*I wrote this last night in longhand and intended to type it for the blog, but my dad called and talked about how he predicts that when I’m 25 (what is apparently a ripe old age and the cut-off date for knowing what I want to do with the rest of my life), I’ll look back on this day - on the last one year plus of days - and realize it was all a waste of time. I resent that very much, and needless to say, it didn’t put me in the mood to do anything but fume and cry and feel a distance from him that surpasses miles.
This morning, I rounded that corner, rainboots heavily stomping up the stairs to the street. I walked through clouds of stench - pot smoke and onion rings, cocoa butter and urine. This is my weekday miasma.
It’s too early to feel this way, I thought. This corner, walking past this crowded bus stop most days until the end of June. I signed up for this, which happens to be here. And weather like this, with its soggy cotton candy sky, might be beautiful where I come from, a reprieve from sunlight. But here it is dreary.
Somehow, though, a lightness. Like the gold edged clouds in a Precious Moments illustration. Marcus lets me help him, instead of acting like he can read just fine on his own (which he can’t), dammit. We work together, and I’m not the only one speaking, brightly and stupidly like a mother to a mute newborn. It took two months.
It strikes me that I am the teacher who best reaches the frenetic fifth grade Bernice, who reads at a first grade level, stutters, and spastically does the Chicken Noodle Soup dance when it strikes her. In the middle of a quiz, in line to lunch, her legs will suddenly kick and her smirking mouth explode into crooked teeth and cherry scented spittle.
And then my Advisory students will not stop laughing after our read aloud book has the word “breast” in it. I read it and continue moving through the sentence. When I look up, the fifth graders are mouthing it to each other and biting their lips.
“Yes, I said ‘breast,’ guys. It means ‘chest.’ You’ve heard of a chicken breast, right?”
They laugh and at the same time, I think we all imagine it - a chicken with boobs that jiggle with every cluck. I smile and move on, “Now enough about breasts.”
And I think all that pot and onion rings, tattered paper under my feet, the wearing away of my soles is actually doing some good.
