When you are on lockdown half a block from a murder, and later are told you probably know the shooter personally, it’s a bad week. When you are told the person who’s probably the shooter but who really knows has said he is so sorry, that is the next week, and it ain’t great, either. At least I am grading papers when I am told this, so I have something to focus on other than how my heart and my body feel.
I really want to skip feeling things.
The days after the violence, we’re just getting through things. The week after, I feel light-headed, a bit tipsy, though I am only on my usual dose of sedatives. I still feel anxious.
Let’s skip it! Let’s just go ahead. Everyone’s fine now. There was nothing you could do. It’s over now. None of the suffering of the world is ever over, exactly. None of the joy is ever over, either.
Friday, one of my students asked if I could take her for a walk. At our alternative school, students are always accompanied by an adult. And one of our accommodations is breaks and walks. Our kids have parental drug histories, personal drug histories, mental illness that’s led to hospitalization, autism, heavy-duty learning disabilities. Each one of them is fascinating. That’s the only good thing about being shit on by life. It does make you interesting. It’s not worth it.
But: I had time to take the kid for a walk. At our new location, we have a back parking lot and a side driveway to walk. A row of the fences of backyards next to the school. One backyard has a barking German shepherd, and a sign that says, “NO TRESPASSING.” A group of big birds, our regulars, are always taking joyrides over the football field and the parking lot.
It has rained.
It’s not raining anymore.
Look at the bubbles, my student says.
Bubbles float along the channels in the blacktop, really hearty, actually. Sometimes joining up with a friend, looking like a scientific visual of a developing embryo. Two cells. Four!
A lot of bubbles looks like a bit of foam.
When one bumps into another, sometimes they joining is totally equal, two into two joined, like a feminist marriage, and sometimes they blop into one bigger bubble, like a magic trick.
We start following them, pointing them out to each other. Oh, look at this guy! Oh, he’s cute.
I’ve never noticed bubbles floating around before, I say.
Whoa, look at these ones!
We zero in on a spot where the pavement is blowing bubbles at a creepily steady rate. Just as if one of Satan’s minions is below, chewing gum piece by piece, blowing a bubble, letting it go; blowing a bubble, letting it go.
Maybe there’s air trapped under there, I say. Or maybe it’s a monster. Or maybe the devil.
If it’s the devil, I’m getting out of here, my student jokes.
I’ve never seen this happen, I say.
Yeah, it’s weird.
It’s Friday. On Fridays, I usually stop for a self-congratulatory coffee and writing session, and then go home and eat frozen pizza and go to sleep as soon as I want to. I’m usually squashed as thin as Judge Doom after the steamroller.
Twenty minutes of bubble watching is the most relaxing thing I’ve ever done at the end of the week.
My student is going to Homecoming the next day.
What are you going to wear? I say, and then I think, is that too personal?
A dress and heels, she says, and I say, okay.
We should probably go in, I say eventually. We’ve observed the birth and family life and middle age and death of many bubbles by this point.
I guess, she says.
It’s rainy, but warm. The big birds over us are interrupted by an airplane. Either it’s really small and close, or it’s really big and far away, I joke.
Yeah, she says. It must be really far away.
