Prose

Scars

/ Katrina Kaye / 1 Comment

Katrina Kaye

One of my students asks me if I used to cut myself.

This is not a usual conversation, but then we do not have a usual relationship. She thinks I saved her life.

I tell her, I did, sometimes, but more often I would muff cigarettes out on my thighs.

She didn’t know I smoked.

“For fifteen years,” I tell her. “But I haven’t done it for over three years now.”

The cigarettes or the burning?

I smile at her. She decides on the answer herself. She’s a smart girl.

You must have started young.

I nod and look at the bracelets covering her wrists. Her long sleeves in the spring time. I wish I had a cigarette now, wish I knew what to say, or what answers would help this girl. There is no manual, no instruction, no class, to truly prepare a teacher for the reality of human connection.

Did they scar?

“I have a few.” I hike up my skirt a bit and show her a constellation of circular scars across my right thigh. “They are all pretty faded,” I assure her.

She nods as I lower my skirt. She is silent.

“Yours will fade too,” I say. I never had a conversation like this before. It is terrifyingly honest. I never had the guts to ask anyone the questions she asks me, but I am so familiar with the look in her eye, with the stutter in her throat, the way she seems to shiver through her skin.

“They will heal. In years, people won’t see them. There are creams to reduce the scarring.”

She asks me what kind and I scrawl a few names on a list for her. She glances at it and shoves it in her pocket.

“Alice,” I say. “I don’t do it anymore.”

I know. She gives me her signature shy smile. I don’t either.

She gives me a hug. She seems like a girl who doesn’t receive a lot of hugs.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

I smile at her although I recognize sadness behind her eyes. I feel empathy swelling behind my own. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She ducks her head, offers a half wave, and slips out the door.

I lean back at my desk, let a hand linger over the scars on upper thigh. I can’t remember the last time I wanted a cigarette so bad.

“Scars” is previously published in Electric Monarch Monthly (2016).

Swear

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina K Guarascio

She swears there’s a constellation in the shape of a butterfly cresting the corners of the moon. She also swears she’ll pick you up at two and she will take you to the zoo. You wear the pink dress she bought you and lace up your new shoes. Can’t wait for her playful scold: “Tennis shoes with a dress? Oh baby, how does your father let you leave the house.”

She says, we’ll stand like flamingos and get chocolate dipped ice cream. She tells you to remember your sun screen. She calls at 2:30, says she is running late, got a flat, but don’t worry, those sea lions slap their hands all day long.

She used to tell you there were butterflies in your hair and pretend to catch them before dancing a shiny wrapped candy before your eyes. She had the most beautiful smile. You couldn’t wait to see all those white teeth, to feel her hand stroke your hair like a well fed cat.

Dad tells you to come inside and eat lunch, but you stomp your stubborn feet and say you’re holding out for ice cream cones and caramel corn.

She used to warn you about telling lies and pulling the wings off of butterflies. Don’t destroy beautiful things: like truth, like paper.

You dig your toe into the dirt and pretend not to hear the telephone. You pretend not to hear your father’s huff and exasperated sigh, pretend not hear his sharp tone: “She’s sitting outside waiting for you,” waiting, waiting, waiting for you.

You stare intently at little white butterflies swarming the lemon bush. You haven’t smiled in hours.

She told you once, when she was braiding your hair, that the sun wasn’t really setting, it wasn’t really going anywhere; we were the once spinning and we were the ones always moving. Sometimes so fast, it is hard to see faces clearly, like the flap of a butterflies wing. Sometimes we had to be pinned down, held under glass, sprawled and fixed to keep still, to be watched.

You told her butterflies are prettier when they are flying and she agreed.

You’re cold now. Father sweeps you up from the concrete steps. You rub your face with a sleep fist, too tired to admit you’re hungry.

“Princess, time for bed.”

You croak a stubborn, “No,” but your body rolls easily into his arms, knees to chest.

It is not the first night he put you to bed still wearing pink laced tennis shoes. You pretend not to hear him when he mutters under his breath, “I swear, this will be the last time.”

“Swear” is previously published in Cloudy Quarterly (2017).

April 5

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

Adrian Garcia was in a car accident this morning.

Apparently there were four cars piled. Apparently the whole front of the truck was missing.

I’m sure he will be alright, but they don’t know yet.

I don’t know him well. He sits in the front of my fifth period. He was so excited to get a B last quarter. I was proud of him too. He sold candy out of his backpack and would sometimes offer me a free snickers for looking the other way. I always declined. He has been absent the last two days.

I only met his parents once. They asked me: Do we need to worry about him?

I told them, no.

He’s a good kid. He will be fine.

The whole school is tense because of it. I can see it in the halls. He had plenty of friends, although perhaps not exactly popular. He was on the football team.

The girls in my second period don’t know who he is. They are trying to find a facebook page and talking about people they know who have died in car accidents. But you aren’t dead and you won’t die. You will pull though. I refuse to accept anything different.

I think of hospital visits and creating a get well soon card that the class can sign. I think of how I will assign him a good book to read while he recovers. Something specific to his interests. Something I can’t do with a whole class, but he would enjoy on his own. I think of having insightful conversations and reflections they I rarely have the chance to experience teaching public education.

I can’t help but to think of the significance of Easter weekend. Perhaps this fall will only last three days. Perhaps by Sunday we will all be saved.

The internet tells me his is dead before my administration does. I still have four classes to teach. The pictures are insane, the crumble of the wreckage, the glass, the plastic. It was head on. The two kids in the other car went to the hospital. I wonder who they are and what could have happened.

The scenarios play in my mind. Teenagers driving too fast, cutting each other off. Mild road rage turned deadly. It’s easy to get up to 80 on that straight away.

I am helpless and time is moving slowly.

He had a good smile, that kid. So many white teeth. He didn’t want to be in my Pre AP class, I know. He was stuck here, struggled for a while, but he was a good kid.

The students say the cruelest things. They didn’t know him so they don’t care. It was his fault. He was trying to pass someone on a hill. Kids are quick to excuse their behavior. Those who did know him have come in with bloodshot eyes and red faces. More quiet than usual. I don’t feel like talking either.

Pain should not be a selfish thing. One should not keep it inside, strangled and suppressed. It shouldn’t be ignored. I try not to be selfish with the pain I seethe through my pores.

They turned the library into a counseling center for students who want to talk, I keep my room open for students who don’t. I play a movie, let them read, let them talk among themselves. I do not know what to do but I continue. All I know is continuance.

He was just a boy like so many others. Angry at times, frustrated. He sometimes wrote in his journal about how he was angry, how he hated school. Other times he would write the lyrics to rap songs that I didn’t know. He was a good kid. I wish I knew him better.

The day is quiet and surreal. No one knows what to say or how to act and an awkward uncertainty hangs in the air. We all grieve differently. Everyone is exceedingly kind today. I feel I need to be here for these students. They are confused and some of them need to talk, so I let them. I listen. I cannot be selfish with pain.