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LAUREN DAVENPORT “Something in the Way”—Nirvana

Today’s Headlines

There Was a lot of Blood Texas, I mean. I was in NYC. In my own classroom. Teaching Lady Macbeth. She would not let anything get in her way. She was cold-hearted, cutthroat. She was ambitious. CEO material. It must have been infuriating to be held back by her time. The kids giggled when she said, “Unsex me now.” If you are figuring out why you have breasts, it’s a funny line. We could all do with a little less gender and a little more magic. This was what I was thinking at 3:09. I grabbed my phone to scan the Times headlines; there was a lot of blood.

At 5:52 a.m. That Morning I saw a red cardinal in the park as I walked my dog. It announced itself, bold, not to be missed, an influencer, an extrovert. It was 9/11 weather. Gorgeous, sweet air, calm skies, whimsical clouds. A kindergarten sketch of a sky. 9/11 weather is eerie in its foreboding perfection. Crisp skies to raining ash. I see it when I blink still. The cardinal was more than I could handle before coffee.

Did I Say I Love You? I checked my phone to see if I’d texted my daughter and my son this morning. I leave before they wake up. I smell them before I go. She smells like lavender and vinegar and he smells like tar and citrus. I send them headlines from papers that they don’t read just as my mother used to mail me newspaper articles which I ignored. I send them texts about their homework, dentist appointments. I send them memes which they say are stupid. When I try to use a trendy word, they say, “Mom, eww, cringe. You are the worst.” I reply, “The worst? The actual worst? So Hitler was better?” They say, “You are such an English teacher.” I say, “accurate.” I made myself a promise to end my texts with “I love you” because that should always be the last thing they hear from me. In real life they say “yeah, we know, we know, you love us” before I can get the words out, but they can’t stop my texts. Mwa ha ha. It is my love power and it is fierce.

I Am Afraid I Cannot Remember Jamie wanted me to grade something that was eight weeks late, just now. “I can’t stay, I need to get home, I’ll grade it tomorrow.” Chris wanted to show me his new Michael Jackson move. Chantal needed to talk about “all the kids who want to beat her ass.” Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. My locker combination. 37-08-24? Fingers, remember. Muscle memory. Fingers, remember please. Fingers, remember! Fingers, damn it. My grandmother had Alzheimer’s. She’d been a monster to my mother but with a mushy brain came a gentler woman. Would Lady Macbeth have softened? Hard to imagine. Complaining about age spots instead? Out, out. It wasn’t just the combination I was forgetting. There were words lately. I couldn’t remember the word “clipboard” for a week. I got around it. Circumlocution. A word I did not forget. But I saw myself as my grandmother, the way she’d pretended to know my name when she didn’t. Circumlocuting. Pretending to know me as an act of love. Finally opened, I grabbed my tote bag, I headed for the elevator. A student had pushed every button slowing my trip.

The Subway Commute is Always A Hero’s Journey so these days I carry mace. I carry it on a blue plastic key chain which I know I will never figure out how to use in an emergency. I got it from another state because you cannot mail order mace in NYC. I like that. I like that it is hard to get a gun here too. Except that anyone can get anything by going elsewhere. I appreciate it the way I appreciate airport security. Make believe. A man is talking to himself. He is bobbing and weaving, he is punching the air. When he punches, he exhales and a force consumes everything around him. The world goes flat for him like paper and his fists go right through it all. He is punching too close to faces. A thin white man in a plaid suit crosses his legs. He is nervous. A black woman grips her cane. The boxing man shouts, “Ah yah ah yah ah ya,” and I believe he is calling his ancestors and this is the reckoning and he is Jesus or someone who will die for us. Or maybe he is here for us, for our souls, we are the sinners and he has come to wipe us out. Twelve more stops. He is now pounding the glass on the doors with his fists. Which will break first, the glass or his fists? Ah yah Ah yah Ah yah, the train burps and he stumbles away from the doors. He punches again and screams, “That’s right, Lucifer,” and I think yeah Lucifer, you’re done for buddy. But it’s actually my face that is about to get a taste of knuckles. He is punching right at people now. Wince. Wince. Wince. Stopping just by their noses. A man says, “Cut that shit out mother fucker.” But he is now talking earnestly

with Lucifer, the ghost. My face is next. I hear my inhale. The train lurches, a hiccup this time. He misses my face by a breath. He bobs and weaves. He and Lucifer are now in some kind of boxing waltz and it is elegant like candle wax and the doors open and he leaves as every single person on the train exhales in a giant collective sigh. We are one now, our sweat, our souls, our hearts. I think “I LOVE THIS FUCKING CITY” and I think “I HATE THIS FUCKING CITY” at exactly the same time. I have eleven stops to go.

