The Summer Side of Life

I drove down South Hairston, on my way to work.  It's brighter in the mornings now and I could see clothes strewn down the yellow line, all of the way down the road.  I made the left by the Sikh temple and pulled into the parking lot by the trailer where I work.  The school's dumpsters were full of household goods and baby clothes, stuff from people who had been evicted. 

Jaime's mom warned me that they were moving.  He'd been such a dick lately, I was almost relieved.  They were moving to Rockdale, which I knew would be better, and I told her so.  Better schools, better services for English learners.  I was surprised when they called me to the front office Monday morning, because a student wanted to say goodbye to me.  The whole family was there and Jaime was nearly in tears.  I could tell I was about to cry too, so I asked him if he wanted to visit his second grade teacher.  We said our goodbyes and Jaime ran out of the front door of the school.  I walked slowly away, feeling a pit in my stomach.  

May only the best come to you and your family, I repeated over and over in my head while I walked to the trailer.  

Teacher Appreciation Week happened.  Mya brought me a card, telling me how much I "slay" and a creepy looking clay egg.  I wrote her one back, telling her that I will miss her terribly because she also, slays.  Eduardo made me a card and brought flowers, picked from someone's front yard, and a bag of Doritos.  Ariel brought me a pink flower from her Plant Cycle project.  These things are better than some stupid Starbucks card, any day of the week.  

They make me proctor a lot of testing at work.  Sometimes I get to test my own students, which is awesome and sometimes, I don't.  I had a large group of my students in the trailer, testing, when I received a voicemail from Adan's mom.  We had been texting back and forth since she and Adan moved.  She told me they found a new place and I helped her look up which school she should enroll him in.  As soon as the kids finished the test, I listened to the message.  

It was DFCS.  Mom had given the agent her phone and told them to call me.  I argued with the DFCS woman on the phone, in front of my kids.  How there was no way in hell that I would help her take Adan away from his mom.  How insane it was that they didn't even have a Spanish speaker to conduct an interview with a mom while they were threatening to take her child.  That everything I was hearing was wrong and I WOULD NOT PARTICIPATE.  The agent's voice softened a little bit.  
"Look,"  she said.
"I want to close this case.  It seems extreme to me.  I don't think mom has papers and I know that she is scared.  Can you verify what she said, that she has been in constant contact with you, attempting to enroll her child in school?"

"Yes.  She has been in constant contact and has even Ubered to the school already, trying to enroll him."

"Okay, I'm going to do what I can."  she answered.

"Who did this?"  I asked.

"Someone named Ingle.  A social worker from your school system.  She said he had more than thirty absences....."

"I can send you a screenshot of the absences he has had from my school and believe me, it is no where near thirty.  I have never even heard this person's name."

"Are you saying her information is incorrect?"

"Yes.  Yes I am."

My fifth grade group of students is now five Spanish speaking boys and one Karen girl.  Pway is very patient with their antics and the fact that they ditch English all together when they are together.  I have this image of the first time some high school Spanish teacher tries to get Pway to say what she knows about the Spanish language and she responds, pinche wey, no mames, pendeja.  And then, threatens to fuck their mom.  

I kept trying to get the kids to do some work.  I sat next to Eduardo, while he clipped away on his Chromebook.  I heard chupa-something, and made a Chupacabra joke. 
"That's not the kind of chupa that I was talking about." he said slyly, and kept smacking his computer.  

I laughed.  Even though it is at the least wildly inappropriate to tell your teacher to suck your dick, I like it better when they're wily instead of sad and wondering when you are going to leave them, too.  

It was Career Day, but I still went to see my students while various people presented their professions.  As soon as I came in, Danny and Eduardo turned around and stopped listening to the presenter.   

"¡Me gustan!" Eduardo scream-whispered, touching one of my silver-painted finger nails.

I told them to turn around and pay attention.  They next time both boys turned back around, they had colored their fingernails with pencils so that they would be silver, too.  

I raced through the cafeteria, my entrance to the school from my trailer, trying to get to my next class. 

 "Ms. Wagner!"  an administrator called.

"Yeah?'  I responded, caught of guard.

"You gonna have to respond to them."  she said, smiling.

My fifth grade boys were all waving furiously across the cafeteria,  even the puerto rican kid they recently recruited was doing it.  

