Author: Post Road

Sticks and Stones

Jay Wamsted

I was posted up outside my door one day, greeting students as they wandered in for class, when Michael came back outside to speak.

            “I was in this store yesterday,” he started, nodding at his classmates as they made their way past us, “and this man was super weird to me.”

            I was paying attention, though not overly so. I am in my thirteenth year of teaching at Mays High in southwest Atlanta, and in that time I have heard countless stories from so many teenagers. Often teaching is much like parenting—you’re always doing at least three things at once, and listening to an extracurricular exploit is usually the one furthest in the background.

            Michael went on. “So I’m just walking around, looking for some snacks, and this white guy comes in, looks me over, and says, ‘You a big n-word, ain’t ya?’”

            My brain shut down its other functions immediately; I was paying complete attention now. To be clear, Michael did not say “n-word.” He is black—as are ninety-eight percent of my students, the other two percent being Hispanic—and he spoke the insult out loud, without a trace of self-consciousness. Like it or not, the word remains entrenched in the argot of the black teen.

            I squared to face him. “What?” I asked, incredulous, angry.

            Michael shrugged. “Yeah, it was weird. His wife kind of apologized for him, and I just kept looking for snacks. But then this other black kid walks in and the guy goes up and calls him an n-word also.”

            He paused, his attention distracted by laughter drifting from inside our classroom. He looked back at me. “Anyways, it was just super strange. But when it happened, I thought about you, felt like I should tell you about it for some reason.” I nodded, completely unsure about any proper response.

            Five minutes later I was teaching math to a room full of black and brown faces. As usual, I was the only white person in the room.

            Even the most kindhearted white woman,
            Dragging herself through traffic with her nails
            On the wheel & her head in a chamber of black
            Modern American music may begin, almost
            Carelessly, to breathe n-words

            —Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin”
            #11, lines 1-5

Some years prior I had taught a student named David. Once he came to my room—not during class, rather just to talk—when, apropos of nothing, he asked me, “Wamsted, you ever say the n-word?”

            Again, David actually spoke the word. My face went flush, and I came back quickly and loudly with something like, “No! David! Why would you ask me that?”

            But he wouldn’t take no for an answer; instead, he kept at me for a bit before switching tactics. David knew that I have a soft spot for Kanye West and his first two albums. “Okay Wamsted,” he said. “Let’s say you driving around in your car, windows up, all alone, rapping along with Kanye. Then he says the n-word. What you going to do?”

            I was more uncomfortable than I ever had been with a student; I could feel my ears burning. “No way, David! I just skip those lyrics!” I looked at him, imploring, hoping he would let up, and finally he did.

            “Okay, okay, Wamsted, I hear you. Just know this, though: I’m going to keep an eye on you.” He turned heel and walked out of the room, didn’t even say goodbye.

            At the time I thought ours was just a bizarre interaction, one from which I was grateful simply to be released, though I don’t see it that way anymore. Now I think I might have missed an opportunity to connect with a young black man who had no good reason yet to trust me.

Monday morning, a class full of seniors, all of them a little down after a big football loss over the weekend. Mays is a good team—we played several years ago for the state championship, and football is an important part of our school’s culture. One of my students, a high-profile college recruit, describes the beating they took on Friday.

             “They were all these white boys, Mr. Wamsted, and they were vicious. Every play, you’d get tackled, and they’d stay on you just a little longer than usual, not enough to get a penalty, just enough to curse you out.”

             On the ground, n-word! Yeah, n-word, you stay down!

             “It was exhausting, Mr. Wamsted. They just wore us out.”

            Yes, even the most
            Bespectacled hallucination cruising the lanes
            Of America may find her tongue curls inward,
            Entangling her windpipe, her vents, toes & pedals
            When she drives alone.

            —Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin”
             #11, lines 5-9

Sometime after the Kanye conversation David was in my room again, and as is not uncommon for even the best of adolescents, he was driving me crazy. It was during class, and he was harassing me about some favor he needed that I was unwilling to perform at the moment. We were getting louder and quicker with our comebacks as he tried to convince me to see things his way, and finally I took a different tack with a deliberately arch comment.

            “David! The exigencies of our current situation counterweight the quiddity of the dilemma in which you find yourself enmeshed. Much to my vertiginous chagrin, I am unable to assist you due to my pedagogical responsibilities!”

            (Or something like that. At this point, I have no idea what I really said.)

            He turned away from me to a friend. “See? That’s what white people do when you’re winning an argument. They get all loud and use big words to bully you into shutting up.” He and his friend laughed, and once again, David walked away without another word back at me.

A softball game far outside the city, past the inner ring of suburbs and into what is known around here as “the country.” One of my students was playing in the outfield, close to where the teenagers from the opposing school set up their cheering section. For seven innings she trots out there, takes up her position, tries to focus. All the while, a steady stream of insults from the all-white crowd watching the game:

             “Hey there, monkey! You sure look like a gorilla. Bet you don’t even know who your daddy is, huh? Maybe an ape. Monkey! Hey, gorilla-girl! Who’s your daddy, gorilla-girl? You hear me, monkey? I’m talking to you!”

             She didn’t say a word in response. One of her teammates, however, was thrown out late in the game for getting rude with an umpire while arguing balls and strikes. Mays lost the game pretty badly.

             My students think these facts are unrelated, but I am not so sure.

            Even the most made up
            Layers of persona in a two- or four-door vehicle
            Sealed in a fountain of bass & black boys
            Chanting n-words may begin to chant inwardly
            Softly before she can catch herself.

            —Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin”
             #11, lines 9-13

Once, early in my time at Mays, I was called down to the office to meet with a parent whose grandson had been performing poorly of late. The student was missing classes and not turning in assignments; the grandfather wanted to know what could be done in terms of making up the work. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but as we were discussing what could and couldn’t be rectified, I became frustrated somehow about the situation. Maybe I was in a hurry, maybe the grandfather wanted more leniency for his grandson than I thought was warranted, maybe I felt accused of not doing my job properly. Whatever was going on in my mind, I must have said something in a tone, gotten a little louder than the situation required, because the grandfather interrupted me.

            “I will not be intimidated by you!” he intoned, flashing eyes a dare to continue. I balked, in no manner having intended to intimidate him, and we stumbled through the rest of our talk. His grandson eventually turned in the missing work, passed my class, and moved on. All’s well that ends well—an uncomfortable moment papered over by a successful conclusion.

            Until David, that is. For years I explained the grandfather away by putting the blame on him: his grandson had made a series of poor choices, and I wanted to believe the moment reflected more general frustration than actual offense. Now, though, I think intimidating an older black man—consciously or not—was exactly what I was trying to do that morning. More subtly than overtly, perhaps, but equally intentional to my high-vocabulary comment all those years later.

            David was right—“bully” is an apposite word here.

Sitting with a black colleague at a graduation ceremony, and she is telling me her story, how she moved to Atlanta after winning an impressive scholarship—the Gates Millennium, which paid not only for her undergrad but also would follow her for life and fund her upcoming medical school. She had taken a break in her higher education to teach, was working at Mays for a couple of years in an effort to pay back her good fortune in some manner. I made some naïve comment about defeating racism, something about how she had risen above it with her amazing accomplishments, how certainly she must show the world the foolishness in the notion of skin superiority. She laughed.

             “Just the other day I was driving through a rich white part of town, and I got distracted for a second at a light. The car behind me peels around and this white guy hollers out his window.”

             Get moving, n-word!

             “So, you know, you never really get to leave it behind.”

            Of course,
            After that, what is inward, is absorbed.

            —Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin”
             #11, lines 13-14

David asked me that time if I ever said the n-word, and I told him no. Let me now be more honest, offer a story that might serve as a hinge in my teaching career.

            Once I was in a hallway meeting with a difficult student. We had been getting on each other’s nerves since the beginning of the year; this afternoon we were arguing about some point of classroom management, and both of us became increasingly frustrated. Finally he rolled his eyes, completely exasperated, and shot off at me in an effort to end the conversation decisively—n-word, please!

            I came back at him in what I thought would be a disarming fashion: “Hey, now you’re not making any sense, calling me an n-word. Let’s talk reasonably here.” Again, to be clear, both my student and I spoke the n-word aloud. The conversation from this point completely escapes my memory; the moment slid into the quotidian. I only remember this story at all because of what happened the next day.

            That morning I was walking into the building when a colleague, a veteran black teacher some years older than me, stood in my path. “Can I speak to you, Wamsted?” he asked, and we made our way off to the side of the early morning teacher traffic. I had no idea what he wanted to talk about; we taught different grade levels as well as subjects, so our work relationship was limited. The previous day’s conversation had completely slipped my mind.

            As it turns out, he had been in the hall and heard my interaction with the student, and he was incensed. For a minute or so, the two of us in full public view as teachers walked by getting ready for the day, he lit into me about the history of the n-word, the terrible struggle he and his forebears had undergone in order to liberate themselves from such oppression, the offense he felt at hearing some white man say it to a black teenager. I wish I could remember what he said, but I panicked and shut down. I was so embarrassed, so horrified at the thought that this older black man I barely knew would think I was a racist—I found myself nodding along and saying “yes, sir” to every word while hearing none of it.

