An Out of the Way Place
The
night of August 12, 1993, found me arriving in Sells, Arizona, being assaulted
by 105 degree heat, a weighted blanket of humidity, and the sight of Alice in
Wonderland-sized toads hopping everywhere I looked. I had accepted a teaching
position in the special education program of the middle/high school in Sells
which was part of the Indian-Oasis Baboquivari Unified School District of the Tohono O’odham nation, an hour southwest of
Tucson, Arizona, and an hour north of the Mexican border in the Sonoran Desert.
This was the landscape of centuries old saguaro cactus and flash floods caused
by summer monsoon thunderstorms. Back in
the 60s, when I was a girl growing up in Scottsdale learning about Arizona’s
tribes in school, this one was known as the Papago. Author Byrd Baylor wrote several lovely
children’s books about them that portray their inner nature, among them Yes Is Better Than No. Their reservation is the 2nd
largest in
I was arriving the night before orientation
for new teachers and at the moment was lost, though the town was so small it
had only one grocery store and two gas stations. The road to the teacher
housing seemed to have vanished. The vice-principal had pointed it out to
me the previous week while showing new teachers around after our interviews,
but now, at night and after a long, hot drive, I was completely disoriented.
I
stopped at a pay phone on an isolated stretch of road to call the woman, a
regular education teacher at the middle school, who would put me up for a few
days while I waited for a vacancy in the small apartment complex which was part of teacher housing. Scores of flying
insects descended on me as soon as I reached for the phone, attracted by the
light above it. No one answered, not even an answering machine. I hung up and
moved quickly back to the car and just sat for several seconds. Duffel bags, a
box of books, bedding, and my boom box were piled and disorganized next to me in
the back seat, as packing had been an unusual challenge. What in God’s name was
I doing? I wondered. My knee, injured just two weeks before when an 18-year-old
bicyclist slammed into me from behind, ached deep in the bone. My upper front
teeth were loose, having been nearly knocked completely out when I’d landed
unconscious and face down on the highway. A bulky “wire basket” that encased my
upper teeth prevented me from eating and chewing normally and made people wince,
either in empathy or disgust, when they noticed it. Was coming to this out-of-the-way-place
a choice I made partly to distract myself from the various consequences of the
trauma? The new faces and scenery I’d
encounter, the stories that would be entrusted to me, the horizons found only
in the Sonoran desert. Wouldn’t they stimulate something in my brain that would
prevent me from asking hard questions and remembering the nightmarish moments
over and over?
I summoned up my energy reserves and
drove on. A blue and white hospital sign reading “Sells Indian Hospital”
appeared and I turned in thinking I would find someone I could ask for
directions. I parked in a nearly deserted lot and banged on several doors in
areas lit by security lights that gave off a creepy yellow glow. In
this lighting, the toads, which appeared to weigh ten pounds, made deep
croaking sounds and hopped against the side of the building. Perhaps they
wanted the refrigerated air, launching an invasion that I was just in time for.
Anything seemed possible as I hobbled on my sore knee in hopes of finding a
human being. No one came to any of the doors; instead the place seemed deserted
inside and out. Maybe those inside chose to ignore what waited outside. The
night seemed too hot and muggy to be real; I had thoughts of waking up, of
turning around and going back to Flagstaff, four and a half hours and five
thousand delicious feet higher in altitude. Maybe it was a dream of warning
before I made the actual move. Shaken by the financial implications of the
accident, I had abandoned my graduate studies, the community I called home, and my friendships in order to have a
full-time income and insurance benefits again. After regaining consciousness
during the accident, my face and the front of my body having skidded on the
pavement, I began screaming over and over, “I don’t have any insurance. I don’t
have any insurance!”
I didn’t have a plan as I left the
hospital lot, but I did have the smallest bit of faith. So when I saw an
occupied car sitting on the side of the road I quickly pulled up next to it. I
rolled down the window, and trying to sound nonchalant, asked the driver, “Do
you know where teacher housing is?”
