artful dodger

few things land as heavily as going home the first friday of a new school year. you feel like you've lived a year since 8am. and since today was yet another humidity filled heatsink of a day, i opted, for the third horrible time this week, to take the bus. shudder. i marvel at how, no matter when i arrive at a bus stop, i have just missed the bus that leaves me in a cloud of exhaust. and although the little schedule at the stop tells me the bus will swing by every seven minutes, it is usually at least fifteen. today it was twenty. no matter. public transportation has a/c. except for this bus. i stepped aboard some sort of horrible sauna with standing room only. the woman behind me jabbed her notebook into my spine every time the tires on the bus completed a revolution. every time. when there was finally a seat, i found myself planted next to a man who smelled as if he had dead squirrels tucked away somewhere. not a breath of air because the windows wouldn't open. so when the bus pulled up next to a middle school and 47 screaming 7th graders flooded the bus, i leapt for the back door. which was locked. so i yelled to the driver who was so busy dealing with squealing 7th graders he had no idea i was there. eventually, a kind man who was louder than i could manage (is that possible?) got the attention of the driver and i spilled out the back door yelling my thanks to the guy, who waved in return.

so i walked down bay parkway in a swarm of 7th graders. the girls swirled around giggling in little huddles, but the boys moved in swearing packs. they are new to using the words out loud so they practice by putting all the swearing they know into one sentence. it's so funny to hear. they don't know parts of speech so they can't really shift the words around, add endings and such. at least, not very well. my urge to teach at this point was strong enough i crossed the street. it wouldn't help them to know crap is a noun and crappy is an adjective that can modify any noun. they'll figure it out. they really like the word crap.

the walk was longer than it is in cool weather and the two or three story trudge up the stairs to the f train had me struggling to get to the platform. i heard the train above me and as my head came up even with the floor i saw the doors close. i took another step anyway, mostly just from the inability to do anything to resist momentum. the doors opened. it was like finding the end of a rainbow. the train car was so super refrigerated i could feel the blast of air while i was still on the platform. i jumped into the car and slumped into a seat. a man facing me said, "i was gonna yell for the conductor to hold the door if he didn't." he had a voice that was real old southern, slow and with a twang. i told him thanks and we chatted a minute about the train doors and the heat and the gloriousness of air conditioning. he looked maybe sixty but probably wasn't much older than me. his eyes were sunken way back into his head and his teeth were going everywhere. a few seemed to have escaped. but you could tell he'd been a handsome man once, before whatever happened to him came along. i settled into my knitting. "you got some pretty feet," he said eventually. now, this will seem unusual to you and it did to me, too, the first time i heard it. a strange place to focus. but i am used to it now. my students in harlem were obsessed with my feet. i smiled and said thanks to the guy and he said, "yep. i sure do love me a woman with some pretty feet."

when i got off the train i stepped out into the swampiness about ten blocks from home. this route takes me past several schools, but by the time i'm near home, most of them are empty, with only a few stragglers left hanging around. when i was about four blocks from home i saw a group of teenage boys, five or six, strolling along coming toward me, dressed like all teenage boys, like my own little angels. denim shorts nine sizes too big belted just below the butt, exaggerating what are always already little skinny chicken legs. hats in reds and blues perched precariously on top of sleek braids, white t shirts so long they actually cover what the shorts are too low to cover, shiny boxer shorts nobody really wants to see. but this one shirt caught my eye. it was on a kid at the edge of the group, tall, skinny. the shirt had silk screens of factory buildings on it and across the chest it said "artful dodger" and then on the stomach there was a red flag with "we will not die" burned into the red. i was trying to figure it out because it seemed to be partly from his world and partly from mine and i didn't know what it meant but i was pretty sure he didn't either and i kept staring. and as he passed me, he held out his hand, like to slap me five. low. and i held out my hand but instead of slapping me five he took my hand in his and put his other hand on my elbow. and when he said my name i looked at his face and he was one of my little angels. he was one of those awful tenth graders, hug child, who breaks my heart every single day. so i asked about his shirt and he didn't know what it meant but he knew he was in trouble for that so as he let go of my hand he yelled, "i want to know what it means. tell me about it monday. i'll be in class." and as much as i want to strangle him for cutting my class yesterday and for being late the day before and for not turning any of the three assignments so far and for the fact that i know he won't really show up monday, i know none of that will do any good. and the truth is none of those things he does will make him any less my child. he knows this as well as i do. so i say, "okay. i will."