A Teacher’s Story

Alex always sat in the last row, his face

rigid as a cat’s before pouncing.

Once, I pulled down a map of Greece

to ask him a question

about the origins of democracy.

He walked to the class aquarium,

grabbed our angelfish and stabbed it

in the eye with his Sharpie. After the bell,

I tried to talk to him. He never looked at me.

He kept spinning a quarter on his desk

and shrieked: “I hate George Washington.

I hate George Washington’s fat face.”

The next day, his mother took him out

of school. At home, she taught him to shoot

freeze-dried food and Bushmasters

in the cellar, booked a cruise to Mexico

with a boyfriend. Alex never slept.

All night he played World of Warcraft,

ate nothing but Marshmallow Fluff on toast.

By then, his father had moved

to California. The December morning

he crowbarred the door to the gym,

it was snowing hard. I’d just finished

teaching The Outsiders.

My nephew, Doug, watched as Alex marched

in his flak jacket and body armor

to the badminton class, ordered everyone

to lie down in a row beneath the net.

The pop, pop, pop sounded like firecrackers.

When the principal shouted “Lockdown!”

over the intercom, I hustled my students

into a closet, refused to believe

it was the police banging our door even

when the sirens stopped. Last March,

a demolition crew buried the gym

in a dump at the edge of town.

I’ve got a job in the new school

where Doug is now president

of his class and captain of the tennis team.

After one match, I asked him why

he shouted and shook his fist

at the sky with every long point he’d won.