            I knew, given how seldom our paths crossed, that it would be some time before he would be able to think of me as anything other than that white guy who, however well-meaning, said the n-word. It was years before I was able to speak to him without something like fear and trembling.

            In retrospect, my discomfort could have gone in many different directions—I could have reacted with fear like the Kanye conversation with David, or attempted to bully my way out as I had so many times before. Instead I managed to do the one thing that I think endeared me to this teacher who later become a close colleague.

            I shut my mouth and listened.

One morning near the end of my school year with David, he came to my room, his friend tagging along. “Wamsted, hey,” he said, “let me use your deodorant.”

            It is true that I had deodorant, and David knew it. I ride my bicycle to work, so I keep a stick in my bag. I told David, however, that I didn’t have any spray and I don’t share stick deodorant. As before, he wouldn’t let up—he kept at me, wheedling away, getting agitated. The situation was becomingly uncomfortably familiar.

            Exasperated, I finally tried to come back in a definitive manner, and I said something loud like, “David! I am NOT going to share my stick deodorant with you!”

            He got loud right back at me. “Why? Because I’m black? Because I’m unclean? You don’t want to lend your deodorant to some unclean black man?”

            The words hung there, heavy between us as we all watched each other. This time, however, I didn’t panic or try to bluster my way out; this time I didn’t collapse into silence. I just sighed. “Really, David? It’s that serious for you to bring up all that about racism? Here, brother, be cool, just use the deodorant.”

            He instantly calmed down, and as he slid my stick deodorant under his shirt he turned to his friend. “I knew I’d get him with that black man stuff. White people hate being called racist.” He turned back to me. “Thanks, Wamsted. You all right after all.”

            And then, just like before, he and his friend burst out laughing. Instead of walking away, however, this time they invited me in on the joke, and I, realizing I had been played, burst out laughing, too. It was glorious. Somehow through all the years I had stumbled upon a way of speaking without fear or intimidation; I had managed to win David’s trust.

            For a moment or so there in my classroom, we were all right after all.

By most accounts my time at Mays has been successful—I am well-liked by both the administration and, more importantly perhaps, the students. I field hugs, high-fives, fist bumps all day long; last year I was honored by the senior class with the highly-coveted “Favorite Teacher” award. Once we had a student-teacher basketball game, one where I was kept on the bench for very good reasons that had nothing to do with the fact that I was the only white man on the floor. Eventually, though, they had to put me in when the crowd of juniors and seniors kept up a minutes-long chant of “Wam-sted! Wam-sted!” It was, to say the least, exhilarating—this despite the fact that at no point did I lay hands on the ball.

            Recently, though, I received a compliment of a more Janus-faced nature, when a student told me out of the blue that I was the first white person she had ever trusted. I was both elated and devastated. I am, of course, pleased finally to find myself becoming the kind of white man a black teenager could trust. And yet, after she left the room and the shine wore off her comment, all I could do was to wonder about the kind of world we live in, a world where a seventeen-year-old black girl could say with complete sincerity that she never before trusted a white person. I went home that day frustrated rather than encouraged, asking myself how such a thing could have come to pass.

            I offer this essay in response to that unspoken question.

You a big n-word, ain’t ya?

            “Anyways, it was weird. And when it happened, I just thought about you, felt like I should tell you about it for some reason.”

            Michael is looking at me, sideways, not committing fully to my response, but visibly curious. I paused for a moment, took a breath, and looked him in the eyes. He turned to face me, leaning in to my words. I said the only thing I could think of to say.

            “That’s some bullshit, Michael. Some real bullshit.”

            He smiled broadly at me, nodded his head. I spend so much time asking students to express their emotions in a way that eschews cursing, but sometimes no other words exist to capture such a maleficent thing.

            “Thanks for telling me, man, I’m glad you did,” I said. I grabbed his hand and pulled him in for one of those handshake/backslap/hugs.

            “Real bullshit,” I said again, almost a whisper.

---

Jay Wamsted has taught math to teenagers in Atlanta for fifteen years. His writing has been featured in various journals and magazines, including Harvard Educational Review, Southeast Review, and Under the Sun. He can be found online at “Education Post,” where he is a columnist, or on the “TEDx” YouTube channel, where you can watch his 2017 talk “Eating the Elephant: Ending Racism & the Magic of Trust.” He and his wife have four young children, and he is fortunate enough to walk to work. You can contact him on Twitter @JayWamsted or by email, wamsted@gmail.com.

Four Essays

Nance Van Winckel

Shortly Before the First Time My Nephew Went to Jail

His last semester had briefly floated towards him and then away. As he watched the enormity retreat, a spring wind hurled the finally-dry fall leaves at his face.

            I called him inside. I was a heavy beam he’d have to pass by to get through the doorway.

            “You’re always high, your teacher says. She’s not passing you.”

            He’d turned 18. I was as good as dead to him.

            He ducked by and punched the teacher’s note out of my hands. The wind slammed the door on us.

            We had two more weeks in this house—before the sirens, before the deep relief inside my dark ache. Driven off, he hadn’t even glanced back at the dead one who’d outlive him.

One of My Cousin’s Photos from the War

I took it to the U-Frame Shop, and although I was supposed to do the work, mostly I just stood and watched as the shop guy’s toy-like hammer tapped at the worries of corners: joists and joins.

            A mat of mustard yellow proved stunningly perfect. A Windexed glass slid into place and I helped cinch the hanging wire tight.

            Then, before he wrapped it, the boy paused a moment to admire what we’d framed: the huge grey clouds above a temple in ruins, a scorched riverbank, and, floating in the harshly lit foreground of the river, a bronze helmet, glinting. The boy’s eye moved to it and rested there, briefly. His face took on the look of someone who’d just been sent forth on a trail into a dense forest, and his eyes reflected his keen sense of what a labyrinthine trail it was. The helmet sat like half a boiled egg atop the water.

            I’d been the only customer in the shop for the whole long half hour, and the boy had seemed perfectly content making the frame, having something to do besides stare out at the rain.

            I’d paid him with the correct change and then handed him an extra five.

            “Oh,” he said. “No, I couldn’t.”

            “Yes, you can,” I told him. “It’s okay. I’m sure of it.”

            He smiled, shook his head again, and began folding thick brown paper—two sheets—over the picture. Shyly, he asked me then about the photographer. “Dead?”

            “No,” I said, “he’s still alive. He used to cut trees but now he builds log houses. Up in Alaska.”

            “Wow, that’s far.”

            “Yes, quite far,” I said, recalling how it’d been twenty years since I’d seen that cousin and forty years since he’d pushed me on a swing. I kept having to promise to hang on. I am! I shouted. I will! He’d swung me higher, bending his knees to throw his whole body into each next push. From my distant lofty trajectory, I could see his green Army uniform and his toothy white smile. Then I plummeted toward him and heard our two sharp exhalations as I flew up again, giddy with fear, squinting, moving inch by inch toward the fiery dome of the sun.

Dang It

I was a college student rushing to class. I’d overslept, had no coffee, and was dreading a pop quiz in Organic Fucking Chemistry. Ahead of me someone else was rushing, too. A blind girl. She tapped a black cane in front of her, first on one side of a building’s column, then on the other, and then bang!— she smacked right into it. .

            “Are you okay?” I hurried to her.

            “Dang it,” she said, still standing, rubbing her forehead. “What is this?” She touched the column, marveling at its porous texture and girth.

            “Dang it,” she repeated when I told her, then walked carefully around it, and on.

            I was in my last year as a premed student, finally accepting that I would never go to medical school. Apparently poetry needed all of me. I worked 3-11 in a hospital, got up early, and went to classes. I loved my life. And felt guilty about that. Why should Ibe happy? My sister had been put on a plane and flown to Dallas for a “miracle” rheumatoid arthritis cure our father had seen advertised in The National Enquirer. The cure involved massive doses of hormones and steroids. Returning home three weeks later, she was fifty pounds heavier. The miracle doctor had been “dismissed” from the hospital staff while she lay there bloated, sore, and wondering why her.

            I loved my life. I was away from them. But in random moments—in the shower, taking a pee, eating a yogurt—I worried about them. My life. It seemed to have grown a shape, a thing I didn’t hold but one that held me, moving me in and out of the enormous, bustling world.

            Over the years, the image of that blind girl’s collision often returns. I see the cane tap so perfectly to the sides of the column and I feel my later self trying to wake up my early self, to make her shout, “Hey, look out!” But the words still stick. I’d been walking through the world but I wasn’t in it. The girl goes forward. The girl smashes into the thing right in front of her.

Ordinary Exchange

            Mom: “How long have you known me?”

            Me: I say my age.

            Mom: “How long have I known you?”

            Me: I say my age again.

            Mom: “That’s a long time.”

            Me: I smile and nod.

            Mom: “Do you think you’ll remember me after I’m gone?”

            Me: “Yes. As long as I can remember anything.”

            Mom: “I’ll remember you, too. After I’m gone.”

---

Nance Van Winckel’s ninth poetry collection, The Many Beds of Martha Washington, appears in July 2021 with the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series/Lynx House Press. She’s also published five books of fiction, including Ever Yrs, a novel in the form of a scrapbook (Twisted Road Publications, 2014) and Boneland: Linked Stories (U. of Oklahoma Press, 2013). The recipient of two NEA fellowships, the Washington State Book Award, a Paterson Fiction Prize, Poetry Society of America’s Gordon Barber Poetry Award, a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship, and three Pushcart Prizes, Nance teaches in Vermont College’s MFA in Writing Program and lives in Spokane, Washington.