I watched Rafael slink across the trailer one morning, his eye catching something.  It was a long pink fake finger nail, part of a press-on set Ariel had worn one morning.  I watched him glance around and clandestinely put it in his pocket.  

"Why do you talk like a baby?  You're stupid, a child."  Arecely hissed at Eduardo.

"No me importa."  he responded, blowing her off.

They continued coloring in their journals.  

I don't know what this girl's problem is.  One second sweet, the next, a salty mess. 

I did a little sleuthing on my own, trying to figure out the leak in the Adan situation.  At least one person, and possibly two from my school were involved with the social worker with a hard-on that had been stalking Adan's family since a previous school.  I am not a confrontational person, but I guess I had questions.  

"Hey there, I was trying to find out why you couldn't provide ANY Spanish-language resources for a housing-insecure family, but could find a way to send DFCS to scare a mom to death?"

Her response:  Call me.  And dumbass didn't even leave a phone number.

I did end up calling her.  It wasn't pleasant.  

"You sound angry."  she said, baiting me.  

"Well, maybe I am.  Are you telling me that the only social service our school system can provide to non-English speaking parents is DFCS?"

"They're trying to help."  she responded.

"DFCS?!"

"We got the address from an entry you made in the parent contact log."

My skin started to prickle.  So, I helped?  That crazy cunt from the other school dug through my contact log?

"Do you think it's a choice for you to NOT give up that information?"  she continued, a threatening edge to her tone.  

"Let's just chalk this up to lesson learned, thank you for your time."  I said, and hung up. 

I didn't want to admit it, but it was chilling.   States across the country are passing anti-immigrant legislation.  Much of the anti-trans legislation has focused on schools.  In the 80s they tried to bar undocumented children from attending public schools.  I believe they tied it to the AIDS crisis, similar to the measures Biden and Trump used with COVID to deny entry to the United States.  We are living in a dystopian time and I feel like it is only going to get worse for us, for my kids.  It really is us against them and I will never make the mistakes I made with Adan again.  

"Do you get to talk to your dad much, since you left?"  I asked Eduardo one day.

"My dad?"  he responded.

"Yeah, you know your other dad?"  I know that he lives with his mother and two sisters and her husband.  The family that was created here while he grew up down there, before she sent for him.  

"No, I have only met him once."

"Who did you live with?"  I asked.

"Mis abuelos."

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize....do you get to talk to them sometimes?"

"Not really."  he answered.

"What are these?"  he asked, looking at some tickets I had on my desk from some drawing the school had done.

"We used these in the alburgue...."

"Wait, what?  They sent you to one of those places?  HOW LONG?"  I asked.  The detention centers on the border, the ones with kids lying on the floor under tin foil emergency blankets.  

"Only a week.  My aunt was with me in the group when we crossed through Mexico.  Hot cold, hot cold!  We got to the border and they took me to the center and deported her."

I stared back.

"Then, they put me on a plane and flew me here.  A month walking in Mexico and a hours to get to Georgia!"  he said, smiling.  

It was early and the kids were tearing through the trailer, getting journals, colored pencils, eating funky breakfast from the cafeteria.  I saw Arecely sidle up to Eduardo, whispering something.

"¡PERRA!"  he yelled in her face.  

I guess she had pushed him far enough.  

I walked up the hill with the walkers.  The hispanic contingent is less now, after Adan and Jaime moved. No more groups of "Spanish moms"  as Jaime called them, waiting at the corner for their kids.  Eduardo's mom stood up there though, with a couple of little children around her.  Sometimes I find it hard to communicate with her.  I don't know if it is because my Spanish sucks, or if it is because she thinks every communication that comes from the school comes from me.  She'll ask me abruptly about things and I have no idea what she is talking about.  She started asking me about a T-shirt Eduardo's sister had wanted for Field Day.  I looked at her blankly and Eduardo started trying to pitch in, translating the few words he knows into English.  

"Mi hija pensaba que no tuviera yo bastante dinero." she said, bitterly.

I felt really stupid, confused and everyone was looking at me and it was raining.  I tried to explain and she seemed annoyed.  There seemed like an implication that I wasn't doing my job, which bothers me because I try really hard to get my families everything that they need.  Eduardo seemed weird, too.  Not my normal, no mames wey boy.  He had the face on that he uses when he is around his homeroom teacher.  Kind of serious and blank.  I walked back down the hill in the rain, feeling beaten down.  I glanced back up at them, but they all walked with heads forward.  

