Paul Thorax is No Longer Welcome in This House

The first couple of weeks went by surprisingly fast.  I rode that awful Chromebook from work like it was my bitch, assigning stuff, putting cool things up.  I couldn't believe it when the first two weeks were done, then the next week leading up to "Spring Break".  The weird, daydream nation strange dent in my couch was obvious.

I thought back to Alejandra, in the days before the school shut down.
"Did you watch him last night?  You know, Donald Trump?"  I whispered while we worked on phonics.
"Yes.  We don't like him, but feel like we have to listen."
"I feel the same way,"  I responded.
"We have to know what's going on."

As I sat on my couch, trying to create a decent learning situation for my students, alternating between my $25 school issued computer and my Macbook, as well as paper and pencil, I felt like it was some odd mission control station.  I had to clear off the couch when Alec would come in.

Surrounded by mission control, I watched The View at 11:00, hoping it would make me feel like I was a housewife.  Then, the local news, to find out any pertinent Georgia information and how many more were infected or dead.  Then, Donald Trump would come on.  And I watched, because I felt like I had to listen.

I would look at social media, after 3:00, my sign-off time.  And yes, we did have to sign-off.  I got pissed at parents referring to "homeschooling" or that their children were "self-schooling".  Isn't homeschooling when you all teach them yourselves, instead of pushing play on all the lessons I have been making?  All the stupid videos that the crappy internet in my house can hardly handle that I post online for you?  Lessons, materials, etc.?  You want to home school?  Great, count me out.

I've heard people arguing inside houses.
Alec and I have fought during this time, mainly when he reads me parts of Paul Theroux's new book.  Some idiot in that book actually mistook his last name for Thorax, which actually makes me smile.

I walk around my neighborhood, trying to get some exercise.  I don't go in the park anymore, because social distancing appears to be optional for a lot of people and I'm sick of jumping walls and climbing through bushes.  I see lots of boxes piled up behind people's houses, Amazon boxes and oddly, a lot of new giant TV boxes.  I guess they decided if they needed to be locked in, a big TV would help.  Sometimes I try to be carefree, think of funny things.  Then, I think of all the people dying around me and I can't really do it.

I sat through another Zoom meeting at work.  Praying is becoming very regular and though I don't really agree with that, I figure my discomfort of it pales in comparison to the relief my coworkers apparently get from it.  One of my coworkers put up a picture of his wife, in full protective gear, ready to enter the room of a COVID patient.  I was horrified.

Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race.  I am not a bro.  I have voted my opinion and am absolutely sick of being told that wanting someone except for Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden is some sort of act of treason.  I have never attacked people online or in person.  To the contrary, I feel like I have received some of the most divisive rhetoric coming out of the DNC camp - did you take your ball and go home?  What about your marbles?  You know what I have to say?  You get more bees with honey, bitches and I am not a child.  I am a forty-eight year old woman and just because you settled for a the guy that told you everything 'Merica can't do, you better quit attacking me for wanting something better for all of us. 

Our refrigerator broke the same day.  Alec and I have stayed in and stocked up and I felt freaked out watching all that food rot.  He called repair men, went online, did it all and the end result was a new fridge, expensive, though I am not being paid by my second job and he's on unemployment.  The fridge couldn't be delivered for a solid week.  A friend of my sister's did a huge act of kindness and delivered two giant coolers onto our front porch within thirty minutes and Alec went out into the COVID world and bought thirty dollars worth of ice.  We put the food in the coolers, closed the blinds to the kitchen and turned on the air conditioning.  The kitchen tomb reminded me of Ferdinand and Isabel, way down in that crypt in Spain.

I added one of the last segments of The One and Only Ivan onto my virtual learning page.  I have been trying to finish that read-along with one of my groups for over a year.  I listened to the recording of Ivan exploring the outside for the first time in decades and started to cry.

"Alec,"  I yelled.
"Paul Thorax is no longer welcome in this house!"