Middle Passages

Reverie Koniecki

I am in middle school. There is a slight incline in the stretch of hallway between homeroom and French class. I stop at my locker. Turn the dial. Spin. Right. Left. Right. Click. An open door. Books in hand. Three minutes until the bell rings. A hand reaches from behind me and slams the door shut. Another hand knocks the books I cradle to the floor. A voice whispers, “Go back to Africa, you black bitch.” It is the daily ritual between Jake and me. For an eighth grader, he is tall and muscular. Two years of slammed lockers, fallen books, unseen shoves, fights, and an all-you-can-eat buffet of racial slurs. Mouli. Black bitch. Coon. Nigger. Slave. Middle school is the first installment of the Scream franchise. I am the black girl who will die first.

            My friend Patty knows about Jake. We pass notes in French class. Patty tries to cheer me up. I tell her she is my best friend. She is elated. She says she never had a best friend before. It is the eighties, so the likelihood we will become blood sisters is high. Patty has two older brothers who are in high school. I can’t go to Patty’s house because her oldest brother Matt will beat her up. It started when their uncle died in the Vietnam war. Even though he died before any of us were born, when Matt learned of the race of his uncle’s killers, he began to hate Asians. Except Patty and I probably call them Orientals because we are not yet politically correct. From Asians, Matt’s hate spreads to Jews, and then naturally to Blacks. Patty doesn’t understand his hate, but she fears it. She tells me even though her younger brother Corey acts like he’s racist when Matt is around, she knows he isn’t racist in his heart.

            Patty and Corey go skating over the weekend. Matt is not present. Patty sees Corey talking to a black boy. She sees Corey laughing and racing the black boy. She sees Corey touch the black boy’s arm with tenderness. She approaches her brother. “You’re not racist,” Patty declares.

            “No, I’m not,” Corey admits. “But we can’t tell Matt.”

            Patty’s skin gets dark in the sun. She says her father’s skin is darker than mine in the summer. Her father won’t talk about his family or his past. Patty and her brothers wonder about their family’s dark skin, but their father’s lips are sealed.

            Patty lives two miles from me. I live in an apartment complex where my brother will go out to play one day wearing his yellowjacket-colored sunjammer sunglasses that he is so proud of. His bike, which has recently shed its training wheels, and t-shirt match in color scheme. It is long before Wiz Khalifa will make an anthem of the color combination.

            I live in an apartment complex where my brother will come back crying. He will be walking his bike and his broken sunjammer sunglasses will hang lamely from his neck. My six-year-old brother will hiccup as he tells me and my mother how five ten-year-old boys jumped him. My mother will envelope him when he tells us how those five ten-year-old boys knocked him off his bike. I will stand stupidly in the corner as my brother replays how those boys hit him and kicked him. I will start to cry as he tells us how they put his face in dog shit. I will feel guilty because he was alone.

             I will start to have migraines. My mother will take me to the doctor who will give me ibuprofen and teach me Lamaze. I will lay on the bottom bunk after school each afternoon and imagine myself slowly becoming a ragdoll. I will imagine myself with fire red yarn hair with both ends looped into my scalp. My skin will become pasty. My eyes will become black triangles juxtaposed onto tapioca skin as if they don’t belong there. I will ask my doctor if I can imagine something else. She will tell me to visualize myself as a container of water with holes in the soles of my feet. I will ask, how will the water drain from my arms? She will tell me to imagine my fingers also have holes or to raise my hands above my head.

            I wake in the middle of the night screaming. My mother slaps me into consciousness. It is way after midnight, and I have no memory of anything. In the morning, my throat is sand and I can barely open my jaw. This is our nightly ritual.

            My mother invites my cousins over for a barbeque. The five of us go to each boy’s apartment. My brother rings doorbells and asks if a boy can come out to play. My cousins and I hide around the corner. Two of the five boys are not home. The other three we hold down, while my brother does the hitting and kicking.

            Patty’s brother Matt has a job. Her brother Corey has a black friend. Patty and Corey share secrets. Patty and Corey tell their father about Matt’s threats. Patty’s father tells Matt to tell Patty and Corey they can be friends with whomever they want. Matt obeys. Matt is going to be working Saturday. Patty invites me over. She lives on a dirt road, on several acres of farm. She has her own room and an indoor, heated pool. We swim. We go back to her room and giggle. When we are hungry, we go to the kitchen for a snack. Matt comes home. Patty introduces me. He says hello and heads to his room. My mother picks me up. It is the best weekend since I moved to this hellhole. In French class on Monday, Patty shows me her bruises. I never go to Patty’s house again.

            When we are in our thirties, I will run into Holly, another middle school friend, on Facebook. Holly will post a photo from the Quebec trip when we tried to sneak out of the hotel. We will laugh about how I shimmied out the window first. (The piece of tape on the outside of our hotel door left us with the window as our only means of escape.) Once I hit the ground, the weakness of our plan strikes us, and we spend the next hour figuring out how to get me back in. I am too short. Patty, who is tall for her age, jumps out the window and lends me the extra height I need to reach the other girls’ outstretched hands. We both make it back into the hotel room undetected.

            Holly remembers Jake. I tell her I hate him. She doesn’t understand. I ask her if she remembers how he treated me. She has no memory of him punching my locker. Of him threatening to kick my ass. Or of any of the racial slurs he introduced me to. She does not remember me being afraid to tell anyone for fear that the spotlight would make it worse. She doesn’t remember my mother coming to the school once a week to pressure administration into protecting me. She doesn’t remember the teaching staff’s response was to act as if I was invisible no matter how rotten I behaved. She doesn’t remember me pushing the limit to see if anyone would call me on my attitude and meeting no resistance. She doesn’t remember Jake holding up a crayon and loudly declaring, “Look! I have a BLACK crayon!” and laughing uncontrollably. She doesn’t remember how no one said anything in my defense. She doesn’t remember how I put my head down and just cried. She doesn’t remember Mrs. O. pulling me out into the hallway and asking me what was wrong. Or me telling her how I wished that people would just treat me as a normal person. She doesn’t know that my blackness precludes me from being “normal.”

            I am teaching George Orwell’s 1984 to sophomores. We don’t have time to read the entire book, so we watch the movie and read only the first three chapters. Even after seeing Parsons mindfuck Winston by holding up four fingers and insisting there are 5. Even after witnessing his lobotomy, electric shocks, and extreme hallucinations, the students are still confused about the concept of doublethink. When I ask them to form an opinion about Orwell’s commentary on the nature of reality, they don’t understand my analogy of the tree falling in the forest any better than they do 2+2=5. They don’t remember that Hitler rewrote history and tried to credit the invention of airplanes to Germans. There is too much space between them and that war. So, I tell them that our histories were left out of the narrative. And I ask them, who benefits from this redacted history? I ask them to identify the people who have control of the narrative here in the United States.

            “Rich people? The government?” They offer, unsure.

            “Yes. That is true.” I say, “But who, or what group of people, decides what stories get included in curricula?”

            Holly still doesn’t remember any of Jake’s offenses even after I remind her about how he carved NIGGER into the side of the music teacher’s car. I don’t know why I feel a sense of loss.

            The music teacher is the only other black body at the middle school. I am in choir and stay after school Tuesdays and Thursdays for practice. Jake comes in and hands the music teacher a wad of cash. He doesn’t look in the teacher’s eyes. His words are no longer a hiss.

            The music teacher repairs his car. Jake comes to practice each week with a new wad of cash. The music teacher never meets my eyes. I wonder if he knows we are both victims of vandalism.

---

Reverie Koniecki is an African American poet and educator living in Dallas, Texas. Reverie is currently working towards her MFA in Poetry at New England College. She is a poetry editor for The Henniker Review.  Her poems and prose have appeared in Entropy, Thimble Magazine, and Off the Margins.

Renunciation

Diane Yatchmenoff

Mornings were hard for Myra.  Many days she huddled under the covers in the pre-dawn hours, clutching a pillow tight to her belly, fighting rising consciousness, feeling the urge to claw with both hands at the soft place above the solar plexus, tear out the snarl of writhing tentacles that formed in the night and grew longer and stronger hour by hour. Relief was imagining an explosion—just behind the rib cage—that place.  A slow-motion blast, her innards splattering in a million directions all over the walls and ceiling.  She heard the sound, felt a momentary relief from sensation.  Sometimes she added a gunshot to the head—more practical and a kind of magical sound.  Not as effective, though. It wasn’t her head she wanted to rip off. 

            If all else fails, was how she thought of it.

            This habit had not disappeared with marriage, nor with therapy, though in truth Myra hadn’t mentioned to any of her several therapists the fact that she thought about suicide every day of her life.  It hadn’t seemed all that relevant.

            “You’ll feel better if you sit up,” was Jason’s observation on many of those mornings. He was right, but that was beside the point. She cherished the idea of annihilation.