I sat at my desk in the morning while the kids filed in.  I greeted them, while they set themselves up for our morning together.  Eduardo walked behind me, wrapping his arms around my neck.  I felt his face burrowing into my shoulder.

"I hated yesterday."  I said.  

I felt his face push harder into my shoulder and he just stood like that for a very long time.  

*Title, Gordon Lightfoot

Calf and Lamb

"My butt hurts."  Ariel announced.
"You know when you go to the bathroom and it hurts real bad and you just sweat...." she continued.
No, Ariel, I really don't, I thought to myself.  

"You're my mom now."  Rafael announced to our principal.

She looked at me, a little wide eyed.

"And you, you are my tía."  he continued, motioning toward me.

"Well, I guess I've been downgraded."  I announced.

"He's yours now."  I whispered to my principal, laughing.  

Standardized testing started. I never know how that is going to go; I usually have to proctor a group that does not include any of my students.  Randomly, Eduardo got put in my group.  Either him or Baby Gustavo gave me this awful, bleeding throat, hacking cold that was killing me.  I was determined not to call out during testing and came in anyway, wearing a mask.  While I gave the rest of kids the mints during testing, Eduardo and I shared a bag of cough drops and coughed our way through testing. I would let the kids play around in the room after they were done.  I felt terrible when they elected Eduardo to be the leader of their next Simon Says and he said,  I can't, I do not speak English, but continued running and playing with the American kids.  Then, he just came and sat with me and drew pictures of Quetzals and volcanoes.  

Alec and I stood at our local, pop-up farmers market.  One of us buys vegetables there every week, but usually we don't both go together.   In honor of Earth Day, the meat farm next to our vegetable stand brought a calf and lamb for people to pet while they sold lamb and veal butchered and packaged out of a cooler next to the petting enclosure.  There was a sign on the enclosure, advertising how much of the calf you could buy, one quarter, half or the whole damn thing.  I've seen that meat farm for years selling their products, but I have never seen them bring the actual animals into a petting zoo format.  I was enraged.  I guess people should know where their meat comes from, but I couldn't stop staring at those poor animals.  I petted the calf quickly, and walked away.  

I was getting a little tired of Rafael's weird jump up, surprise hugs.  Or, when he tried to track my phone.  I will always help him, I'm his teacher and I care for him tremendously, but his odd, misplaced affection was just kind of grossing me out.  He ripped the door open of the trailer one day and tried to grab me in a hug.  I shifted quickly and side-hugged him.

"So, it's like that."  he said, a cold look in his eyes.

He is nine years old.  

I don't know where he gets this shit.  

"So Wagner, um, you should get your personal things out of your trailer.  Those contractors out there are going to rip the stairs off of the trailers that are getting hauled away and we're afraid they'll rip your stairs off, too."

I stared back.

"So, I'm going to put my lunch and stuff in the trunk of my car....."  I said slowly.

"Sorry, yeah, we thought you might need a minute to process.  We aren't using you for testing this afternoon, because of, you know, the stairs."

"Me cago en tu primo."  Eduardo growled, slapping his laptop when Rosetta Stone didn't accept his answer.  

"Gross."  I answered, tired.  

I have seven kids in the trailer in the mornings now.  

"Mira, abuela."  Rafael started.

I looked at hm.

"Señora." he continued.  

"No es abuela, ni señora, es mamá!"  Eduardo yelled.

"She's got like, fifty years...."  Rafael sputtered.

Hmmm, the kids never guess my age correctly.  He must have googled me, too.  

"Lo mataré." Eduardo muttered.

"Tienes amor tóxico."  Adan said to Rafael, smiling slyly.  Rafael tried to throw shade on him and Adan gave it back to him, hard.  

After that, all of the boys started calling Rafael "Amor Tóxico".  

I was alarmed that Rafael could shift so fast into meanness when he felt rejected.  I wondered what it might mean for him when he was older.  Would he be that guy that tells everyone that some girl was a lesbian just because she didn't want to go out with him?  Claim that she actually begged him to date her and he said no, as opposed to the other way around? I was glad the other boys knew what it meant to be toxic toward someone.   I hoped they could show Rafael a better way to be and that maybe he would listen to them.  I also couldn't believe I was dealing with a maelstrom of nine through twelve year old boy fever.  

