID NOT GO TO SCHOOL, DID YOU???"

As fast as I could, I got in front of a Formula Drift sign and made him a video, reassuring him that I DID NOT GO TO SCHOOL, and to get ready, because the videos and photos were coming.   As soon as I got to the actual track, I felt my phone buzzing.  He was calling me on Instagram's version of FaceTime and he had Kaw on the call.

"They're coming, Prem, they're coming!"  I yelled over the noise, before turning my phone around so that he could see the twin cars racing down the hill and breaking and drifting with smoke clouding the whole air.  

"That is really cool...." I heard Prem whisper into the phone.  

I felt ridiculous when tears filled my eyes, but I just kept them focused on the race and kept filming.  

My fourth graders ran out to our trailer, picking weed flowers the whole time.  The made head bands, rings, even a head band and a bracelet for Lola.  We all put them on and read our book, with magic everywhere.  

*Title from House of Love, Christine