Golden Isles

I woke up in the bed I had spent part of the summer in, looking out at the southern Georgia foliage and thinking about the splintery path that goes to the grey Atlantic shore.  It looked even more beautiful in the fall.  I had to bake some pies for Thanksgiving.  But that wouldn't be for a couple of days....

"Please verify your panel and when you are holding interviews" the Fulbright email said.  I was excited about assembling my own panel to help select who would go on exchange next year.  But THAT would happen after my week-long, late November break.

"So, how much of an offer do you want to put in?" the realtor asked us.  I felt my stomach churning.  I wasn't exactly sure if I was actually going to shit my pants or if it just felt like it.  That house was cute.  I've seen lots of cute houses in my nearly twenty years of renting.  Unfortunately, I really liked this one.  But the cage was coming down on me, the one that makes you get grown up and act like an old person, the one that kills your ambition, the one that guarantees that you never do anything interesting again.  "Low ball or legitimate?" she asked.  "Legitimate". 

I watched Charlie in class, this super smart kid that always seems so reserved.  He was smiling and interacting with his friends.  I'm glad he likes being in there.  I remember the first few times I saw his mom.  So familiar she looked.  Great kids, who was she?  Then I remembered that she was a shrink doctoral student that I went to when I was losing my mind as an undergrad.  I watched Charlie.  I'm glad he feels comfortable.  I'm glad that I have something to offer him.

We accepted the seller's offer, finally.  I hadn't been sleeping well, was behind at work and blood had been coming out of strange parts of me.  Nose, and other non-mentionables, accompanied by insane stomach cramps.  I got zits.  And a migraine.

The kids were practicing for their annual, winter recital.  At the end, they all held hands and raised them.  "That's the part that will make the parents cry" I whispered to a co-worker "but not my dry-eyed, childless heart".  She laughed. 

Emma and I were walking over the splintery path to the beach.  She had been rollerskating and I had been watching.  We wanted to look at the sea.  "You almost hit me, bitch" an unknown voice called to a lady riding her baby on the back of a bike.   Emma and I looked at each other.  A dad emerged, with two teenage sons and a pre-teen daughter.  We looked down.  As we passed, the pre-teen called out: "Like your hair," in response to Emma's hot pink do.  "Thank you" Emma responded courteously, without a hint of sarcasm.  We kept walking.  "And your bodies".  Emma and I looked back, a little stunned.  "And your pink flowers..." the girl continued.  We were baffled.  I was baffled.  Were we being, um, harassed by a thirteen year old redneck with her dad standing by?  As an adult, should I do something or avoid confrontation?  We walked to the sea.  And started laughing. 

I watched the kids sing during their recital, remembering last year.  So exhausted after driving half the night to the detention center and back.  Half drunk and running through the King Center with a parking ticket in my hand.  Things were so different this year.  The kids finished their song and lifted their little candles while holding hands.  I saw Emily, waving her candle and playing with the other kids.  And I started crying. 

"Do you think the Randolphs will get matched?" Terry asked me, after we completed our fifth interview of the day.  "I hope so," I responded, "they would be perfect".

"My name is Frank and I have autism" the tall seventeen year old said to our kids during our morning meeting.  I still felt blurry eyed and frankly, rosy and filled with love after the beautiful display the kids had put on during their recital the night before.  He pulled out a piece of paper and slowly tried to adjust himself and started reading.  Tears flooded my eyes.  Not normal, misty tears but full on crying.  "How many of you know someone who is autistic?".  Hands went up.  "Yeahhh..," he said quietly, "there's a lot of us".  "In Kindergarten, I couldn't speak.  I wanted to, but no one could understand me.  I wanted to play and talk to the other kids, but I couldn't".  EMILY.  EMILY.  EMILY.  Is it what I had hoped for?  That she is in there, just waiting to come out?  "In third grade, I couldn't read.  Ms. Zalero helped me.   Good job, Ms. Zalero" he said, motioning to our principal.  She burst into tears.  He continued and I tried harder and harder to not make a scene.  Would Emily be able to get up one day and speak like he was?  "I may be a big guy, but I feel like a kid inside" Frank ended.

