Chapter 1 Salma #2
Parents take pictures of their children—faces grimaced, smiling into the sun, and too-large backpacks hanging off their slight shoulders—sometimes with siblings and sometimes with friends.
The first bell rings, and parents and children start their shy approach toward me.
A slow mob starts forming. Excitement and anxiety at the coming separation are palpable in the air.
It’s not like kindergarten or even first grade where children are crying, but you can see it just under the surface.
Here is Hong, a diminutive and stoic little boy from China whose parents requested a meeting before school started at which they introduced me to Hong and his grandmother, neither of whom speak English.
The parents are researchers and will rarely be picking up.
He is one of the three students who will need extra help in navigating school activities until he understands the language, which will be alarming in its speed.
I look for the children that need extra attention or love. The ones who already show feelings of otherness heavy in their posture and their downcast eyes, children who come from a deficit. It is difficult for a child to learn if they are suffering. It is a simple fact.
I introduce myself to parents and children and tell them I look forward to meeting them at curriculum night in a few weeks.
There are couples dropping off their children, but it is mostly mothers.
In one case, a very awkward nanny. I make a note to give extra attention to the overly boisterous Tommy, whose parents were unable to show up for the first day of school.
Once I had a family in a similar situation, and I found out later that the parents were at the children’s hospital with their younger child getting a chemo treatment. Who am I to judge?
Seventeen of my eighteen students are here.
I tell them to hug their parents goodbye; they will see each other in a few hours.
The second bell rings, and we start filing inside.
All around me, I hear, “See you soon.” “Listen to your teacher.” “Be good.” “Have a great day.” “I love you.” The one missing child will have to walk into a full class by themselves.
How hard is it for a parent to just do the right thing and show up on time for the first day of school? On this, I do judge.
As I turn to lead my class inside, I see a car drive by much too fast on the one-way lane in front of the school. There are children on this street. And then I see the driver, and I swear I know her from somewhere. I can’t readily place her. It makes me feel unsettled.
When we get to our classroom, I tell the students to place their school supplies in accordance with the directions on the wall. Collective supplies, such as five dozen sharpened pencils, glue sticks, and tape, go in bins. Individual supplies, such as markers, crayons, and notebooks, go in cubbies.
At morning meeting, each child introduces themselves.
They say their first name, their family name, if they have any siblings, and if they are a cat person or a dog person or a lizard person.
I give them a sense of how our first day will go.
I give them all a math worksheet to work on independently for ten minutes while I assess where each student is in understanding basic concepts and if they have had any summer learning loss.
It is just the first day. I don’t really expect anything.
My goal is to just start building a routine and muscle memory.
As I walk around, a statuesque woman with piercing green eyes and long reddish-goldish-brownish hair, hanging in greasy strands, rushes into the class without warning.
“Hi. I’m Marlene.”
In one arm is a writhing toddler, trying to lunge to the ground. The other hand is being pulled behind her back by a child with a mane of her own. This must be my remaining child, Poppy.
The mother starts to apologize, but I cut her off.
This is not the time to be engaging in discussion.
I have seventeen other students watching the new child, and I am sensitive on Poppy’s behalf.
I look behind the mass of her mother and ask Poppy to join the rest of the class.
She steps out, trembling like a leaf in a breeze.
I squat down so we are eye to eye and say, “Hi, Poppy, I’m Miss Chaudhry.” She cocks her head like she’s heard something. “I’m so happy you’re here.” She looks at me warily. “Why don’t you start organizing your supplies? The others are just finishing up a math worksheet.”
“I didn’t bring any.” Her voice is deep and husky, the sound of a fifty-year-old smoker, not a seven-year-old.
I look up to glare at the mother, but she has slinked away.
“That’s okay.” She is a stunning child. Wild, curly hair that radiates out from her entire head like one of those Greek saints.
Heavily lidded eyes that possess an adultlike awareness.
No wide-eyed wonder in this one. “Do you want to know something? I started at a new school when I was about your age also.” What I do not tell her is that Aunty made sure I knew where my cubby was and met my teacher well before the first day of class.
“I want to go back to Chicago,” she says.
“I’m sorry, Poppy. I can’t help you with that. But guess what? After lunch, you can plan your next trip to Chicago.”
I walk her over to a large tablet on the wall loaded with software that is a glorified map of the world that lets kids plot a path to anywhere by boat, by plane, by car, by walking, by swimming.
My class abounds with maps, globes, and scenes from around the world, extraordinary landscapes to scenes of ordinary life.
Unlike other teachers, I have class themes each year, and this year, it is Around the World.
I change the class theme every year to keep things fresh for myself and to have a special memory for each class that they can retain as their unique experience.
I think it would feel terrible for a fifth grader to visit my classroom, as upper students love to do, and see the same log cabin from the Mountaintop Retreat theme.
There is a reason parents request me as a teacher.
Around the World is one of my favorite themes in this school, where there are students from dozens of countries.
A place where Miss Chaudhry does not feel like a foreign name, just another signal, another echo, from another place on the planet.
If prior years are a guide, soon my kids will start calling me MissCh, making me sound halfway mischievous.
This year, I have installed a mini-hot-air balloon in the corner with an actual balloon that can be blown up and illuminated.
I like to create small spaces for gathering and building community.
There is a basket big enough for two or three students, lots of pillows, and a latched door.
It will be a special place that will be an earned reward.
In addition, there is a lofted area I call the Nook, a quiet place to read or get some space when there are too many stimuli, especially for my introverted students.
Mamoo is the benefactor who allows me to make my classroom rich with wonder.
He is also the model Sunnyside Elementary volunteer, assisting wherever and whenever is needed.
Within months of Aunty’s passing, Mamoo was diagnosed with lymphoma.
He suffered from the twin engines of grief and chemo until he took an early retirement.
Even though he is still grieving and experiences the aftereffects of the treatment, he now looks for things to occupy his time.
Once the school year gets underway, he will be in my class one afternoon a week.
He will host a book club with a group of my high-ability reading students and work with the children who need extra help with math.
He doesn’t follow the district’s math curriculum, and I pretend not to notice.
In addition to the time he spends in my class, he spends one afternoon in art and one whole day in the library.
Wherever he is, the kids love him. He says, “Really, all they need at this age is radical acceptance. You just never know what that might do for a child.”
Some time ago, Emil and I had arranged to go to the art museum after class prep.
I don’t really want to go, but I will because that’s what we do for each other.
I arrive before him and take in the magnitude of the space.
The art museum is a turn-of-the-century neoclassical building, majestic and imposing on a big hill that overlooks treetops and hundred-year-old mansions.
Inside, it is like a movie set. Windows up high let in light that flushes the lobby a rich amber.
Why has Abu contacted me now, after all these years?
What could we possibly have to say to each other?
Too much happened. Too much time has passed.
There is no going back. And yet. I hear his hacking cough.
With his call, the long-held dam of my past has started showing signs of crackage.
My years of attempting to reconstruct memories in search of the real truth have taught me that clarity and certainty are elusive.
A beautifully dressed mom with bright-red dry lipstick pushes a stroller.
Does she not kiss her baby? A gaggle of middle-aged women are quietly giggling, trying to figure out how to make their audio-tour devices work.
An old white-haired man sits unmoving on a leather-covered bench and views the painting in front of him.
I am always self-conscious, certain that people are watching and judging me, so I start imitating the old man and stare fixedly at a painting that takes up almost an entire wall.