Chaos I Contain

If walls could talk, oh, the things I’d tell you about the chaos I contain, how I witness the unraveling of society like a mutant cat attacking a ball of yarn. I’d also tell you, how I’m just a degenerate like the rest of my compatriots. And they’ll complain just the same. Because in the end, I’m government funded.

I could complain all day, but there are more interesting things afoot. After another long day of containing the noise of squealing adolescents, the building empties to dim lights casting shadows over water warped ceiling tiles and stained, trampled, industrial carpet lost from its original color. Once all the hellions of the ghetto are gone, the single adult who vainly kept down the preadolescent pandemonium sags in her chair and cries… like normal.

This time however, this woman who’s come and gone from my classroom, enduring her overseers oversight and the hellions’ parentage’s scrutiny for almost a decade, pulls up her laptop, scans the sagging cupboards, the motivation posters–one on my far right had the tape already peeling off, again. Tape and concrete don’t mix, lady, you try it every time! Anyways, she pulls up her laptop and starts job searching to no avail. Teaching related jobs snatch up like the bug traps in my corners.

“Rough life, eh?” I say, more out of humor to myself. Didn’t expect her to actually hear an inanimate conscientious object .

The woman pretty much jumps out of her seat, as much as a slightly obese woman could. I mean, I deal with black mold, rats, and water stains. She deals with stress induced weight gain and eating habits that do little to cope with either. She’s got her cold coffee thermos and an empty diet caffeine soda sitting next to family pictures and cutesy teaching knick-knacks –all of which fail to validate her occupation… and my existence.

“Am I going crazy?” the poor woman says. Her eyes bulge as she stares from surface to surface of each wall, of me.

“Yes and no,” I say. “I’ve always been talking, but perhaps now you’re ready to listen.”

She blinks a while and sits back and takes a gagged sip at her room-temperature coffee.

“Yes and no, huh?”

“I mean. You’re working here. You chose to be here, I was put up and neglected.”

She sinks into her chair and stares at the pictures. I can tell she thinks maybe this is some sort of prank. Maybe someone put a speaker in the ceiling. So I console her the best I can.

“Wanna know who’s drawing the dicks on your desks?”

She balks. “Who?”

“That one dark skinned kid always wearing the faded puffy coat.”

“Jeremy?”

“I don’t know names. I don’t know your name.”

“Tracy. But I’m Ms. Rattenburg. Sometimes called The Ratt… or Ms. Rotten Burger has been the recent rave” she trails off and wipes a tear with the heel of her hand. “Why do I do this wall? I don’t even know if this is a joke, but I don’t even care anymore.”

“I don’t know why you do this.”

“I mean,” she rubs her tightly knotted up hair. “I mean, Jeremy for example. I can’t get mad at him. That jacket is likely all he’s got. He never takes it off. I bet it’s bare skin under that faded, smelly thing. He’s failing and his parents don’t care. Don’t respond. I know nothing going on at home.”

“The wall in room 401 says he bit a girl.”

Tracy shakes her head. Sighs. “Yeah, that’s Susan Mills. She called his mom a drugged up whore. A drugged up whore! Who does that? Not that she’s in any better place. She’s been in and out of foster care and her father has an outstanding restraining order. Can’t get within 500 feet of the school or the girl.”

She sits in silence. I don’t respond right away. It’s the same old sob story. Almost every kid walking through this school, caught in the urban slums, has drugs, guns, and violence floating between their walls. I was built in 1982 but never had much potential for greatness. I came with outdated electronics. Overhead projectors were a dream to the educators in my youth. Oh, the wonderment I had. The feeling of encapsulating the emerging generations as their minds were populated with solutions to the world’s problems… oh how naive I was at such a young structure.

“Wall,” Tracy says after I’m silent for too long.

“Still here. Always here. Watching, listening, enduring all the nonsense.”

“What should I do? Do I give up? Do I leave? I can’t abandon these kids…”

“I would if I could.”

“Why?”

“Can’t walls dream too? How would it be not to have a rat scurry along my basestrips.”

