Hair Like Nana

"Okay...no longer a fan!"  Victor called out, walking down the sidewalk into the neighborhood.  
I had gotten in his face.  He was the student that had pissed over my student's stuff a while ago.  He recently became a walker and mocked me for days.  Let's just say I met him where he was at.  

"Ms. Melfi, we need you in carpool."  I heard the call over the walkie talkie while I walked with my walkers in the other direction.  I didn't think much of it.  Our online faculty meeting started a little after and our principal was late.
"Sorry,"  she announced.
"Just so you hear it from me first, we had a gun pulled in the carpool lane, the police are taking care of it."  

No one even blinked.  

I am testing right now.  It's the ESOL test that happens annually and gives me a lot of stress.  It takes up my whole schedule, is difficult to administrate and can make me look like shit if the kids don't do well.  It effects our school's score, too.  My kids are triple counted: minorities, low income and English language learners.  

I have to test kindergarten individually, over two days.  I saved Ku for last, knowing that he would be the hardest.  He did okay the first day but by the second, he was screaming and laughing hysterically, climbing on the back of my chair and clutching me around my neck.  I started to get frustrated, then reminded myself that the laughing and screaming is his panic response.  We made it through.  The minute we stopped, he completely quieted down and calmly took my hand.  I put a sticker on his forehead.  He requested a second star sticker for his hand.  Then, he slowly took them off and stacked one on top of another and pressed them on my hand.  Then, he hesitated and pulled my sleeve up.  He pressed both star stickers on my arm and pulled my sleeve back down, like it was our secret.  

"Is Alec your valentine?"  Kaw asked.

"Yup."  I responded.

"What will you do on Valentine's Day?  Go to restaurant?"

"No, those places are full on Valentine's Day.  We'll probably get takeout."  I responded.

"Not McDonald's.  You should go there."

"I don't know about that....."

"Well, then Chick-Fil-A"

I burst out laughing.  

"Ku!!! Ku!!!" I heard kids yelling.  I heard him screaming.  I looped around the corner and saw a child laughing and dragging Ku around by the arm.  Their teacher was late and they were lined up in the hall, unattended.  I bent over and got an inch from the kid's face that was dragging Ku.

"Get off him."  I said lowly.

"He doesn't know how to act!"  the kid responded, laughing.

"Neither do you.  Don't touch him."  I responded and took Ku by the hand.  

He pressed his forehead against my forearm. 

"You didn't hear....?"  Mr. Warner asked with surprise.

"Where Allen has been, you didn't know?  It was all over the news.  He was shot in the face by his brother....they say he is going to be okay......"

No, I didn't know.  They don't say minors names on TV.   It happened two days before my fiftieth birthday, which was freaking me out.  The little boy that told me that he should be in ESOL because his mom was from New York and "knew Puerto Rican".  The little boy that always said "let me come with you".  

I saw all of my walkers up in the front office while I tried to pick up my testing materials.  An angry mom was yelling at the administrator that had my testing materials outside of the front door.   Really yelling.  It was a mess.  I finally sat down next to one of my walker-witnesses.  Shit had gone down after the walkers got to the stop sign, the point at which I stop watching them and go back to the school.  A second grader got pushed to the ground by a fifth grader.  The police were called on children.  Someone got hurt.  One kid's mom got called a bitch by another's.  Conflicting stories abounded.  

I left with the walkers that afternoon.  Angry mom that was supposed to be picking up her kids in the car was standing at the top of our path, heading us off, ready to do whatever she was going to do to the kids that she thought hurt her kid.  I sent her kid up to meet her, hoping she would walk away and took the rest of the kids up the hill.  When I got back, I found the kids that had been involved in the altercation with her kid inside the school, pressed against a wall.

"Let's go."  I told them.

"She's out there.  They said that we wouldn't be safe."  Victor responded.

"She's gone now.  Let's go."  I answered.

"What if she's hiding behind a tree?"  he asked.

I took them outside and their posse arrived, a muscular older brother on foot and dad in a car that roared through car pool.  

They jumped in and took off.  

I woke up at five in the morning, thinking of that woman standing at the edge of the bus line, hoping to intimidate the kids that she thinks jumped her kid.  It made my stomach hurt.  Her kids are assholes and so is the kid that pushed her kid down.  There were no innocent bystanders, plenty of guilt to go around, but this was crazy.

