Rotten Words
Juice spilled all over my drawing, and I watched horrified as my delightfully green alien was surrounded by the yellowish force of the invading liquid on the paper.
“Ew” I said.
“Ewwww,” my small pigtailed friend echoed.
“Oh! Gosh, I really sorry, that just keeps happening, I’m really sorry, I’ll make you another I promise!”
His name was Danny, and this was the fourth time Danny had spilled some form of liquid on my work this week.
“Oh, that’s all right.” I responded “It’s not like you’re doing it on purpose, nobody’s that mean.”
“How’d ya know anyway?” the pigtailed individual questioned suspiciously. An extensive pause filled our table after her, yet an ever busy second grade classroom proceeded on around us. Somewhere, something shattered.
“Whad’ya mean Grace?” I questioned.
“All I’m sayin’ is that people do mean things on purpose all the time, just cause you don’t know why doesn’t mean that don’t have a meaning of their own.”
“Grace that’s stupid,” said Danny “It was really an accident, why would anyone-”
But silence had filled the room, and our teacher had begun to speak, wandering her way as she did through the beginnings of some topic I was not particularly interested in. Preferring to meddle with my newly pierced earrings instead, I glanced around the room, legs kicking freely beneath my chair and noting the surprisingly still appearance of my classmates. A radio crackled in the background, the reporter voicing something urgent and soft. Outside a bird had fallen silent, the cloud above it darkening almost in sync. The old door at the front of the room creaked open and heels clicked into the room, all the while my teacher’s voice droning in the background. My head turned and my stomach went with it as my eyes fell on the teacher who had just entered the room. She was crying, and despite her attempts to hide it, he shoulders shook wildly with her hands, failing to button her light coat.
“I’m heading out Laura” she stammered to my teacher “I’ll let you know if I hear anything from him.”
The door snapped shut and my ear began to bleed from the constant fiddling around my new earring. Head turning I decided maybe I should make an effort to listen to my teacher, who had also paled, and was stammering slightly now, her voice nearing a breaking point I had never before heard:
“…It happened about 30 minutes ago now, and we’re still not quite sure of the details, but some of you maybe going home to spend time with your mommies and daddies soon, just until we figure out what’s going on.”
“But why would anyone fly a plane into a building?”A small boy in the back of the room asked tentatively “Wouldn’t people get hurt?”
“Yes” she responded “But it might have been an accident, we don’t know yet. New York City is a very big place, it might take some time. The truth is, people do very…” her voiced faded searching sadly for a word, “very strange things sometimes, we can’t always understand them.”
Grace’s chair squeaked next to me and her dark eyes grew wide
“Do you think somebody meant to hurt somebody, Mrs. B?” she asked, uncomfortably close to eager.
Mrs. B held Graces gaze for a long time, yet the class remained still. Her eyes swept through ours, and the world fell unnaturally quiet, as if everyone was waiting for an answer. As if the nation together was waiting to hear, sitting criss-cross apple sauce on the floor, juice in hand, minds as hopeful as any second grader, united and vulnerable against an unknown enemy. It was in this way that they wanted to hear it from a trusted most loved source, that everything was an accident. That no one could truly muster that kind of evil, that depth of meanness.
“You’re a smart class” she said finally, a car passing loudly outside. “Sometimes people are mean. Sometimes people knock down each other’s blocks.” She slowed again looking for the softest words “ It does happen.”
“Yes, but is that what happened this time?” chirped Grace, her voice rankling and disturbing the acquired still of the world.
“We don’t know yet Grace. But it is possible. I guess we just have to be prepared for anything now”
The silence remained, but now there were small anxious movements throughout the room, and second graders began to do what second graders did best. They whispered. Theories spread through the room like disease, and suddenly children were crying, their ears red from excitement. Teachers came from all areas, and those few so deeply affected were escorted out with promises of numerous treats. Those left were instructed to color images of their feelings right then. I nearly drew a band-aid, as I know strongly needed one for my ear by then, but instead settled on beginning a large confused smiley face, complete with its very own braids, mirroring mine. Yet just as I went to add the necessary freckles, a wetness touched by arm, and I discovered that one side of my paper had already been destroyed by the remaining yellow juice. My throat closed and I gasped. This had been one piece of art. I looked up at Danny whose hands were shaking badly, and I held his eye contact. Graces crayons squeaked next to me.
“I’m so sorry, JA” he began “it was an acci-“
But he stopped when his eyes met mine again, and I felt them narrow to suspicious slits.
“Sometimes we don’t know why people do things Danny, they just do.”
Danny’s eyes sunk, his face reddening all the way up to the tip of his ears, now a dark shade of purple, and he backed up slowly out of his chair, and I sat watching what I thought to be his evil features the entire time. Danny, the doodle killing machine, left to go to the bathroom, and didn’t come back all day. I stood up to throw away the remainder of my confusion, and glared angrily at a girl who had left her foot in the aisle, surely to trip me. She glared back angrily, and my face twisted as if by the effect of some sour candy. A plane flew loudly over the school and I opened my mouth to confront my assailant…