I stood in the counselor's office at school, begging for help with Adan's situation.  His mom texted me that in a matter of days they would be effectively homeless.  

"Ms. Wagner!!!!"  I heard, screamed.

I saw four little faces, Adan, Eduardo, Danny and my new girl, Arecely.  Four little beautiful faces, poking into the counselor's office.  They ran off.  Arecely's hair was down and it flowed behind her, waving up and down.  

To make a long story short, Alec persuaded the farm to sell us the two animals.  It was not cheap, and they nearly called the law on Alec because they feared he would drive to their farm and let all of their baby animals free.  We put the calf in the backseat of Alec's 2006 Honda and he held the lamb in his arms while I drove the whole heard to a rescue farm in Conyers.   

I got in the car Monday morning and it still smelled like farm.  And I drove to work and I faced the day, thinking of the baby animals and hoping they slept well.

Children of the Beehive

I remembered this day, long ago.  I was jacked up on Prozac and didn't want to go to my therapy appointment.  I was with my friend Somber-Tracy, who is a Republican now.  
"Dogs just roll around in the sun.  It makes them happy.  I want to be like that."  I announced.
"Hilary, what the fuck is wrong with you?"  she answered.
Then, we jumped up and down on the trampoline in her backyard for a while and I ditched the appointment.  

I saw the dog, the dog I call Faye, on the dog shelter's website.  They said that she had been abandoned, tied to the fence by her owner.  I know they have to say what they're going to say, but did they really think that was what happened that day?  That I was lying?  She's been in there more than two months.  

Papí and I took off during spring break.  Lola too.  We drove two days to New Mexico.   It was hot, then cold, then snowing and windy.  It was perfect.  The time changed and we changed and we came back.  It was beautiful.

Rafael ran into the trailer, nearly ripping the door off.

"I made my own lunch!" he screamed, opening his lunch box.

I looked inside.  Two rice puddings and a bag of Doritos.  Carefully packaged.  And, a Capri Sun.  

"Is that your hair?"  he asked, as one of the massively long threads of my hair attached to the sweater I was wearing.  

"Yeah, sorry, I shed."  I responded.

"I'm keeping it, " he responded, running away with a piece of my hair.

"I like your skin."  he continued, sniffing my sweater.  

"Look!  Christians!"  Lupita yelled.  

We were walking out of our trailer, the one that school thought didn't need a Swiffer, though I do all of the cleaning myself, and didn't need to be replaced by a new trailer, though no one uses the old ones and I am covering up holes in the walls with paper and the floor is caving in.  

I saw these white women walking around, with long skirts and white sweaters.

"Are the Witnesses, or Mormons..?"  I whispered to Lupita.

"They come to our house too!"  Agnieszka announced.

"We call them the Hallelujahs,  everyone does!"  Lupita responded, gold cross glistening in the sun.

"Pendejo."  Eduardo growled.

"Zee gurl ees goeeg to zee library..."  he continued, speaking into the headset I had to buy myself, for their Rosetta Stone lesson. 

It rejected his pronunciation.  

I heard a loud slap.

"Zee gurl ees goeeg to zee library..." he said again.

"Pinche wey....."  he continued, slapping the computer when it rejected his pronunciation.  

He and Danny started wrestling.  Both were on the ground.  

"¡Chupáme debajo!"  Eduardo screamed, showing me the Google Translate version of 'suck my dick' on his computer, merrily, just to make sure I knew what he said.  

"Yeah, "  I responded.

"I heard you.  Get your stuff, friends.  I have to see my first graders.  I hope you all have a great day.  The best day.  I'll see you again in a few hours."

*Title, Sonny and the Sunsets  

Out Like a Lamb

Rafael launched into the trailer, nearly ripping the door off, like he does every morning.

"So my uncle from France, he gave my brother a Rolex for his birthday."  he said, as if he was continuing a conversation instead of beginning one.

"But my brother, he didn't want it!  He already has an Apple watch.   He didn't want a Rolex!"  

We all laughed a little, listening to Rafael's stories about his rich uncle from France.  

