I Felt the Lonely Comin' Down

"Ms. Wagner, why is the sky bright yellow?"
I looked outside.  It was bright yellow.  At 5:30 at night.
My boss looked at me.  "Emory cancelled the tornado drills because people would think it was real."
"Aazim, I have no idea, but I don't like the looks of it." I answered.
"You're supposed to be smart.  Why don't you know the answer?"  he asked.
"Can't win them all!" I answered, chasing him through the yellow parking lot.

"Let's get physical!  Physical!"  a strange, blond boy yelled, arching his back and shaking his ass.
"What's your name?"  another yelled.
"Hilary."
"She got destroyed by Trump." a brutish boy announced, his broad face widening in a mean smile.
He turned and screamed in a girl's face.
I had noticed him a month ago.  Two months ago.  Now all his behavior made sense.  But, why his parents chose a school that emphasizes kindness made no sense to me.  I watched each 20K a year kid run around and felt confused.

I drove to the Housing Authority.  I stay the same whether I am in the projects or at a private school.  I speak the same and act the same.  They are all my babies, but my project kids are my loves.

"How old are you?"  one of the private school kids asked.
"Guess, and then I''ll tell you."  I answered, knowing the responses would be funny.
"Twenty-five" he answered.
"Twenty-six" another seconded.
"Fifteen!"  a third yelled.
"I know you're not old," Blair declared, "you don't have wrinkles!"
"I have wrinkles when I smile,"  I answered, pointing at my eyes.
"Those are the good kind."

I sat in the room with the kids that where in trouble at the private school.   I told them what they were supposed to do, then picked up a book off of the bookshelf.
"I WAS ON FIRE."  I read to myself.
"It was my earliest memory."
I watched them and read, feeling content and happy in my world.  I glanced up occasionally, when the problematic boy, the white kid that I had witnessed throw money at a staff member, looked at me.
"I was standing on a chair in front of the stove, wearing a pink dress my grandmother had bought for me.  I felt a blaze of heat on my right side. I turned to see where it was coming from and realized my dress was on fire."

"It sounds like fun out there," I said out loud.
"Everyone is doing their choice activity.  I know you'll get on your game so that you'll be with them next week."
"Yeah..." he responded.
"You guys can go.  Have a great weekend."

"Who'd ya vote for...?"  Tamira asked me.
"I'll tell you if you tell me first who you think I should have voted for...."  I answered.
"Stacey.." she answered, eyes glowing.
"But....some people didn't..." she started to answer, before stopping herself.
"Mean old white people in the sticks, " I answered, "didn't vote for her."

Tamira's eyes glowed brighter and she ran around the table and hugged me.

*Title, Dolly Parton
*Quotes, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls

I've Said it a Thousand Times

I love it that when the city buses go by, the floorboards shake in my house.  I don't live in an especially large city, but I do live in the largest city in the southeast.

"Wow," the assistant principal breathed, "is she...is she really so... sleek?"
"Yes," I answered, closing my computer so that he couldn't look at my desktop picture.
"My dog is like a seal, a wet seal, her name is Lola."

I quit my job about six weeks ago.  It has been a series of experiences.  Dreams, weird dreams, public perception issues, interviews, everything.  For a while, I had classroom dreams, terrible dreams about things getting out of control.  Margaret, my dead friend, appeared randomly, several times. Most of the time, I didn't dream at all.  People ask how it is going.  People ask how Alec's dad is doing.  I get hostile whenever anyone asks.  There isn't a one word answer.  Last night, things got different.  Weirdly, I ran into the person that ran me out of my job.  I was uncomfortable, we were in a crosswalk, and she had aged twenty years.

I've heard that my old school is talking shit about me.  My rational self said that it was what people do when you leave, they discredit you.  But, it pissed me off.  And, why are things so falling apart when I leave, essentially if I sucked so much ass?

I applied for a type of job I used to apply for years ago, when I had hopes and dreams.  Lola was sleeping when I left the house.  I hugged her and told her how happy she would be on Staten Island.

We set up the foosball table at the Housing Authority.  It didn't matter that one of the legs was missing, we propped it up with milk crates and dictionaries.  I didn't think about anything for an hour and a half, except trying to get my turn.

"Can we see your dog?!"  the kids screamed/asked.
"She's so cute..." they murmured.
"We don't like dogs...." Habiba mentioned.
"They're made of pork."
I started laughing.
"Dogs aren't made of pork!"  I responded.
Then I caught myself.  She is eight and Muslim.
"I don't know why we don't like dogs, but we don't."
"I understand.  I've heard that before and I don't know either."

And then, we did her math homework.

Seashore

"Cabeza, nariz, hombros, rodillas...."  I sang with the three year olds, shaking my knees together in a fake Charleston dance while we sang our song.
"NOSE!"  a little boy growled, pointing at his nose, which was filled with a solid looking green substance.