Canary in the Coal Mine

Kitty, I didn't even tell you about some of the worst parts.  Lola was sick again, a week before the virus hit.  The diarrhea, it was a slower onset this time, but when the vomiting happened, it was intense.  I could hear her stomach gurgling and knew what happened in September was happening again.  And, it was raining.  Alec and took her to the emergency vet in the rain; he sat in the backseat with her and I drove without windshield wipers all the way there, at the end of rush hour.  They insisted upon keeping her overnight and I didn't argue.  The blood had happened again.  When Lola is not well, I am not well.  I stop functioning in anyway, shape or form.  I stared at my phone all day of the 3rd and was relieved when they let us pick her up. I piled my stuff on my desk and waited until 3:00, called in sick to the Housing Authority and went to get my dog.  The only reason I didn't call in sick to regular work was because I had already requested a personal day on March 16th, for her birthday.  I was sick already and if we could just make it through this, she and I would have a long weekend together, for her birthday.  We would all feel better.  We got her, along with bags full of medicine.  Her arm was shaved again, from IVs.

In February, Alec and I had had prepared for the virus, a little.  I bought five pounds of basmati rice and ten pounds of dried beans.  A couple of those giant, two liter bottles of wine.  Some extra toilet paper.  I ordered an additional bag of dog food.  I really thought if this thing really happened, they would tell all of us that we literally couldn't leave the house for two weeks.  QUARANTINE.  And Lola, Alec and I would hunker down and play board games, only to emerge two weeks later to normality.  I feel like an idiot for thinking that now.

The school dreams started immediately.  My selective mute appeared the first night, but she was talking.  A lot.  And she was really fat and had makeup smeared all over her face, though she is only six.  The second meanest teacher at the school yelled at me one night and slammed her classroom door in my face while we argued about interpreters.  I sat up, feeling sweaty, though Alec and I had most of the windows in the house open and it was chilly.  Lola laid between us, her face burrowed against my leg.  Steve was in the Conservatory, her belly large and resting on a twig, looking out from the large bay window that overlooks the street.

When they sent us home on March 13th, I sheltered in place.  I thought I invented the term, until I heard it used on the news.  They use it for shootings, and I work in a school.  I only went out to the grocery store and even limited those trips.  And Petco twice, for crickets for Steve.  Okay, I bought beer from the gas station.  I went to the dog bakery on March 16th, Lola's birthday.  I know that is questionable, but I guess I didn't get it yet.  I haven't been within six feet of another person except Alec for two weeks.  I was surprised when people started talking about shelter in place orders in Atlanta or the surrounding counties.  Wasn't that what we were already doing?  When I got sent home from work, I went home.  Except for the dog bakery.

We've been doing a lot of Zoom faculty meetings.  I was stunned when my former roommate - classroom-mate, appeared on the screen when she logged in, in a hospital gown with an oxygen thing in her nose.  I knew she was sick, I knew she had a pneumonia and sickle cell, I knew she was hospitalized.  I didn't expect to see her face, ghostly and haunting from inside the death zone, isolated from her husband and one year old child.  I wanted to scream.

I watched the Senate arguments about the bailout-stimulous-whatever the fuck you want to call it and got pissed.  God forbid someone gets a few hundred dollars more than they already make.  What the fuck do they thing we are going to do with it?  Go to Paris?  Paris is closed, bitches.

I wake up now at 4am, instead of 3am, when my mind goes wild.  I lay in the bed with the breeze coming in and Lola pressed against me.  Sometimes Alec is there, sometimes he has moved to the couch because both of us have thrashed around too much. The owls went wild again the other night while Lola and I laid and listened. I hear the sirens, the ambulance sirens that have always haunted me in the night, on their Grady route, and I question if it's the slow sound of a person already dead or the wild siren of a person that might survive.
And, I don't know if the sirens are real or not.

Stages of Corona

I drove to the grocery store when I left work on Friday the 13th.  I feared it would be like a snow day situation, but decided to try it out anyway.  A man sat out front, playing a saxophone.  I hadn't seen anyone do that at my grocery store before.  The sounds kind of drifted through the parking lot, like some sort of swan song.

I felt accomplished, because I already had a lot of online assignments and had worked hard on Friday, so I really felt like I was set up.  I remember being surprised when the state immediately called for classes to be suspended for two weeks, TWO WEEKS!  Not a day or two like at the county I live in originally did, but two weeks!  I intended to be vigilant and my previous work made this easy.   I guess I thought we would just ride this out and go back in two weeks, or maybe after Spring Break, in the second week in April.