"Hey, I'm worried that that thing from yesterday is going to escalate.  I mean escalate between the adults."  I told the administrator while I picked up my test materials.  

"I agree."  she answered.  

One of the first graders started braiding my hair.  Then, she leaned in close.

"Your hair smells like nana!"  she exclaimed.

Great.  My hair smells like someone's grandmother.  

I gathered up my walkers.  Angry mom's kids were walkers again, though she had said she would pick them up.  The girl that pushed her kid was suspended, but her brother and cousin Victor were walking.  We trudged up the hill, angry mom's kid on one side and the 'offenders' on the other, along with about twenty other kids.  

"She's up there...."  Victor whispered.  

I could see her.

"She called my mom a fucking bitch..."  James said loudly.

"Stop talking."  I said, staring forward.

Her little girl ran ahead and yelled "that's the two boys."

We walked up the hill.  

"Hey."  I said.

She nodded back.  

She stood to my left and the two boys stood to my right.

"Well, there are the little ones, not sure what is taking them so long to get up the hill."  I mentioned 'casually'.

She finally started walking away.

"We can't go until she crosses the street." Victor said, his dead eyes watching her under his hood.  We waited.  

"She crossed.  But, she went toward our houses instead of hers."

"Come on, I'll walk with you."  I responded, thinking they were paranoid.

We walked to the corner.  I really didn't care if I had to walk them all of the way home.  I knew that woman could more than beat my ass, but I wasn't sending children, even rough-ass children, out to be subjugated by an adult.  I was surprised when I looked to the right and the woman and her children were very much coming from the wrong direction and bounding toward us.  At that moment, James' big brother pulled up and Victor and James piled into the car and tore away.  

And me, I went back to school.  

You Suck Dick

I watched my first grade boyfriend drag an orange crayon over the picture of my face on my work ID. 
"Here, this will make you look better." he said, while systematically covering the photo. 
"I'm gonna give you a little lipstick, too." he continued, while covering my mouth with pink crayon.  

"So I was trying to line my kids up for the assembly and text a parent at the same time...."  Mr. Warren said, eyes wide open.

"Spell check switched her name to 'baby', I don't even use words like that....I had to text her back and tell her I wasn't calling her that....."

The fire alarm would not stop going.  

"DON'T EVACUATE!" the principal yelled over the intercom, trying to be heard over the noise.

It had a three beat rhythm.  I walked past four boys, covering my ears.

"YOU SUCK DICK.  YOU SUCK DICK."  they chanted, in rhythm with the alarm.

"It smells bad in here."  one of my second graders commented. 

"My trailer?  My beautiful trailer?!  What do you mean????"

I was honestly horrified.

"It smells like wish finger."

"What, what is wish finger??"  I screamed.

"Do you mean like wish bone, like the thing in the turkey?"

"NO!  Witch finger!"

Oh my god, witch finger, the green plastic witch fingers I bought at Kroger during Halloween that we all put on every time we read to keep track of which sentence we are on??

I ripped the finger off of my finger.

It smelled horrible.  Then, I sprayed stuff in the air and ran through it like it was perfume.  

I pulled a little row of chairs in front of the giant monitor the county put in my trailer.  The kindergartners sat down.  It was Awards Day.  I don't really believe in that sort of thing but, well, whatever.  They sat for a minute, and then started to squirm.  Suddenly, Naked Thursday occurred.   Legs kicking in the air with the pants pulled up to the knee. Shirts pulled up to their shoulders, talking belly buttons.  

"Dah na nah nah, bu nah, nah nah, nah nah, buh nah nah naha nah...." I chanted, and put my eyes on the screen.  

 

James Madison Never Got Called an Asshole

"I really think these people are totally punking me.  The picture on my new ID is even worse than the last."  I lamented.
"Yeah.....your head is like....square......"  my first grade boyfriend responded, staring incredulously at my new work badge.  

"MISS EVANS!"  a parent called out loudly in the middle of the virtual class.

"Javonte has got to go.  He got a Q-tip stuck in his ear.  I'm taking him to the emergency room!"

We stared back into the screen.

"Oh Javonte....."  Ms. Evans responded lowly, shaking her head.  

