A Murder of Crows

As I walk from the school building out to the trailer, I've been noticing some big fat crows flying overhead.  The weather has finally decreased from the high nineties of early October to something somewhat resembling fall.  It no longer feels like the surface of the sun as I walk over the blacktop to my metal-clad school home.  I like the crows.  They, along with the pine trees that circle the back of the school, make things feel like Halloween. 

The trailer is showing some signs of Halloween as well.  Rain appeared after weeks of dryness, and the walls of the trailer don't seem especially water proof.  The adorable, "All About Me" posters the kids made about themselves at the beginning of the school year seem to be absorbing moisture from the walls, transforming their hand drawn faces into something quite speckled and ghoulish. 

There is also a strange smell.  I've gone to great pains to clean the tables and chairs weekly with lemon scented, disease killing wet wipes.  I also clean the board and my desk and antiquated computer and phone.  I spray the trailer with a natural orange spray that the kids say smells like a mix of the counselor's office and candy.  I keep my dry snacks in a sealed plastic box in order to not attract rats.  I deny residence to large cockroaches by chasing them from the trailer.  Most have declined to return. 

"Ewwww...." one of the kindergartners commented, scrunching her nose and waving her hand in front of her face.
It was only their second visit to the coveted trailer, the desired destination of all of my ESOL kids. 
"It smells like fish!"  another exclaimed.
My trailer.  My beautiful trailer.  FISH.  They might as well have told me it smelled like B.O.  I was horrified. 

"Agnieszka, the kindergartners said the trailer smells." I whispered to one of my first graders.
"Really?" she whispered back, perplexed.
"Maybe it's me, do I smell?" I responded, pretending to sniff myself.
She drew her nose closer and took a careful whiff.
"No, you don't smell.  You smell good. "  she paused for a minute, before exclaiming in a moment of realization,
"You smell like white people!  I smelled one before on the playground!" 
I thought of the lone white girl in the school, who happened to be in her class, and burst out laughing. 
We both did. 

Mudo

"Shift" Mr. Warner repeated, over and over.
"Shift to the left."
I watched my student carefully write "shit" on her spelling test.
"Oh man, you should have seen what Ja'quon put as his name on Kahoot...."  he said lowly, after seeing me look at her quiz.
"LOIN KING" he wrote on the board, before quickly erasing it with his hand.

I sat in the Media Center, my morning duty post, monitoring the kids in the lower grades that don't eat breakfast at school.
"A minute is sixty seconds.  An hour is sixty minutes.  A week is seven days...." a little boy prattled off.
"You really know your time segments." I responded.
"Yeah, but he can't make the errr sound." his fellow Speech classmate said dismissively, her own stutter surprisingly absent for a second.

"Both of my parents' birthdays are on January 1st."  Aazim mentioned randomly, as he worked on his math problems.
"My mom's birthday is on January 1st too!"  Habiba commented.
I've heard that refugees are often assigned January 1st as their birthday if there is ambiguity about their actual birth date when they arrive in the United States.  I've had a number of refugee students with the tell tale birthday.  I was surprised they didn't know this but didn't say anything, just marveled at the coincidence.

"I'm taking it!" I heard an unfamiliar voice utter, before Helina grabbed crayons from another child.
"She talked...." Ana said quietly, eyes wide.
"I think she just did...."
She has never done that before.
We all stared at Helina.
She looked back at us, a mischievous look in her eyes, before climbing on the table and drawing on it.

Heaven Only Knows

Heaven only knows just why... 
loving you should make me cry
Make me feel like I could die
That's the way it goes...

"I spoke to my doctor.  We're doing thirty-six weeks."  the radiant, yet wildly pregnant pre-K teacher informed us.
"She said it was supposed to be thirty-nine, but I said, no.  Not this time.  We are doing it differently."

"Get out of the car!  I'm going to fight you!"  the woman who had roared up beside my car screamed.
"Are you fucking crazy?"  I responded.
"You're lucky I don't have my gun.  I'd shoot you!" she screamed, before roaring off in front of me.
Good to know.
I am actually a very careful and conscientious driver, but, you can't win them all.

"The mandamus went through, they filed it Monday."  the text rang through moments after my driver friend threatened to shoot me, while I was pulled off on the side of the road calling 911.
"I am so glad," I responded.
"Wish they had filed it three weeks ago, but at this rate, we might have him by New Year's!"
One man, out of Afghanistan. 
Please pray that it works. 