Alec, Lola and I drove to the beach the next morning, to the panhandle of Florida, where his family was vacationing.  The sand was powdery and the water clear.  Lola ate all of the Whataburgers that I no longer eat on the way home, making the most of our vicarious eating habits.
Most of the area west of there was destroyed about two days after we drove home.

"Hey, thanks for your time, but I've accepted another offer..." I emailed a school, in lieu of sitting through another interview.  It looked like a good school, but I thought the coordinator sounded bitchy.  So, I said fuck it.

"Hilary, his dad has been put on life support.  He really needs to be up here."  I could feel my throat quivering and got off of the phone.  I booked Alec on the same connecting flight his brother was taking through Atlanta.  He flew the morning of his birthday.

"Look, I've turned down offers.  Pay raises, schools that were walking distance from my house."  I said to the guy, taking a drink of my coffee.
"I'm not willing to go just anywhere.  It has to be good."
"How many are we competing against?"

"I'm interviewing a lot.  I can wait until January.  Or next school year.  It just has to be right."

The Air That I Breathe

I was driving for a really long time.  It felt like I was going to enter Alabama at any second.  The topography changed over and over again.  Highway, historic West Side, changing to strange supermarket chains that I had never heard of.  All of the signs turned to Spanish and a series of Mexican and Caribbean restaurants popped up.  The houses were made of cinder block.  My mind filtered through all of the implications of teaching in that area.  If only it wasn't so fucking far away...

After driving in the out way, I accidentally pulled into the bus lane and nearly hit a metal gate trying to make a u-turn. I casually pulled into a parking space at the giant, empty, elementary school.  I rang the bell.  A man made his way through the dark office.
"Hey, come on in, I'm the principal." he announced, friendly enough.
"Where do you live?" he asked, the minute we arrived at a conference room.
"Atlanta..." I said hesitantly, knowing it sounded very far away.
I saw three covered bridges on my drive back to the big city. 

Classical music was playing.  A friendly guy asked me a few questions.
"What drew you to apply?"
"The show.  The exhibit.  It sounds exciting."
"It really is..." he breathed, "it's huge..."
"We'll be in touch!"  he told me brightly, sending me away with my Yayoi Kusama flyers and pins.
The interview lasted ten minutes.  But I felt different.  In the world again, in some way.

I stood on the recess field, watching the goats in the neighboring yard while I monitored the students.  It was my first day ever as a sub.  My first day ever in a private school.  I was stunned to find out that I was subbing for a recess monitor and basically spent the day hanging out outside watching goats.
"Hey, Hilary.  My name's Blake!"  a kindergartner informed me. 

Then, I drove to the projects.  I greeted my group, throwing genuine compliments everywhere.  As we played multiplication bingo, I chuckled and spoke to my group, feeling free of cloistered private school decorum.

"9x5"  I announced while they scrambled to do the math.
"Fingers!  Count on your fingers if you have to!  That is nine added together five times!  I have scratch paper!"
We digressed for a minute, when I explained that a rhetorical question is a question that doesn't require an answer.
"You know, when your teacher says 'Why do I hear talking?' she doesn't really want an answer, she just wants you to be quiet!"  I said, laughing.

For once, they laughed too.  We were bonding.
I left, after having made about half of what I usually make in a day.  But I felt okay, actually more than okay.
Alive.

All the Eternal Love I Have

"Do you have any resume paper?"
The sound of the text from a former co-worker woke me up.  It was 6:15 in the morning.

I jumped in the car at 4:45 in the morning and drove to my mom's house.  She was having knee replacement surgery and needed to be at the hospital by 5:30.  We arrived on time.  The waiting room was dingy and the fluorescent lights flickered.  Someone had carved their initials (P.J.) in the wood column in the middle of the room.  Someone else added "BLOOD" to the column.  I felt nervous while they wheeled my mom to the back.  I left and drove back to my mom's house to let her dogs out.  One sat by her bedroom door, refusing to move.

"We would like to offer you a position!"  the email read.  I was back at the hospital, in the recovery room with my mom.   I had been unemployed one day.
"Thanks, but I'm good."  I responded.
My phone started blowing up with calls from two other districts.  I felt flattered, but overwhelmed.  I ended up with job interviews scattered throughout my first week out of work, woven between visits to my mom's house to take care of her dogs.  I felt like I had to strike when the iron was hot, but felt like screaming CAN'T YOU ALL JUST GIVE ME A MINUTE???

I sat in the front office of the school, watching a Sheriff deliver papers and parents pick up kids that were being sent home for bad behavior.  A social worker was walking around.
"WHENEVER the doctor makes me take an antibiotic...."  the woman next to me said loudly into her phone.
"He gives me the pill AND the cream.  THAT did not happen.  And NOW, I must see him immediately."
I had never heard a person so publicly discuss a yeast infection in my life.

