The Lock-Down

Over the intercom, we heard the voice of our assistant principle. Why was she interrupting us again? We’d just had a fire drill, a ridiculous circus of teens jumping into each others’ sweaters and running around the school grounds. After all, they were missing class. They were thrilled.
Now she told us, Teachers, please commence lock-down mode. Lock-down? I didn’t remember getting the memo. We still hadn’t gone over the procedure for a lock-down. I realized that I didn’t really know what to do. Lock down. Then I remembered that I had an emergency folder hanging from my closet door and ideas came to me one by one—things I’d read or heard about. First, I told my small class to go sit with their backs against the wall and be quiet. I chose the green card from my emergency pack that said, ALL ACCOUNTED FOR – NO INJURIES, and slid it under the door after locking it.
We turned the lights off and I joined my students against the wall. We sat there quietly for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes my students were happy to lose. They’d been doing crossword puzzles about the Renaissance, our Social Studies topic, and were tired of figuring out what 2,down meant and how to spell feudal. So they sat tight beside me in a row along the back wall.
One was straining to read the words in his anime graphic novel. I still smiled at seeing the book in his hand. I hate to read, he’d yelled at me the year before. With tears in his eyes, he lowered his voice and, lips quivering, I heard the words I can’t do it. So I set to work, finding high-interest books about sky-diving and SWAT teams that he’d throw back at me. I tried short stories from the elementary school across the street. There were a lot of pictures, but he told me they were for babies. And then I’d found a graphic novel series and he couldn’t put the books down. He was like a glutton. The book was so close to his eyes it became his face for a week, and then he asked me for another, and another, and another. He started reading in Math and in Science, and I laughed a little when I asked him to please put the book down. Just one more page, he pleaded. What could I say? I let him do it, and the rest of us went on to sentence structure—capitals and periods. I smiled at him now as he read the book, back to front, page after page, absorbed in the black and white world of text and image.
Another was counting the pieces of chewed gum stuck to the desk he was hiding under. His lips moved silently—one, two, three, four…Sandro, I named him a few weeks before. I’d given them all new names. He was no longer the boy with FASD, with a record, already at thirteen, with fuzzy memories of a forgetting family, lost across a field, toward the mountain—a bear waiting to devour him. That’s how he described it. Now he was Alessandro Botticelli, famous Renaissance artist. I painted that? he’d asked, when I’d shown the class a print of Primavera, then the Venus. Hey, he’d called out, I did that! I smiled then as I did now.
The rest of them gloated the same way when we learned about their lives in Renaissance Italy and France. We had Mona Lisa and Catherine de Medici and Niccolo Machiavelli and King Francis I and Leonardo Fibonacci who, when he learned about his famous math skills, laughed. Who’d have thought, he mused, and I thought I sucked at math. We all laughed and he winked at no one in particular. It was something he’d been practicing. It’s to impress the ladies, he’d said. Now he asked me if he was allowed to climb out the window. I told him, no. Why not? he asked. Because there might be bad guys waiting outside. He puffed up his little chest and told me he could take them. Of course you could, Fibonacci.
He hangs his head and let’s me know that he’s disappointed. Fibonacci would sacrifice himself for us. I know he would. Like Dally Winston incarnate, he defends his friends with his fists one minute and graciously gives his blessing to a friend who wants to date his crush.
One hundred pounds with a ton of confidence. At twelve, he’s a gentleman of sorts. A little Clarke Gable with pants hanging below his butt and with black hair like curtains across his face.
I could hear Mona and Catherine whispering to each other in the darkness. I often wondered what they talked about. Sometimes I would catch them giggling behind their hands, fingers painted purple and pink and blue. Eyes lit up. They were best friends—inseparable. They started out and should’ve stayed in the special employability school. At thirteen, neither could read or write or do math beyond the second-grade level. Sometimes, they would stand at my desk and smile, but wouldn’t or couldn’t say anything. They didn’t know how to start the dance of conversation. That was my job. I’d look up from my work and fold my hands. Looking her in the eyes, I’d ask, How are you, today, Mona? I’m good, she’d say. And that was as far as she’d get, but she’d keep smiling and waiting for her mind to send something to her lips, something to say, to express her ideas. Sometimes it wasn’t easy to smile back at the vacancy without wanting to cry.
The buzzer goes and breaks through our stuffy, sleepy silence. The period’s over. I get up slowly, my knees ache and I wonder if I’m getting old. I turn the lights on and am about to tell my lovelies to get their things together when my phone rings. It’s the secretary. Mrs. Goodkey, she says, do not dismiss your students. This is not a drill. And she hangs up. I look at my kids. They’re all watching me, their eyes glued to mine. I make myself breathe and force the muscles in my face to soften. It’s okay, I tell them. Just a little longer. But I need to use the washroom! It’s Catherine de Medici. I tell her I’m sorry, but she can’t go. She’s afraid—I can see her eyes glaze over and she pinches her lips closed. She would never argue with me, but I can see in her face, in the way she sits back down, that she’s worried what might happen. It’s happened before. I shut the lights off again and as I do, someone tries the door. Not a sound. Not a sigh. Not a blink from my children who usually can’t stop themselves from moving. And I’m holding my breath, then hear heavy footsteps walk away.
All of a sudden, they’re mine and I’m theirs—especially for those who have no one. And melting away are my plans for the next class and my work piled high on my desk and the weekend only hours away. I walk slowly and quietly to the wall where they’re waiting for me, watching me. I make sure I breathe.
The air is heavy and I’m not sure it’s getting to my lungs. I lean against the wall and slide to the floor between them. They’re watching me and waiting. I look around at them and tell them that we’re going to be fine and I tell myself that they can’t tell I’m bluffing.
I hear a whimper farther down the wall. It’s Mona. Her words tremble as she asks if she can come sit by me. Of course, I tell her, and she crawls over on quivering hands and knees with Catherine close behind.
We’re all beside each other now, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee and no one moves and I hope they know I love them. I’d laughed with them over my embarrassing moments so they can know they aren’t alone. I shared my memories of failure and success so they can feel good too. I tell them they’re my favorites and that my day wouldn’t be complete without them. I whisper now that I’m glad to be there with them. Fibonacci puts his arm around my shoulder. Sandro smiles, slowly. Mona puts her hand in mine. And we wait.