“Follow me,” he said. I did, and in a
minute I was right in Jan’s driveway. I couldn’t wait to get out of the car,
and then hopefully to do some unloading.
I had only met Jan
for a few minutes at the interview and I’d found her oddly detached; her
features expressed nothing and her eyes showed little interest in others. She
was a bit older than me and seemed a reserved, sedentary type of person, with
brown hair she wore to her shoulders. The special education director had
informed me Jan would accommodate me for a few days as repayment for a previous
favor from her. So as I got out and went to greet her, I realized she wasn’t
interested in me or my situation. Sure enough, I got neither smiles nor polite
questions about the drive. The room I would use was her office/storage room; it
contained a small twin-sized bed but there was hardly room for my overnight
bag. I mentioned wanting to unload a few things, but it was obvious they
weren’t welcome. I saw her as having lived in the simple rental for years,
living a quiet life, and not having many people in. I imagined she collected
things to fill up the corners of the house to erase some of the emptiness she
must have inevitably felt.
Truly, I was just
going through the motions of functioning, and I didn’t want to collapse in
front of a relative stranger. The job I’d accepted would be stressful (teaching
a self-contained class of behaviorally disordered junior high boys) and I
wanted to give the impression that I could handle it, in spite of my current
condition. It would have helped if she’d do something to make me feel I’d arrived somewhere, instead I felt I was
still driving around lost. She stood at the door every time I went out to my
car to get something for the night. She was concerned about her cat getting
out, about someone moving around without order in her ordered environment. So
she stood at the door waiting for me to come back in and then would lock it
behind me.
“Are you through going out?” she asked, as if there was only
so much she could stand.
How would I know? I
was out of the energy needed to think about what odds and ends I should dig out
of my car. Distress fogged my brain, so I said an impersonal good night and
retreated to the “guest room” without the shower and food I needed.
The next day was an
uneventful orientation for new teachers, then came the weekend. The nights were
long and hot and sleepless. By 9 a.m., temps hit nearly 100 degrees. This
wasn’t helping me recover from the accident; I needed to walk outside and let
my body find its strength. I asked Jan about trails and places nearby to hike
and run for when I felt better and the weather cooled. The weekend was upon us
and I had a little time to settle and think ahead. Unfortunately, one of the teachers also
living in the housing complex had recently broken her foot while walking her
dogs mid-morning less than a mile from the housing compound. She had no water
and lay on the desert trail for a period of time calling for help. Finally, a
utility worker saw her and summoned assistance. She was at that moment laid up
at home.
I was told about
this as if it were very relevant to me. But left out was that the woman was a
non-athletic, overweight older person. Still, Jan seemed to think that if I
were to be out alone and hurt myself, I would be at great risk of serious
injury and hardship. I would have to depend on others and this would be an
unwelcome imposition on them. Therefore, I must not go onto the trails without
checking in with someone as I left and when I returned.
“We might see ourselves as being cool and independent…” Jan
began, but, she implied, look at you now.
Apparently, my freak accident meant I was at risk of being struck by a
falling saguaro perhaps, or that one trip on a stone would mean a busted head.
“I never go far, and I’ve spent so much time in desert
areas, running, climbing, camping..you don’t need to worry,” I explained. It
was all I could do, but I felt like I was talking to a stone. I wanted to put a
dent in her composure by telling her how during my teens a friend and I had
ridden into the desert, smoked lots of pot, then climbed up jagged outcroppings
trying to get stuck enough to need an official rescue. Instead, I stood there
running my tongue over jagged cuts resulting from wires raking the insides of
my mouth. I might have looked like someone suffering from the long-term effects
of psychiatric medication.
“But think of how helpless you’d be if you got hurt here.
Others would be burdened by helping you,” she continued. Her manner of speaking
seemed devoid of emotion, and I wondered if she was one of those non-Natives
who stay and work on reservations long-term because they don’t get along in
regular society.