I sat outside on the patio of a bar with friends, on a school night.  I did not have another interview until 1:30 the next day.  It was nice to be out, to not have to think of teaching school the next day.  To not have to put on my monkey suit job interview costume until later.

I saw a boy riding up in the distance, a boy with cornrows.  I taught him years ago, and several other members of his family.  It was late, but his dad wasn't really known for supervision.

I extended my hand and he stretched out his as he rode by, touching for a second, then he continued into the night.

*Title, derivative of Yayoi Kusama

The Obliteration Room

"When would you be able to start?"  the principal asked me from her perch across the table in the rather dingy room.
"Uhhh...um, I don't know.  Maybe two weeks...."  I responded, eyes on the ground.

My last day of work was last Friday.  I began the process of requesting to be released from my contract two and a half weeks into the school year.  Kitty, I knew I should have told you, but I had to be quiet about it.  And, I'm not sure if I'm even ready to tell you yet.  Less than seventy hours later, I was sitting in front of another principal on a job interview.

I tried to drive back home, but my brain was in a fog.  I was weird on the interview, too.  Mind wandering, kept just answering "Right..." or "I don't know" to questions. I think the word "fuck" mixed in with a couple of my responses.  I was close to my house, then suddenly I was lost, I was on the west side of town instead of my neighborhood.

"Yayoi Kusama lived through the second World War in Japan...."  Lois Reitzes informed me.
"She hallucinated from an early age, her fields of flowers were not a happy memory."
"She tried to kill herself by jumping out of a window...she returned to Japan and still resides in a psychiatric hospital."
The sun was bright.  I kept looping and driving down roads I didn't know, unclear about how I had ended up on Abernathy in the first place.
"We have to give her mother a break, even though she was incredibly violent."
"Her first time at the Venice Biennale, Kusama crashed it by setting up her own exhibit on the lawn outside."

"How did it go?"  my mom's text message asked.
"I don't know...." I said when I called her.
"Pros and cons, I mean, I could work there, it'd be alright."
"Hilary....." my mom started.
I started crying.
"I just want to be an Infinity Room attendant.  I just want to stand there for two months inside of one of Yayoi Kusama's rooms and not say anything.  Just stand there."

"Then," my mom answered, "that is what you should do.".

*Title, Yayoi Kusama

Closer to Heaven

"Mamaaaaa.....bring me some shoes!"  Taisha screamed.  It was 6:50 in the morning and we were walking through the apartments.
"Grandamaaaaa!!!!"  she howled.

Our school has a parent initiated attempt to get the students to walk or ride their bikes to school, instead of taking the bus or riding in a car.  Our district is only four miles wide.  One parent really wants to make sure the children of the Housing Authority are included and arrives at school around 6:30 in the morning, picks up teachers that are willing to be there, and drives us over to the apartments to walk with them to school.

I've been meeting her for over a year.  She ran up to me and hugged me.
"Hey...", I said, putting my coffee cup in the holder of her car, "um, Friday is my last day...I'm leaving....".

Taisha had on cute flats.
"Why didn't you wear tennis shoes?  It's Walk and Roll?"  some of the muslim girls asked.

I work with Taisha after school.  She's in my group.  My fucked up giant group of sixteen.  She's a star.  Immaculate, clothes and hair clean, presenting in the best way.  No one has to know she lives in the projects, because her parents have made sure they don't know.  And, she works and acts accordingly.  Until, Tuesday morning.

"BUY ME SOME FOOD!" Myla screamed as we walked past the gas station.  Another boy grabbed a gas pump and threw it on the ground.

They yelled.  They screamed.  The walked in people's yards.  They talked about the bikes that were unsecured, the houses they would rob.

I worked.  Taught my classes, attended meetings, packed my things.  Felt sweaty and gross all day.  Graded papers. Went back to the Housing Authority that night to tutor.

"They went fucking crazy on the visitors last Friday... screaming, demanding food, grabbing shit.  Their names are on the board."
Out of the sixteen students in my group, ten of their names were on the board.  The ones that were not on the board had been absent.

"You all have debased yourselves."  I said quietly.
"You have acted under what you are."
"No one bangs on the table and begs for food."
"I didn't do that!  It wasn't me!" Zoey and Tamira screamed.
"Did I say Zoey or Tamira?  Whoever did it, I don't want to know.  I don't want to know because I don't want to think of you that way and you're better than that."

I left, feeling tired, dirty and defeated.  Laaida jumped out from behind a neighboring car, all sixth grade of her burka wearing self.
"Hey!  I thought this was your car!" she laughed, even though she was by the wrong car.  The other white teacher's car.
"I wanted to surprise you!"

I watched my students jump on top of a utility box and do our school's chant.  They saw me, and did it louder.  I wanted to film them, send it to my boss, show how great they were.  But, she's a dick and doesn't deserve to see it.

I smiled and clapped, phone in my pocket, and got in Alec's car and drove away.