And I ran to my room.  And cried and hiccuped and panted.  Every time I tried to calm myself, thinking of the twenty-odd kids that would be busting through the door at any minute, I just started crying again.

Zoobilee

I stared across the child sized,  too short table at Bobby.  He didn't smell like pee.  It was my only break of the day, a whole one hour for both lunch, planning, communicating with parents and whatever other fucked up thing popped up.  Ridiculous.  "Alright, Bobby.  You had a bad day in Spanish.  Now, you are going to have to do the work you should have been doing while you were...well, flipping out".  Yeah, flipping out.  Yelling, screaming, refusing to leave the room, shoving my hands away when I tried to hand you a paper.  Again.  A couple of days ago you threw a chair.  You've attacked most of your classmates, many in my presence.  Randomly.  You've freaked them out.  You've been dragged out of here before.  A lot of the sympathy I had felt for the pee clothes had dried up.  He needed to get his shit together.

"You're taking my recess!" he howled.  Yeah, he didn't buy my creative language at all.  I was totally taking his recess.  If I had had it my way, he would have been sitting on a bench watching the other kids play outside.   And I would be eating lunch in peace, without my least favorite student sitting across from me, taking an extra half an hour of my time.  We decided that we needed to present it to him as not taking recess, but making up for lost time.  And that, coincidentally, comes out of my time, though I had already taught his class once that day.  

"I'll tear it up!" he screamed, referring to the "work" in my hand.  His face was red, he was howling.  I watched the scene play out for a minute.  "You're faking" I finally stated.  He stopped on a dime.  And started laughing.  "Alright, here's your work.  I am going to eat my lunch.  I can sit at my desk, or sit at the table with you.  Which do you want?".  "The table" he answered.  "With you?" I asked, incredulous.

"Yes".

I spread out my Bento and started eating, seated in a Kindergartner's size chair.
"I have a fake spacer in my teeth" Bobby said, randomly.
"Open your mouth.  I saw something going on in there while you were screaming".   He opened it.  "That's a crown, what's up with that thing on the other side?"
"I put that in myself".
"What?  Okay Bobby, you do your own dental work?" I responded, gazing in to the silver shit bracing his teeth.
"Yes".

"Do you think tomatoes are gross?" I asked.  "Well, I'm eating the whole thing" I continued, not waiting for answer, while laying it on the crisp bread.  The Wasa kind.  The kind I like.  He actually didn't need help with the assignment.
"You read well" I mentioned.
"You know why?  I go to the Sylvan learning center"
"Really, how often?"
"Once a week.  And then we go to the shi-shi place afterward"
"The shi--shi place, what, some fancy place?"
"Yeah, the sushi place" he responded.

I thought of Emma, my beautiful, fourteen year old niece.  She has liked sushi from the time she was little, and would stuff little calamaris, legs and all, into her mouth on trips to Mexico, in little places with plastic tables while the admiring staff would smile at the cute rubia that would eat anything.   "You have sophisticated taste, Bobby.  Most six year olds won't eat sushi" I finally responded.
"My mom is teaching me to cook".  I was surprised by how articulate he was.
"Do you like that?"
"Yes.  She is teaching me to make sushi rolls".

Your family sounds nice, I thought.  It sounds almost normal.
"Do you have friends in your class?" I asked him.
"No"
"Bobby, you have hit a lot of them".  He nodded in agreement.    "And when you scream and mess up our whole class, it scares them.  They are sick of it." I responded.

He had finished his work.  I pulled out the reflection sheet,  the thing he had crumpled and destroyed both times before.  He grimaced.  "No, this isn't for you, I'm drawing what happened".  I drew stick figures, one for him, one for me.  Him screaming.   Me, looking like Judy Jetson.  I showed him step one.  "Take a reminder, Bobby," I advised, "it doesn't have to go to this" I continued, pointing to the drawing of him screaming, kicking, raging.  Attacking random kids.  Peeing on himself.   "What happens when it goes to step two at home?".   People say they beat the shit out of you.  Say it.  Say it.  "They don't let me go to sushi.  Or I don't get to cook with my mom".  Really?  Why has Family Services been called out a few times?  Why are you so fucked up?