"So, when I'm older, I'm going to have a beard."  one of my housing authority students mentioned casually.  

"Like a really long one?"  I responded.

"Yeah, really long.  My religion says you're not supposed to cut it."  he answered.

"So you're going with it?  Will you have a mustache, too?  You could like, grab the corners and curl it up with your fingers....."

His eyes widened.

"What if it is like really sparse, like only three really long hairs grow....."  I continued.

His eyes got even bigger and he screamed.  

"Did you know that James Madison showed up like, two weeks early to the Constitutional Convention basically so that he could write the whole thing before anyone else got there?"  I asked my co-worker as we leaned against the wall overseeing a massive fourth grade bathroom break.

"Hmmmm."  she responded.

"I mean, who does that?  It's kind of rude."  I continued.

"JAMES MADISON does THAT."  she answered with a firm nod.  

"Mauricio, you have really curly hair."  I commented.  I have really never seen a Mexican kid with hair like that before.

"Yeah, I have A LOT of hair."  he answered.

"I have a bunch on my arms, too.  And my back."  he continued.

Well.  You learn something new every day.

Ya visto

"Hey, be careful not to step on the lizards....they don't bite or anything, but...."  I said, watching the lizard I'd been speaking to for half of the day warm himself on a piece of linoleum that was getting sun through the trailer window.
"You want them out of here?"  the I.T. guy asked as he hauled off my work desktop computer.
"No, I like them. "  I answered.

And I do.  My school district decided to return to virtual classes on our first week back after the holiday break because of the Omicron numbers.   I was surprised by how little time it took me to start speaking to lizards while I sat in the trailer alone, watching my students over computer screens.  

Virtual learning brought back total deja vu.  The district announced that we would only be virtual for a week, three days actually, because we had teacher work days that we used to distribute Chromebooks to the students.  As I planned for three virtual days, I kept remembering March of 2020 when they said we'd be virtual for two weeks.  I returned to the school building in February of 2021.  I remembered January of 2020 when people first started talking about the virus at school.  I never thought we'd still be speculating on it two years later.  The massive car lines for COVID testing were back.  My Google Classroom started blowing up with messages from my fifth graders, requesting to "go live" after classes finished.   I got a look at whose room got new paint and even talked to some parents I haven't see since the last time we were virtual.  The kids joked about playing Among Us.  We tried out the new Google backgrounds, making it look like it was snowing behind us instead of just ordinary walls.  I saw my students without masks on for the first time in well, about a year.  I was surprised how much older they look and how big some of their teeth are.  

I usually make New Year's resolutions.  I'm not sure why, but I didn't this year.  I really have no idea what 2022 has in store for us.  

And Many More

"I got three questions from my students today."  a fellow teacher announced as she entered our mandated professional development session.
"How old is glass, were you alive during slavery and can time move backwards."  she continued, plunking herself in a chair.  

I snickered to myself.

"Why we here......?" she whispered lowly, looking at me from the corner of her eye.  

I hovered around the vegetable section trying to get a bell pepper while some bougie lady tried to transform the guy stocking the shelves into her personal shopper.  

Well I need blah blah and blah blah and blah blah for a recipe and I just don't see it!

That means it's not here....I found myself mentally answering.  That means you might have to go to another store.  That means you might not make that recipe.  The stocker may not know a substitute, but I bet Google does...

"Why don't you wear a mask?"  the stocker asked the woman with what appeared to be genuine curiosity instead of antagonism.

"There is no longer a mask mandate in the city."  she responded brightly.

"Besides, everyone wants to see my smile!"

"I DON'T!"  I blurted out.

"I'm with you."  another stocker seconded, giving me a nod and trucking her huge cart of vegetables down the aisle.  

I drove home with my bougie groceries, glad I didn't end up in the newspaper for getting in a mask-fight because I can't control my tongue.  I approached a huge intersection when I saw something lying in the road.  It was a person.  I glanced around furtively, looking for emergency vehicles, assuming someone had been hit by a car.  I crept forward on the green light, then stopped.   Cars whirred around me, some honking.  There were no emergency vehicles.  The person was curled up like a little cat, sleeping.  Cars continued whizzing past, many with Christmas trees on top.  I sat, frozen, while people honked and tore around me.  I inadvertently covered my eyes, knowing the person was about to be run over.  

