You Make Me Feel Like Dancing

As I walked toward the market after parking the car, I noticed a man sort of hanging out of the window of the car next to mine.  I thought he might be about to ask directions.

"Hey!"  he called.

"Next time park slower!"

Park....slower?  I mentally asked myself.  How do you park slow?

"I got two kids in the car!"

"Okay."  I responded and continued walking.

"AFTER YOU TWO GET DONE SCISSOR FUCKING!!!!"  he shrieked, face red with rage while he tore away in his minivan.  

"What was that?" my sister asked, walking up beside me.

"I think it's a reference to lesbian sex."  I responded.

"Men always trying to get us to do that."  she commented, and we continued walking toward the store.   

"How long should I wait until I walk or move furniture onto the new floor?"  I asked the man that had been repairing the trailer floor for most of the morning.   I asked him in Spanish, telling him apologetically that I was trying to get a little practice in.  He actually seemed happy to not have to wrestle with English and engaged in a lengthy conversation that ended with him telling me that he was undocumented and from Honduras.  Only his wife and kids were here in Georgia; the rest of his family was still back there.  Then, he told me that he will probably never be able to see them again.  

"I don't have a driver's license,"  he mentioned.

"I can't get one in Georgia, but I am very careful.  It's the bad people that give all of us a bad name, make people want us to leave."

No, I thought, it's pure xenophobia.  And, a complete lack of appreciation for what you do for this country.  The school district couldn't find enough workers to repair our buildings and started hiring contractors.  From what I am seeing, the contractors are predominately men like the guy that fixed my trailer floor:  hard working and undocumented.  I thanked him when he was leaving and then put my face flat down on my desk the minute after he closed the door.  

"Have you seen this?"  the text from my neighbor questioned, accompanied by a picture of one of the limbs on our massive oak tree, split and hanging by a thread.

"No!  It must have just happened!"  I scream-texted.

"It just fell."  he answered, accompanied by a picture of the giant limb spiked right in the middle of the street.

We started driving home.  As I got to the street behind my house, I saw firetrucks pulling up and blocking the street off.  We drove around the block.  The limb was huge and resting on the power lines in front of the house on the other side of the street.  I sat there in the pouring rain staring at it, unsure what to do.  

"If you could be eating your favorite food right now, what would it be?"  I asked Yaaz as part of my beginning of the year icebreakers.

"Nachos and scrambled eggs."  he answered, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.  

"Hey, that new kid of yours, the one who barely speaks English?"  Ms. Kent began.

Hot Rod, I thought.

"Yeah?"  I answered.

"Well, he let off some words when he was leaving school, cursing."  

I laughed a little.

"Like what, ass or something?  Poop?"

"BITCH.  MOTHER FUCKER.  You should have heard him, screaming it right in front of the front door during dismissal."

Great.  

I walked out of the back door and toward the trailer.  A Spanish-speaking couple that had been power washing the school was outside, painting the exterior doors.   Their elementary-age daughter was with them, in the middle of the school day, painting a door.  

*Photo, Doll's Head Trail

*Title, Leo Sayer

Socorro

I opened the back door of the house, tired, and the whole yard was wet with rain.  Lola darted out.  I heard the birds that live in the bushes squawking and started running.  Lola had one of the birds in her mouth.  A baby.  I screamed for her to drop it and she stood there, confused.  I brought her back inside and sat inside myself, afraid to go out and see what was happening.  I finally went out there and saw a baby bird, dead, with its mouth open and clouded eyes staring toward the sky.  I had to pick it up.  I was freaking out.  I got a file folder and closed my eyes while I drove it up under the bird's dead body.  I stared upward, so I wouldn't have to see it crumble. I looked at our fence line, where all the other birds were staring at me, hoping to peck my eyes out.  

"Your pulses seem great!"  the guy that gives me acupuncture exclaimed. 
"I'm sorry, that's impossible.  They should be screaming HELP ME."

I'd been painting our kitchen.  I had a ten week summer break this year.  I wanted some sort of balance between enjoying myself and getting things done.  And then, in late June, I put painting the kitchen on my docket.  I thought it might take a week.  It took a week to clear out every dish and piece of food, shelf and blind, as well as scrub everything down.  The rest is a blur.  Scrubbing, painting, contact paper.  Laying on my stomach painting woodwork.  Watching Alec and my sister precariously balanced on books and counter tops, trying to get a clean line of paint on the ceiling.  I honestly don't even want to talk about it because it was so horrible.  I would open my eyes in the morning and want to climb under the bed.  The whole house was a disaster.  If we wanted a fork we'd have to walk through multiple rooms, looking for it.  Our coffee maker was balanced on a chair by the TV.  I forbad any type of cooking in the kitchen after I went through the horror of scrubbing grease.  For approximately four weeks, I did nothing but scrub and paint the kitchen.  I remember taking one day off.  When it was finally done, and again, I can' t even talk about the details without freaking out, I only recall tip toeing through the kitchen and marveling at pulling open a door and seeing exactly what I needed laying inside.  I only recently allowed hot food to be prepared in there, after we got a new hood installed.

And then, one week later, school started.  I felt sort of chill.  I came in, pretty cool.  I picked up my badge and my key to the trailer and walked out back, greeting co-workers.  I unlocked the door to the trailer and hesitated, because where I was about to put my foot had no floor, just joists.  I jumped over the floor-less area and surveyed the situation:  all of the classroom furniture and my boxes of stuff were crammed in one corner.  Multiple parts of the floor were missing, as was part of the wall, that had been replaced with plywood.  I walked through and dragged a paint bucket to a safe part of the floor and turned it upside down so that I could sit on it.  I dragged the internet stuff around, wifi was out, and got it up and running.  I put my computer on top of an upside down trashcan and tried to figure out what to do.  

I let the school year begin.  

*Photo, Doll's Head Trail