Monday started making me wake up.  I had originally asked for it off as a personal day, but clearly was going to do the telework thing.   The district really had us structured, telling us to answer text messages within minutes, sign-off on spreadsheets that proved we were working, increasingly changing demands that we usually found out about after we hadn't done them.  It stressed me out and sort of pissed me off.  I'm not a slack-ass.  I'll do what I'm supposed to, because I care about it.  No one has to create tasks for me. I assumed I'd be checking email a couple of times a day and grading assignments and entering those who did the assignments in our grade books, since my district really only cares about percentages.  Those who couldn't get on the internet or just didn't for whatever reason, we'd catch up in two weeks.  I was surprised when we were told not to be out in public during work hours.  I didn't want to like, cocktail lunch it out, but I wanted to jog and try to get to the grocery store during non-peek hours, and I work after hours, anyway.  Optics.  Then I felt like an asshole because we were reminded over and over that we are still getting our paychecks and benefits, which most people weren't.

Things became more frightening when they started asking us to aggressively check-in on students that hadn't logged-in on our online platforms.  I guess that's when it dawned on me that we might not being going back to school this year.  And that a lot of my students, I might never see again.  That we would have to end it like this, with no warning.  Not just the fifth graders that will go to middle school even if I don't get to see them at the end of their school year, but the ones that get evicted when their parents can't make rent in a couple of weeks and scatter, to god only knows where.

It was dark out one night, earlier in the week, I don't know which day, when Alec's work called and said to not come back, and that he needed to file for unemployment, and that his health insurance coverage would end on April 30th.

The municipality where my sister and niece work sent home restaurant workers shortly after, but were more ambiguous about unemployment benefits.  My niece continues to work running takeout, though she doesn't have health insurance, but obviously needs the money and apparently, isn't even getting unemployment.

I emailed the parents of my students that hadn't connected on the online platforms, writing the Spanish part myself but using Google translate for Burmese, French, Arabic and Amharic.  I asked them to get their kids online and to take care of themselves.  Some of the languages my kids speak aren't even in Google translate.  I found out later that we weren't supposed to do that but in my opinion, extraordinary times call for extraordinary means.

I sat in the Conservatory, calling individual parents on my phone without guarding my number.  Honestly, they can call me whenever they want, with whatever they need.  I had already been texting them, hoping that the English might be easier that way, but I had a number of good conversations in slow and broken English, or in Spanish and they reassured me the kids were okay.  I asked them to call me with anything they need.

They made us do a Zoom department meeting on Friday.  I tried to be positive, but said little.  I noticed that the new Spanish teacher had really nice crown molding in his house and that some of the other teachers looked a little puffy and worn, like I knew I did.  The coach of course looked amazing, sitting out on his back deck like he'd just completed his workout.  People speculated about when we'd be back and what it would look like.
I finally spoke up.
"I don't know what we are going to be walking back into, whenever we go back.  Our students are low income.  They rent.  We see their stuff piled up in front of the houses every time we drive to work after the first."
"Well no... no, I just don't see that."  a teacher answered, one that usually hates me.
"They can't just put them all out....the government will stop that."
"Landlords can be very unethical."  I responded.
"And, many of our students are undocumented.  The will avoid anything the government might be willing to provide, based on their status.  Because they have to.  And those are some of the kids that have gone radio silent, the ones I haven't been able to get in touch with."
She paused and I watched realization wash over her face.
"Ms. Wagner, anything you hear, anything you hear, please tell me.  I can try to get my church involved.  I'm sorry but if anyone does not object, I know that we are in a public school environment, but I would like to end this with prayer."
"Prayer is what we need!"  the new teacher called out.
"He is the only one that can help!"
"Would you like to lead it?"  she answered.

And the teacher launched in to a prayer, a long prayer in his beautiful accent.  It was impassioned, begging God specifically for the undocumented kids, asking him to fix this.  It was very surreal, looking at my colleagues with their eyes closed and faces bowed in prayer, over Zoom.  I'm not into that kind of thing, but I definitely wasn't going to speak against it.

I stared straight ahead, as Mr. Bakwamba try to heal my world, heal us and save my students.  I wasn't ungrateful.

The Crown of Viruses

She sneezed, and green phlegm flew everywhere.
Soe looked startled, grabbed her nose, and ran for the tissues.  She locked eyes with me for a minute, scared, even though she is only in kindergarten, and we both knew why.

I heard several more deep coughs from my kindergartners and first graders, mere inches from my face.   The thing was, I was already sick.  I've been worn down, itchy eyes, congested and coughing since last Sunday.  Monday morning coughing in my face was more of the same.

I walked by the sinks that exist outside of the bathrooms and students stood in lines, scrubbing their arms like they were preparing for surgery on Grey's Anatomy.  A lot of the sinks no longer had soap and I don't know about the kids, but I only use cold water when I wash at school because lead absorption increases through the skin when the water is heated.