I
understood we were coming from radically different perspectives on life. Just wait til I don’t have to stay with you.
How delicious it would be to get my own place, and I would vanish into the
desert without a word to anyone.
Getting out of
Jan’s place was foremost in my mind and I anxiously waited to hear from the
district housing office about vacancies. I finally decided to pay the office a
visit one afternoon a few days before the first day of school. I still limped a
bit from the gash in my knee, and the wire basket on my teeth couldn’t be
disguised either. Entering the air-conditioned school buildings always
felt harsh after being out in the heat. One was bad, the other worse.
The housing
director, Carlos, approached me after I asked a secretary about an available house
or apartment. Being tallish, he looked down at me and with a gleeful glint in
his eye told me, “There’s nothing vacant right now, and there probably won’t be
for a while.”
A different
official with the district had informed me something would be vacant soon, so I
refused to completely accept Carlos’ statement, and also because I
couldn’t see myself surviving the start of the school year living without
sufficient personal space. In the emergency room after my accident a nurse had
said, “What happened to YOU?” in a tone that suggested I must have been
misbehaving, when all I’d done was go on a casual bike ride in my neighborhood.
Yet I looked like someone had grabbed the back of my head and body, then
pounded me into the pavement. Everyone, depending on their own issues and
personal history, has their own way of responding to the victim. That was the
only ER experience I had ever had, but aren’t ER workers supposed to show
professional concern and a semblance of compassion?
Then the next day,
a Thursday, as I sat in an orientation meeting someone brought word that an
apartment was being cleaned at that very moment and would be ready by the
weekend. Relief! I found Jan and told her I’d be able to move out of her extra
room the next day.
“And just in time,” she responded, not unkindly, relieved
for both of us.
Friday was the big
day to make the one-hour drive to Tucson to get the wire bracket removed by an
oral surgeon and a lighter set of braces put on by an orthodontist. The two dental offices were around the block
from each other in the same office complex towards east Tucson. It was August
and the heat was worse in the city due to it being trapped by concrete and
glass. As the oral surgeon went about removing the wire basket, snipping at the
wires with some weighty-looking clippers, tears began to leak quietly from my
eyes. The assistant, an older woman, tried to comfort me, “Now, now it
shouldn’t really hurt.”
“It doesn’t hurt physically. It’s the trauma.” I said.
Her silence and look
of discomfort earned a cold look from me and the silent question, What is wrong with people?
Thankfully,
I wouldn’t need to return to that office. Not having the wire basket on made me
more aware of the missing front teeth, however, so when I got in the car I was
careful not to look in the rear-view mirror more than I needed to. I carefully
avoided touching the sizzling interior of my car any more than I needed to. The
orthodontist was literally a half-block’s drive around the corner, and I found
his office easily. Inside, I found other patients, mostly young teens, waiting
to be seen.
I was quickly shown
to a chair, where I sat staring straight ahead, enjoying the air conditioner
for once and trying not to think. The treatment area was a large, open
room and I felt ridiculous being in the view of the other much younger
patients. As I sat there becoming angry and self-conscious, trying to ignore
the gaps in my gum where the knocked-out teeth had been, I felt a deep sense of
apathy begin to thread through my consciousness as if a bucket of mud suddenly
coated the emotions that churned within.
The orthodontist,
Dr. Leavitt, was interacting with yet another patient and looked to be full of
warmth and smiles. But as he approached me, I didn’t smile back or even make
eye contact.
“Maria Jensen,” he announced and extended his hand, “I’m Dr.
Leavitt. How are you today?”
I continued looking
at the wall but did manage to offer a light handshake in return. “No time
for chit chat huh? Are you going to at
least let me start seeing what we can do here?”
Still not looking
at him, I opened my mouth. “Ok, let’s see.” He didn’t poke or prod with the
usual nasty metallic tools, thankfully. “Basically, we’re going to put braces
on these teeth. That will help re-stabilize things and get these teeth back in
line.”
“Hmmm…” I voiced, not questioningly but just to say, go
ahead.