Eduardo clicked on his computer, which of course wasn't doing what it was asked.

"Pinche weyyyyy"  he mumbled, trying to get the page to load.  

Shortly before Lola's eleventh birthday, we found another lump on her.  I called the vet to move up her twice yearly tumor check and X-rays.  I was surprised when they said Lola's vet had left the practice.  Lola's vet that helped us through her malignant tumor and radiation and performed another surgery for an additional tumor.  She has guided us through all of this and I felt an awful sense of dread as I booked Lola's appointment with another vet.  As the date approached, I felt extreme apprehension.  Would this be the visit when they say there is nothing they can do?

Rafael launched into the trailer, nearly ripping the door off.  He was hiding something behind his back and all of the boys were smiling.  

"Close your eyes."  he instructed.

"IT"S A...!"  Jaime called out, attempting to ruin Rafael's surprise.

"Mamón wey!"  Eduardo hissed, stopping Jaime from continuing.

"Pendejo."  Danny seconded.

Rafael pulled a large box from a jewelry store bag and produced a golden bracelet with a black magnetic stone on it.  He pushed it onto my wrist.

"Rafael....wow, that is so nice of you...how did you....?"  I sputtered, not knowing what to say.  

"My uncle from Francia."  he responded, smiling.  

I smiled back.  Though I had doubts that this was a priceless French jewelry piece, I found it sweet, yet horribly uncomfortable and I wondered if his mom knew that one of her bracelets had left the house.  

Eduardo spun the globe, slowly.  

"It took a month for me to get here."  he mentioned.

"I didn't really see Mexico, we just went from pueblo to pueblo."

"One night, we were sleeping outside and my arm felt weird.  I pulled off my jacket and there were these bugs all over it and red marks."

I stared back.

"But I'm here now so it's all okay."  he continued, and smiled. 

"Did you know that Mexico used to extend to here?"  he said, pointing up near Colorado on the globe.

"Yeah, before the United States lo robaron."  I answered, smiling too. 

"And Colombia, it was all of this..." he continued, pointing to parts of South America.  

"Panama, too"  he continued.  

"And the Mayans were here."  he said, pointing in Central America.

"But they're not gone."  I responded.

"You're Mayan, so they are still here."  

"That's right."  he answered, smiling broadly.  

They kept Lola for a long time at the vet, sedating her, scanning her.  The vet called me with the results, though Alec was the one who took her to the appointment.  I held my breath.

"The new bump is not malignant.  And her scans are all clear.  There are not mast cell tumors."

I exhaled slowly.  

"So, we will see her in six months!"

"Thank you."  I responded.

"Thank you so much for taking care of her."

 

Still Like a Lion

"The whole fifth grade got their Chromebooks taken away.  They were creating adult profiles during the school day and catfishing multiple adults simultaneously.  Some had more than one profile.  Malikai had a whole couple fighting about him."  

That made for an interesting faculty meeting.  

I found myself snickering a little, knowing I shouldn't.  

I set up the computers for my morning tutorial.  When I opened Eduardo's, I closed it again and left it on the table.  Then, I put it away.  We weren't saving a place for him at the table like people do with dead people.  I checked my email.  What do you know but the day he was scheduled to be deported, the county got his Rosetta Stone sign-in ready for him.  I closed the email.  I put the envelope with his testing accommodations back in my desk.  The one I tried to hand to him the week before and then hesitated, because I hadn't written a Spanish explanation for what it was for his mom.  When I tried to explain, he just shook his head like it really didn't matter either way.   

It was raining as I assembled my walkers for afternoon dismissal.  

"My mom is going to meet me."  Eduardo's sister said.

"Because...my brother's not here."

"I understand."  I answered.

"Don't worry, I'll get you home."

She started sprinting as soon as we left the front door of the school.  I was dragging the rest of my walking crew with me, trying to keep up with her.  At the foot of the hill, I saw what I thought might be a boy.  There stood Eduardo, almost looking like Eddie Munster, wearing court clothes, a shirt buttoned up to his chin and hair slicked down, under a giant umbrella.  He was smiling from ear to ear.

"So... and...entonces????"  I half-screamed.

"They are letting me stay.  THEY ARE LETTING ME STAY!"  he repeated.  And then his mom jumped out from behind a tree, and the three of them sprinted up the hill.  