             Sometimes she played out a fantasy of disappearing, showing up somewhere else—Alberta or Newfoundland (places she had never been but where she was sure you would hear a train in the distance all night long, empty fields for miles and miles). Starting over in jeans and a t-shirt, boots, a backpack but no past.  She would have lost fifteen pounds on the journey, arriving attractively waif-like. She pictured the television series—the one about a small town in Alaska, she couldn’t remember the name, with an old lady who ran the general store, and a radio station, and the episode when they catapulted a cow, or maybe it was just a grand piano.

             Somewhere like that.

             It would be a place big enough that she wouldn’t be noticed, or where the people would be entirely incurious about a strange woman staying at the Motel 6, waiting tables at the Lone Star Diner or Jake’s Truck Stop or maybe the Dairy Queen. Eventually she might rent a room—if she liked the place—and be that somebody else forever—a yearning as deep as it was when she was eleven.   

             Under the covers, she spun out the story.  A bus or train ticket that couldn’t be traced, enough money for the motel, enough to make do for a while without withdrawing from their bank account or obvious charges on the credit cards. Better that Jason should think she’d been kidnapped or murdered than that she’d left him. 

            Still, they got on fine. Myra was a different person at work, among friends, pretty much all the time except first thing in the morning.  And if sometimes she shut off abruptly when she walked in the door after work—felled and silent like a tree downed by a storm—or occasionally in the middle of dinner or faced with the prospect of sex when she hadn’t prepared herself, it was barely noticeable.

            The pregnancy surprised them. They had given up on the idea some time back, but there it was. Out of the blue. And as the babies grew inside of her (it was twins, they learned early on) Myra’s first thoughts in the morning were of holding the babies, breast feeding, organic and nutritious baby food, a bigger apartment, a double stroller.  Once in a while, if she happened to come out of a dream early in the morning before she remembered she was pregnant, there might be a flicker of dread and the familiar sounds of obliteration—instantaneous, like a default setting that had not yet been erased. 

            But then she remembered.  She was going to be a mother.  A mother doesn’t abandon her children. The old images she summoned were flat and lifeless.  Sometimes she felt this as a loss.  But only for a moment. 

            The last trimester flew by and they were into the first months of nursing and sleepless nights. Myra was rarely awake without one of them (both were girls) attached to a breast, sucking on her.  Their warmth, the sticky oppression of their bodies was often overwhelming, sometimes delicious. Jason was entranced, carried them around the apartment, nestled together on his arm, balanced inside the deep blue ridiculously large terry cloth bathrobe she had given him before they were married.  She had imagined him bigger. 

            She couldn’t recall much about the birth.  In the hospital, they encouraged her to deliver vaginally—the babies were normal size, she had plenty of room, they were not late.  And so she did, but a wall had gone up around all of it, and while most women loved to talk about their deliveries, Myra drew a blank.

            “Was I totally drugged up?” she once asked Jason. 

            “No, not so much.  You did great,” he said.

            There were other gaps in Myra’s memory—she was sometimes vaguely embarrassed by how little she remembered from her childhood, bare fragments constructed mainly from photographs.  She had been an unexceptional child to look at, had a brother (frequently seen holding her hand), a tremendously handsome father, and a stylish mother in shirtwaist dresses, high heels and bouffant hair holding a long-stemmed martini glass. From these images, she summoned up cocktail parties, vermouth and olives, the taste on her tongue, the glittery darkness of Christmas morning.  A tree house her brother built, a large scary closet in one of the bedrooms, broken glass in the fireplace, a green plaid bedspread, her father’s knee, his warm and inviting smile, hand holding out a quarter to stop her crying. Her shame as she wrapped her eight-year-old hand around it.    

            “Something to look into,” one of Myra’s therapists offered when Myra lost her train of thought for maybe the fourth or fifth time in an early session, gazing to one side, unable to remember even what he had asked, staring at him blankly when he pulled her back with a quiet ‘Myra?’ her head moving ever so slowly as she returned his gaze. They didn’t get much further, and eventually Myra took up transcendental meditation instead.

            It seemed strange about the birth, though, so recent. 

            After Jason went back to work, the days wore on, strange and blurry, full of endless pacing from living room to bedroom, holding one or the other of the babies in front of the mirror, the light, the window—anything to attract and hold their attention.  Back and forth Myra paced, jiggling and bouncing colicky Vanessa, pacifier attached to the more placid Jillian lying in the bassinette, naps no more than fifteen minutes long, one or the other of the babies always awake.  Feeding sessions that went on and on, punctuated by weak cries of hopeless despair from one or the other of the babies, sometimes from Myra herself.

            When the babies were eight or nine weeks old, there were nightmarishly long days when Nessa would not stop fussing well past the time when she might blessedly have been asleep.  At the end of one of those afternoons, Myra was in a sort of daze by the time Jason finally came home.  He hurried to the shower, promising to relieve her the minute he was out.

            When he returned to living room, Myra was standing silent and still, holding Nessa, still fussing, across both forearms out in front of her like an offering.  The look on her face caused him to move quickly, closing in on them.  In truth, Myra felt merely odd, slightly faint, not thinking at all, her arms just suddenly light and wobbly, then opening ever so slightly, the baby coming loose.  Jason had her then. “Okay,” he said, taking Nessa. “Time for a break for mom.” 

            At the pediatrician’s office one day soon after, the young nurse looked at her strangely when Myra asked about colic.

            “We talked about this earlier this morning,” the nurse said gently. 

            “No,” Myra shook her head, “I haven’t talked to you.”

            “You’ve called every day, sometimes more than once,” the nurse said, still more gently.

            “I haven’t called.  No really,” Myra felt both anxious and defensive.  The nurse clearly did not believe her.

            “The days can get really long,” she said with sympathy but avoiding Myra’s eyes. “The doctor will be right in,” and she was gone.

            Soon enough, though, Nessa was mobile, cruising the furniture, taking her first steps before ten months, happy in the back pack, always busy, Jilly the more contemplative.  These were adorable babies, then toddlers—everyone said so.  And Myra could see it too, most days, loving them with a fierceness that was overpowering and left her breathless.  She cared for them impeccably, only occasionally waiting a long extra minute before checking on them in the bath.  Or the time she forgot the outlet covers were missing in the family room or that the child-gate on the stairs wasn’t latched and she had left them upstairs in the hall while she checked on dinner.  But sometimes she felt as if she were walking in quicksand or in slow motion—like those dreams about trying to run but not getting anywhere or needing to be somewhere and losing your way over and over.

            It was the spring when the twins were two and a half that Myra had the first daydream—Jason hauled off to jail, accused of murdering his two beautiful twin daughters, her the distraught wife in the face of the cameras, weeping, devastated, and Jason in shackles.  Like a movie scene on an endless loop, it came back over and over, more detailed and sharper in each iteration—sometimes when the twins were napping, or at lunch time when they were in their high chairs at the kitchen table, mashed sweet potatoes or avocado or apple sauce smeared across their faces and clothes, finding each other’s antics hilarious, talking gibberish that only the two of them could understand.

            “Do you need more help, babe?” Jason asked one morning. “Want me to find someone to come in? You seem a little ragged.”

            “I’m just tired,” she said.  “I nap when they do, it’s all good.”

            But he looked at her strangely, as if there were something a bit off about how she said the words. The next day he brought home a flier about a support group for new mothers, pointing out enthusiastically that it was right nearby at the community center, reminding her in practically the same breath about the neighborhood babysitting co-op they could join. Myra nodded, trying to look appreciative.  Then one afternoon, she had a call from one of Jason’s co-workers, Jennifer, who said she’d just about gone nuts when her kids were both home and she wasn’t working.  Said it made her crazy in the head and wondered how Myra was doing with all of it.  There’s an online support group, Jennifer told her—like a chat room, but with a facilitator. I’ll send you the link. 

            Myra’s thoughts began to twist and turn that summer, with unbidden images inhabiting her mind over breakfast, at nap time, walking behind the stroller. She imagined Nessa falling off the tall wooden climbing structure at the park—from the very top, landing on the sand below.  She saw Jilly on the hideous iron spinning thing, slipping on the edge, her head smashed as it spun and spun, never regaining consciousness.  She saw herself at the hospital, weeping, waiting for Jason, terrified.  Once she imagined a child molester, hiding behind the bushes, grabbing both children, scooping them up, dragging them quickly into his van, speeding off as bystanders held her, screaming, while they called the police.  In her fantasy, they were never found, their bodies never recovered, just gone.  Horrible fantasies, late at night or first thing in the morning.

            Then one day at the park, Jilly—careful little Jilly—slowly climbed the big kid’s slide, step by step, cautiously, all the way to the top, hesitating with trepidation—it was a long way down.  With a squeal, Nessa came streaking from the swing set, bolting up after her sister and—in typical fashion—pushed past quiet Jilly, bumping against her with enough force that Jilly was airborne, up and over the edge of the slide, tumbling towards the ground. Myra, standing directly below, reached out automatically and caught her—easily, without a thought.  She told the story over and over to Jason that night, giddy with relief she barely understood.   

            That fall, despite the newfound respite of preschool three days a week, new strange and ugly images crept into Myra’s head frequently.  And one day, when the girls were at preschool, she searched out the online support group that Jason’s co-worker had recommended, signing on just to see, calling herself Twisted.

            “Hello Twisted from Santa Rosa” the instant response, followed by a chorus of welcoming messages.

