But I’m no quitter, even when it might be the smart thing to do. So I stick it out in the five-week course, fill out the proper papers, have all the interviews, list my principal and old professors as references, and begin to wait. Wait for the call that will change my life. Wait for my future to begin.
The first call I get is for an emergency placement. A three-year-old who was found in the backyard after a house fire killed his parents and two older sisters. He stays with me for three nights, until they can locate a second cousin in Connecticut, and he never speaks a word. He cries most of the first night, sobbing in my arms as I rock him for eight hours straight, cotton jammed into my ears to mute the sound. He sleeps the entire second day, and I finally have to wake him at dinnertime to give him milk and mashed potatoes, which he eats sitting up on the edge of the bed before falling back asleep at my side. The third day, as we wait for the social worker to pick him up, he stares at me from the couch and eats Halloween candy straight from the bag. He won’t talk or play with any of the toys I’ve bought; he won’t even watch TV.
When the doorbell rings, he runs back to the guest bedroom and jumps onto the bed. He buries his head in the comforter and kicks the social worker in the face as she tries to pull him off. It surprises me that he doesn’t want to leave, but she says it’s a normal reaction. It’s not that he’s grown attached to me personally, he’s just used to the environment; he doesn’t want to have to adjust again.
After they leave, the apartment is quiet. Not any quieter than when he was here, but it still feels different. Now I know how the boy felt: I don’t want to adjust again either. I don’t really want him back, although I’m sure with time he would have warmed up, I just want the situation back. I want my life to be constant, the players to remain the same. I call up my caseworker and ask her to take me off of the “emergency” list. She says I might not get called for a while if I do that and I say that’s fine. It’s hard, but I know I’m making the right decision for my own sanity, and I’m following my instincts. The rest—who, if, and when I get a child—is out of my hands, and it feels good to finally give up any pretense of control.
When I get to school the following Monday I can tell something is wrong. The playground is deserted, which is rare even in the winter, and the hallways are eerily quiet. The kids I do see stand together in small packs, whispering to each other with their hands over their mouths. I go to the teacher’s lounge looking for answers, and run into Mrs. Reed, Cristo’s teacher. She walks over to me quickly, shaking her head.
“It’s so sad,” she says.
“What is? What happened?”
“César,” she whispers his name. “The surgery failed. He lost the eye.”
I cover my mouth, as if to quiet a scream, but no sound comes out.
“I thought you might have been there, at the hospital.”
I shake my head. “Cristo didn’t call me.”
“Well, here, sign this card we got for him. I’ll bring it by his grandmother’s house after school.”
“He’s home already?”
“Today, I heard.” She hands me a pen, already uncapped.
I lean over the card, reading it again and again to make sense of the words. Hey Kid, Get Well Soon! School Is Not the Same Without You! There is a dog on the cover, who wears a baseball cap and stands up on his hind legs like he’s human. His smile shows a row of perfect teeth. The inside of the card is mostly bare, except for a few signatures from the secretaries and the janitorial staff floating around the edges of the card. I want to say more than just my name but I can’t think of something that sounds sincere. I want to apologize—for the accident, the surgery, even this pathetic card. Why a card, anyway, when he’ll hardly be able to read it?
I quickly sign Love, Miss Valentín, and hand the card back to Mrs. Reed.
“So the left eye is okay?”
“The same. Thirty percent last I heard.”
“Thirty percent,” I repeat, nodding as if I know what that means. Does he see everything with just thirty percent of the brightness, or does he only see thirty percent of all things? Or maybe he sees everything perfectly, but only thirty percent of the time?
“I know it’s horrible to say, but I wonder if this is it for him now.” She stops herself and looks around the empty room. The coffee pot gurgles in the corner, but otherwise it’s silent. She lowers her voice. “I don’t want to give up on him, but you know how he is. How will he ever catch up?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“It seems so unfair, to cripple a kid who’s barely making it to begin with.”
“Barely making it?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do. And I also know that this school is barely making it. His grandmother is barely making it.” I can’t hide my anger as my voice begins to rise. “The projects, this city, our country is barely making it. He’s just following suit.”
She backs up, as if afraid of me. “I’m not blaming him, Vanessa, if that’s what you think. I know what these kids are up against, all of them. Even the ones with parents. I’ve taught here longer than you, remember.”
“I know, I know.” I lower my voice and touch her shoulder as a peace offering. “I’m sorry, I’m just upset.”
She puts her arm around me and squeezes softly. “We’ll get through this.” And I know she means a career spent teaching, not just César losing his eye.
“I keep thinking about Cristo,” she finally says. “This is going to devastate him.” She looks at me over her glasses. “Have you seen him lately?”
“Not enough. I’ve tried, but…I think he’s avoiding me.”
“He avoids me all the time, and I’m his actual teacher.” She tries to keep the resentment out of her voice but it doesn’t work. She softens her tone. “He’s not doing well, Vanessa.”
I lean against the filing cabinet, which shakes under my weight.
“Tell me,” I say.
“His grades are in the toilet.”