I Sent Him to the Social Worker on a gut feeling. Always trust your gut, my mom told me. Never trust your gut, my dad insisted. These mixed parenting messages explain why I am incapable of executing a single action without thinking about every possible and several impossible outcomes. To say I hate this quality in myself is a lesson in understatement. A kid in my class was squeezing a tension ball and there was something about it. I don’t know. It wasn’t unusual. Lots of kids have them. But the squeeze was so tight, the leg of the desk squeaking each time he pressed. There were twenty-three other teenagers, I didn’t have hours to think about it. I don’t know. I will never know. If I believe in God. It was God. Maybe? It’s been a rough year. I love these bratty teenagers. I love Shakespeare. But. There was just something in the way he squeezed.

Inner me said, send him to the social worker. I walked over to his desk, I bent down and I whispered so no one else would hear, “You seem frustrated today. Why don’t you go see Ms. K?” He sprung up, reminded me of a pogo stick, the way he popped up with his bouncy ball and out he went. I didn’t think about it again. But later, when I was trying to get home, I learned that he was squeezing the ball because he was trying to stop himself from taking the pencil that he had in his other hand and stabbing me in the neck because he would enjoy watching me choke to death on my own blood.

I’m His Favorite Teacher the social worker was trying to reassure me. I hadn’t done anything wrong. He wants to kill everyone, it’s not just you. You’re his favorite, that’s why he was trying so hard not to hurt you. Umm, thanks? He wants to strangle a kindergartner, apparently, to see if she will die fast because their necks are small. I do not know if I believe in God.

We Are At War I am off the train but there are too many of us so we have formed a single file line trying to exit up the stairs and—my ankle. Remember, ankle! Remember, ankle! Remember please. My son left a basketball outside the bathroom door. In the middle of the night, I went to use the bathroom, I tripped on the ball. I sprained my ankle. He does this shit all the time. He leaves his shoes in the middle of a room. His scooter in the middle of the kitchen. His bookbag lands somewhere like the wreckage from a bomb. He says he just forgets. He loses a pair of house keys every week. Sometimes he can’t get inside because no one is home. He has to go to the playground until someone arrives. My heart tries to escape my chest in these moments. These Ukrainian stories. Especially the refugees who are trying to bring their Irish Setters with them, or staying because they are too old to leave. I hate the clashing colors of their flag and I, too, have fallen for their handsome actor-politician President. The pregnant women listen to the sounds of explosions while they are in labor. War is stupid. It is hard enough to get home.

Let’s Hope She Doesn’t Get Pregnant The garbage trucks must have just come, which is odd because normally the cans are in my path on the way to work, not now, when I am trying to get home from a long day of Macbeth and imaginary daggers. The cans are like those barrels in an old video game, Donkey Kong, the player must jump, jump, jump over them. I pick a few up because I AM A GOOD PERSON. I AM A CITIZEN, because I LOVE this FUCKING CITY and I HATE THIS FUCKING CITY. But after a while, I quit. I am just zigging and zagging, bobbing and weaving, like the boxer but not at all, I am almost home, and the air now, it is not 9/11 it is sticky and it smells like blood. It smells like the headlines and I hope my daughter will not get pregnant and need to have an abortion because there will be so many things in her way. I hate thinking about all the students, my babies who had babies and how the men, they are never there, they are demanding ghosts. My phone is buzzing and there is more blood and I gather that the teacher knew and she tried to warn people and they ignored her and I know that this is absolutely true even though I do not believe everything I read in the headlines and I am not sure I want to teach anymore but in two blocks I will see my kids.

The Key, of Course, Is Stuck in the Gate which happens all the time, if it is too cold, or too hot. Sometimes I have to reach my hand through the gate and put the key in the other side of the lock and open it in reverse, which hurts my arm but we have to have lots and lots of locks because this is New York, because this is America, and because there is lots of blood and I finally open the door and my dog jumps on me and the dishes are piled so high that I wonder if I could call Guinness Book of World Records, the house smells faintly of piss and old newspapers and my son has left the milk out on the counter from his cereal and my daughter comes down the stairs and takes one look at me and says, “my skirt didn’t come, are you sure you ordered it” and then she walks away and they are everything, they are the why, and this is my refuge and at last there is nothing in the way.