            Eight or ten women were on the site, with names like Peaches from Bend or Debbie from Philadelphia, Lonely from Austin, Amber from Anchorage, or Barely Managing from St Louis. They seemed to be sharing trials of toilet training, giving each other tips that had worked, agreeing how frustrating it could be, how they had to avoid advice from their own mothers, how their husbands were useless, helpless—or sometimes “He’s so much more patient that I am.”

            Myra stared at the screen, not quite comprehending—as if they were speaking a language she had learned in high school but not used since.  Nonetheless, she found herself on the site almost daily, though she never posted a comment.

            One day it was different.

            “Sometimes I have pretty dark thoughts,” a newcomer—Alice from Las Vegas.

            “We’d all listen if you’d like to share more about that.”  The facilitator’s response was immediate.

            “Just dark thoughts, nothing really, they pass.  Sometimes I think about doing bad things.”

            “Can you say more?”

            The screen remained blank.

            “Alice, would you like to talk about this offline?” the volunteer asked, “I can send you my phone number.  It sounds like you could use some extra support right now.”

            Myra watched this exchange closely, but Alice had signed off.

            It was three days before Myra noticed that Alice from Las Vegas had logged back on.  She sent a private message.

            “Hi.  I saw you on the site a few days ago.  I have pretty weird thoughts, too, sometimes.”

            It was another day and a series of messages back and forth before Myra texted bluntly, “I think about hurting my children.  Well, not hurting them, actually, just finding a way to get rid of them.”

            Immediately, a message came back. “Me too.  Like leaving them somewhere. Like Hansel and Gretel—only without the breadcrumbs.  No oven, just the long walk through the woods and no way back.”

            “I think about leaving the stroller in the mall sometimes.  With both of them in it.  It’s a double stroller—we have twins.  They’re three.  How about you?”

            “Three and five—both boys.  Swimming.  I think about swimming accidents.”

            “I think about fire.  And poison.”

            “Antifreeze in their juice.” 

            “I think about kidnapping.”

            “I think about burying them in sand up to their arm pits—hats on to protect their heads from the sun of course—and then just leaving.”

            “Sell them on the internet.  There are ways.  I looked it up once.  It wouldn’t be that hard, actually.”

            “Trade them for a puppy—a really expensive puppy.”

            “Trade them for a case of wine.”

            “That’s a good one.”  

            And for a while, Myra felt normal, making a new friend, sharing silly thoughts, and anonymously.  She loved the chat room!

            “We could start a club—Mothers for Murder.  We can call it MFM for short.  An idea a day, the sicker the better.”

            “You live in Las Vegas, right?” Myra texted one day.  

            “No, that’s just my online profile.  I’m in Santa Rosa too.”

            They decided to meet for coffee on a Thursday in a spot that Alice recommended, out near the south end of town where they would be unlikely to run into friends.   It turned out to be a big open space, tables and chairs spread sparsely around—a warehouse where somebody decided to serve coffee.  Myra liked it immediately—so blank and cool, all steel and concrete and glass.  Soothing.  She took her coffee to a table in the corner, watching the door for signs of Alice.  She had no description but was confident she would know her on sight.

            The coffee was bad, and she was growing impatient as the minutes passed, though she had been nervously early and it was still barely passed the hour.

            “Myra?” she heard her name but didn’t immediately register it as no one had come in the door and the sound was behind her.

            “Myra?” she heard again and realized there was a presence at her side.  But something was wrong.

            Looking up, she saw that it was a man who was speaking to her.  Slight in build and not tall, dark hair, something foreign about the eyes, but a pleasant enough face.  Bland.  Pale skin, northern or eastern European features, though it would have been hard to say.

            She stared, confused, her mind only slowly taking in the situation, not yet alarmed.  He smiled and pulled out the chair across from her.

            “Hello,” he said, still smiling.

            “Who are you?  Where is Alice?”

            “I’m Alice,” his tone modest, apologetic.

            “What do you mean?  Why are you saying that?”  Myra felt vaguely alarmed, aware that perhaps she should be more alarmed, but was mainly confused. 

            His voice was soothing as he explained that he enjoyed the online chat room, enjoyed meeting mothers and offering support and friendship, he was sorry if he startled her, didn’t mean her any harm whatsoever, thought her messages were so clever and fun that he just had to meet her in person. 

            “Do you even have children?” she finally asked, her feelings verging on outrage but dulled somehow, as if she knew what she was supposed to feel but couldn’t quite muster it. 

            “Well, not the way you mean,” he responded.  “But in another way I have hundreds of children. Like yours.  I specialize in children.” 

            It was a strange thing to say.  Myra knew that. Knew she should ask what he meant.  Knew, in fact, that she should probably leave, that the deception alone meant that he was not a safe person. 

            He told her he placed children in homes overseas, children who were so much loved that their American mothers wanted the very best for them.  Sometimes he met mothers on the internet.  He looked at her kindly, his voice hypnotic in her ear.

            Myra wanted to leave, call Jason, the police even, but instead sat motionless sipping her coffee.  

            “I need to go now,” she finally said, her voice sounding odd, as if it were coming from somewhere outside her.  

            “Of course,” he said gently. “My number.  So you can be in touch if you like.” He passed a slip of paper across the table.

            By the time she was halfway home, it seemed perhaps she had imagined it—so blurry in her mind, and not possible after all. She was mainly embarrassed.  That was it.  She felt embarrassed—how could she possibly explain. And so she said nothing, and within no time it felt like something she must have dreamt. 

            She didn’t return to the chat room.

“Who’s Alice?”  It was a spring morning, nearly the end of the first year of pre-school.  Jason was holding a slip of paper, standing at the closet door in his shorts and socks.  “Found this on the floor.”

            Myra’s gut flinched slightly, though she remained motionless under the covers and her voice came out light and breezy. 

            “Nobody important. Just somebody I met on the chat line.” She held out her hand, “I might call her some time.” 

            Jason thought that was a great idea, thought so in a voice hearty with encouragement. “I think it would be great for you to have another mom to talk with,” he beamed as he headed out the door.

            Something flickered in the back of Myra’s head, almost imperceptibly and then it was gone.  She was having increasing trouble holding on to thoughts, even when she wanted to. She couldn’t think why on earth she’d saved the number but found it was not something she was willing to part with.

It was a Wednesday and the girls were at preschool.  They carpooled, and it was not her day to drive, so her neighbor Dee had picked them up early and would be bringing them home later on.

            Myra lay in bed and thought about doing the laundry—there was so much laundry.  Or cleaning the house.  It was littered with toys and dirty clothes, sheets, towels, dishes. Or maybe taking a walk. Or reading something.  That would be good.

            And suddenly they were coming in the door.

            “Myra, hey, we’re here.” It was Dee. 

            Myra had no idea where the morning has gone.  Did she clean?  Did she sleep?  She couldn’t recall.

            But there they were.

            The girls ran off to their room, Dee’s four-year-old Mark tagging behind. 

            Myra glanced around to see that, whatever the morning had brought, it wasn’t cleaning.  Seeing it through Dee’s eyes, she was suddenly ashamed. 

            “Don’t know how the morning got away from me,” she muttered.

            “Happens to me all the time,” Dee said, though it was obvious she was lying.

            Dee smiled, but she was looking at Myra a little oddly.

            “Looks like you’re ready for battle,” she said lightly.

            Dee was looking at the knives.  Every knife they owned was on the counter, laid out in a neat line.  Carving knives, chef’s knives, even the steak knives with the ivory handles that were her grandfather’s and belonged in the dining room.

            Myra was perplexed.  She couldn’t at the moment think why she had gotten them out. 

            “Oh, I was cleaning the drawers—can’t imagine how they get so dirty,” she said, “I’d better get those put away.”

            “Okay, I’ll see you soon,” Dee was saying, her voice a little tentative, uncertain.  But she called her son from the girls’ room and then they were gone. 

            Myra stared at the knives lined up on the counter, knowing vaguely that something was wrong.  Heard the girls squabbling, but the sound seemed far away, muted.

            She began to wipe the knives with a fresh white dishtowel.  Maybe she really was cleaning?  She couldn’t quite remember.  She put the carving knife slowly into the wood block, then the chef’s knife.  One by one she put them away, some in the knife block, some in the drawer, each in its place—finally the steak knives, sliding them carefully into the individual grooves in the special wooden box that her grandmother had saved. 

            Myra noticed a steel tool still on the counter.  She picked it up to put away, but the feel of it in her hand was pleasant—the hard, cool, smooth curves.  She traced the line of it with one finger and thought of mashing potatoes, white and fluffy.   Her hand and arm flexed slightly to the remembered rhythm, imagining the smell of oozing yellow butter.  Perhaps she would make potatoes for dinner. Maybe sweet potatoes—meaty, fleshy, harder to mash, she liked the red kind, the ones they call garnet.  Her mouth watered slightly at the thought of it.

            One of the girls was crying, the other calling for her.  But the sound came from a great distance and didn’t seem terribly important.  Then footsteps, the door opened.   It was Jason, smiling down at her,

            “Sweetie, what are you doing in here?”  Myra saw that she was on the floor of the laundry room, the sheets in a heap under and around her.

            “Laundry,” she said after a moment.  “There is so much laundry to do.”    

            “Where are the kids?  They go home with Dee?”

            His words reached her slowly, one at a time, heavy footfalls muffled by thick wool batting as they landed.  