“How bad?”
“Cs and Ds mostly, Fs if I didn’t like him so much. He falls asleep in class and never turns in homework. He used to give me all these crazy excuses why he didn’t have it, but now he just shrugs and says he forgot.”
“Dios mio, I don’t know what to do with that boy.” I cross my arms over my chest, suddenly feeling cold. “Have you talked to Chino or Kim?”
“Chino’s a sweet guy, but he’s not living there anymore. And if I call the social worker…well, you know what happens after that.”
“Wait a minute, so they’re living with Kim? Their mother’s cousin’s ex-girlfriend?” A feeling of dread sets in, as I realize I should have checked in sooner.
“It could be worse. At least she hasn’t kicked them out. And she has a job.”
“And her own kid to watch after,” I add, suddenly feeling sick to my stomach. I shouldn’t have backed so far away, trusting everyone else to handle it.
“Will you talk to him, Vanessa? See if you can get through to him…”
“I try all the time, when I see him in the hallway—”
“No, not here, not in passing,” she says. “I think he’d take it more seriously if it was outside of school, on his own turf. His own terms.” She taps César’s card against her clipboard. “He just tunes out here, like this is some practice life, while his real life is taking place outside these doors. Find him in that world and talk to him there.”
I don’t know what to say, so I simply nod my head, accepting the responsibility that’s once again been handed to me. What else can I do?
“Good. I’m glad we talked.” She sounds relieved, as if we have already solved the problem. She’s halfway to the door when she turns back to me. “You may be the only thing that boy has left, the only thing that can keep him from becoming another statistic. Another César.”
I listen to the click of her heels as she walks out of the room, leaving me alone in the teacher’s lounge, wondering if I’
m qualified for any of the jobs I actually perform.
I find Cristo easily enough, standing on the corner outside Anthony’s Drugs. It’s the same spot where six months before I had seen his mother sell Ecstasy to a carful of students from Providence College. She used to sit on top of the covered garbage cans so she could see the cars coming in every direction. If she made eye contact and someone was interested, she’d hop down quickly and approach the car window, taking only a few seconds to decide whether to slide in or head back to her post.
Her son stands with his back to the street, leaning against a telephone pole. There are two older guys next to him, late teens, maybe early twenties, and they look like they just stepped out of a rap video. The darker one wears a gold chain with a huge #1 around his neck, which jumps from his chest as he gesticulates; he is telling a story that has Cristo and the other guy bent over laughing. I park my car and walk over to them slowly, the same way I used to walk up to stray cats I wanted to bring home as a child.
Cristo stops laughing as soon as he sees me, but the other two keep going, oblivious to my presence. The lighter man has a tattoo of a girl’s face on his neck; her hands are clasped together like she’s praying, right underneath the man’s earlobe.
“Hola,” I call out, testing the waters. “¿Como estás?”
“Hi,” he says in English.
“Can we talk?”
“Sure.” He crosses his arms. “What’s up?”
“Alone.”
He looks at each of the men and then back to me. “Later,” he says to no one in particular.
“You want us to wait?” The lighter man scratches at his neck as if the tattoo still itches.
“Nah, she’s cool.” Cristo steps away from the telephone pole, strolling in my direction. He can’t contain his smile. “She’s just my teacher.”
“Cool,” I hear the man say as we walk away. “A teacher who makes house calls.”
We walk across the parking lot, stopping next to a small vacant lot. The grass hasn’t been cut in months, and it grows in wild, dry patches.
“Nice tattoo,” I say, once we’re out of earshot.
Cristo shrugs. “He’s all right.”
“A prince, I’m sure.”
He stops short. “You come here to bust up my friends?”
“You think those guys are your friends? Those men?”
“Why not?”
“Those thugs are twice your age, Cristo. What about Marco and César? I thought they were your friends.”
He shrugs. “I never see Marco anymore. Not since you switched him to Regular Ed.”
“I didn’t switch him, Cristo, he was ready to move.”
“Whatever.”
“And César?”
“He don’t need me.” He picks up a bottle cap and throws it into the overgrown grass.
“Doesn’t need you,” I correct.
He glares at me but I ignore it.
“How can you say that? Of course he needs you.”
“He needed a good doctor. And a fucking miracle. But he didn’t get either one.” He blinks quickly, and I can tell he’s holding back tears.
“Please don’t swear in front of me.”
“Swear? Come on, Teacher. My friend just lost his eye but you want me to watch my mouth?”
“You have every right to be upset. To be angry and to yell and scream, to want to break things. Nobody’s going to blame you for any of that.”
He turns away from me. “Then what will they blame me for?” he asks, his voice starting to break.
“What do you mean, blame you?”
He walks into the field, his legs swallowed up by the tall grass. I hear the sound of twigs snapping.
“None of this is your fault, Cristo. You know that.”