“Rats?”

“Oh, all the time. Mostly mice, but sometimes some big ones come around through the night.”

Tracy shudders.

“But to be a wall in a nice place where people put nice posters on me–”

“Hey!”

“Tacky and cliche, all these dumb posters. ‘Your Only Limit is Your Mind?’ Oh please, most these kids won’t escape the same fate as me. Run down and used.”

“It’s better to hope.”

“Take it from a forty-something year-old wall… it doesn’t.”

“So what do I do?”

“Take care of yourself, girl. Unlike me, you’ve got those damn legs. Get out of here. See something, build something.”

“Do I just give up on these kids?” she sniffles.

“That’s all those bigwigs walking in and out of here telling you that. If they truly cared, they’d pay you more. They’d fix me. They’d make all school walls built the same. There’s been dozens of other teachers besides you in and out of my room. They’re all as haggard as you.”

Tracy sits back and stares at the wall. “I’ve never been on a cruise.”

“That’s only a word I’ve heard some people say.”

“You go on a boat, out to sea. You eat food, rest in the sun, play for a week.”

“And the most fun I get are decorations on one side and acid rain on the other.”

“Hard life as a wall?” she asks.

“Goes by fast. I’m like a temporary rock.”

This time Tracy falls silent. She looks up at the ceiling and sighs. In her lowest point of her career she’d never have thought she’d have a conversation with an inanimate object. But already the mandatory half-hour she has to remain after hours is up, and she slips her laptop and cold coffee thermos into her bag. She rubs her tired feet before slipping them back into the cushioned but worn shoes.

“At least retirement is supposed to be nice. Pension and everything.”

I scoff. “Right, what’s my retirement? Someday they’re going to bulldoze me and haul me off to the landfill. What will I do there? Rot with all the food, plastic waste, and battery acid.”

“Good night wall. Thank you for talking with me. I’m not sure if I’m insane or not, or if I’m just really, really tired.”

“Oh, you’re insane. But it’s not because a wall is talking to you.”

“Oh?”

“You became a middle school teacher, girl!”

She blinks at the room, those little brain muscles trying to rethink everything she dreamed. I would know. I remember those bright eyes glowing when she first entered this room nearly ten years ago. She set up all the pretty decorations, nearly draining her personal coffers, then cried the same she did tonight when she realized she was out of her depth. She was, by human mating standards, likely an appealing female. Thinner, lack of blemish, didn’t have the bags under her eyes yet either.

“You should go to a doctor,” I say, “You know, the body handymen you humans have.”

“Don’t get me started on that. I would if I could afford it.”

“Don’t you have insurance?”

“Don’t you have… insurance, or, a warranty?”

“Well played.”

And with that, she left.

#

For the following weeks my relationship with this exhausted creature changed. During her “quiet” moments of prep while she furiously typed emails, graded, or worked on lessons, she’d speak aloud to me embracing her delirium. I almost felt a kinship with her at times. She even went so far as to take down some of the posters I complained about and put up nature posters. Almost like looking through a window with an actual view. Almost.

In all honesty, things were looking up for us. She seemed to take talking to a wall as a method of therapy and told me what her walls were like at her apartment and how she misses her parent’s walls. She talked about how she’d been to the Great Wall of China once. I, of course, made fun of her for that one. That one was about as useful as the Berlin Wall. Or the one that one blonde supposedly important dude, the one that talked funny, tried to build between the US and Mexico. Good times. Good chats.

It wasn’t until the day Jeremy threw a chair at the wall and put a hole in me that things went awry. Yeah, let me tell you about it. So the kid comes in. He supposedly got a haircut, but it looked like he did it himself ‘cause it was uneven and the curls stuck out like black mossy tufts. Trust me… I know. Anyways, kids were laughing behind his back and he was sinking deeper and deeper into his faded puffy jacket when one kid blurted out too loud, “Did a lawnmower cut your hair?”