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Diane Yatchmenoff has a PhD in social work from Portland State University focusing on the impact of childhood trauma on adults and families. She is a recipient of an Honorable Mention award from Glimmer Train for emerging writers. “Renunciation” is her first published fiction. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Anchored

Rachel Fleishman

My ten-year-old son spent the afternoon with six friends imagining a parallel dimension while I looped our dog at the edges of the park. They splashed through the creek with walkie-talkies to escape from Russian soldiers, chased a Demogorgon along the ravine, hid behind tree stumps, all the while over-and-outing about the Upside-Down: a dimension felt but unseen. They were emulating characters from a television adventure set in 1985. It was a Sunday in suburban Philadelphia in January 2020, and the air was unseasonably warm.

             I watched them band together like a troop of kangaroos bounding down hills with leaves cradled in their T-shirts. For them, it was a simple adventure to access another world layered on the now. It was the fantasy, the science fiction, that lit up their minds with creative impulses. Their giddiness evoked a nostalgia for my own childhood.

             I spent Sunday afternoons in 1985 in this very park. With my brother, now also a parent. With friends, now grown and outgrown. Always I was moving in circles. Up slides, down ramps, round bases, hand in hand through shadows and streams, twirling down around poles. Swinging to launch shoes, bodies into weightless flight. I remember lying on rusting, round platforms where child pushing child made grooves for future feet, dizzy as the metal moved circles beneath our backs. We pushed each other faster and higher while the merry-go-round and swings kept us tethered to the ground. Anchored.

             I combed that ground for four-leaf clovers to wish for illusions: rainbows, moonbeams, princesses in pink crinoline who could jump rope. It took decades before I stopped spinning long enough to set my sights on a future where I had two sons and a husband who could hold my whole self. I did not know then, as I coiled and curled, that comfort would come with a linear rhythm of marriage and motherhood, dinners and dog nuzzles.

My younger son stopped my walk with a fit of need. We sat together on a bench, his toes barely scraping dirt below us. Pouty lip, teary eyes. He unloaded a pure and simple sadness, excluded by these big boys. You can’t play, his brother told him. I folded him between my arm and my chest and for just a moment I was his every answer. For just a moment, the only dimension was the one we could see. For that simple moment, I could turn time off and our melty embrace was everything, it was enough. Until his best friend appeared, and they ran off to build a stick fort.

             As he ran off, I felt raw. Not at his fickle needs but at memories of the crevice between inclusion and exclusion. I remember hanging there. Triumph in shirt tucked, both hands letting go to dangle from the crooks of knees off the high bar. Agony because I was the only one who kept hanging, who could not mount the courage to drop. Penny drop, girls called it. Friends to my left and right flipped and landed. Two feet, heads high. But I did not trust myself to upright my own fall. Hanging there while the others dangled themselves again. Until they tired of falling and flipping and we were all off, pulled together in motion by cartwheels browning hands and bare feet.

             The dog tugged after black squirrels scampering up the stone wall that ringed the park, wanting creatures she could not catch. As I reeled her in, I could all but see my six-year-old self, plucking honeysuckles from that very wall. Another little girl, now living in Portland with her wife, taught me to harvest nectar drops with one pulled calyx at a time.

             When I moved back here as an adult, after almost two decades away, memories of my childhood would catch me daily, reel me in as they floated to the surface of my consciousness. I felt the joy of young adventures held in the walls and rituals of the township. I would walk by houses and think of sleepovers spent watching Pretty in Pink in my purple cabbage-patch sleeping bag. I could hear my friends singing folk songs while we pitched stones into the stream behind the park. I would drive by Wawa and stop myself mid-phrase from telling my children the story about sneaking away from tennis practice to climb graveyard fences en route to that Wawa for Chipwiches and Zippo lighters. Not that I ever dared smoke.

I eased the dog from trail to sidewalk. Instead of pining for the past, I drew in the now. My eyes traced the bend of willow branches, less romantic without their curtain of leaves. I absorbed the muted heat of winter sunshine on that cloudless afternoon. I felt the pain of my neighbors masked by the stone facades of their houses. Breast cancer. Layoff. Affair. Divorce.

             I watched my older son and his friends through the peeling green chain link fence. They climbed the tube slide, perched atop the monkey bars. They squealed with unfiltered delight, their voices like sunlight on an open ocean. Once closer, I heard them talking about a girl, a classmate, who was not there. A girl they wished could be the character with the super powers. A girl to save the world, to be the one. I saw my son shift in that moment, right there with muddy knees atop a plastic dome meant to contain crawling toddlers. From thirty feet away, I felt his shift. A jolt, not unlike the lurch of the typewriter shifting capital letters into line beneath my fingertips for my elementary book reports. Full force from little boy to something more.

             And I remembered that same shift in myself. Gradually, much after 1985 but still in this park. With fondness, I opened myself to the refocusing, the longing, the setting of sight. I remembered that first boy and how we said all. On logs, on park benches. In the crisp twilight nestled in the orange leaves and brown acorns of fall. I remembered plunging into each other head-first, lips and fingers stumbling through the newness of mutual embrace.

             These ten-year-old boys were not quite longing; their shifting sight was just beginning to find its new horizon. Their collective imagination was still mostly fantastical. That day alone, they killed the monster, turned the keys, closed the gate, beat the Russians. Got the girl. None of this was real. There were never any Russians threatening their daily existence just as there was no gate to another dimension, no upside-down present. What they could not see, could not find then as children, were the dimensions of past layered on the present.

             That night, my older son and I played cards and listened to music in our kitchen. This time spent counting and sorting and singing was our anchor. Together, we moved in circles as I taught him to waltz to Kermit’s The Rainbow Connection, a song he slipped in between dabbing and flossing to Imagine Dragons. It’s just so heartwarming, Mommy. I taught him to put his hand on my hip, or around a partner’s waist if he’s feeling romantic. I taught him how to lift his arm to let his partner twirl as he himself slowed without standing still.

             That Sunday I was moored by memories. Reliving all the years I spent living for the future, living to grow up, to do more. Back then, the future was 2015 and it meant time travel and hoverboards and flying cars. Back then, I did not know that elation would find me in the twirl of my son’s wrists, in the trusting pout of a lip. Back then, I did not know that the stars were never as far away as they seemed when I was playing, spinning, arms out, head raised. Simply fighting not to fall.

---

Rachel Fleishman, MD, is a neonatologist who writes creative nonfiction about her journey as a mother and as a doctor-mom. She is the mother of two busy school-age boys who are thrilled that their evening tradition of sleepy tea and card games is now in print. She has been honored to have her essays appear in such publications as The Philadelphia Inquirer, Hippocampus, and several medical humanities publications. Her essay in Literary Mama was nominated for Best of the Net 2020. To review her publications, you may visit her website at www.rachelfleishman.com or find her on twitter @rafleishman.

Adult Education

Brandi Handley

After a good fifteen minutes, Hailey and I are still stuck on a volume problem. Find the volume of the cube. This should be an easy question—just plug the numbers into the formula. But the answer she and I keep coming up with does not match the answer in the back of the book. I immediately think: typo. The book is wrong; we are right.

             Hailey is a twenty-four-year-old student so close to taking the high school equivalency test that she’s made it to geometry. Frankly, she’s a lot better at math than I am. She’s figuring numbers in her head while I’m writing them out on paper.

             The Big Q Quik Trip cup, purse full of snacks, and extra pencils mean she’s in it for the long haul. And as I scan the classroom for the other teacher to help us, she keeps studying the volume problem.

             “Oh!” Hailey says. “That’s what it is.”

             “What,” I say, “what did we miss?”

             “The width is in feet, the length and height are in inches,” she says. “We have to convert the feet to inches.”

             I look at the cube in her math book. Sure enough, the width is in feet. How either of us missed such an obvious step seems incredible. One little bump and we’d been derailed.

Jim is in his sixties and hasn’t sat inside a classroom in more than forty years, having spent those years driving an eighteen-wheeler. He wants to drive school buses so he can spend more time at home with his family. Even with all of his experience, he cannot apply for a position without a high school equivalency certificate. Tonight is his first class with us and in preparation he has brought his own pencil and a pair of reading glasses that he keeps in a leather pouch in his breast pocket.

             Like Hailey, he has strong math skills—while we start most students on fractions, we start Jim on geometry. He and Hailey should pass the math portion of the high school equivalency test in a matter of weeks.

             He sips from a water bottle throughout the class period, making sure it lasts all three hours. At the end of class he says, “If I’d known it was this easy, I’d’ve done it a long time ago.”

While math comes relatively easy to Jim and Hailey, it is Kryptonite to a lot of students. Joanna enrolled in our program once before but quit amid a battle with fractions, a derailment that lasted several years. She’s returned with an infectious positive attitude and a package of Jesus pencils.

             Tonight she places the pencils on the table in front of her. They say things like, “I ♥ Jesus” and “Jesus makes it possible!” She says that she’s not only brought her Jesus pencils, she’s brought the man himself. “I got Jesus with me. He’s going to get me through this.”

Rebecca, like the other students, does not have a high school diploma, yet she’s a loan officer at a small bank. She dresses in button down shirts, slacks, and flats. Her hair is short and straight, and a brown barrette fastens it away from her face. She arranges her student folder, notebook paper, and pencils neatly on her desk. Her work is meticulous. She asks questions. She listens. And she has failed the math portion of the high school equivalency test five times.