Suddenly, another car screeched to a halt and a bleach-blond woman emerged wearing high heels and a longish gold embroidered coat.  She walked authoritatively through the congested intersection, throwing her hand up whenever cars advanced toward her.  She woke the person in the intersection, imploring them to get up before they got killed.  She got the person on their feet and slowly advanced them through the passing cars toward the sidewalk.  I again covered my eyes, as speeding cars missed them by inches.  They made it to the sidewalk and the blond woman moved her car to the side, exited and continued talking to the person she had just saved from the intersection.  I drove home.  

I walked up the hill with the students on the last day of school before winter break.  

"You fat!"  one yelled at another.

"You're fatter than me!"  she responded.

"FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  another screamed from the front steps of her house.

Some of the kids gave us the finger from the passing school buses.

"Bye everyone, be careful going home and have a great break."  I responded and walked back down the hill to the school.  

On Our Way Home

"Level 2 lockdown."

I gripped Ku's hand tighter.

"Adrian, come with us."  I said sternly.  

He continued washing his hands.

"ADRIAN.  NOW."  I commanded.  

Level 2.  Possible threat INSIDE the building.   Get inside a classroom and lock the door and don't leave.  Continue teaching.  

We sprinted down the hallway while Ms. Porter swung the door open, ushering us in.  

I've had the creeps a lot lately.  There is a wild feel in the air, a feral, bad feel of violence.  You see it when you drive.  People flipping out, yelling at each other, swerving around, disproportionate reactions.  Threatening to shoot.  

I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and think of the woman who was murdered with her dog in Piedmont Park.  We live next to a large park.  We have a dog.  I am a woman.  I try to quiet my mind but it doesn't always work.  When I leave in the morning, I walk through my backyard in the pre-dawn hours to our car that we park behind the house.  I've been more aware of my surroundings, noticing when I hear a crinkle of leaves or people outside of the fence.  It is early.  No one should really be out there.  If they are, I like to know that they are there before they know that I am there.  

"The suspect shot two police deputies while they attempted to serve a warrant for murder.  There is a manhunt.  Police have closed down a section of Covington Highway and are walking through the street with rifles."

I looked at the message that Alec texted with the local news article. 

"I think this is why you are on lockdown."

Our school was listed with the other schools in the Covington Highway area that were also locked down.  

"We have been cleared to continue with dismissal.  Wagner, you will take your walkers up the hill and to the neighborhood as you usually do.  One of the police will flank you."

We assembled the walkers' line inside of the building, instead of outside of the building as we normally do.  My group is huge; at least thirty children stood in front of me.  Ku stood next to me, gripping my hand, even though he doesn't walk with me.

"Sit here, baby,"  I instructed, putting him across the hallway next to the door.  

"Don't move.  I'll be back."

"Let's go." I told the rest.  

We trudged up the hill through the woods.  

I had gotten in trouble for going outside earlier in the day to get my lunch from the trailer.  Now, I was walking with thirty kids through the neighborhood.  It turns out the suspect was killed by police as we lined the children up.  

I crept through the backyard this morning, in the dark.  I opened the gate and saw the back window of the car, open.

Open?

I saw the glass glimmering on the driveway in front of the broken window.  

I turned, rushed back inside and locked the door.  

*Title, Lennon-McCartney

Zebulon

"STOP!  Let go!"  Htoo yelled, trying to get out of Albinus' forced hug.

All of my students are sick of Albinus.  He hits and kicks everyone for no reason.  It pisses me off.

"I won't hurt you!  I won't hit you!" Albinus pleaded, all while continuing his rape hug.

"Let go!  Albinus, when someone says they don't want a hug, you have to respect that."  I instructed.

Htoo wrangled himself from Albinus' grasp, his face contorted in anger and frustration.

"I don't....I don't.....like you." he sputtered slowly, his face turning from anger to sadness.

Htoo is one of the friendliest children I teach.  I felt angry with Albinus and his stupid parents for making Htoo even experience these negative feelings that were so contrary to his normal disposition.  

Mya and I opened a new tab during the boring Social Studies lesson.  I typed Aung San Suu Kyi's name into the browser so that Mya could see the latest news on her trial.  