“I promised him, Teacher. I promised him that everything would be all right. And he believed me. That little shit believed me, but I was wrong.” He’s crying now, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“You had faith, Cristo. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
I take him into my arms and hug him as tightly as I can. At first he holds back, as stiff as a dead bird, but when I don’t loosen my hold or abandon the hug, he gives in, sinking further into me. He buries his face in my coat and sobs into the wool, the sound of his ragged breath muffled by the dense fabric. His body goes limp in my arms and I know that I’m the only thing keeping him off the ground.
We stand like that for several minutes, rocking together in the chilly November afternoon. The temperature is dropping along with the sun, and the wind kicks up gravel and bits of garbage, but I’m not about to let go of him. I’ll stand here all night, in the bitter darkness of Manton Avenue, if it will make this boy feel better.
Finally, he peels himself off me and takes a few steps back, squinting as his eyes adjust to the light. He wipes his face on the sleeve of his sweatshirt and sniffs loudly, then spits several times into the grass before looking at me.
“Sorry, Teacher,” he says.
I smile but don’t say anything.
He crosses his arms. “So, what’d you want to talk about?”
“I just wanted to see you, to find out how you’re doing.”
He sniffs again. “I guess you got your answer.”
“Part of it, maybe. But not everything. How’s Trini?”
“I saw her last week, for Halloween. She was a stray cat.”
“That’s pretty ironic,” I say.
“What’s that mean?”
“It means it’s fitting. You know, because she doesn’t have a home.”
“Scottie thinks she does,” he says. “With him.”
“And what do you think?”
He looks at his hands. “I think I miss my sister.”
I want to hug him again, but I don’t. “And how’s Luz?”
“Good. You hear she got class president again?”
“Yes, I heard.”
He shakes his head. “Sometimes I can’t believe we come from the same family.”
“You’re just as smart as she is, you know that. You just don’t work for it.”
“I work, Teacher.” He looks across the lot toward the street.
“But you don’t study. That should be your only job.”
“Sure, Teacher, whatever you say.” He starts to walk away from me.
“Any word from your mother?”
I feel bad for mentioning her, but I do it because I know it will make him stop. He turns to face me.
“She’s supposed to get out next month. An early Christmas present, I guess.”
“For her or for you?”
He shrugs. “I’ll let you know.”
“And you’re okay until then, staying with Kim?”
“What choice do I got?” He’s looking at me, but also somewhere over my head. “Where else can I go?”
As he walks away, I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I’m sending a kitten into a pack of wolves.
“Adios, Cristo.”
“Adios,” he calls out without turning back around.
He walks back to the corner and takes up his position on the telephone pole. The wind blows harder and he steadies himself against the pole, as if he’s afraid he could blow away. Soon there are several men standing with him, creating a barrier against the cold. They are smoking shared cigarettes and passing a forty-ounce bottle of beer back and forth. One man holds a pizza box under his arm like a magazine. Cristo doesn’t take the cigarettes or the beer, but he still looks like one of them. Like he belongs. An eleven-year-old boy hanging out on the corner like it’s his job. And I guess maybe it is.
As I walk away I hear someone ask him if he speaks Spanish. I turn around to see him wearing a look of disgust, as if they had asked if he ate dog shit.
“Hell no,” he says, looking straight through me.
I spend the next few weeks trying to figure out how I can help Cristo without hurting myself or compromising my career. Some nights I can’t sleep, s
o I make chocolate chip cookie dough and eat half the batter before I even bake one cookie. I watch old movies and write long letters to my parents that I know I’ll never send. I count time like I’m in prison, which makes me wonder what Arcelia does to pass her days, and if she, too, is up at night worrying about the fate of her son.
A few days before Thanksgiving vacation, while spending my lunch break in the library to replace the librarian laid off during cutbacks, I watch as Mrs. Reed brings her fifth-grade class into the large, empty room. She had warned me that they would be coming, to work on a class project about poetry, and I had tried to prepare by bringing all the tables into the center of the room. She goes to the meager poetry section and pulls every book off the shelf, randomly handing them to the kids. For those who read only in Spanish, she takes some books from the LIBROS EN ESPAÑOL section, which comprises a single aisle in the stacks, even though the Spanish-speaking population in our school is about sixty percent.
A few of the girls I had last year come over to me, begging me to read the poems out loud, and asking which one is my favorite. I read them everything from Shel Silverstein to Robert Frost and they seem to love every word, especially the ones they don’t understand. I see Cristo look over at us from time to time, and then look away, pretending not to listen. After the girls have chosen their favorites and are carefully copying the words into their spiral notebooks, I walk over to the small table where Cristo is sitting by himself. There is a small book of poems in front of him, but he has not picked it up. Instead, he’s reading a comic book that he tries to hide under the table as I approach.
“Read something to me,” I say, pushing the book toward him.
He flips through it quickly, and seems to stop on a random page.
“Noche, fabricadora de embelecos, loca, imaginativa, quimerista, que muestras al que en ti su bien conquista los montes llanos y los mares secos; Que vele o duerma, media vida es tuya: si velo, te lo pago con el día, y si duermo, no siento lo que vivo.” He puts the book down, giving up after the first stanza.
“Now in English.” I push the book back to him.
This Side of Providence Page 17