The Children

The children, when they want my attention, call me Hey and Yo and Miss Lady. And when they don't give a shit, which is most of the time, they toss pistachio shells on the ledge of my chalkboard and write FUCK all over their binders.

"It's not that we don't like you," she whispers. Her watermelon gum. Her assignment on the floor. "It's just that you don't yell or nothing, so we know that we can do whatever we want."

Two boys. Around and around and around the desks. "Knock it off!" I yell. "I mean it!" I yell. The others, laughing and heckling.

At lunchtime, I walk over to Eddie's and pick up a California Roll and a Snapple. I eat in the classroom--the hot, green classroom--and wait for 12:30, the dreaded slam of lockers.

Mr. Jenkins, the one they all love, the one who, years ago, robbed the 7-11, stands, his arms crossed, outside the classroom. When they see him, they sit down, they get quiet, and we all look, as if it means anything to anyone, at the list of vocabulary words I've written on the chalkboard.

At the evaluation, she doesn't sit. She leans against a file cabinet. "I mean, I'm sorry," she says, "but I don't understand it. You're the adult. You're the teacher. You're the one who is in charge." I nod and say I don't understand it, either. I sign on the line where she tells me to sign.

Out in the parking lot, the Taurus won't start, and the snow is falling harder and harder. I dig through the trunk for the scraper, for the jumper cables, before I see them coming across the field.

Some are running and some are throwing snowballs. Some are making angels in the frozen grass.