"You kept asking to go to the bathroom.  You said it over and over.  You poked me, which I don't like.  I don't think you had to go to the bathroom.  I think you knew you were in trouble, and you wanted to get out of here".  He drew steam flowing out of my Judy Jetson's head.  "Yeah, it made me mad.  Is that why you did it, to see me get mad?".  "No," he answered "I didn't have to go to the bathroom.  It was what you said.  I wanted to get out of here". 

I took him back to his classroom.  My next class was lining up outside.  "Can you wait with them?" I asked their teacher, as I galloped down the stairs with Bobby.  He grabbed my hand.  I was surprised.  I held it.  I felt him pulling away when we reached the bottom of the stairwell.  "No," I told him, "I feel you trying to let go.  You're not getting away from me.  You are going to hold my hand and like it".  He did.

He will be the same demon he has been for a year and a half.  He is tricky.  He lies and he fakes.  I can't trust him.  But I want to.

He waved at me after school.  That was a first.

Will it change?  I doubt it.

Lupita

Music was playing over the intercom.  Kids from all grade levels began singing with it, singing some song I have never heard before but that they all seemed to know and like.  Sherman jumped up in his fuzzy, one-piece, footed pajamas and began doing a Pete Townsend-windmill with his arm.  "Dyno-mite!" Hands vs. Feet sang, along with the other kids.  We just kept calling the numbers.

I wheeled my stacked cart through the Buford Highway Farmer's Market.  I never use carts.  I don't like them. I generally just break my own arm off with an overstuffed basket before pushing one of those pinche things around.   I made an exception.  It looked like rolling Mexico, stocked with Day of the Dead bread, sémaforo candy, Mexican Coke and fresh tortillas and cream. It was gorgeous. 

I drove toward the city, stuffing a carne asada taco in my mouth.  It was my second.  "Excuse me..," an Asian man with accented English asked me from a neighboring car.  "where is Farmer's Market?".  I pointed with my thumb in the opposing direction and continued stuffing taco in my mouth.

As I walked around the park, a large, dark SUV rolled past, its back window quickly lowering.  I saw Curley's eyes looking out through the open space.  Even though I couldn't see the lower part of her face, I could tell she was smiling. 

I laid on my back, looking up at a sunny blue sky.  It almost hurt my eyes it was so bright.  I saw a full color image of the Virgen of Guadalupe, transposed over the blue, up in the sky.  It looked like the Virgen on the back of my Nuevo Laredo shirt.  I smelled roses.  And then I saw roses, circling and blooming around her in the sky.

They were red.  Red roses.

An Owl in a Dead Tree

"Try to guess why I got in trouble at school today" I instructed Alec.  "Yelling at a kid?  Being mean?" he asked.  "No" I answered.   "Being drunk in public?". "Not that".  "Your clothes?", "Nope", "Giving the kids cigar boxes?".  "No, none of the above, " I answered,  "rewards.  Rewarding them for academics". 

I walked down the dark sidewalk to school, tired, the morning after Halloween.  I could hear the lions roaring from the zoo.  I was wearing my pajamas.  And a robe.  I entered the school.  It looked like a hospital; teachers wandering around in robes and slippers, carrying coffee.  Kids in furry pajamas.  Me, in my Mexico jersey, pajama pants and dragon robe I bought in Vietnam.  I wore shoes.  I didn't want to mess up my slippers on the sidewalk. 

"Maestra Hilary DOES what she wants" one of the second graders commented in line.  "Now THAT'S what I'm talking about, Raymond" I said, nodding in agreement.  "And WE are ready to sing it" he answered.  

"How did it go today?" the cute teacher asked me.  "Well, Bobby menaced another kid today, but we were able to talk through it, and he didn't actually hit anyone," I answered,  "or bite".  "Great!" she answered.  "But he smells bad, like piss or something, shit," I whispered in her ear, "but he says he doesn't have to use the bathroom".  "He's wearing yesterday's pee clothes" she whispered back.  "What?".  "He pissed his pants yesterday and we put him in a change of clothes," she whispered, "his parents never cleaned out his backpack, and the pee clothes were still in there today.  He had another accident, and we had to put him in something". "That's disgusting" I replied, unsure if she realized that I didn't mean her actions were disgusting, but that any parent would allow their kid to walk around in piss stained clothes from the day before in addition to not even checking their six year old's backpack.  I looked at Bobby.  He pisses me off.  He acts like a dick.  He attacks everyone physically in class.  It's been going on a long time.  I stared at him.  No one should walk around in pee clothes.