The work he began
doing was not painful and the little braces and wires felt dainty after the
wire basket. I remained fairly absent though, as he chatted and joked. He was clearly convinced that all his
patients should enjoy and like him, but I wouldn’t begin to give him any satisfaction.
He would not get “chipperness” out of me if he paid me. The emergency room
experience included an oral surgeon angered that he got called in while out on
his boat (“Just my luck, and just as they were getting ready to flip the
burgers!” he kept saying). Only a week after that I was packing and moving with
my injuries and unable to eat solid food, then surrounded by strangers starting
a stressful job in a new place. What pounded the nail in the coffin was the kid
himself who’d struck me. We sat across from each other in the small emergency
room as he cradled a gashed elbow. I held my hand to my mouth, covering my
dangling teeth and bloodied face. The raw, hateful emotion in his glare seemed meant
to annihilate what was left of me. I knew little about narcissism at that time but
now see how his twisted reaction was an exhibition of it. So I’d been there and
had messed up his ride, and now his parents would be mad that the poor lady he
hit would most likely sue.
“All set,” Dr.
Leavitt said, bringing me back, after making some adjustments with a petite
plier-like tool. “How does it feel?”
“Ok,” I finally spoke.
Out
front, I made a future appointment; nothing was said about payment. I found out
later that they knew all the details and understood that my account would be
paid by a settlement.
As I
headed towards the outer door to leave Dr. Leavitt said, “Next time is when?”
“In two
weeks,” I said flatly.
“Looking
forward to it,” he quipped, raising a hand up in a perfunctory wave. It was
obvious that I was going to be his project, that he was determined to make me
laugh and be one of his happy patients. A small bead of satisfaction tickled in
my chest; whether he could get me to lighten up or not, I would appreciate his
efforts. This would be the only space I
would be in over the next year and a half where I would release some of the
emotion into my consciousness, where I had no choice but to be reminded, where
I had to open my mouth and risk the invasion of memory into the forefront of my
mind. And I had found it a safe space to
do that, a much-needed safe space.
Meeting the
Boys
Every K-12 teacher has their own
sense of anticipation for the first day of school, especially at a new job.
Soon we’ll meet a group of young people who will become like our family for a
full school year. New reasons to smile, and as many to complain and dread the
days. Wondering what the boys would be like in the self-contained SED (severely
emotionally disturbed) class distracted me from the current mess of my life,
although at least I was moving into my own apartment. It was a single-story
complex, very solidly built, and I never even had the sense there was someone
on the other side of my living room wall.
The one issue I had was the lack of
any materials or supplies to engage the boys with, as the orders I’d made
wouldn’t be delivered for another few weeks. The classrooms we’d use were in a
portable building a minute’s walk from the main campus. These kids were one
step away from treatment or juvenile lock-up, and in fact they almost all had
probation officers and therapists. Their diagnoses ran along the lines of group
conduct disorder, attachment disorder, and oppositional-defiance, which are basically
what they sound like and resulted from the various traumas they had been
subjected to, both prenatally and in their childhoods. These diagnoses would
evolve to become anti-social personality disorder in adulthood if the boys
didn’t grow out of them or receive effective treatment.
The special education director for
the district was a tall, older woman I had a good rapport with, so I had
stopped her after a meeting and asked what she suggested my assistant and I do
with the kids the first day.
“I’m sure the primary classes over
at the elementary could offer you some crayons and construction paper,” she
offered.
This suggestion made me realize what
I might be up against. The idea of keeping disturbed teen-agers busy with
kindergarten materials was somewhat comical. I would have an assistant and a behavioral
health worker from an agency in Tucson to assist, but it was up to me to set
the tone for the day and get activities going.
As it turned out, the counselor,
Diane, had worked with them last year, and the boys went about harassing her
all morning. That was pretty much what they did, harrass people until the
recipients figured out how to shut them up or else ran off nearly pulling their
hair out.
