She looked at me a little blankly.
"Did your family come here on a plane from Africa?" Femke asked.
"Yes...." Agnieska answered.
"Mine too."
I returned to the Housing Authority for the first time in a year and a half. The community center has been completely remodeled. I knew it was going to happen, but was shocked by how nice it was. It's beyond comprehension, rivals Middlebury. I came in and saw half of the amount of children that we normally have in our after-school program. And, they had all aged. A lot.
The fire drill thing came on, over and over again at school. They kept telling us to disregard it, until they told us to pick up everything we own and evacuate immediately. I grabbed both of my computers, personal and theirs and the rest of my shit and got outside. We lined the kids up and they told us to push them back to the fence line. We heard sirens. I stood with my kids and watched the firemen enter the building. It was a gas leak.
Lola is walking on three legs, and her skin is scabbed and horrific. She is on so much medicine that I monitor whenever she pees for fear of kidney damage.
I see kids walk around school that I used to know, crying. They aren't taking basic directions from their teachers. My second graders don't know the alphabet. They're like zombies.
I thought the Housing Authority kids would be better off because of the district they live in, but I have kids writing random letters down, lacking any kind of phonetic awareness, in fourth grade. And, they are hateful. Kids I know, coming from families of which I have taught every member. They want me to eat shit. It makes me want to leave. I'm exhausted, too. By my third day at the Housing Authority, I saw Aazim and Habiba enter. They are in sixth grade now. I remember March, 2020 when I told them not to worry about anything and that we would be back in a couple of weeks. The looked at me awkwardly and waved their hands, without raising them, keeping them locked by their sides.
Mashia is stuck in Tunisia. It's an odd story, something about the family being trapped there because of COVID. I wave at her through the screen, half a world away.
"We are in a code three lock down."
I was standing in the cafeteria, with nearly sixty children. They started screaming and throwing chairs and trampling each other.
"Go to the lab!' my former teacher-roommate yelled.
Code three lockdown means that there is an identified threat, inside the school. For novices, we are talking Columbine. Bway Pa, Paw Ku, Alberto and Jorge were in that room. The rest of my children were spread out, throughout the building. Angel stood, baffled with paperwork I had just handed him, alone in the cafeteria. I guided him to the lab. Kaw was in the bathroom. I hoped he was safe.
We herded them into the lab, while one of their teachers sprinted from the trailer because she knew that her children were in that cafeteria.
We got them down on the ground. Many of them lacked masks, because the had been eating lunch. We passed out as many as we had.
Police cars lined the front of the school, and at the house across the street where the shots were fired. It's the closest house to our school and five to seven shots were fired while two teachers and twenty-five first graders walked along the school, in a line.
An additional second grade class saw our community member shoot a dog to death, in her front yard, while they were at recess.
I heard a little knock, at the trailer door.
It was Bway Pa.
"Hey, Dr. Lewis wants her charger back."
"Tell her I put it back where I left it."
"Okay."
"Here, get in here, I have a treat for you. Today sucked."
She waved at me while eating her Swiss Cake Roll, as the buses roared away.
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