STRAWBERRY MANSION

The apartment near Rittenhouse Square had a ladder to the roof where James could smoke cigarettes, and neighbors who were so polite they made him believe in ghost stories. When he first moved in, there was a sign out front dedicated to Barbara Gittings, the godmother of LGBT equality, who must have lived there at some point. They removed the sign a month or two after James arrived, presumably to make way for some construction project. Throughout the school year, he found a bit of solace in his flat as he became another ghost trying to solidify some sort of personal autonomy.

            One morning, James got up early to get ready for work. His hot water wasn’t working, and it was only as he stood staring at the shower head in a half-dazed mindset that he remembered it hadn’t been working the day before either. Deciding it was probably best not to waste water, James plunged his head into the frigid stream, taking care not to get the rest of his body wet.

            The sky was still dark as he left, and he could feel a cold coming on as he got on the bus and headed out to Strawberry Mansion. It didn’t help that he had spent the entire weekend drinking gin and smoking cigarettes. As the bus veered past the penitentiary, he tried to summon the strength to make it through the day. It got easier as he kept moving.

            He got to the school and headed straight to the main office. The elderly secretary greeted him as he found the key to his classroom, and he felt obliged to reciprocate her small talk.

            “Good morning, Mr. B!” She said before he was even in the door. She knew he’d be coming. She was the one who operated the camera and buzzer to let people into the building.

            “Good morning goooood morning!” James said.

            He collected the classroom key from the mailbox and turned to leave but stopped at the doorway. He wasn’t sure why he needed to continue his rapport with the old secretary; for some reason it seemed important.

            “So, when’s hoagie day?” He said, for lack of something better.

            “It’s whenever you want it to be!”

            “Oh… no, I don’t want to be the instigator.”

            “Be the instigator!” She laughed.

“If you don’t do it, no one else will.” The first grade teacher chimed in, also laughing.

            James managed a smile, and mumbled something about needing to hit the ATM as he took his leave from the main office and headed up to his classroom on the second floor. He shared his classroom with one other tutor, a woman in her sixties named Martina. James was always the first one to the classroom in the morning, so he took the chairs off the tables and wrote the date on the board before getting to his last-minute lesson planning.

            The morning was uneventful. James pulled kids from their classrooms every half hour. He and Martina both had a quota of 20 students, but most of the time they only got to see about fifteen of them. On that morning, the students who were present were tired and anxious, still holding onto the last threads of winter break and not ready to listen to a guy in his late twenties tell them about the difference between a consonant and a vowel.

            At lunchtime, James called the maintenance guys for his apartment to tell them about the issue with his hot water. He ate a plain cheese sandwich. It was all he’d had time to whip together in his disgruntled cold-shower mindset. Martina was kind enough to bring him a Pepsi from the school’s store downstairs. For James, this was, decidedly, a big help.

            Shortly after lunch, James went to retrieve two of his first-grade students for their session: one girl and one boy, Hope and Malik. Malik had just recently been assigned to James by the school’s literacy liaison, so James had made it a priority to expedite the curriculum and catch him up to Hope’s level. After two minutes of letter drills, it became clear that Malik hadn’t been thinking about the digraphs James had asked him to look at over the weekend.

            “That’s alright.” James told him. “But I need you to try a little harder, Malik. We’re not just here to take a break from class and eat candy, you know.”

            In his vanity, James was always telling these kids to try harder. What he should have been telling them was that he didn’t care either way if they wanted to learn how to read; they were going to have to figure it out eventually. In any case, he wasn’t getting paid enough to lose his voice lecturing kids.

            “So, Malik,” he reverted to his ‘soft’ voice, “can you please tell us one word that starts with the digraph, ‘SH’?”

            “Uhhh,” Malik dropped his chin to the table and began biting at thin air, rolling his eyes.

            “I know I know!” Hope raised her hand.

            “I know you know. I’m asking Malik though.”

            “Uhhhh,” He shrugged. “Chat?”

            “No Malik, that starts with ‘CH’. Hope, can you give us an ‘SH’ word?”

            “Ship!” She proclaimed and Malik began to chuckle.