There is something so wrong there I don't even know where to start.

Otoño

"So, you going to say 'hi' to your wife on your way out?"  I asked the blond booty shaking, now first grader.  "Miss Connor?  She's not my wife anymore" he answered, referring to probably the hottest member of our teaching staff.   "That's not what you said when you brought in that drawing of your name in hearts for her last year" I responded.  "Nooo!" he contested, "It's over between us, but she keeps chasing me.  I have a fourteen year old girl friend now". 

"My family escaped from Vietnam on a boat.  They were boat people.  It was after the war, things were bad.  They sailed to the Philippines and lived in a refugee camp until the U.S. let them in" the thin, pretty woman told me, while she painted my fingernails.   "That sounds dangerous" I responded.  "It is," she answered, "people get lost and the boats sink.  The U.S. stopped letting people in not long after my parents got here.  They had to.  It had to end sometime.  But people still get here".  "How?" I asked.  "They get fake papers and bribe people along the way until they get to the U.S. My roommate did it, she's not who her papers say she is," she responded "why are you missing a toenail?". 

"The hot water heater went out?" Alec told me.  Were we in Tijuana?  "What do you mean, did you re-light it?" I asked.  "Yeah, like a million times, it just goes back out.  I'll try again".  It didn't work.  Coldest night in recent months and no hot water, and I smelled like wet dog after my slow jog around the park. 

I stood in our morning meeting at work, feeling very bright eyed and bushy tailed after my freezing cold, splashing water army shower.   A woman walked by in furry, leopard printed pajamas.  A one piece.  Must be pajama day somewhere in the school.

I was wearing the necklace, the long, silver necklace with a silver apple at the end, that has a real, working clock inside.  My sister gave it to me when I started teaching.  High school kids loved it and now elementary kids love it.  It caught Emily's eye the minute she sat on her place on the rug.  The place she always sits.  Without change.  Everyday.  Barely thinking, I pulled it off and handed it to her.  She tried to twist the knob that sets the time.   I had to pull it out so that the hands would move.  Would she break it?  It was a gift.  What if she slammed it into the brick wall?  I love that necklace.  For some reason, I felt like it was worth it to let her play with it.   As I continued the lesson, every time I would glance at Emily's marble-like eyes, filled with fascination as she made the hands move and dangled the apple in front of her face as if hypnotizing herself, I felt oddly calm and content. 

It was time to get off of the rug.  Would it be a struggle to get the apple back from Emily?  I couldn't let her have it.  It was too important.  As soon as I explained the assignment, the kids jumped up, including Emily, to go to the tables.

She quickly handed me the necklace and headed to her place at the table, to the place where she always sits.  Everyday.  She wanted to draw what the seasons of the year looked like. 

I almost wanted her back, back watching the apple, back watching the silver swing in front of her glass eyes.

Noah's Dino-Ark

"Did you enjoy the King center?" the kindergartner asked.  "Huh?",  "The King center, when you went?", "Sure" I answered.  The little African-American girl was resuming a conversation that we had begun a month ago, completely without preface.  "Martin Luther King was killed.  Someone shot him." she continued.  The little African-American boy that had just turned five piped up.  "A white person!" he howled.  "Noooo," Nia corrected, "a black person!".  "White!" Joel yelled.  "Black!" Nia responded.  "White!", "Black!", "White!", "Black!" the kids continued, until their teacher came to take them away.

"Carbon dating is wrong!  It doesn't tell you how old bones are!" the radio commentator squealed through the car speakers.  "Man and dinosaurs existed at the same time.  There are cave paintings of dinosaurs...,".  Which apparently are more credible than carbon dating.  "Dinosaurs were walking the earth even three hundred years ago!".  Okay, you got me there.  Ben Franklin and the brontosaurus.  All the shit they wrote down with quill pens and no one mentioned flying beasts or man-eating monsters.  The commentator started taking calls.  "How did Noah fit the dinosaurs on the ark?" caller after caller asked.  THAT is the only problem you have with this guy's story?  "He took babies," he answered, "baby dinosaurs". 