“Where’s Sherry (their previous
teacher)?” “She was cool!” “Who’s this lady?” “This sucks.” “Are we going on field trips this year?” “Can we wear our (gang) colors?” “Are we
having snacks?” “I’m going back to jail next week!” “No one makes me do
shit!” This was about all they said,
regardless of how I attempted to get any other kind of discussion or activity
going. I don’t know if other teachers of this type of student have felt this
way, but part of me always wants to commit some shocking act to shut them up.
It would have been fun to produce a set of cymbals to clash together or perhaps
do an aerial cartwheel off the desk.
We finally produced the colored
paper and crayons we’d gotten from the 1st grade teacher and let
them have a sheet and several crayons each. They continued their gibberish but
seemed to enjoy the release of drawing on paper to cover their future textbooks
with. Some of the work was appropriate, but some of them ripped up their papers
and threw them like hand grenades into the trashcan.
After we let them go at dismissal
time (during which they attempted to literally stampede out the door), Diane,
the counselor, brought their files out and reminded me to review their
histories and test results. I hadn’t found the time to do this, what with all
the other prep tasks, the meetings, and my appointment in Tucson.
“Here’s Lawrence’s,” she said. “He
and Freddie are brothers. Their dad has HIV and their mom is a hardcore alkie.
They go back and forth between the two of them. Freddie got a head injury in a
gang attack last winter, spent a month recovering and lost a lot of school
time.”
As she handed them over to me, I
realized that each boy had their own horror story, that it wasn’t just what had
happened, it was what was happening in their lives now, what had happened in
utero, and that I could control none of it.
“I’m ready for a drink, Diane, or
maybe a month off.”
“Well, you won’t be finding any
drinks on the reservation, but you better be here tomorrow, I can’t go it
alone.”
We had a good rapport from the
get-go and gave each other a lot of relief that semester, basically with
laughs. She wasn’t the type whose shoulder I would cry on, but her sense of
humor was just warped enough that we could feed off the kids’ craziness.
One day one of the boys, Bradley,
was in the other classroom, refusing to cooperate with our requests as we
“ganged up” on him so to speak, trying to manipulate a situation of peer
pressure. “Maria and Diane are sluts!” he suddenly yelled out.
Being in the adjacent teacher’s
office, Diane and I glanced at each other.
She was middle-aged and heavy set, and me with my wounded mouth and
reclusiveness, heading out to the res to nurse my damaged body and wounded
spirit, made this sound so completely absurd. “If we should be having so much
fun…” Diane quipped softly, the boys out of earshot. That got a smile out of me, and by the time
we went back to round them all up Bradley had mellowed out.
The semester went quickly, as there
is never a dull moment in these teaching situations. The class went on field
trips with Diane and the aide; they engaged in equine therapy, got in trouble
for throwing gang signs on the main campus ( I had to appear in tribal court as
a witness), got professional haircuts in the classroom by my very talented
teacher’s aide (as did I), and at the
end of the semester went on an all-day field trip. Diane wasn’t paid to come
out the last day before break, so my aide Armando and I planned a hike and picnic
out at the site of Itoi’s cave, the place of emergence of the Tohono O’odham’s
head creation figure. Some tribal members object to its location being made
public and some of the boys reminded me I wouldn’t normally be welcome there.
We would hike about a half mile up to the cave and then eat after returning to
the van. I was the only female, the only
non-Native, but the kids mellowed with all the activity and indeed leaned towards
being affectionate. We straggled up the trail in a long, broken up line, all
alone, together. Their black hair and lean brown bodies fit so perfectly into
that desert which I have always loved. If only their world had not been ripped
from them, ridiculed and exploited until they existed only as one-dimensional
figures in an illustration.
The
ride back found us quiet, and the walls they normally stayed behind inched
down. “I think I’m going to my aunt’s for Christmas,” Charlie told us. “They
brought a real Christmas tree down from the mountains.”
“Hope
you have a great time,” I responded.