Jeremy flipped. He flipped good. He picked up his chair and, luckily, missed. But the leg smacked me good and punctured my plaster corner. The boy screamed and lept on the other boy biting and thrashing. Tracy, shocked, ran to the boy and did her best, but failed to pull him off the now bleeding and crying white boy. Soon a police officer burst into the room and tackled the poor thirteen year old to the floor like he was some armed bank robber, and the rotund balding admin stood glowering in the door frame.

Once everything got settled and the assaulted student and the manhandled boy were hauled from the room, Tracy was left with wide eyes, messy hair, and a disheveled blouse and skirt. Once her sixth period ended and the hooligans departed with cuss words, gossip, and innuendoes echoing in their wake. She sat in the silence of her room shuddering and once again near tears.

“What happened, Wall?” Tracy asked.

“Jeremy went nuts.”

“Why?”

“Ah, that curly haired kid was making fun of him. Said something about his hair.”

“Oh dear,” Tracy sighed.

“All the kids were whispering it.”

“Why do they have to be so cruel to each other?”

Before I could answer, however, the door to her room opened and the bald-headed red faced administrator entered. Mr. Greenfield. The name does not live up to the personality. The guy’s been tormenting the school for about two years. Last principal retired, his replacement was… less ideal.

“Ms. Rattenburg, do you have a moment in which we could talk?”

She nodded looking at me wondering if he heard us talking.

“Would you care to explain how this happened today?” Mr. Greenfield asked.

She explained, reciting everything I had said. “So, unfortunately, Carl provoked Jeremy.”

He nods, contemplative. “Did you know that some of the kids took video of the affair?”

Tracy shakes her head and looks at me. I shrug, but you know, as a solid wall without joints or fleshiness… I didn’t actually do anything.

“They did?”

“And now our school is coming under media scrutiny since our SRO was shown tackling a black student to the ground, even though he was defending Carl.”

“Oh dear,” is all Tracy could say.

“So, now I have to ask, what were you doing during this?”

“Excuse me?” we both say. She jumps when I spoke, but Mr. Greenfield didn’t seem to notice.

Tracy gathers her wits. “I, well, I was at my desk. I, I was pulling up a presentation. I think.”

“You know that one of the effective methods of classroom management is presence right.”

“I, I’m aware.”

“Making rounds about the room, encouraging students. Precorrection.”

“I do that. Like I said, I was setting up a presentation.”

“And students shouldn’t have cellphones in the classroom. Why are you allowing them to have cellphones?”

“I don’t. If they have them out I take them away.”

“Well, they certainly had them out during that little scuttle. I’m sorry Ms. Rattenburg, but I’m worried about your classroom management skills.” The man circles the room and stops at one of the posters, the nature one. My nature window. “What do these posters have to do with Math? You should have only content related decorations in the room.” Then he tugs on a poster. “You are only allowed to use painters tape.”

“It falls off.”

“Regardless, I’ll need you to take these down.” He moves on and circles her room. He brushes his thick fingers over my new injury. “It appears that you have not been fostering a safe and inclusive classroom. As an educator you need to make sure you recognize and report all concerns with the students.”

I scoff.

He says that right as he passes a Pride poster and a safe space sign. What an ass.

This time, Tracy flushes red. She stands from her seat, heart pounding and her breath heaving. “With all due respect, sir. I have. I have reported him. So has Mr. Tibbs and Mrs. Redwood. They all have. Nothing’s been done. We’ve even suggested a social worker check on his house.”

“It should’ve never come down to this. I’d expect better from you. You’ve been here a while, I’m sure you're a talented teacher, but we’re going to have to write you up. You’ll need to provide evidence of classroom management and incident mitigation techniques.”

“What?” Tracy says, speechless.

“Holy shit, girl,” I shout. “Don’t just stand there, say something!”

She startles and looks to me, again Mr. Greenfield didn’t seem to notice.

“Consider this a warning. I have some emails I have to write. Looks like I have a busy night.”

“You gonna take that, Tracy?” I ask.

She looks to me and to the principal. He still doesn’t notice. “Why can’t he hear you?” she asked.

Mr. Greenfield stops, “Excuse me?”