*Lyrics and title, Emmylou Harris

érase una vez

I really couldn't get out of bed.  It was Friday night and honestly, I had had quite a few beers.  Lola needed to go out.  Alec went outside with her.  The first time.  Then, the second time, third and fourth.  I laid on the couch the last time and realized Alec had left her outside the last time, with the owls howling, and went back to bed.  I let her back in.

I drove into school, thinking how happy I was that I hadn't seen another dead animal in the road lately.  Right as I thought it, I saw a large cat, or possibly raccoon, dead in the middle of the road.  I averted my eyes and swerved to miss it.

I noticed the bruise on the arm of one of my Karen girls.
"What's that?" I asked.  She started giggling, suspiciously.
"A hickie!" she howled and my other student lifted up her wrist to show me a commiserate mark.
"We gave them to ourselves!"  she shrieked, then updated the mark with her mouth.

Lola threw up again, a lot of bile.
"Let's put her on chicken and rice, that's what the vet always says to do."
Alec drove to the store and bought the supplies.  We cooked it and gave Lola.  She threw up the whole meal, undigested, within minutes.
"I guess we have to do the twenty-four hour fast."

"I don't want to walk home.  I don't want to see that dead cat.  I try not to look but I look anyway and now I can see its bones...."  Alberto informed me.
"That cat is still there?"  I asked, incredulous.
"YES!  It used to come into my backyard.  A squirrel, a possum, I don't know, it doesn't bother me so much.  But a cat...."
"I feel the same way, Alberto.  I am so sorry.  If you don't mind, I am going to email someone right now about this...."
I opened my laptop and emailed the sanitation department, the same place I emailed when I couldn't look at the dog that looked like Lola laying in the street a minute longer.

Lola's vomiting was increasing.  I walked outside and found her in the bushes, snout pushed to the ground, violently dry heaving right next to an old pile of poop.  She would never come that close to poop if she was okay.  I was horrified and brought her inside.  And for some reason, I left for about forty-five minutes.  Or maybe I didn't leave then, because the day is becoming a blur to me.  But, I did leave while she was sick. 

"This thing keeps going up like a vampire..."  Angel mentioned, randomly, pointing to the collar on his shirt.
"Or romantic movies...." Alejandro finished intently, reading a definition out loud to the class, carefully.
"Alejandro!"  one of the only nice teachers in my school called out. 
"Step back from those romantic movies!  Te quiero!!!"
Alejandro smiled and turned bright red.

I came home and found four piles of bile-vomit on the floor.  One of them was tinted with blood.  I cleaned it up and tried to call the vet.  They were closed.  Lola vomited again, and it was clear of blood.  I paced and waited.  She wanted to go outside.  I kept her in, deciding that anything that was going to happen was going to happen right where I could see it.  She crouched, like she was going to poop.  I hovered.  Blood sprayed from her bottom.  A lot of blood.  I put her leash on and raced her to the emergency vet.

We arrived at the vet and they took us to a room. Lola crouched and blood sprayed from her again.  I started screaming and crying and waving for someone to help us.

We stayed several hours.  They took her to the back and pumped her with fluids.  Then, they recommended taking Lola home, along with a bag of medicine and a lot of things to watch for.  We drove slowly down Abernathy and onto Georgia Avenue.  She looked solemn.  I thought about riding back from Mexico with her.  My warrior.  My valiant dog.  I clenched my fists on the steering wheel, but started to relax near Summerhill.  H. Johnson was on the radio, and I turned it up a little, hoping it would sooth her.

She violently vomited multiple times when we got home, the one thing they said I should be worried about.  She paced, visibly uncomfortable, clawing the furniture and driving her face into the couch and chair corners.  It was misery.  Finally, she laid between my legs on the bed and fell asleep, her head in her paws.  I watched her sleep for three hours.  In the morning, I took her back to the vet and they admitted her, without asking me or trying to talk me into it.  Sunday was a bad day.  Monday was too.  They were doing tests and warned of emergency surgery.  Alec and I could only visit her.  She was on intravenous medicine and food.  She was lethargic and dirty.  She was horribly ill.  Every minute I was away from her I wondered if my dog was dead and they hadn't told me yet.  I couldn't sleep or think.  My stomach was raw.  My thoughts were dark.  Very dark.