A child coughed, stood up, and was sent to the nurse.  Her teacher randomly picked up a can of Lysol and sprayed her area.  Then, he sprayed himself, on the neck.
"She coughed on me.  It doesn't work unless it burns."

A video circulated of a child being released from school and a parent spraying them down with Lysol before letting them in the car.

I walked up to baby Gustavo and he held out a little tube of hand sanitizer, squirting it on both of mine before he would let me anywhere closer to him to help him with his work.

My uncontrollable coughing took over during a fifth grade class.  I looked around and there wasn't any hand sanitizer left.  I sprayed my cough-covered arm with Lysol, then sort of sprayed it in the air like perfume and swooshed through it.

Thursday was the day that the kids that had read the most received prizes.  It's been a big endeavor.  I bought them sketch books, colored pencils and everyone got to check out new books from our new classroom library.  I walked up the hill and through the neighborhood with them, telling them to enjoy their three day weekend.

I was at the Housing Authority when we found out that metro-Atlanta was locking down.  I told my kids not to be scared, but to be scared.  There was a nervous energy in the air, an uncertainty.
"Um, I'll see you guys when school is back in session...." I announced, trying to sound cheery.  Then I drove slowly through the apartments on my way out, watching them walk home.

I went to a school without children today.  I posted a number of online assignments, though the  online platform was crashing as every teacher in the state's third largest district tried to do the same thing.  I went to weird meetings and cleaned my room with something that says it kills 99.9% of every fucking weird thing.  I brought Steve home on Monday, so she was already safe.  Then, I looked around, turned off the lights and locked the trailer.

I drove Alec's car across the grass that serves as our recess field and left, with the trunk full of anything of value, not really certain when we'd be back again.

Dream Like Martin

Mondays suck.  This rainy, gray, not enough hours of sunlight Monday in late February started with an extended conversation about farting.
"Y'all, it's nasty!"  the kindergarten class was informed.
"Go to the bathroom 'cuz I DO NOT WANT TO SMELL THAT."
The convo lasted a long time.  It seemed appropriate for a shitty Monday.

February is Black History month.  In the bougie schools I worked in, Black History month had been sort of pushed aside, because the idea was to have a diverse curriculum that was inclusive all twelve months of the year.  I've always agreed with that and for that reason, thought "history" months were cheesy, no matter if it was Hispanic, Woman or otherwise.  Though I work in a Black school now, I've noticed a resurgence in Black History month celebrations even in bougie areas or basically, my former employment district, which I still frequent three times a week to work at the Housing Authority.  It's funny, Black History month doesn't seem like simple recognition or education of Black achievement because it is ordinarily not included in curriculums or life like I thought it was, but more a celebration of the culture of the varied and un-monolithic contributions of Black people.  The Housing Authority opened my eyes to it and my school really celebrates it as well.  It feels like Christmas week, with theme days and encouragement to dress as different things or wear certain colors, each different, every day of the week.

Black History month school celebrations also provide ripe opportunities for white teachers to Rachel Dolezal it up, and I certainly am not going to end up like that. Most of the dress up days could be addressed tastefully, but it is easy to overlook things.  I just try to imagine myself pumping gas somewhere and what a random onlooker might think of what I'm wearing, obviously outside of the school context of the celebration, and usually decide to not engage in the dress ups.

"We going to have to get you a little dashiki..."  Ms. Snyder said coyly, while she waited for her students to use the bathroom.
"Wash your hands!"  she called, as one of the kindergartners exited.
Her dashiki was quite festive.
"No way."  I responded.
"I am not going to end up on the news as the crazy white teacher, culturally appropriating everything." I responded, laughing.
"What do you mean," she responded slyly, literally looking at me from the side of her eyes with a little smile.
"I wear myself a little 'ol Rolling Stones t-shirt, what's the difference?"
"It's different."  I responded.
She nodded affirmatively and continued her bathroom routine, and I felt like I might have passed a test.

"She was the first African American southeastern Congresswoman."
"Barbara Jordan."  Aazim answered.
"He founded Jet and Ebony magazines."
"John H. Johnson."  he continued.

I've quizzed him so many times for the Black History bowl the Housing Authority conducts that I know the answers myself.  Shit I never knew before.  I can recite them in my sleep.

Maybe I should have been able to a long time ago.