"My parents said Karen people put her in jail."  Mya whispered.

It felt like a punch.  I had hoped that when the various ethnicities left Thailand and Myanmar and came to the U.S. as refugees that they had left their hatred of each other behind, but they clearly brought the same old bullshit with them.  

It's not her fault.  It's not her fault.  I made myself think, over and over again.

Her parents are teaching her this stupid shit.   You have to question it out of her.

I love Mya.  It honestly pains me that she could feel that way toward the Karen people.  I worry what she thinks of some the students I work with everyday.

"Hilary, we received horrible news last night....."  the text from my sister read.  It came through early in the morning on the day after Halloween.

"Mike is dead.  He died last night."

He was thirty-three years old.  

He was fun, someone you always liked running into.  I remember years ago when my sister was getting rid of Emma's trampoline because she had outgrown it. 

"Oh my god!  I want it!" he exclaimed instantaneously, eyes wide with happiness. 

He would tell us about his dance parties, girls he liked and tried to hook up with, and how he bought one of his ladies flowers on the way out of work one day and got himself some tulips too, because they were on sale.    

"Bueno, Sra. Martínez, lo siento pero.....algo pasó hoy en la escuela.....um, un alumno orinó sobre la botella de agua de Mauricio.  Y pues, lo hizo a propósito....."

I hated the phone call.  CAN SOMEONE ELSE IN THE SCHOOL HANDLE THE SPANISH LANGUAGE WITH PARENTS?????????  The last time, I had to tell a parent in Spanish that we lost her kid during dismissal and didn't know where he was.  Now telling a parent of one of my students that a kid deliberately pissed on something of his was not a conversation I wanted to have.  

She burst out crying.

"Mauricio tiene miedo, tiene miedo todos los días.....quería que esta escuela fuera buena.....se tira sus cosas en la basura....se le roba...."

My palms itched with an overwhelming desire to beat some ass.  

"I was with my mom at Wal-Mart."  Femke started.

"We saw this guy out front, you know, one of the guys, and he asked us for money.  My mom went inside, bought a loaf of bread and what are those things called that you sleep in?" she asked, positioning her hands like a triangle

"A tent."  I responded.

"Yeah, a tent.  She gave him the stuff and said next time you see me here, you come to the car."

I pictured her mother.  A Rwandan woman with ten kids that barely speaks English and lives in poverty herself.  

Next time you see me, you come to the car.  

"Children....."  the intercom instructed, "if you see Miss Henrietta in the cafeteria, be sure to tell her happy birthday!"  

One of the general ed. first graders motioned to me to come over.

"Is she the old girl in the cafeteria?"  she whispered inquisitively.  

"Friends, let's all gather to do a drive-by of Ms. M's house on Friday.  We have the day off because the Braves won the World Series."  the text explained.

Ms. M is one of the nicer co-workers I have.   My first year at the school, people kept saying she had cancer.  I never wanted to ask her the details, but assumed she was in remission the following years.  At the beginning of this year, she took an extended leave for what I heard was a standard "procedure".  I had noticed it was taking longer than six weeks and was alarmed when the drive-by parade message came through.  

I got up the next morning and shortly before the drive-by was to begin, another text came through.

"She passed in the night."  it read.

She was thirty-seven years old.  

I remembered the way we used to greet each other.

"Here comes trouble."  I'd say.

"That right, Ms. Wagner, nothing but trouble."  she'd answer, putting a tough look on her sweet face.  

We drove to south Georgia on the Sunday after Ms. M's death for Mike's memorial.  He came from a small town of a little over a thousand people.  I really felt like they shouldn't have just counted him as one person, but more like two or three.  People say that memorials provide closure but the sight of his bike, suffering family and the small urn that held his remains inadvertently felt more like ripping the scab off of a barely healed wound.  

"Good morning!"  I greeted my kindergartners, carefully keeping one eye on Albinus in case he started hitting and grasping Ku by the hand so he wouldn't run off.  

"I'm moving!"  Htoo announced.

"No.  What?  When?"  I responded.

"Friday is my last day.  We are moving to a small house and I will go to big school."  he continued, excited.  

"I'm happy for you."  I responded.

I was lying.  I wasn't happy.  I wanted him here.  Here with me.