            “Good job, Hope! That’s right, ‘Ship’, which is not to be confused with whatever word Malik is thinking of right now. Moving on, Malik can you please give me a word that ends with a ‘CK’ digraph?

            “CK?” He stared up at James with glazed eyes.

            “C’mon Malik, think about the ‘CK’ rule. Hope, what’s the ‘CK’ rule?

            “Ooooh, it’s when at the end of a word you use ‘CK’.

            “That’s right, but why do we use ‘CK’ and not just a ‘K’ or a ‘C’?”

            “Ohh,” She beamed up at James. “It’s because… because… it’s… I forget.”

            “Listen up Malik. We use ‘CK’ at the end of a one syllable word when the hard ‘K’ sound is right next to the —-”

            A voice rang out through the intercom and cut off his explanation:

            Attention staff and students, we are currently in a state of lockdown. No one is allowed in or out of the building until further notice. Again, we are in lockdown. No one is allowed in or out of the building. That is all.

            The voice faded, and James turned from the speaker to look back at his students, both of whom looked entirely unfazed.

            “Martina,” James stood up, “I’m gonna lock the door.”

            “Good thinking.” Martina nodded on her side of the classroom, looking a bit nervous as she shuffled the letter cards in her hands.

            As James stepped outside to lock the door, the special ed teacher across the hall poked her head out of her classroom to look around. James asked her if she was going to lock her door and she said she didn’t think they needed to. James locked his anyways and stepped back inside to continue the lesson. An hour or so later, the lockdown was lifted.

            Back in his flat that evening, James could feel the cold he had started his day with beginning to mutate into an augmented sickness: no doubt the product of 500 students coughing and sneezing on him all day. For some reason, he thought chicken wings and pasta with marinara sauce sounded like a good idea, so, as his fever soared to temperatures unknown, he worked on his lesson plan for the next day while eating his dinner. He got about five hours of sleep and awoke the next day with his head in flames.

            The hot water was working. James took a long shower and tried to bring his fever down. He couldn’t miss work; he’d already used up most of his sick days and the year wasn’t even halfway through. He found one of his old cloth masks in a pile and strapped it on as he left his apartment. Only once he was outside did he realize he’d forgotten his umbrella.

            The rain fell softly on James’ walk to the bus stop, which was only a block away from his apartment but still, cold water was the last thing he needed for his cold. He got off the bus in Strawberry Mansion and booked it to the elementary school, trying to remember what people said about running versus walking in the rain. At the school, he printed out a few worksheets and tried to make himself invisible until the students arrived at eight-thirty. Several of his kids approached him in the hall with high fives and fist bumps, which he reciprocated with apprehension.

            After lunch, James was walking two of his students to the classroom when one of them said something that sparked his interest. Another pair of first graders, but they were more advanced than the others… exceptionally bright… more aware of their surroundings. Both were around six years of age.

            “I know why we had a lockdown yesterday.” Said Jemaeh, the older of the two.

            “Oh yeah?” James knew she was just playing for time, but he didn’t see any point in giving the kids a false sense of reality. “I know why we had a lockdown too. Why do you think we had a lockdown?”

            “I don’t think it happened close to us.” Kimmy, the other girl chimed in. “I didn’t hear any shots.”

            “No, it was a few blocks away.” He told them through his mask. “But that’s nothing we have to worry about. Now, who can tell me what a glued sound is?”

            James made it through the rest of the school day with no incidents other than having to reprimand a kid for stealing from his candy stash. When he left the building, the rain was falling in torrents. Without his umbrella, he was drenched by the time the bus arrived. However, he was starting to feel better about things, more positive, despite all of it. All the ailments and mental obstacles which no full-grown adult should have to face let alone a pair of six-year-olds could take away from the fact that he had another warm shower waiting for him back at his apartment. On the street, an extra gallon of collected rainwater fell from a gutter several stories up and landed directly on his head. He hardly felt it. Those kids were practically immune to the violence of the outside world, to whatever horrors life had in store. In the tropical climate of his bathroom, he let the warm water wash away the grime of the street.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *