JOURNAL, Thursday, Feb. 8th

It snowed today – the most disruptive type of snow in the life of a school, beginning without much warning after the kids had arrived, and increasing in intensity throughout the day. Huge billowy flakes that accumulated quickly against any solid object, growing up the face of walls, fences, cars and trees, drawing everyone to the windows.

The kids long for recess when they can toss and coat themselves – and each other, defying all playground injunctions about the throwing of snowballs.

The teachers wonder how many of them arrived this morning without mitts, or snow pants, or boots. The principal wonders if he will get the call that will set the emergency phone procedure in motion notifying parents that the school is closing.

If the school had closed, I’d have had a better day . . .

Everywhere there’s an electric hum jumping like blue light from one child to the next, infusing every lesson and activity with a sense of distraction. The hallways are more alive than usual with the sounds of the most highly strung conductors of this human energy: too wound up to sit still, when those kids ask permission to go to the bathroom the teachers sigh with relief and hope that the main current of the excitement might be broken in their absence.

I have Shawn’s reading group just after morning recess. The four of them arrive: bare feet, clammy hands and cheeks streaked with red and white, defining areas of cold and colder. They jump over chairs as they come into the library, grabbing each other’s heads and rolling into the beanbag chair propped in the corner. I herd them into the office just off the library where we work while I keep watch over both rooms.

We begin our time with a quiet thinking exercise – a particular challenge today – but it helps them focus. I work on phonics with Trevor and Jason while Shawn and Peter file through their picture-word flash cards. They’re a nice group; they make me smile. They tell me how they see the world and I’m amazed at how different we are. They have a lot of courage and determination that they’re willing to put out for such a small portion of success and encouragement in return. I’m proud of my little boys because I know the cost of each new word on their reading list.

The grade 4 class is booked into the library after recess to do some research; they’re a difficult bunch. It’s remarkable how the chemistry of personalities within a group can make all the difference in the world – this group has its toxic elements. To make matters worse they have a supply teacher with them today. Their own teacher is away again. The stress of being with this particular class seems to be enough to play havoc with her immune system – she’s had every cold and flu that has made the rounds of the school so far.

The class rushes into the library. The more aggressive kids careen through the doorway, rushing to lay claim to the choicest tables (in the back corner, of course). The supply teacher attends to one who has hit his head against the doorframe as the others rushed past him.

The poisonous element in this class seems to come from a small group of girls, tarted up like sleazy, pre-pubescent rock stars, who hold the power of friendship and acceptance in their fickle and collective gaze. The obvious leader of the pack is Nathalie or “Nat” (a name which suits her well, calling to mind an irritating and carnivorous insect). Nat has the hardest eyes I’ve ever seen in a child: dark and angry, rimmed with streaked mascara beneath her dyed blond hair and its brown roots. Nat has been padding her training bra for years now.

I try to concentrate on my group and trust the teacher to keep some element of control in the library. It doesn’t work – I know this when I hear the rustle of the pages of a book, flying over two tables as it’s being “passed” from one group to another.

I leave my boys alone in their room and walk to the front of the library class to take up my post. The din settles somewhat as they notice my glare. I tell the class in a firm low voice that they’ve lost their library period and are to pack their belongings and line up, single file, along the wall.

A murmuring cloud of disgruntled comments hovers over the room as they make their way to the door. It’s a tenuous control I have over them – I plan to walk them back to their classroom where we’ll discuss the elements of the school’s code of conduct that they’ve breached and the consequences.

Before I have a chance to leave the room, I hear an odd sound from the office at the back of the library. I look over to see Nat’s gang huddled in a semi circle, ripe with excitement and anticipation. I see Nat, standing before the glass wall of the office, looking in at my little boys, seductively pulling the front of her sweater down from her nonexistent cleavage and rubbing her other hand over a thigh, blowing kisses and licking her lips in the direction of Shawn and the others. What I had heard was the sound of Shawn’s pencil case hitting the reinforced glass and falling to the ground with a dull-crisp shattering sound as it spilled its contents on the floor. He had hurled it in some sort of attempt to protect himself and his friends from her luring insults.

With a flick of her gelled and sprayed hairdo, Nat lets out a shrill laugh and shoots back at the boys: “You’re nothing but a bunch of pussy-assed retards, anyway.”

As I sit here tonight listening to Danny’s gentle humming coming from the bedroom, looking into the pristine beauty of the snow still falling in the light of the street lamps, writing about this incident in some attempt to purge myself of its stomach churning effect on me, I’m struck by the contrasts of purity and filth, of innocence and violation.

I lost it with Nat. I’m sure the headache that I’d had all day didn’t help matters but, throbbing temples notwithstanding, I couldn’t pass off what I’d witnessed as being just a bratty exhibition. I quietly asked the supply teacher to take her class back to their room while I kept Nat with me. I sent my boys back to their teachers and watched them scurry down the hall, recognizing the deliberate calmness in my voice as being that calm which comes before a storm. When everyone had left the library I closed the glass door with precise movements. I turned to Nat and was stunned by what I saw: her cool look of relaxed indifference, almost defiance, triggered a fury in me that was visceral, spontaneous, and very likely inappropriate.

As I lashed out at this nine-year old symbol of everything that is degrading and degraded, I was overwhelmed by a need to protect those little boys, to keep them from being sullied by exposure to her filth.

Then a sudden insight came crashing and intruded on my rage, deflating its power and leaving me feeling like the fool I was: it occurred to me that Nat is only nine years old. She’s a child. What is there in her story that would make her use her embryonic sexuality as a weapon to bully the vulnerable ones around her?

It also occurred to me that if Nat were having trouble in school, if she couldn’t read or couldn’t handle the math problems, she’d be one of my kids, one of the ones who need me.

But in her case, it’s a distorted sense of sexuality – brought on by who knows what personal or family history – that is her disability; and they don’t offer remediation for that in our school system.

Copyright 2003