I come into work and am greeted by a student I haven’t seen in 3 weeks. I’ve been meaning to talk to his guidance counselor but even she has been out every time I try to find her. He finally tells me he’s been taking after school classes to earn art credit for graduation and that’s why he’s been missing my class that he’s been taking for gym credit. We’re putting on an end of year show in 2 weeks; pretty standard procedure for arts enrichment programs and resident teaching artists. These shows have insured or doomed my rehirings for the next year. This student was half my show.
I try to talk him into working hard, pushing through, and doing both the art class and mine, partly because I fear for my job but also because he’s good at and dedicated to Tae Kwon Do. He agrees and I can’t quite tell if it’s only because he doesn’t want to disappoint me. I gather my things — $300 worth of paddles and martial arts movies that some corporation started by a social worker paid for — and head out to my classroom. I spot him walk back into the assistant principal’s office, probably to talk about grades. Last I heard, he was going to Nassau College next year. Last I heard.
I enter to my room and set down. I’m only thinking about a piss because these 40 minutes only ever had 1 student and, for the last 3 weeks, has had 0, so I have time to kill. He walks by my door, the used-to-be, the hopefully-once-more student but doesn’t stop. Some tones play over the P.A. system, a threnody, and I think: fire drill; standing outside in 80 degree heat in a shadeless neighborhood with low rising buildings and low expectations of its children. Great. Instead, the assistant principal announces all staff to lock their doors. I guess that includes me, the unlicensed after school teacher who teaches credit bearing classes anyhow. I know its her because I spoke to her about other students, making sure they all received credit to graduate. She says it’s a Code Blue, repeats those 2 words and the 3 numbers of the room where its happening — one two zero.
She’s wrong. It’s not in Room One Two Zero. It’s in the hallway right outside. I can see friezes of it from my room, number One Two Five: a hunched over male, 3 adults circled half around. I’m still too young and too afraid of death to look any more. Blue, like the shirts, beads, and bandanas that half the student body wears. Blue, like a girlfriend’s veins.
(On the train this morning, I saw a mother smack her toddler. I didn’t say anything any of the 3 times she did it. The child threw her bottle down and when I handed it back to the mother, I looked closely at her face and found no warmth. Later, when all the stops were above ground and the 80 degree sun was bleeding through the windows, a group of college girls came on. They must have been because the colleges were out but the high schools, in New York City, were still in session. It was noon and I was headed to teach so surely they weren’t young and ditching class because what would I be without students? They started playing with the girl, laughing at how she negotiated the rumbling subway car, at how she smiled. Later, between my stop and my school’s front door, I thought: I want to have children of my own some day. I want to create something from scratch, to write it together helix by helix, vein by vein.)
My first guess is stabbing. In this school, someone would get stabbed. Except a Code Blue is probably just someone choking, getting blue in the face. By now, all of the security guards on the first floor have gathered outside my door. Blue shirts, black pants, a trail of wire running up their shoulders. I get flashbacks from my first class here, the first time I ever taught poetry: 8 students and I were about to head into our room when another kid decides to pick a fight with a guard. He doesn’t want to be called a kid, wants to be a man and independent and stand up to authority. So he does and they, there’s 3 guards now, push him into my room, all spit and sweat and swear words. The last guard locks the door behind them and a student says to me: glad you chose to come here?
I hear them counting outside. One two three four. Breath. One two three four. Breath. Someone says, did you call 911? and I’m sitting in an empty classroom, typing every fresh memory into my iPhone. I hear the lull of a flatline beat, the hiss of a defribulator. It doesn’t take a story teller to piece together what’s going on.
I hear instructions being dictated, how the speaker pauses after each sentence to make sure he’s understood. Then, laughter, from the blue shirts that don’t wear beads or bandanas. I like the EMT they brought in, how he lightened the mood after all was said and done. It’s a skill that took me years to develop.
The crowd outside disperses; the assistant principal announces that we can go back to our usual schedule. I sit in an empty classroom for another 15 minutes. By the time my next student comes, I’m only half done with this story. I click off my iPhone, leave it on the desk, and turn to get my binder. He asks, there was a code blue? Quickly, I look to see if I forgot to turn off my phone. Then, I wonder if he has some sort of xray vision, that he can see through my device, somehow, to the data it holds.
No. He was simply in the same building at the same time. I dismiss it, say, yeah, I heard, and go on with the rest of the day.
