Chapter Thirty-Four: Death at an Early Age

Chapter 34: Death at an Early Age

When I was a kid, a neighbor had a premature baby who died, and my mother had a friend who made pottery in Vermont, who died. With those two exceptions, I survived childhood free of death. I never even had a pet die. My students are not so fortunate. Many of them have had a parent die; most have experienced the death of a relative. My students know many dead people.

Selma

I am in the bus circle, on a warm afternoon in early November, preparing to call classes for dismissal when I notice two women one black, one white, coming out of my office. I don’t recognize them as parents and wonder if they are from DCF. I walk over to investigate and they tell me they are looking for Selma. Now I am sure they are DCF workers since Selma has been living with her cousin since the step-father accusation. I stick my head in the office to ask Lynne the identity of these women; she is meticulous about letting only authorized people pick up children. She answers before I can ask: “They’re cops.”

Selma is called to the office. I stand eavesdropping near the car with the two female police officers. If Selma is in trouble, I want to know. The black woman speaks quietly to Selma. Selma screams. A piercing scream. Not the usual loud girl scream she squeals when she sees Tyryona’s new skirt, nor the indignant scream she fires off when someone calls her a “ho.” This is the sound the painting “The Scream” would make if it had audio. Standing with her face pressed against the driver side window, Selma starts to pound the unmarked police car with her fists. Now she is crying loud, hyperventilating cries. As I approach, the white woman answers my unspoken question: they just informed Selma her older brother was shot and killed today, four miles from our school.

Marcus

The next day, the day after the shooting of Selma’s brother, the newspapers are filled with the lurid details. They say he was shot “gangland style.” Isn’t this is a line from a movie? Is this real life? The students are buzzing about the murder. Rumor mill says our student, Claymont, is related to the murderer who has not yet been arrested. Not surprisingly, Selma is absent today. But Marcus is here.

Marcus’s sister died two days ago. She was going to turn 26 in a couple weeks. She had cerebral palsy. Marcus’s mom sent a note explaining that Marcus wanted to go to school so she let him. Marcus’s hair is unbraided and he has that wild look in his eyes. He doesn’t want to talk to any counselors or other staff members about his sister or anything else. I phone his mother. She cries telling me about the pain of watching her daughter suffer for years only to die. She tells me Marcus hasn’t shown any signs of grief but she believes this is because he is relieved his sister is no longer in pain. I suggest that Marcus is grieving and needs Mom to talk with him. He is so volatile under regular circumstances, I really worry about him attending school today. Unbraided Marcus has been known to wander out of class and around campus. Unbraided Marcus has beaten up children half his size (and Marcus is so big, most of our students are smaller than he is). Unbraided Marcus has cursed and threatened teachers. I don’t want Marcus to hurt anyone today or to end up arrested. Marcus’s mother agrees to pick him up and talk with him.

Claymont – ramifications of an arrest

Stone, who rarely has anything positive to say about his students, wants me to read an essay Claymont wrote. Rosie too raves about this piece of writing. I ask Claymont if I can read it. Claymont has written about his grandfather, their shared joy in comic books, how his grandfather needed to take medication and it was Claymont’s job to bring him his pills. The story ends with the death of his grandfather. Claymont explains his grandfather died when Claymont was arrested for punching Brock and he, Claymont, was in jail and not there to give his grandfather his medication.

“Claymont, is this true?”
“Yes.”
“It sounds like you feel like your grandfather’s death was your fault.”
“It was.”

Then I remember. I remember the punching incident with Claymont and Brock, Brock and his racial epithets and later marijuana in his shoe for which he too was arrested. Given the circumstances I never would have requested the arrest of Claymont, but neither did I protest. If I had stopped the deputy from arresting Claymont would his grandfather still be alive? I look at Claymont intending to say something reassuring. Something about how surely someone else could have dispensed the medication to his grandfather and that this death is not his fault, but when I look at Claymont’s eyes, I don’t see a boy who needs reassurance. I see burning anger and hate. And in a flash I see that as much as Claymont blames himself for the death of his grandfather, he also blames me. As far as he is concerned I requested the arrest. I don’t think protesting my innocence by saying I didn’t want him arrested, yet did nothing about it will alter his view of me as the murderer of his grandfather. I say the only words I can find: “I am so sorry Claymont.” His continues to stare at me, unaffected by my words. It is a horrible haunting stare.

Souvenirs of Death

I have a file folder in my desk marked “death.” In it are lists of books to help children cope with death including picture books for children who have lost a grandmother and longer chapter books for a child mourning the death of a brother. In the file I also keep copies of cards some of my students have made for peers dealing with death.

The front of the brown construction paper card reads, in block letters:

I Hope your mom made it 2 Heaven.

Inside is neat printing in pencil:

Dear Milton:
I feel sorry for you and I know how it feels to loose (sic) your mom. My mom died 2 years ago and I got over it, you will get over it soon. I am so sorry that your mom died. When my mom first died I tried to kill myself don’t do the same thing. Please take care of your self.
Truly yours,
“J-Man”
Jeremiah

For just a moment, step into the skin of a child who lives in a world in which bad things just keep happening. What is it to not know, day by day, whether there will be gas in the car when your asthma chokes you and you need to see the doctor, food in the refrigerator when your stomach aches from hunger, new sneakers when your toes hurt from shoes that are too small? What is it to have the power shut off for non-payment not once or twice, but often enough that you are relieved when flipping the switch does turn on the light? What is it to not know if you’ll be belted or why or how bad this beating will be? What is it to sometimes live with your mother and her boyfriend, sometimes with your grandmother, sometimes with a neighbor and even sometimes in foster care? What is it to call a dilapidated trailer home, a tent home, a car home, a motel home and nowhere home? What is it to see death surround you and strike so often and so randomly that you are unsure whether your family, friends and even you will die next? How do you cope when you don’t see patterns or causes and it all seems so random and out of control?

Do you think maybe you’d be angry and curse? Maybe you would fight? Maybe you would take drugs or sell drugs, have sex or sell sex? And if not, why not? Cause and effect have been pretty muddled in your life. Bad stuff just keeps happening and on the hierarchy of bad things, death is near the top.

My job at Prospect is surrounded by deaths, not just the deaths in the lives of my students, but in my own life as well. The death of my beloved father-in-law in January 2002 awoke me to the impermanence of life and in part motivated me to seek out this principal position. Halfway through my tenure at Prospect, a close college friend died. His death was unexpected (he was a healthy runner) and a wrenching shock. Shortly after I left Prospect, a former Verizon coworker, a good friend in his 20’s with two babies, died tragically in a car crash. Jack, John and Jason were men I loved; overnight they disappeared. Now I too know dead people. But I am more fortunate than my students. I lived over four decades before death interrupted my bliss; and it certainly didn’t define my childhood.