1. Leave Your Luggage At Home

I watch A. wheel a rolling suitcase down the sixth grade hallway.  He steers it with purpose and speed and guides it around the corner toward the main office.  His back tilts almost parallel to the speckled tiles beneath his feet, and I wonder what is inside.  Something heavy, I suspect.  I notice his glasses.  The circle frames are as precise as graphing compasses.  Whole and unbroken, they attach to wiry coils that wrap his ears and indent his small, spotted nose.  His eyelashes are long and curl against the foggy, smudged lenses.  His hair, a common brown, is separated by oils in sharp, chaotic rays.  I eye his school uniform.  Rather than drooping, sagging pants that I’m used to, he wears his khaki shorts just beneath his belly button.  I imagine that his fleshy pink skin pinches beneath the tight black leather of his belt. 

It is the first day of my second year teaching at Southeast Middle.  I am not nervous since my former students have already validated my authority with their hugs or sneers.  I’m a veteran now, and the sixth graders know it.  My co-teacher, Ms. Todd, is inside our classroom taking the homeroom attendance.  I am in the hallway, watching a stranger.

“Why are you carrying around that suitcase?” I ask.  I’ve been trained to keenly identify prohibited items like sweatshirts with hoods, cell phones and gum.  Sure to assert my presence in the hallway much as in my own classroom, I am the kind of teacher who confiscates chewed gum without flinching.  I give students the “hand it over” look and uncoil my right palm.  Sometimes, before homeroom even begins, I’ll have eight saliva-coated spearmint wads inside my hand.  It is effective to shock them, behave against what they expect.  With only a year of experience, this is one trick I’ve learned.  I eye this carry-on size suitcase and wait for his response.

“Because it’s too big to fit in my locker.”   A.'s voice spills from his throat.  It’s as if his diaphragm puffs erratic bursts of air, allowing these words to barely make it over the threshold of his mouth.  It is pitched in a prepubescent octave.  It is airy, breathy and somewhat constipated.  This kid must be one of mine, I think, and I remember Ms. Graham, a fellow special education teacher, say “I think I met one of your sixth grade babies,” this morning.   I wonder about his diagnoses, if he can read.

This little man reverts his eyes back toward the ground.  For a brief moment, I picture him aboard a red-eye flight.  “It’s for business,” he’d say instead and muscle his perfectly miniature box-on-wheels into the overhead storage compartment before sitting down and buckling up.  But this little man, somewhere between eleven and twelve, is on his way to forfeit his luggage.

“Leave that at home tomorrow,” I say sternly.  I am accustomed to this tone.  It is soft and calm with a firmness that ages me enough to create a false authority.  It is this even-keeled yet assertive voice that gives me a reputation for having well-behaved classes.  It is the first time in my life that I am confident with my personality.  It is the first time that my quiet demeanor has contributed to my success, rather than inhibit it.  I avoid a smile, but I add a question.  “Okay?”  My voice swings upward in a slightly friendlier tone.  “Okay?”  A's fragility seems to warrant this gesture of kindness.

I know,” he says, “I know.”  And he continues his trudge down the long jet bridge of Southeast Middle.  I watch him as he fights the thick and sloppy, often paralyzing mud of the sixth grade.  I pivot on my heal and walk into my classroom.