Someone called Nia a "black bitch" on the playground the other day.  He was black too.  And, in kindergarten.

"Thanks for returning my note" I said to the parent quickly.  I already know her and her kid has been fucking around in class, hence the note.  I was surprised when she started crying.  "I'm sorry, I'm really sorry" she stammered.  "What?  Why?  It's not your fault, I just need your help," I answered, "it's really not a big deal".  "We've had a lot of chaos lately and it's showing and I just feel so bad, you are so nice and I worry that you get stepped on".  So nice?  I turned around, and spun back to her.

"Are you talking to me?".

Sing and Never Tire

I walked into my trusted hairdresser's shop.  "I am filling in!" a man announced, "I am learning to cut hair!".  It was a parent of one of my students.  A troubled student.  A violent student.  I felt awkward about saying 'no' and sat in the chair.  He shaved my hair off, all around the front and the back, leaving a small, yarmulke-shaped ring of hair on my head, surrounded by a quarter inch shave.   I couldn't believe it.  "Why did you do this?" I screamed/asked.

"I was doing my best" he answered, sarcastically. 

I woke up, feeling weird, and went to work. 

The kids were actually working steadily on the thing I gave them.  "¿Quieren música?" I asked them.  They wanted it.  I put on Daddy Yankee and not Norteño, my música of choice. "Is this rap?" Lashandi asked loudly.  "Sí," I answered "de Puerto Rico".  She looked to another African-American girl in her class.  "We do it better" she said.  I was disappointed.  He is a "we".  Are we really going down this road again, so early? Who is black and who is not.  That you can't be black and Hispanic at the same time.   Stupidity. 

I laid down, just for a minute, after school.  I heard my bird, Momo.  She makes a typewriter noise, over and over again, on the side of her feeder.  She does it when her partners die.  Suddenly, I opened my eyes.  More than two hours had passed.  It was seven o'clock.  Typewriters were in my head.

"You received a big shipment" Alec told me.  "What?" I asked.  "Like, a million boxes.  They are in the front". Oh, those boxes.  The one hundred and forty boxes for the kids to make mini-altars for Day of the Dead? I really needed small boxes, and the cheapest ones I could find were empty cigar boxes.   My front room smells nice, cedary, and is filled with beautiful wooden boxes from Honduras and the Dominican Republic. They are golden, lovely, filled with embellishments and clasps.  I spread them out on the floor, and open and close them. 

"¿Como estás?" I asked Emily, just like I always do.  I generally discard the answer.  She says strange things -  things I don't understand.  She started talking, and for some reason, I watched her carefully.  Little coos and sounds that no one would ever consider language flowed from her mouth.  Her eyes and head moved back and forth, just like any other person's would while talking, except that her eyes looked like glass.  I listened intently, for the first time.  She was thinking and communicating whatever was in her head, just in a way that no one could understand.  But she wanted to tell us something.  I watched her until she was finished, and thanked her.  For the first time, the corners of her mouth moved upwards and her normally expressionless face assumed a look of satisfaction.

A few minutes later, she said her first Spanish word of the year.  Azul.  Azul was her first word. 

It has been a big week.  First grade is making a project to send to a school in Mexico.  I have begun full immersion teaching in grades K-3, and they are getting it.  Fourth and fifth grades are researching historical figures and making cigar box altars that represent the person's life. Emily spoke her first words of Spanish.  I was at school until nearly eight o'clock the other night, explaining my curriculum to happy parents, one of whom started crying and hugged me.  "I need to talk to you" one of my bosses said, entering my room near the end of the day.  "I received an email from a parent that said you are giving the kids candy everyday, which she says goes against our discipline policy and our sustainability plan for the school.  And, it does". 

Of all the things going on in my classroom, I was really surprised to only hear about the random piece of Mexican candy I give whichever kid wins our monthly Bingo game.