Then
Teddy mentioned a paperback book I’d come across and loaned him. “Maria, can I
keep that book over Christmas? I’m really gonna read it.”
“Yes, read it and share it.”
That
funny shawl of sorrow that descends when you know something’s over lay gently
upon us. For the special ed director had hinted to me that the class was
dissolving over the break; several of them were going into treatment and the
rest would end up in juvenile detention, and we would never be together as a
group again.
A New Assignment
By the time spring semester was to
start, I was informed that a new class at the high school was being put
together. It was a Title 1 (federally-funded) drop-put prevention class of
juniors and seniors with very poor attendance, and there would be no more than
12 of them. For three days a week we’d be in the classroom where they would
work on academics and which I could structure however I wanted. The last two days
I would take them to the vocational training center down the highway where they
would apprentice in trades like welding or carpentry. It was the pilot year of
the program and it gave me a “trailblazer” kind of satisfaction to see what
worked with these chronic absentees.
It was a different type of job
description for me, and I appreciated that it fell in my lap the way it did. As
the Title 1 project director explained it to me, the point was to facilitate
their education while motivating them to come to class.
“Just have fun, Maria. If you’re
having fun, it’s probably fun for them and they’ll keep coming.”
I liked that idea. One of the first
things I did was offer to play music in the classroom as long as they were on-task.
After some discussion, I found they liked reggae, rap, and heavy metal. The
only one of these that would work for me was reggae, so I invited them to bring
their CD’s and I brought in a boom box.
Curtis came in the next Monday with
his entire collection of Bob Marley CD’s, and by lunchtime they were working on
their pre-algebra skills while Marley’s voice sang “Buffalo soldiers..brought
to America” and other oft-heard Marley lines that helped create a
non-institutional atmosphere among us.
This group of kids was older and
had no diagnoses, as had my special ed class. Their curiosity about me was
obvious in their receptivity and disclosures and in their very attendance in
the class. They had all had run-ins with juvenile court though, and were on
probation. The first day of school after the break, Marvin, a thin 16 year old
who kept his hair clipped short, lingered for a bit during lunch. “I’m on
probation til next summer,” he said. “I was at a party and there was a fight. I
stabbed a guy, he lived though.” He said
this so calmly; I blinked not out of fear of his potential violence but at the
fact it could be possible for a polite, soft-spoken person to in fact have done
what he claimed.
“Oh, well just keep coming to class
and avoid those parties,” I replied, just as calmly.
As I had no one at home to provide for besides my cat, I sometimes brought in a home-made casserole lunch to
share with them. I’d let them know I brought lunch as the bell rang at noon.
They’d hang around the basketball court, then see me coming back in with a covered dish. Soon they'd trail
back silently into the classroom. Rather than hang out shooting baskets or
skip afternoon class altogether, they would sit at their desks over
paper-plates piled with warm chicken and potatoes.
One day while we enjoyed one of
these lunches, Calvin, an edgy sarcastic boy who hoped to work for the local
electric utility, piped up rather impulsively, “Did you ever think about
getting married?” He asked, as he piled another spoonful into his mouth.
It seemed a little wall had fallen
when he said that and given way to an unplanned outburst, and so I responded
pointedly, “I’m not cleaning up after anyone but myself.” That would certainly
shut down any attempts by them to cross those necessary student-teacher
boundaries. But it was impossible to avoid feeling an urge to “care-give.”
On the surface, outsiders see their
diabetic, alcoholic, uneducated parents and relatives and just feel pity, and
see the ugly hopelessness. Calvin’s mother was killed on the train tracks and
many of them have no clue who their fathers are. His father was so ill from alcoholism and obesity that he literally couldn't rise from the couch to answer a knock at their front door. Jason had three little sisters
and a single, unemployed mother. But
when the kids look back at me they just see me, beyond the “skinny
white lady who has braces on her teeth” persona, who brings them lunch and lets
them play Bob Marley. And I loved them for it.