             She’s tried high school equivalency classes before, years ago, and just recently online classes, which have helped her pass reading, science, social studies, and writing. Only math remains. She wonders why she can do algebra in class but not on the test.

           &nbsp ; This evening she sits tightly wound at her desk, her shoulders tensed up to her ears. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I fail again,” she says. She’s been with us five months already and has been one point away from passing, but on her latest attempt her score dropped severely, though she’d studied harder. She has one more attempt left for this calendar year.

             Next to Rebecca sits Laurie, who carries a Hello Kitty backpack and wears glittery barrettes in her spiral-curled bob. She’s 43—the same age as Rebecca. This is her first attempt at classes of any kind since she dropped out of school more than twenty-five years ago. She struggles with fractions, percents, and long division. But she’s decided to go ahead and take the math portion of the test, just to see what it’s like.

             We marvel when she passes on her first try.

             “Imma good guesser,” she says.

When I started at the adult education program, I’d never taught before and wasn’t sure I wanted to. But the program needed another teacher and I needed a part-time job while I pursued graduate school. At 5:45 in the evening, Debbie, a teacher in the program, gave me the grand tour of the facilities—the bathrooms, the water fountain, the classroom where students had started to arrive.

             They signed in on a small table, picked a yellow or Halloween-themed pencil from a basket, and pulled their student folders from a filing cabinet. I didn’t hear any greetings or excited chatter like one might hear in a high school classroom. Most of the students had come from a job or their children. A couple of younger students, maybe seventeen or eighteen years old, appeared as if they’d just rolled out of bed, looking as tired as the others. The classroom got crowded and warm in a hurry.

             The first hour of class was independent study. Students worked on assignments that addressed their individual weaknesses, while two teachers went from student to student answering questions and explaining concepts one-on-one.

             I watched from beneath an array of educational posters diagramming a plant and animal cell, the parts of a flower, and the solar system; detailing decimals, fractions, and the multiplication table; and listing grammar rules and the writing process (pre-write, draft, proofread, share). A globe, a world map, and a map of the U. S. were all at least fifteen years out of date. There were books—textbooks of every school subject, dictionaries with faded red covers held together at the spine with masking tape, and exercise books with yellowed pages and 1970s copyright dates.

             An entire public education—kindergarten through twelfth grade—was crammed into that one classroom. The weight of it hung there, palpable. I went out into the lobby to get some air, afraid a student might ask me to explain photosynthesis or algebra. At that point, I wasn’t sure I could explain long division.

             As the first hour of class came to an end, so did my time as an observer. The second hour was a group lesson. “You can help me teach the lesson tonight,” said Debbie. “You were an English major, right?”

             I nodded. Maybe helping meant passing out worksheets.

             “You can do an essay lesson. You want to?”

             “Uh, sure,” I said. I followed her to the director’s office where she Googled five-paragraph essay graphic organizers.

             “How about this one?” she said, mousing over one shaped as a hamburger. The two buns symbolized the introduction and conclusion paragraphs; the lettuce, tomato, and hamburger patty symbolized the three body paragraphs in between (or the “meat” of the essay). “This one’s easy for people to remember,” she said. “We have to keep things simple for this crowd.”

             Then Debbie said, “If you could be a cartoon character or a super hero, who would you be?”

             I tensed up at the question. Betty Boop randomly came to mind and the Powerpuff Girls. Finally, I said, “Bugs Bunny?”

             “Why?”

             “I don’t know.”

             “Well, hurry and think of three reasons. That’s the essay question we’re going to give the class.” She handed me the stack of freshly printed hamburger graphic organizers. “You can show the class how to use these with your example.”

             I stood in front of the class, a roomful of adults—people I’d soon come to know as mothers, fathers, certified nursing assistants, managers, bank tellers, factory workers—and drew a giant hamburger on the board so I could explain why I wanted to be Bugs Bunny.

             The simplicity of my essay lesson seemed inappropriate in light of the high stakes these students were facing. “This crowd” and the experiences that brought them to our classroom were anything but simple. I found Debbie’s attitude to be common, equating adult education student with drop-out.

In our classroom, hands go up like smoke signals. They hang in the air silently betraying the urgency with which they were sent up. Most students in our program would rather do almost anything than ask a teacher for help. They’ve been in school before and were not successful. They’re skeptical of success now.

             But after a few classes, some of the students start to relax and trust us with their questions. On one particularly crowded evening, smoke signals have turned into flares. Hands shoot upward and an inexplicable anxiety shrouds the room.

             Steven’s forgotten how to find a common denominator; Nicole is trying to remember if the formula for figuring percents is IS over OF or OF over IS. Carlos needs a hand grading his practice test. Jeremy has been staring at a blank piece of notebook paper for twenty minutes trying to write an essay. Not knowing the multiplication table has stalled Keisha’s progress in fractions. I quickly show her the finger trick for remembering the multiples of nine and give her a handout for the rest.

             A few people working on fractions try to help each other until I can get back around to them. Meanwhile, the students at a table across the room are flagging me down to settle a dispute over comma use. I dread that table; I can’t even remember the rules for comma use. I ignore them for a moment to help Maria on sentence formation. I kneel next to her table to get a better view of the exercise. She says, “Honey, you’re too pretty to be on your knees.”

             By the time the first hour of class is over, I am almost relieved to be teaching the group lesson. I teach a short one on ratio and proportion. Most of the class is getting it. This is a major victory for both me and the students. The anxiety that has plagued us this evening begins to dissipate. We ease up on ourselves. We crack a smile. Small victories are what keep us coming back.

             I have less success teaching essay writing. We’ve whittled down the writing process to what’s listed on the poster stuck to the wall: pre-write, draft, proofread, share. I become a writing drill sergeant:

             “Write simple sentences. Don’t be fancy.”

             “Only use words that you know how to spell.”

             “The essay test is not the time to experiment with punctuation.”

             “Stop trying to use semicolons.”

             “Lie if you have to—just make sure you answer the question.”

             “They are only going to spend two minutes grading your essay, so get to the point.”

             I am trying to dispel the mystery of writing, give them rules that are easy to follow. In the process I feel I am dispelling any creativity they may have had, or worse, the desire to keep trying.

             More than half of our students stop showing up to class within a month. When each new month rolls around, twenty to thirty more people sign up for orientation. Hundreds of people in Blue Springs, Missouri live and work without a high school diploma.

             Blue Springs is a suburb twenty miles east of downtown Kansas City—drive past the business district, 18th and Vine, and Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums, through Raytown and Independence, and you’re there. It’s a city of 50,000 middle-class Midwesterners. And it’s home to thirteen elementary schools, four middle schools, one freshman center, two high schools—and one alternative school, which houses the Blue Springs Adult Education and Literacy (AEL) program.

             The alternative school was formerly Hall-McCarter Middle School. My middle school. I can see the peak of the house I grew up in from the parking lot. The AEL program is in the part of the building that used to be the school library, the place where I once unsuccessfully tried out for the school musical. The square tables with the matching cushioned chairs serve as our students’ desks now, but everything else has changed. Most of the bookshelves are gone, walls divide the space into classrooms, and the book check-out station is now the AEL director’s office. The building has changed so much that sometimes I forget I was a student there. An enrollment session gives me a tangible reminder.

             Sitting behind the teacher’s desk, I spot a familiar face. I can just make out his profile between the heads of the other students: it is unquestionably the freckled face of my middle school nemesis, Matt. He’d already been held back one year in school before I met him, and he was big for his age. He threw his bulk around like a badge. He was loud and crude but on the whole harmless. I dreaded him not because I thought he would harm me but because I knew he would try to embarrass me.

             One afternoon in 7th grade math, I sat chewing a fingernail. He announced loudly, “She’s giving me the finger!” I was mortified because, yes, my middle finger was sticking straight up as I gnawed on it. This is the worst memory I have of him.

             At some point he’d broken his leg, and years later he still walked with a limp, the injured leg a lot skinnier than the other one. By high school his over-sized t-shirts had turned black and chains dangled from his cargo shorts. He wasn’t loud anymore but eerily quiet. I don’t remember seeing him past tenth grade.

             More than fifteen years later we are back in middle school, and now, I am the teacher.

             At the end of the day he comes up to my desk to hand me his paperwork. I say, quickly, “Hey, how are you?”

             He recognizes me immediately. “Whoa, how are you?”

             “I’m good,” I say. And then the encounter is over.

             I haven’t seen him since enrollment. Maybe another opportunity presented itself, a new job or a training program that didn’t require a high school equivalency certificate. Or maybe his plans were overturned by some unforeseen blow. Or was it me that kept him from coming back?

Some students are here by a judge’s order and because their parole officer will check up on them. Others need a high school equivalency certificate to keep their job or because they can’t find a good job without it.

             Jeff does not have to be here. It’s the middle of second semester and he could be out riding his motorcycle every Monday and Thursday night instead of learning slope intercepts. He could be at jousting practice (he now does that on Wednesdays) instead of reading about chemical reactions. He has a job and doesn’t need a new one.

             He works methodically writing in teeny tiny handwriting, carefully folding down the pages of his notebook after each page is full. For three hours he works, rarely taking breaks or needing help. He is here because he wants to graduate high school before his daughter, whom he has raised by himself. He made a deal with her that if she finished high school, so would he—they would race. When he takes the test in April, he passes, beating her by one month.

Vicki turned fifty years old last year. From a distance she looks like a teenager—tiny build, blond wiry hair, flared jeans, and tight tops. Up close you can see that stress and cigarettes have roughened her face and neck. She’s on medication for ADHD, bipolar, anxiety, and depression. Her hands often shake. Her essays are full of sentences that randomly stop and start.

             It’s March, and Vicki has been with us in the mornings since the previous August. She tells me she’s going to court today.

             “For your divorce?” I ask.

             “No, Robert and I are back together,” she says.

             “When did that happen?”

             “A few weeks ago,” she says. “I moved back in with him after my mom pulled a gun on me.”

             I can feel my face stretching with surprise. “What happened?” I ask.

             “I was living with my parents when me and Robert split up,” she begins, “and one night Mom and Dad had been drinking, and I don’t know, I came out of my room and Mom was at the end of the hall waving Dad’s gun around.”

             “So, she wasn’t, like, aiming at you?” I say. I feel an arbitrary sense of relief that this gun-wrangling may have been some kind of misunderstanding.

             “When she saw me she started screaming at me,” Vicki continues. “Things like, ‘Get the hell out of my house, you leech! You just can’t stop ruining people’s lives!’ And that’s when she started pointing the gun at me. I locked myself in my room and called Robert and then the police.”

             I try to imagine Vicki in high school, a petite girl dealing with undiagnosed ADHD and bipolar disease. I wonder if her mom was prone to waving weapons around then.

             Vicki tells me she loves me. She says it like best friends say it.

             “Love you, too, Vicki,” I say.

Like many students, Michelle feels the need to explain why she didn’t finish high school. Unlike Vicki, she seems to have had a comparatively normal upbringing.

             “I wasn’t planning on dropping out. I wasn’t stupid,” she says.

             Although she’d gotten pregnant her junior year, she planned to finish high school and then go to college to study nursing. Her friends and family supported her, and when she went to the counselor’s office to sign up for senior year classes, the plan was still intact.

             “I told the counselor I didn’t want to take gym until the spring because I was pregnant,” Michelle says. “‘You’re what?’ the counselor says. ‘I’m pregnant,’ I tell her. ‘I want to wait and take gym after I have my baby.’” Michelle has a deer-caught-in-headlights look about her as she tells me this. “She told me I couldn’t sign up for classes if I was pregnant and threw my schedule in the trash.”

             One balled-up schedule was a hard enough bump to derail Michelle’s plan. Would the plan have stuck if she’d known how to advocate for herself? Or known that another counselor may have had a different, more compassionate reaction?

             Michelle decided to give our program a try after fifteen years working as a certified nursing assistant for minimum wage. She earns her high school equivalency certificate in less than four months.

Ian brings his wife with him to school. He missed our last orientation, but we allow him to enroll because he’s desperate. His wife is pregnant with their second child and he needs a job.

             They are both young, but at twenty, he is clearly much younger. His wife hangs on him, arms tied around his waist. She points her face up at him for a kiss. And then another one.

             Ian meets her face halfway, but the rest of his body looks ready to spring from her. He hasn’t brought his wife with him, I realize: she has brought him. Tethered to her, he looks like a wild animal. His eyes dart around, and I can easily imagine his lanky limbs loping over fences and across fields.

             “You’ll need to go through the orientation process,” I say to Ian.

             The young wife reluctantly lets go of him. She leaves, and I take Ian to an empty classroom to take pre-tests and fill out paperwork.

             He cannot sit still. His heel pumps at the floor, his hands slap the table twice a second. His eyes dart from his reading test, to the window, to me, to the blank white board, back to his test. “This is easy for me,” he says.

             “Good,” I say, “keep going.”

             He speaks in a hurry. “I’m even better at math.”

             He fidgets through the remainder of the test but completes it in record time. I worry that he rushed through the test without trying, but when I get his scores back, he appears to be right—the test was easy for him. He could improve in a few areas in math, but he should be ready to take the high school equivalency test soon.

             Most students who hear this kind of news are visibly relieved. Relieved to know that they’re not as far behind as they thought. Relieved that their goals are within reach.

             When I give Ian his good news, it is hard to say how he feels. He stares past my right ear as I’m talking to him and pointing out his scores on the results page. The sudden stillness of his body is disconcerting after watching him in constant motion for several hours. Finally he says, “I don’t want to take the math test until I’m ready. Like really ready.”

             “There are a few areas you’ll need to brush up on,” I agree. “But it shouldn’t take you long.”

             To help Ian plan for his future, we set up a meeting for him with a representative from the Full Employment Council (FEC), a program that works closely with ours. The representative describes the opportunities waiting for Ian once he passes the high school equivalency test. Ian loves working on cars, so he gets information on a mechanic training program that the FEC will pay for.

             But after several months, Ian still doesn’t want to take the high school equivalency test, though he’s ready and our program has money to pay for it. Most students see a high school equivalency certificate as a key that unlocks opportunity. I wonder what a high school equivalency certificate looks like to Ian. A cage? One more tether?

             I’m not sure how to encourage him. He doesn’t need the usual help. He knows the multiplication tables; he’s figured out algebra on his own. His reading skills are strong. He doesn’t need me to tell him he’ll do great on the test or to give him test-taking strategies.

             I worry that what he needs is less responsibility, time to be a kid. But in the adult education program we specialize in steering students toward more responsibility.

             We coax him into signing up for the test. When the day of the test comes, he doesn’t show up to the testing center, and he doesn’t come back to class for a month. We call him. He says he doesn’t have gas money to get to school. We say next time you come, we’ll give you a gas card.

             Once he has the gas card, he disappears for another couple of weeks. We call him again, and after a few days his wife answers. She and Ian and their baby had an accident driving to Ohio to help a friend move. We assume he no longer has the gas card to get to school.

             A week later Ian comes to class smelling like weed. This is the one thing we, as teachers, are not allowed to overlook. He is told to leave. He does not come back.

The ideal adult education student is somewhere between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-two—people who are experienced enough to fully understand the opportunities a high school equivalency certificate offers but young enough to remember a few things from high school. If this demographic sticks with it, they’ll be done in a matter of months.

             But if they’re a single parent, it may take a little longer.

             If they have more than three kids, a little longer.

             If they work overtime, maybe a little longer.

             If their car breaks down and they can’t get a ride to school, longer.

             If they have test-taking anxiety, social anxiety, or general anxiety, longer.

             If they have to take out a restraining order on their partner, step-brother, cousin, or either parent, even longer.

             If they live with any drug users, longer.

             If they have ever been hard into drugs themselves, it will take quite a bit longer.

             If they relapse, much longer.

             If they suspect that their parents, teachers, or friends were right all along and they really aren’t smart, a lot longer.

             If they give up, it’ll take…

             Longer.

             Longer.

             Longer.

Tyson carries a skateboard with him to class, along with a large chip on his shoulder. The skateboard isn’t a hobby but his transportation. This is the suburbs: there are no trains or buses. He walks/skateboards from Planet Fitness, a twenty-four-hour gym where he sleeps, to school, a distance of over four miles.

             Tyson is a good-looking kid—tall, athletic, a neatly-shaped Afro. His sweatpants fit tightly and he wears his socks pulled up to meet the too-short bottoms of his pant legs. He wears a too-small sweatshirt and carries a too-small backpack. Somehow it works. He looks hip. He has a big white smile, straight teeth, and clear skin. He could have been one of the popular kids in high school.

             He doesn’t want help. When I ask him what he’s working on, he jabs at the paper with one finger before going back to scrolling on his phone. I ask if he has any questions, I’m unsure he’s heard me through the ear buds. “No,” he says. But I see that he’s looking up how to calculate percents.

             When I see him next class, he’s so desperate, he allows me to help him. He has his writing test in two days and the essay he has just written is one long sentence, the length of the page. I tell him he has the right idea. He has voiced an opinion somewhat related to the essay question. I tell him organization is key on this kind of test. Paragraphs. Periods. I tell him to give me three reasons why he believes his opinion is a strong one. I draw a graphic organizer on the board. I avoid the hamburger-shaped one in favor of one with simple boxes. Together we fill it in.

             “Okay, I get it,” he says. But soon he’s stuck trying to turn the three reasons into paragraphs.

             We write the essay together.

             I try to imagine where he sleeps at the gym. The locker room? The “abs” section? I don’t know what he eats. Powerade and protein bars? I only know he can’t go home. His parents kicked him out for some unknown reason—he doesn’t appear to be on drugs, he hasn’t shown any signs of violent behavior. At times I glimpse a certain attitude, the chip on his shoulder infecting his whole person. But there must have been something that prompted his parents to kick him out. Something more than a bad attitude.

             I don’t know what bump in his path landed him in adult education. I only know he is here, and he accepts the packets of worksheets I offer him after class.

             “Can I take this pencil?” he asks.

             “Yes, take it,” I say. “Take several pencils.”

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Brandi Handley earned an MFA degree in creative writing and media arts from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Currently, she teaches English at Park University, a small Liberal Arts college in Parkville, Missouri. Her work has been published in the Laurel Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, and the Wisconsin Review.