I walked with the rest of my crew up the hill, almost dizzy and smiling so much myself that my face felt stretched.  My last three walker kids started screaming because they saw a dog.  I walked toward the corner, drenched with rain, while I human-shielded the kids from the dog.  

"Ms. Wagner!"  I heard, called from a car.

I turned to see Albinus with his arm stretched out of the window.  He and his mom were smiling and laughing at me.  I waived back and turned toward the dog, rain covering my glasses and running down my face.  It was groomed to look like a lion.  I have never seen a dog that looked like that before.

And I smiled and I smiled and I screamed towards the raining heavens.  

Hasta lunes

I stepped out of the car at 6:45 in the morning.  The sun is rising earlier so I can actually see more than headlights around me.  Two deer stood staring at me.  They gently crossed the street and hopped down into the woods that lead to the creek behind the school.  One of them had antlers.   

"Muriel, do you like sports?" I asked, after she seemed particularly invested in the Pelé book we were reading.  

"Yes." she answered.

"Which, soccer?"

"No."  she answered.

"Football?"

"No."

"Basketball?"

"No."

"Dodgeball!"  she finally answered, raising her hands in the air like it was the most obvious thing in the world.  

Rafael tore into the trailer, nearly ripping the door off.  After digging furiously in his book bag, he pulled out a little package, wrapped in notebook paper.  In Sharpie, he wrote:  To Danny, mi amigo fiel.  

"It's a phone."  he announced.

"It's Danny's birthday."

And it was.  Danny ripped off the notebook paper and out came a beat up Android with carefully curated apps that Rafael thought he might like.  Tik Tok, What's App, You Tube and Facebook, which Danny quickly deleted.  

"You have to be thirteen to use Facebook."  Jaime announced.

"I'm twelve."  Danny answered.

"Me too."  Eduardo seconded.

Jaime stared at me, aghast.  TWELVE YEARS OLD!!  In his mind, they might as well have said they were twenty-five and drove themselves to fifth grade that morning.  I laughed, not sure how to explain to him that these boys had had a journey that was a little different than his and missed some school here and there along the way.  

"Tuve una novia, pero ya la boté."  I heard Danny say to Eduardo as soon as I walked across the room.  I snickered a little, because it seemed pretty improbable.

"Si, porque eres chingón."  Eduardo answered.

"¿Te puso los cuernos?"  he continued.  

Maybe they are too old for elementary school.  

I make my morning kids grocery store pop-out biscuits on Fridays.  I bring that jam with the red table cloth design on top, too.  They like that kind.  Last Friday, I brought Krispy Kreme instead.  The filled ones.  I couldn't stop thinking that it could be our last Friday with Eduardo and that I should try to make it nice.  He likes the Amulet books.  He checked one out from the classroom library, but brought it back the next day.

"That was fast!  Are you sure you don't need more time to read it?"  I asked.

He hesitated.

"I'm not done.  It's just, I don't know if I'll be back."

"No....just bring it to me when you are finished."  I answered.  

"Let's buy him the whole set." my sister announced later that afternoon, when I told her about the exchange.

"I know.  I had the same instinct...but, would they even let him take them?  When they deport adults, even teenagers,  they don't let them bring shit, not even phone cards or money or anything that would actually...."

"Help them."  she finished for me.

"Do you think they'll fly him to Guatemala?  Or just dump him in Reynosa or Matamoros in the middle of the night like they do the others?"

"Will they call someone, arrange for someone to come get him?"

We went around and around, asking questions without answers.  

The day finally came.  I walked with Eduardo and his sister up the hill to meet their mom.  I gave him his own set of witch fingers because he likes the ones we read with so much and a ring pop, for luck.  

"Look, we are not saying goodbye, because you will be back."  I announced, afraid that I was lying, or giving him false hope.  

He nodded.

"So, hasta lunes."  I said.

"Hasta lunes."  he repeated, and walked down the street with his mother and sister.  

In Like a Lion

And it rained....like a slow divorce.....

I glanced at the clock, knowing it was five-thirty in the morning.

I walked to the bathroom, only to discover that Shark Week decided to pay me a visit.

And I wish.....I could ride a horse....

I turned on the shower and inexplicably, not a drop of water came out.