That spring semester went well and
attendance rates improved. The Title I director was thrilled that her program
was getting off to a good start. Then the fact came out, as the administration
began looking at teacher assignments for the next school year, that I did not
have the correct certificate to run the class. I had an Elementary K-8 and
Special Education K-12 certificate, but the students were secondary and
non-special education, so I could not rightly keep the position. As summer
approached, the Title I director became distressed and went to the
superintendent begging him to let me stay with the class while I worked on
getting the correct certification. Sadly, her request was denied because the
school would be going through the re-accreditation process and correct credentials
for everyone were necessary.
Announcing to the class that I’d not
be back in the fall brought us all down, and explaining the reasons
didn’t seem to help. They were fully capable of understanding that rules had to
be followed and that I couldn’t change them, but they still took it as loss and
rejection. The fallen smiles that looked
back at me were slightly accusing; I was just another face in and out of their
lives that ultimately didn’t care about the burdens or stories they lived,
generation after generation.
On the last day of the semester I
tried to create a moment for some closure before the final bell rang. A couple
of the guys didn’t even come; knowing that would be it for us as a group, why
bother, they felt. I knew that some of them drank after school and on weekends,
and I wouldn’t let myself think of them blowing everything off to feel better
through this gradual self-destruction. For the ones that did show up, there was
no meaningful exchange of words or gestures acknowledging any bonds that had
developed. As soon as the bell rang, they bolted from the room without looking
back, while the yearbooks being passed around and signed in other classrooms
were nowhere to be seen.
Bloods and Crips
News came a few weeks into the
summer from the superintendent’s office that a 4th grade position
was coming open at the intermediate school. All I had to do was say yes and I
could stay in the district the following school year. The idea of leaving
didn’t appeal to me, so I agreed to it.
Usually, teachers leave their rentals during the summer, but I liked the
idea of staying on in my quiet spot, going out to the desert just after sunrise
and driving into Tucson a couple times a week for my appointments and shopping.
A band that I’d enjoyed in Flagstaff was doing some gigs on weekends, and I
revved up my self-confidence and went a few times. It seemed as long as I could
find my smile, damaged as it was, then others would find and respond to me. The
days were long and steamy, and as July approached everyone waited for the
dramatic downpours of the monsoon season to start. It came with flooded washes, booms of thunder
and brilliant lightning, rainbows, brilliant green blades of grass growing between
the rocks, and finally, flowers.
Then it was time for the new school
year to start, and there I was at a new school. Being honest with myself, I
knew this wasn’t the position for me. Large groups of elementary kids left me
feeling scattered and dazed. They weren’t developed enough as individuals to
connect with in a way that enabled me to use the personal gifts that made
teaching a calling I couldn’t say no to.
Whereas we didn’t allow the boys in
the special ed class at the high school to call attention to gang involvement
by wearing certain clothing and accessories, that rule wasn’t officially in
place at the elementary school. Yet it was a problem even among the fourth-graders. About two months into the school year, I had
a substitute for a day. On my return, I was horrified to learn a group of boys
had ganged up on a girl in the class and physically hit her. The reason: she wore red and identified with
the “bloods,” while the boys were aligned with the “crips.”
Learning about these happenings,
while I struggled to regain a sense of normalcy after the accident, left me
with a nasty ache in the bottom of my gut. I also heard about kindergarteners
being harshly bullied at bus stops by fourth-graders as a way to show their
gang-toughness. This was all relatively new to the reservation. All it took
were a few gang members from L.A, perhaps connected to tribal members through prison stays, then
stopping over on the res with the trappings of a more material life; nice cars,
clothes, girlfriends, to create a sort of infection that resulted in a lot of
wanna-be’s, some of whom still had their baby-fat.
One activity that took place in my
class regularly gave me hope, and that was the visits by the local cultural
educator/writer and elder Danny Lopez. As soon as he came in the room, all
noise gently ceased. He was slim and soft-spoken, but it went beyond the
physical. Mr, Lopez would tell
traditional stories or talk about healthy behaviors in the culture that the
kids should be practicing, such as respect for knowledge and being able to sit
quietly. One day I was at the side of the room re-shelving some books. I was
kneeling down behind a study table and perhaps he didn’t know I was in the
room, but I heard his words.
