class clown

He sits in the far corner of the classroom and really does struggle with the question: should I be funny, or should I focus. He knows what his classmates want; they want the clown. And he likes the role. It makes him feel special. No one can cut up the room like him. It’s like ham with eggs. But Mr. Lash told him, yesterday, that time was beginning to run out, that it was time for him to buckle down, to get serious, to focus. And Mr. Lash wasn’t the first, by any stretch. He looks across the room, now. Sid is the intellectual. Mary is the sensitive one. Lou’s the wordsmith. Hallie’s the artist. Fred and Allie carry the common sense mantles. Where would he fit in, if he went straight? Would he fit in? Maybe. Maybe not. He does think about this, but with that smile on his face because it’s best not to let anything on. Mr. Lash is lecturing, now, talking, pointing, and, finishing the 20-minute presentation, says, “Any questions?” and he says, “Yeah, can you go over that, again, Mr. L?” and the class guffaws. It wasn’t that funny, certainly not one of his funniest, but it was him who said it and he was the one they counted on and laughed with, or at. He wondered, a lot, lately, about that one, too.

rambled

He does wonder where she is
and what she’s doing
and who she’s doing it with –
with whom she is doing it, it
being
any
number of things.
of
course, and not necessarily
IT!
And he has wondered
if they
perhaps and/or perchance,
knew each other before, in a
previous life,
when he was a knight and
she
a
princess or even a tavern
maiden.
And he does wonder, still,
if … No, he
doesn’t. He does wish
he did, sometimes, but he won’t allow
himself
that.
He
can’t.

red donkey

He loads up a mini-van every Sunday and drives across the river to the open-air flea market just off Exit 36. Back home, across the border, he’s an artisan. He makes things. Nice things. Beautiful things. Glorious things. But, here, he just sells junk, his and anyone else’s. He does find it ironic, that when he visits the richest nation in the world he makes more money selling gizmos and gadgets than he does at home, selling what his hands create with precision and an almost sacred care. But he has long quit questioning it, or anything like it. So, he smiles, nods, and collects a pocketful of dollars for an old bike, a used VCR, a painting of a southeast Asia landscape. Someone looking over his wares asks him for the time. He says, “It’s still early.” The browser nods and picks up a bright red plush toy, a donkey. A red donkey. Perfectly odd. Two bucks. Sold.

phillippe

His name is Phillippe and he hawks newspapers at the red light just before the underpass outside a town called Pharr in southernmost Texas. He has two children – Jose Carlos and Angelica – and a common-law wife, Rose, with whom he’s lived for seven years, now. After he’s done, this morning, he will head home and count his money. The total will be sixteen fifty-six. He will use that to feed the children for the next three days. He’s learned how to make money last. He’s had no choice. In another year, Jose Carlos will join a local gang, even though he’s only 10. He’ll think it’s a way to become stronger, but it will only kill him, in the end. Angelica will be a serious student. Someday, she will graduate Princeton. No one will be there to see her in cap and gown and she will spend the afternoon alternately alone and with her roommates parents who have a summer home in the Hamptons. Phillippe knows none of this, of course, this morning, in the 98-degree heat, as he walks betweens cars, raising high the papers, the San Antonio Express. No one knows any of this. How could they? It is unknowable. As is the unlikely possibility that Angelica will someday become the Surgeon General of the United States, which she will.

esther's journal

FRIDAY, September 29: More rain. In sheets. But a good day, if not great. We read a short story in class by Kurt Vonnegut – “Harrison Bergeron.” Read it, if you get a moment. It’s good. But the discussion that followed was one of those times when you think you could teach forever. The question was this: what’s more important for society – freedom or rules? What ensued was a raucous, almost chaotic trading of ideas and opinion that gives you satisfaction as a teacher, hope for the future and an understanding of just with what we’re entrusted – these wonderful, young minds. I wanted the class to go on and on and on. I wanted to hug them all. It wasn’t the first time one of my classes has blossomed, like that. But every time it’s like a first time. You can feel the energy. My God, what a lovely revelation, always. I wish you had been there.

nice thoughts

He feels a great comfort, now, where he is, what’s he’s doing, and he wonders why it’s so, and if it’s going to come to an end, or if it can continue. He watches the sun set, near, across the western end of the football field and marvels at the indefinable colors. He looks at the sky, so big and blue, and feels small, yet significant. He smiles at the clouds, with a wonder and joy that seems misplaced at his age, or at least so very childlike. But he likes that, too. He’s even been reconsidering God and wonders if God would reconsider him. Nice thoughts. Good thoughts.

gaity

The girl is presenting a speech in class about her favorite band and it’s the Jonas Brothers and she says, to the class, a bit embarrassedly, “And I don’t care if you think they’re gay,” and the class twitters, even as the teacher stops her presentation and admonishes her, though gently, for it has become commonplace for kids to joke about homosexuality in that manner and she, the speaker, is too nice to mean great harm, if any harm at all. A boy to the side says, “But the Bible says it’s a sin,” and another concurs and the teacher backs away from a theological confrontation, because she must. In the far corner, sits Enzo Ford. He’s a co-captain on the football team and the homecoming king and he’s gay, though he hasn’t admitted it, yet, even to himself. And he feels a great shame wash over him, now, a shame even greater than the one he feels at night, when he’s left alone with his thoughts and his worries and his fears about going to hell, and he says, too, “Yes, it says so in the Bible – and the Jonas Brothers are gay.” And, so, Enzo Ford leads the second wave of laughter. It is all he can do.