* * *
I get home from work late because it’s the end of the year and I’m starting to realize I won’t ever see my students again after the year ends. I give them my number and my nonwork email just in case. I think I’ll hear from Kayla, one or two of the others—the kids off to college, the ones I have promised to help with their freshman-year papers if they give me enough advance warning, will send me some late-night emails at the end of each semester the first year. We sit together in a classroom after their finals and I help them with their personal statements; the CEO won’t let them go home for summer until drafts of their statements are turned in. I have candy in my bag from the teacher workroom, and I hand it out to the six or so kids who sit with me. I have each of them read their statement out loud and we try to make sense of them together. One girl writes about a summer program she went to and how she ran out of money. Her father had saved so that she could have some spending money while she was there—except, she writes in the statement, she was with these other kids who spent money like there was no end to money. It was a three-week program. She had seven dollars left at the end of the first week. She writes about calling her dad and asking him to send her more and the way she was transported back to her life as she listened to him, silent on the other end for too long. How quickly she’d forgotten the image of her parents, who worked on their feet all day, her dad a mechanic, her mom braiding hair. He sent the money to her. She forced herself to envision, she writes in the statement, what they had gone without, done more of, to make that possible. Another boy writes about asking questions, his obsession with it; another boy writes about cooking dinner for his mom, and then about a trip he took with Outward Bound. I help them to fix sentences and sharpen paragraphs. We laugh and their work starts to get better and I think maybe I should stay.
My boss comes around hours after we’ve started working. It’s the last day of school and a week since finals; a lot of kids either did not come or have long since left. My boss, who likes to be the center of attention, comes in and asks what we’re doing, why my students aren’t in their other classes. They’re juniors and I haven’t been their teacher now for months. We don’t have other classes, says one of them. She’s helping us. He looks at me, then looks at them, and says, eyes back on me, You know she’s leaving you next year. She tell you yet that she’s not coming back?
They nod and know although I haven’t told them. I’ve been too afraid to tell them. They know, though, because so few of their teachers last more than a year. They’ve had years of learning not to ever get attached to anyone at school. I wish again, sitting with them, that I could be the exception, that I could be one of the few who stays for them. I’ve chosen not to, just like nearly everyone who looked like me who came before me. I wish I could explain that they’re the only thing about this place worth sticking around for. I imagine, watching all these teachers come and go so quickly—they’re children—it must still feel at least a little—they’re wrong, but I don’t think they could help but think it—like their fault.
* * *
I take the subway home. I read LaRose, by Louise Erdrich. Our girls are with my husband, so I walk into a bar close to our house and get a gin drink. I get out my book, but then I see Josslyn’s daughter. Ifeoma, I say in my head twice before saying it to her—I’ve googled it and listened to it pronounced back to me by the computer—wanting very much to say it right.
Hey, she says. I forgot your name.
I tell her.
Right, she says. Hi.
I didn’t know you were still here, I say.
I got an Airbnb close by, she says. I’m trying to sell all of my mom’s stuff. Find some way to bring the rest of it back down south with me.
Where do you live? I say.
Atlanta, she says.
I’ve only been there once, I say.
She smiles.
I almost tell her I’m from Florida, except Florida’s not the real South. Where I’m from is more like a weird, debased New York or New Jersey with a beach. You like it? I say.
Sure, she says. I grew up here and always wanted to leave.
Here, here? I say, meaning this neighborhood, this building.
Yup, she says.
How was that? I say.
She’s a nurse practitioner and went to a specialty high school in the neighborhood for science.
Mom wanted me to be a doctor, she says. But I got tired.
She was … I start. I’m so sorry about what happened.
You didn’t do anything, she says.
But, you know, I say. She was always so kind to me, I say. As if this matters.
Me too, she says.
I want to ask if she knows any more about what happened. I have this impulse to try to make sense of every tragedy, as if that is the way I will stay safe.
She made me lasagna when our kids were born, I say.
Oh god, she says. I hope you threw it away.
I laugh and nod. I did, I say.
She couldn’t eat lactose, she says. She cooked everything with rubber cheese. She’d lost it a little, she says. She was lonely.
You have siblings? I say, though I already know the answer.
Two brothers out west, she says. Neither of whom, like these assholes thought for a while, was the one who hurt my mom.
Did they come out? I say.
We all fought a lot, she says.
We all get selfish, I say. Or get so set on doing everything the way we want.
I called her, she says. Every Sunday.
I’m sure she loved that, I say.
She nods. She said she did.
* * *
I have unthinkingly, shamefacedly, invited Kayla for dinner. She has mentioned that she’s home alone and even though I know she’ll come from far away, that she’ll have to take the train home late at night, I want to have her at our house.
She texts to say, Is it okay if I bring my brother?
Sure, I say. I don’t tell my husband, until right before they get there and our girls are about to go to bed.
She’s bringing her brother, I say.
How old is he? says my husband.
Five, I say.
It’s a school night, he says.
This was all a terrible idea—presumptuous boundary crossing—but now I can’t take it back.
* * *
Kayla wears more makeup than she does at school. Her dress is short and her hair is done in long, tight braids. Her brother holds on tight to her and doesn’t look at me as I let them into the building and lead them up to our apartment. He still wears his uniform from school, is round-faced, stocky. His shoes are Velcro like our girls’.
The girls are brimming, anxious; Who’s here, who’s here, they say, wet haired, teeth brushed, bed ready.
Mommy’s friend, my husband says.
My student, I correct him.
They look at Kayla’s brother first, about their size. He keeps his face turned toward Kayla’s leg as she grins and leans down to hug each of the girls.
How was the train? asks my husband.
Kayla laughs and I’m relieved to hear her laugh and the girls look at her. Long, she says.
My husband laughs as well.
Our girls lead them into the small room off the kitchen where we all just barely fit. A small couch that sits two or three, two grown-up chairs around the kitchen table, two small, old IKEA chairs for kids.