I went to work Tuesday morning.  A co-worker instructed me to wash my face, though I had just arrived.
"It's in the eyes, you can tell something is wrong...." she said lowly.
I felt sicker and sicker.  I called the vet on my first break.
"She started eating on her own.  The blockage we thought we saw isn't visible anymore, she can go home."
I asked a lot of questions.  Then, I packed up all of my things and stacked them on my desk so that I could drive to the vet the minute I was allowed to leave.

"Soooo, my dad came to visit and I have one more high, my sister is gay....!"  Alberto continued, his Mexican accent extending all of his vowels.
"What, um, your sister is...?"
"Gay" he said happily.  He shrugged.
"It's fine.  She told us.  She has a crush on a girl."
"Okay.  But, is the cat gone?"  Angel asked.
"YES!"  he answered.
"Yes it is!"

Strange Magic

"I'm done with fruit punch."  Alberto informed me, solemnly. 
"It's over between you two?"  I responded.
"Yes." he answered firmly and continued working.

"If the seizure lasts more than five minutes, you will have to administer Diastat.  Roll the child on their side, grab the lubricant...."
Lubricant?  I inadvertently sat up straighter.  I didn't like where this was headed.
"After the K-Y, plunge the medication in the rectum."
She spoke with such authority.

"We have to do a cross-curricular task even though it's our Reading time," I informed my fourth grade group.  They weren't pleased.  It meant that we would remain in their classroom with the rest of the students, instead of going to the trailer. 
"Have you heard of the Boston Massacre?"  I continued, whispering, trying to give them a little pre-knowledge while the general education teacher warmed up her spiel.
"Is it like a purge?"  my new student, Prem, asked.
"How do you define purge?"
"When men rush in and kill everyone."
"Yeah, that's pretty much it...." I answered, looking down at his maimed limb that I have never had the heart to ask about.  It's probably a birth defect, I repeated over and over in my mind. 
"Stand in a circle and and grab your neighbor's hand!"  the general ed teacher commanded.  I jumped up and made sure I was on the side of Prem's gnarled limb, and grabbed it and held it. 

"Habiba, why do you only have one buck?"  I asked.  The Housing Authority has started an extrinsic reward system that allows students to receive "bucks" for good behavior. They use them to buy things, stuff we get from Dollar Tree. 
"I spent all my money on ring pops and popcorn." she announced, spinning and smiling.
"Are you satisfied with your decision?" I responded.
"YES I AM." she answered definitively, hijab swinging as she skipped out the door. 

"Do you have a printer in here?"  the elderly woman that works at my school asked me, after pounding on the door of my trailer.
I paused.  I have the one I bought myself, that is hidden under my desk, but I wasn't sure what she was asking about.
"No, I don't know if any of the trailers have printers." I responded. 
"This used to be the Art trailer," she responded.  I already knew that, after I stole half of the stuff both for my students, and, myself. 
"There used to be a Promethian board in here.  One night, people broke in. They took the board, but no one really needs that in their house, so they smashed it on the blacktop.  Smashed all her pencil sharpeners, too."
She had a strange smile on her face.
"I hope that doesn't happen to me."  I responded. 

"What happened to your face?"  Prem asked me, his eyebrows knitting together in the middle.
"Oh, I got burned and now it is totally peeling off.  It's annoying!"  I responded, pretending to scratch my face off.
He didn't laugh.
"Are you going to die?"  he asked, face still covered with worry.
"No Prem.  I'm not going to die."  I responded gently. 
He didn't seem convinced.

Born to Run

I felt something strange on my leg.  I looked down and saw the feral child, the one that clearly has problems, the one that climbs under her desk and stays there during the first days of kindergarten.  Her tongue was out, connected to my shin.  She screams.  If you ask her to do the slightest thing, she refuses.
I laughed in my head at a professor I had recently that didn't know what EBD meant, but pretended to.  I was looking at it. Then, I wiped hand sanitizer all over my leg.  I'm already sick.

"Do the owls still come to your back yard?"  one of Karen students whispered to me.  I have to push-in to a lot of my classes now.
"Yes...they came this summer...." I whispered back.

I heard a growling noise, like the devil.  It was coming from the kindergartener in front of me.

I drove to school in the beginning morning light.  I saw a dog, dead, lying next to the road.  Its chest was white and its sides were medium brown.  It was dead.  She was dead.  He was dead.  I tried to re-direct my thoughts.  I tried to think to heaven and hope that whatever happened to him was quick and painless.

"Do you ever hear Ms. Patrick screaming?" my students asked me.
"No, and I'm surprised by that.  I have seen students crying outside her trailer, though."  I responded.

Hiccuping, chocking, bawling.  Feral, hollow screams.  Back by the woods where the trailers are, where the snakes come out of the creek and lie on the black top.  While she screamed 'crybaby' at them and demeaned them.  Called them 'boy', asked if they were 'man enough' fight her.  I saw that.  And, I will never let that happen to you.  I'll fight her myself if I have to.

"Ms. Wagner, I know you don't want to hear this...."
"It's okay, mami, tell me...."
"I saw a dog that looks like yours, looks like Lola, on the side of the road today...."

"I saw her too, Patricia.  It was a sad thing.  Let's hope the best for her..., we have to think of other things."

I watched people washing the ancient "warrior" Native American mascot painting off of the front of the school window.

"Why do you think they are doing that?"  Alejandro asked me.
"Why do you?" I questioned back.
"I have no idea."
"I might be wrong, but, I guess that a lot of people find using humans as mascots inappropriate.  But again, I might be wrong."
"Yeah, " he answered,
"who knows?"

Love is Strange

"When I saw the pool, I thought it would be cold. But Vaaman told me it was heated.  I am upper middle class.  From India.  And I felt guilty.  Later, I decided I would own that pool."

I am back in school.  I try to keep my heart and mind high.  I sat down for the first faculty meeting breakfast, after getting the only rudimentary vegan food available, which I am not asshole about because thankfully something was there, when our principal instructed us to pray.  That, I will not do.  I'll take your milk-fat laden watered down grits, a piece of bread and a cup of black coffee, but I will not pray to god. Or do the pledge, either.  

I got a trailer.  It has a metal outer-casing and walls made of cardboard.  I have not had my own teaching space in eight years.  I was thrilled.  It was everything I wanted.  I ripped the old butcher paper off of the walls, knowing that there would be holes underneath.  I scrubbed the white board, though permanent marker never comes off. I dragged 1950s school furniture all over the place until the custodians got mad.  I put it all back because they have a harder job than I do. I scrubbed and scrubbed.  And then, a random county worker showed up and fixed the hole in the floor.  And a second man walked in, Vietnamese, saw me with my international students, and repaired all of the fucked up lights in the ceiling and put covers on them, so that none of the kids would be hit by falling tubes.

"My dad....isn't a criminal...." the sobbing child stammered, face red and covered in tears.  I looked at the T.V. and wondered for a minute why Maria was on it, then realized the terrorized girl wasn't my student.  

I was pretty jazzed about the trailer and put a picture of it up online.  A girl I've known, for really a lot of my life, responded to my picture of the trailer:  That looks like my elementary school.

Back in the way back days, the 80s, every middle class parent locked up their kids into "rehabs" if they were struggling.  It happened to my sister.  My first boyfriend, when I was in tenth grade, had gone through more than one.  And this nice lady, the girl that I've known, that is the same age as I am, was put in one of those "rehabs" when she was twelve.  It's a long story.  It's going to take me a minute to explain it to you, Kitty.  

And, she recognized the beat up trailer.  It must be at least forty years old.  And she was snatched from there soon after.  A child. 

I am struggling with my work load.  I sat in the kindergarten classroom, watching a boy who is not on my caseload.  His hair was tied up tight, and he pulled up his alphabet strip and bit it.  He looked like the Grinch.  

I cleaned the trailer.  I store snacks in there, because I am sort of trying to work on myself.  I put them in a plastic box, fearing rats. 

"You're in the trailer now?"  a co-worker asked me.

"Yaaas.  It the bomb."  I responded.

'What do ya think about snakes?'

I stopped.  What the fuck are you talking about?  Our principal took the stage.  There is a creek behind the trailers.  We have snakes.

"So I  ran behind the whole place and put snake be gone all over, but,  be careful!"

I can't do this.  

I tip toed through the Cafetorium, trying not to fuck up the custodians' work.  I saw my main man, Carl.  

"Gosh, this it the calm before the storm," I mentioned in passing.

"You just gotta learn to dance in the rain."  he responded,

And I will.  I will.  I will.  I will.