Lift

Alejandro was shaking and crying uncontrollably.  He had just finished his graded rendition of Lift Every Voice and Sing.
"Alejandro, oh my god, Alejandro, I'm sorry....I'm so sorry, I didn't realize you were upset....I was laughing and joking around with them and I swear I didn't know...."  I explained, grabbing his shoulder while he shielded his face from the rest of the students at the table.
"It's just a stupid song, stupid crap."  I whispered furiously into his ear, shocking myself by referring to Lift Every Voice and Sing as stupid crap.
"It's not your fault," he typed into the browser window of his Chromebook, without clicking enter.
"Sometimes when I see people laughing I just freak out and cry."
"It's weird, I don't know why."

"I took my first Spanish class!"  Prem announced, his eyes dancing with excitement.
"What does puto mean?"
My mouth fell open.  So did Veronica's.
"Did you learn that in class today?"  I asked.
"NO!" he screamed, then ran off toward the trailer.

"You know what!"  the second meanest teacher in the school yelled at the class.
"This isn't just going to count for one grade, it's going to count for four!  One of them will be a quiz grade!"
Adriana shifted uncomfortably in her seat, still waiting her turn to sing Lift Every Voice and Sing in the hallway to her teacher, for four grades.

I sat with Prem and Veronica in their Reading class, trying to help them while keeping track of Faba and Juan who were seated in separate groups.  The teacher passed out a blurry, small print worksheet of "The Cat that Walked by Himself".
I felt my eyes glaze over.
"I'm not reading all that." Prem said dismissively, when I tried to get him to put his eyes on it.
The teacher started getting kids to read out loud, while a second Special Ed teacher alternated between berating their performance and asking comprehension questions.
"Where'd the baby come from?!"  she yell-asked.
I knew what she meant but tensed up for a minute because it could easily bring a host of nuanced responses.
"From the woods?" one kid ventured.
"The dog had it?"  another tried.
"From the butt." Prem whispered to me definitively, shoving his worksheet in the cubby-thing under someone else's desk.

I stood with the walkers, ready to go go go.  Adriana walked up, her report card in an envelope.
"Let's see it!"  I said, while she carefully opened the envelope.
"Oh god," she gasped.
I looked down the report.  All Fs.  Every single grade, except for a B in ESOL.  My grade.
"She been doing a lot of that crap lately, given out them Fs for no reason...."  a girl that we normally don't like muttered sympathetically. 
We smiled weakly and started the hike out of the school and through the neighborhood, twenty-odd kids behind us.

Salvation Show

I sat at my morning duty post, watching one of the more troubled members of our student population enter the Media Center.  He walked stiffly, with his eyes darting from side to side to see if anyone was looking at him.
He was carrying two trays of Valentine's cupcakes and wearing a sports coat.
"Hey, Jeremy, let me put your cupcakes on the table so they don't get crushed...."  I said, trying to make him more comfortable.  He handed me the cupcakes and walked over to a friend, while fumbling with the buttons on his sports coat.
"Help me get this shit off....." he mumbled, while his friend struggled with the buttons.

I drove to the Housing Authority, already feeling a little relief that I had finished conducting three weeks of testing and the last day of school before a four day break.  I only had two hours of preparation and then two hours of the Black History performance to go before the break began.

"Hallelujah!" the radio screamed.
"And when your heart is troubled...."  Neil Diamond continued, when I suddenly had a weird vision of my principal singing the song on the stage of the school.
"You gotta reach out your other hand...." she belted into the microphone.
"Hallelujah!"  the teachers of the school sang, all while lined up behind our singing principal.  The meanest teacher in the school stood in the middle of the line, singing loudly.
"Reach it out to the man up there!"  my principal continued.
"Hallelujah!"  the teachers sang, now kicking their legs up like Rockettes as they sang back up.
"'Cause that's what he's there for!'' she sang, eyes closed and arm in the air.
"Take my hand in yours..." our assistant principal sang earnestly, after grabbing the mic.  Her big eyes stared straight ahead in a reassuring manner.
"Walk with me this day..."
"In my heart I know..."
"I will never stray..."
"Halle, halle, halle, halle, halle, halle, halle, halle!!!" the back up singing teachers screamed, legs kicking high in the air with each word.

I glanced at Steve, riding shotgun on a branch in her new, ten gallon terrarium and continued driving toward the apartments. 


*Lyrics, Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show, Neil Diamond