Ferocious Heat

I remember

How easy it was

To fall asleep

When I was younger.

I’d close my eyes

And spiral up

In large, slow circles

Into a purple sky

As silent and endless

As prayer,

Finally fading

Into the sweet sea wind.

At least,

This is how I remember it.

Now when I close my eyes,

The crackpot insomniacs

Turn the inside of my skull

Into an arcade,

Boisterous with neurons

Cranked up on cortisol,

Clamoring for a crack

At the pinball machine.

Thwap!

My mind caroms

Off faces,

Places,

And conversations

Until

The silver ball finally settles

Into a pocket of memory

Lined with Frank,

Roger,

Charlie,

Thomas,

And Baby Ray:

Five twelve year old Indian boys

Who,

Almost every morning,

Came to school smoldering

From either a fire at home or

One kindled by the communal torch

At the school house door.

Why stop here? I wonder,

As I watch the memory unspool.

Am I expected to do something now?

Twenty some years after the door

To that world has closed?

For these boys,

In a place like theirs,

History has narrowed

The range of endings.

Barring the benevolence

Of some stray miracle,

Lives like theirs

Tend to destruct early.

Not even

The crisp expectations

Pinned to our new classrooms

Are sufficient

To deflect these trajectories

Or to appease the holy ghosts

Of those who came before,

Cut off

At the root as they were,

Stripped of names and tongues,

The skin and bones

Of our human soul,

Who had either bled to death

From shame

Over the course of their lives,

Or had been remanded early on

To a loveless quarantine,

Condemned to dissolve in the sweaty palm

Of influenza.

However indifferent

The bright blue bay,

Every atom of air

On this hillside

Has been irradiated by the souls

Of those children whose spirits

Remain marooned here.

And from birth,

This was what they breathed,

Frank,

Roger,

Charlie,

Thomas,

And Baby Ray:

They breathed radioactive ghosts.

We wanted to help them read,

Write a sentence,

To come to know

The power of multipliers.

But almost everytime we sat them down,

They would burst into flames.

For these boys,

Whether they understood it or not,

Their molten rage

Did not originate with them,

But flowed from deep

Within the cauldron

Of tribal trauma.

And for them,

Anything other than resistance

Could have seemed like betrayal.

After all,

We had come ashore again,

Hadn’t we?

Not in armor,

Mind you,

But in coats and ties,

Brandishing credentials

Instead of the crucifix,

But still confiscating children

To our own higher purpose.

This time, however,

These children

Would light themselves on fire

If they believed

The conflagration

Would consume us as well.

For these boys,

So well versed in the

Pyrotechnics of self defense,

Every day demanded

A brotherhood of vigilance.

On the day of

State standardized testing, however,

We demanded

An unequivical renunciation:

There could be no such confederacy.

They must work alone.

They must sit still.

They must not talk.

They must read

And comprehend what they read.

They must manufacture sentences

And wrestle them onto paper

With an instrument

As manageable in their hands

As a small snake.

And they must believe

That it is possible and right

For them to do all this

In a place where there is no facade

Between them

And the uncertainties of life and death.

It’s complicated.

In spite of our best efforts

To get them ready -

The week of praise and practice,

The juice boxes, candy, trail mix,

And the elders sitting beside them,

On the day of testing,

The boys prepared themselves.

In the name of their fathers,

Their fathers’ sons,

And the holy ghosts amen.

They prepared

To light themselves on fire.

If you are fortunate enough

To be around children like these

In a place and on a day like this,

You would first see

A thin raft of smoke rise

As, here and there,

A pencil breaks.

Then, as the chairs

Begin to teeter and tip,

The tinder begins to blush

And spark

And the smoke thickens.

Roger tears at his test booklet,

Taunting you

With tentacles of flame,

Reaching for that place in you

That will enable him

To blow up the world.

Roger’s Grandma Grace looks at me,

Her face

As round and expressionless

As a river rock

Shaped by

A percolation of loss

As pervasive as oxygen:

Her son killed

While driving drunk,

A grand daughter

Drifting into the darkness

Of a drug overdose

And on

And on.

You would think

That she would

Have long since drowned

In this ocean of grief.

Yet here she was.

She and I both knew

That Roger would be

The one to ignite.

The other boys would remain watchful,

But they knew it was Roger

Who could best obliterate

Generations

Of their collective humiliation

With his ferocious heat.

Having so many times before

Missed this very moment,

Losing Roger

Or another of the boys for days,

That morning,

I seized it.

Students,

Respected elders, I said.

Let’s start over.

Elders,

Read the story and questions aloud

To the boys,

Help them with their answers,

And then let them dictate

While you write.

I will invalidate the tests downtown,

I said to myself.

The boys, their aunties and grandmas,

Worked through lunch,

Finishing their essays about a man

Who wrote a song most of them had never heard.

Downtown,

In the gleam of mahogany

And the false promise

Of overstuffed chairs,

I sat before an inquisition,

A grim faced group

Gathered to address my heresy.

To understand,

They said,

What I thought

Gave me the right

To change the requirements

For a State

Mandated

Standardized

Test.

I’m a counselor,

I said.

My responsibility

Is to do no harm.

I explained

The measures we had taken

To prepare the students

And our failure nonetheless.

I explained the elation at lunch

As the boys

Their grandmas and aunties

Breathed the unfamiliar air

Of triumph over a standardized test.

But this moment

Was inadmissable.

Eppur si muove.

Finally, they asked,

All things being equal,

Would you do the same thing again?

Yes, I said. Yes.

There was a certainty

In my voice

That briefly robbed them of theirs.

Finally, they said,

We will have to decide

What to tell the state,

And what to do about you.

I rose to leave.

Roger is a seventh grader,

I said, turning to face them,

Inhaling to cover the tremor in my voice.

They all are.

And,

On their good days,

They may read

At a third grade level.

They have been in this district

Since they were five.

Now they are twelve.

Seven years.

All things being equal,

Would you do the same thing again?

I read somewhere

That all memory

Is manufactured memory,

Constructed from a library of probabilities,

Like a game of pinball,

The silver ball,

Constrained by gravity,

Propelled by encounters

With its own posts and flippers,

Each trajectory created

By an invisible geometry.

All memory, that is,

Except traumatic memory.

Traumatic memory

Erects monuments to itself,

Tilts the table

To skew the probabilities,

Then coils under your bed,

Breathing,

Waiting for you,

Waiting for you to tire

And dare to close your eyes.