“I was at a special dinner the other
night with lots of anglos, and they were having a little drink of beer and wine
here and there. But no one drank too much, there weren’t any fights. I wish the
O’odham could learn to be like that.”
As he finished speaking it became
completely quiet. I felt they’d suddenly noticed me, that this was something
they might not say in front of a non-native.
I arose silently and without looking towards anyone, while Mr. Lopez
continued on about something else. I wanted them to have all the space they
needed, that they so rightly deserve.
Meanwhile, back at the apartments,
other events had taken place that unsettled my spirit. Someone had sped into the parking lot one
Friday night and bashed in one of the other teacher’s windshields with a bat.
As it turned out, I vaguely heard the smashing sound as well as the squeal of
the car leaving the parking lot in a hurry. Not having been exposed to these
sounds before, I didn’t assume that’s what was happening, but learned of it
later after getting the news at work.
One week later, while I was spending the night at a friend’s in Tucson,
someone came and bashed in the windshields of five different cars. It seemed
someone had a vendetta or was out to prove something. Teachers like Jan and
others who’d been there for a while swore this kind of violence had never occurred
towards the teachers or other outsiders before.
I found a compassionate listener in,
of all people, the principal at the intermediate school. One of my students was
definitely headed down a rough path, and the principal shared that he and his
wife had considered fostering him because of his family circumstances. The boy
sometimes acted out against me in ways that showed his desperation for
attention, and the principal empathized with my frustration while being worried
for him at the same time.
“If he could just see we’re on his
side,” I told him as we sat and chatted outside on the stairs to my classroom.
“Be careful what you wish for,” he
replied. That’s how I knew, he gets
it.
Another month went by of struggles
with the class and more violence in the community. One weekday morning I was feeling
particularly scattered getting ready for the day as I reflected on all the
academic and behavior issues the students had, and as I was running late I ended
up blasting out of the apartment without the little “flipper” with the three
false teeth on it Dr. Leavitt had made for me after removing the braces. There
was no way I could go in and teach this group without it, and I had to turn
around after several miles to retrieve it.
Forgetting it seemed unacceptable; perhaps I was really under strain.
Shortly after that I came down with
a cold that became chronic, along with a feeling of exhaustion that left me
hollow and struggling to focus. My contract with the district was legally binding;
I couldn’t just resign but I fully wanted to do so. A medical excuse would
suffice though, and I went to the doctor with my cold and told her I was
chronically fatigued from facing conditions at my job while working on my own
recovery from an accident. Without blinking an eye, she wrote and signed a note
recommending I be released from my contract.
On the surface, sharing with my
class that I was leaving at the semester break had little effect except with
the more academically-inclined students. They said little, but the sadness that
rose like a shadow in their eyes spoke loudly and made them look thirty years
older. Around the community though, many words and gestures were
expressed. One boy’s uncle brought in a
signed poster-sized print by a local artist, showing the detailed drawing of an
elder’s face while dancers in the background held a saguaro fruit harvesting
ceremony. A former aide from the high
school encouraged me to be less self-critical about abandoning my class. “Only
you can do what you have to to take care of yourself,” he said adamantly one
day after I opened up to him in an unexpected encounter in Tucson.
On my last day with my class, one of
the students who wore the same blue t-shirt every day came to my desk in the back of the room and gave
me a colored-in picture he’d drawn. It was a desert scene, which was his whole
world. A few flowering prickly pear cacti were scattered among the landscape
and a huge blue sky arched overhead. But
out of this blue sky, plump, over-sized raindrops fell that oddly brought a
sense of cheer. A narrow road led away to the horizon, and the tears fell over
that, too, like a gift from the sky spirits, pitying us for the failings of our
unspoken words.
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