I patched together what could nominally be called a bath, got dressed and grabbed my jug of juice for my all-day fast.  Just looking at it made me feel hungry.

"Ms. Wagner, Ms. Wagner!" Rafael called for the millionth time and as always, he was immediately in my face before I could even respond.  In my face, no matter what I was doing or who I was helping. As always.  With laptop in hand, though I have told him a million times not to run around the room, not to run around with an open laptop, not to run, jump, scream, grab, etc.  He spun toward me with his open laptop, hitting a twenty-four ounce cup of coffee.  Even with the lid on, it spewed hot coffee all over my desk - over all of my books, paperwork, rosters, computer, even my phone.  

"GET AWAY FROM ME!"  I shouted.

You could have heard a pin drop in that trailer.   All of my kids stared straight at their computers, afraid to even look at me as I wiped the coffee off of myself and my desk.

And I laughed, like I always do.....

I glanced at the clock, knowing it was five-thirty in the morning.  

I took what could nominally be called a bath, because even a plumber could not fix whatever is going on in our bathroom. 

And I cried, like I cried for you.....

"Hey Wagner, I need you, this one, this one....." the meanest teacher in the school said loudly and harshly, eyes widening dramatically.

"He doesn't, he doesn't nothing, nothing.....!!" she exclaimed, shaking her head wildly and gesturing toward a a dark-haired little boy and his mother, as if they were also blind and could not see a very large asshole standing in front of them.

"I'll take care of this."  I answered, ushering them away and introducing myself in Spanish.  It was not even eight o'clock, yet.  

I explained everything to the mother and answered all of her questions.  Then, I took the new boy to music, where the rest of his class was.  As soon as we walked through the door, Danny's eyes fixed on the new Hispanic boy.  He inadvertently started rising to his feet.  

"You have to help him."  I whispered to him in Spanish.

He nodded solemnly.  

And I cried, like I cried for you......

Now I was waking up at five in the morning, before the alarm even went off.  "Balloon Man" inexplicably continued as the unofficial soundtrack for my Groundhog's Day morning wake-ups and sorry excuses for baths.  My hair felt weirdly sticky from the shampoo I couldn't seem to get out.  

"So your first language is Mam, that is really cool" I said in Spanish to the little Mayan boy the following morning.  I had quickly arranged to add him to my before-school class after reviewing his files and being the good kid that he is, he actually came the very next day.  He arrived in the United States in September, around the same time as Raphael.  I wondered how long he had been on the road.  

"You really speak three languages, that is amazing."  I continued.  My desk still stunk of old coffee.  I thought about the clump of eyelashes that have randomly departed from my left eye and tried to act natural.  

He smiled shyly.  We looked at his Guatemalan town on Google maps while I assessed his Spanish reading abilities.  He explained things about Mam that I didn't know.  

"So, I won't be here on the sixth or seventh of March....I'm not sure which day." he told me in Spanish.

"Okay! Do you have an appointment?''  I responded, assuming he might be going to the doctor's or something.   

"Well, I have to go to court, it is about my visa, well, it is about if I can stay here.  They said I broke the law when I crossed the border in Texas."

I stared back at him.

Eleven year-olds don't break the law.  Children don't have court dates.  Eleven year-olds shouldn't be deported and separated from the families they are finally seeing again after years apart.  It is cruel.  It is inhumane.  He is a child.  It doesn't matter who is in charge of this country, our cruelty always remains the same.  I would like one of the people making these laws to sit in a broken down utility trailer behind a broken down school at seven o'clock in the morning and explain to a wide-eyed little boy why any of this is a good idea.  I'd spend good money for a ticket to that show.  

"I'm scared."  he added.

"I love you, mamí."  Rafael called while running at me in the bus line.  

I let him hug me, not that he really gives me much of a choice.  

"I love you too, son."  I responded.  I felt weird saying it, but even worse that this little boy tried so hard with people that are mean to him.  

I watched him and Danny run, weaving their way through the larger kids and the bullies and the racists.  Farther up the hill, Eduardo's family waited for him.  A woman with hair to her knees and a shoeless child tied to her back by a multi-colored textile waived to him.  Danny and Rafael jumped on their janky school bus and it tore up the hill, carrying them out into the world.  

*Lyrics, Balloon Man, Robyn Hitchcock