She stands just outside the classroom door. Her long, black hair stuffed halfway
into the hoodie on her sweatshirt while the other half twists down over the
fronts of her shoulders. A
sprinkle of freckles decorates the bridge of her nose. She is almost always in a cheerful mood, and she is usually
the first one to arrive to my class each morning.
I’m loaded down with bags as I always am, my laptop bag, my big ass purse, my Whole Foods bag packed with my breakfast and lunch. I open the back door and head
inside. I place my bags on the
table and head to the front door where she waits and unlock it so she can
enter.
“Hi, Ms. S. Do
you have any coffee today?”
“We can certainly make some coffee. Come help me.”
While I fill the pot with water and put coffee grounds into
the filter, she talks.
“I moved out of my house last week. I live with my boyfriend. He’s 22.”
“Oh,” I say, “How’s your mom doing with that?”
Her mom is known for making her a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich each and every morning. I
know this because on most days, she offers me half. I always say no and comment on how wonderful it is that her
mom still makes her breakfast.
“My mom is crazy, Ms. S. Super crazy. We fight all the time. She drinks. She leaves us alone to fend for ourselves, and I’ve been telling her that the day I turned 18, I was leaving!”
“So you had a birthday?”
“Yep. During
Thanksgiving break. And then I
moved out.”
“So how is it working out for you?” I ask.
“My boyfriend is great. He helps me so much.
I don’t pay for anything, though, and that bothers me. We live a long way from here now, too,
and he drives me here each morning and then comes and picks me up each
afternoon. It means a lot of time
in the car for him.”
I look up from the sink and notice how tired she looks. Her bright eyes now heavy and
dark. Oh, Sweet Child, I
think. My heart filling up with my
own memories of leaving home and needing so desperately to get away.
I pour her a cup of coffee and ask her if she wants plain
cream, gingerbread or egg nog? She
opts for gingerbread.
She continues to tell me about a mom who doesn’t take care
of her and her brother, that the pbj sandwiches aside, she’s gone all of the
time.
“She’s selfish,” she explains. “I feel so guilty leaving my brother there to fend for
himself, but I feel like I had no choice.
I couldn’t tolerate the screaming and fighting anymore. I’ve only been clean for a year, and I
was on my way back to using if I didn’t get out of there.”
“Oh,” I say, “You want to tell me more about that?”
My heart races. I am aware of how ill-equipped I am to
handle what she might describe.
She confesses that she was addicted to Cocaine amongst a
whole host of other drugs, that she’s only been back at school this year. That she spent two years at a
rehabilitation center in Utah.
“It was hell,” she tells me. “I had to earn my way inside the place. I had to sleep outside and wasn’t
allowed to talk. I couldn’t even
sit down on my ass. I had to
squat! If I talked, I had to stay
out longer. It took me three days
to get inside!”
In my mind, I’m saying, FUCK!
To her I say, “That sounds pretty brutal to me!”
“Once I got inside I beat up one of the counselors and
escaped. Then I got picked up and
arrested. When I arrived back at
home, my mom sent me back. It took
two years to get clean, and I never want to go back to using again. My mom has the power to drive me over
the edge, though, so I had to leave my little brother. I don’t know how I will survive, Ms.
S. This all feels like too much
for me to handle. I’m so tired all
of the time.”
I look at her shiny black hair, newly dyed, and I think
about how brave she is to confide in me, that I would have never guessed she’s
been through so much. She’s not
that kind of kid who'd do the things she's described, I think.
But
aren’t we all hiding something.
Isn’t there something about each of us that if we told, the hearer would
think, “I had no idea!”
I tell her a bit of my own story. Just enough for her to know that she
CAN MAKE IT! That she is, indeed,
resilient. That it will be harder
than hell, but that she can do it!
I tell her that my mom ran off with a truck driver when I
was in high school. That she was
gone 3 months and we didn’t know if she were dead or alive. That my sister and I lived alone. That we ate plates of French fries because
it’s all we could afford. That we
burned our trash in the back yard because the trash truck stopped coming because we couldn't afford to pay for the service anymore. That our phone was cut off and
eventually the electricity too.
That no one at school knew.
It took me three minutes to tell her that, and in that three
minutes, her eyes widened and her breath became more rhythmic.
“Damn, Ms. S.
You survived all of that and still went to college!”
“Yep. But it
wasn’t easy. Your journey will be
hard too, Kiddo, but look what you’ve already survived and accomplished! I’ll help you in whatever way I can!”
We exchange phone numbers. I tell her not to sell my phone number, even if she does need
money! She laughs!
We’ve been texting daily for nearly a week now. It’s not much, but I want her to feel
connected. I want her to know she’s
not alone.
------
“Only connect!
That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted and
human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that
is life to either, will die.” -E.
M. Forster 1910/1999