“Oh nothing sir,” she says. She clenches her fist and breathes deep.

“Probably too dense. More than me,” I chuckle.

“Superintendent is coming tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll be meeting with you,” Mr. Greenfield says.

“You gonna take that, girl? You gonna take that man’s shit?” I shout.

She shakes her head. She pinches her eyes shut, cogs turning. Then she flushes red. “No.”

“What is that?” Mr. Greenfield says, stopping in his tracks.

“I said no,” she snaps. “I won’t. I won’t be coming back tomorrow. I’m taking a sick day.”

“Personal days need to be approved in advance.”

“No!” she shouts. “No, I quit!”

The principal swings around, blinking in surprise.

“I’m tired of this. I’m tired of it all. I can’t pay my bills, I can’t,” she starts to cry, heaving as tears drizzle down her flushed cheeks. “After everything I’ve put up with you dare come down here and accuse me of being at fault for that poor boy’s outburst? When I have referred him to the office so many times, when I have reached out to his parents over and over and they haven’t once, not once, replied to my emails or calls. He’s bitten kids in the past. He’s pushed them in the hallways. He’s vandalized this room, and it isn’t until he beats some white kid up and gets on the news because Officer Fredrickson tackled him that anyone cares. No, no. I’m done. I’m done. This isn’t worth it. I can’t sleep. My health is terrible. I’m overweight. I have headaches all the time. I don’t even dare visit the doctor. No, I’m finished. I quit!”

“Keep going girl! You tell him!” I shout.

She looks right at the nature poster, at what she probably thinks is the center of my essence. She whispers. “Why can’t he hear you?”

“No idea, but keep going. This is too good. More exciting than watching that kid draw dicks on your desks.”

“Ms. Rattenburg, you are out of line.”

“I quit,” she says, shaking her head. “I quit and I’m not coming back.”

And with that she pulls out her school issued laptop and slams it on the desk. She grabs the family pictures and storms out past a shocked Mr. Greenfield.

She stops in the doorway and looks at me again.

“Goodbye,” she says past the administrator’s shoulder.

This time I don’t respond as an unburdened woman leaves into the unknown.

#

I’d like to say things got better, but the next day, of course, Tracy never showed. The children filed into a classroom with an empty teacher’s desk. Perhaps Mr. Greenfield thought she was bluffing, but his office walls later passed down the news that he was fuming and scrambling to find a long term sub and post the job opening. HR confirmed her threat a reality. For the first few days the room sat dark and quiet. Some of the kids blamed Jeremy, but when he never came back either, not expelled, just disappeared, the school was off its hinges. Perhaps social services stepped in and got him out of his home, or maybe something else happened.

Regardless, soon some crusty old man with stains on a v-neck became the long-term sub. He came out of retirement to make extra cash since, as his mutterings during prep indicated, his wife’s medical bills were getting the better of him. He was gone a lot, however, frequently taking sick days, and if a teacher didn’t volunteer their prep and admin or IT or district office employees were too tied up to sub, kids walked into an empty classroom. There were two other rooms just the same. One girl even videoed it on her phone, “Ain’t got no teacher again today,” she said. “Now that Ms. Rattenburg is gone, I miss her. I want to learn and not have all these dumb papers from Mr. Black.”

Eventually the school year came to a close. The last few weeks of school were a nearly empty classroom and an exacerbated principal. I don’t know if a new teacher will fill Tracy’s spot, but I will say this, I do miss her. She never came back. Some of those personal affects she left behind are stuffed in a box under a counter. It’s the only thing I have to remember her by. I can’t help but wonder if I broke her. If it was my fault. I was built to house education, to be the walls that protected and sustained the nurturing minds of America, and here I was, molding and bitter, and chased a fine teacher away.

Well, not that it matters. Everyone, Mr. Black or any other stand-in, no matter how much I heckled and taunted, not a single one acknowledged me. Only Tracy ever heard me. So, I sit in humid darkness, empty but for the occasional apathetic custodian coming in to tidy. I know this room will always, always feel empty and my walls will contain nothing but children’s misgivings.