Ground Zero

It really still feels like yesterday...my starting out in Pilsen, Little Village. It really feels like I was just sitting in the front office, clutching my teacher portfolio, brimful with satisfying material for a curriculum specialist or college professor to approve. My initiation there would trump all my carefully knitted lesson plans and common core standards. 3 years out, still finding myself at ground zero with this. His name was Abel, and I remember him vividly. He was rather quiet, charming, and reserved. His first impression of me, unbeknownst to me, would be blurted out upon my distribution of our next worksheet. He said as I passed, "You're a nice little teacher aren't you? Not one of these assholes who don't know shit, but you, you're a nice one." I turned around and said something like, "I'd hope you'd know I'm a nice one, and a tough one too. Now start filling out those questions with a partner."I believe that was my last year there. I would later find myself closer to Englewood, further south, right between back of the yards. Abel, like most at-risk youth, was in and out that school year. We'd small talk when he'd show up, and he'd inform me of what's hot on the block, and his run ins with "5-0." My natural impulse would always kick in to try to level with him, preach to him, try to save him from the streets by pursuing this high school diploma that was so close within reach. He nodded, and always told me he'd want that, but it wasn't that simple.Fast forward one school year, I was already out of "La Villita." Was several months pregnant with a-nothing fits-syndrome. I was perusing through jackets at a neighborhood Burlington Coat Factory when I hear, "Hey Mrs. G." I look up, and there's Abel with a smile growing from cheek to cheek as he sprinted towards me. Waddling behind him was a very pregnant young lady, about 5 feet with light brown hair and glistening eyes. I nodded like a solider would to another solider...I know your pain, those swollen ankles, and that penguin walk all too well."It's me, Abel. Hey babe, this was my teacher from Latino Youth. She was cool as hell. How you been? Here with my lady, she's pregnant and we're buying stuff.""I'm doing ok, pregnant myself. Just trying to find a jacket that fits all the way around," as I chuckled. "What's up with you, did you ever graduate?" He put his head down in a bit of some shame. "Nah, some stuff went down and it never happened. But I'm gonna get it though." "It was great seeing you Abel, congrats on your baby. Take care man, be careful out there." "Thanks Mrs. G., it's crazy out in the neighborhood, it's good you got out." I thought in that moment internally, nah, I'm never out in spirit.Our conversation ended quickly, and on the way out, I saw him again. He opened the door for me like a gentleman. I overheard him say to his pregnant girlfriend that I was once again, "Cool as hell." Interesting simile, but I knew what he meant. I was accepted, received, and affirmed as a teacher who could teach some of the toughest and most elite gang members and win their trust, well, eventually. That was around winter of 2013. Little did he know, that'd be his last winter.Abel would later be shot at close range in the chest, as he drove around with his fellow gang members on July 14, 2014. DOA-Dead on arrival. Rival gang member came to the car at close range, or on "foot patrol" and blasted him several times as he rode shot gun. Found out from a friend of mine in Costa Rica, a fellow teacher who stayed at Latino Youth and doing some great things in the neighborhood. When he told me, I froze, but psychologically pushed it away. That wasn't a good idea. It'd come oozing out the upcoming school year.Back home in the Berwyn/Cicero area, it'd be triggered and fall on me like a crumbling wall with large chunks of dry wall piercing my head and my chest at once. Room 246 is nothing like Room 214/208 from the hood. Yet, I still had to deal with things that would yank me back, and yank me hard. I'll call him Ricky. He sits in the back, comes in late, blurts out inappropriate comments, always testing my patience. One day I pulled him out, as he had recently challenged me with a drive by, "You're just like every other teacher, you act like you care, but you don't care, you are no one in here." I said, "Oh yah? Tell me that when I was going to student funerals, raising money for their dead loved ones, and visiting them in the ICU. You don't know me Ricky, you don't me." "Yah, well that passed already." My jaw dropped. Can you believe that? Questioning my heart, my realness, my authenticity? Me? Mrs. G.? I was pissed to say the very least. Seconds later, whips out his phone just to spite me. Was looking at him in my peripheral vision. Still fuming over his last accusations, I leaped across the room, leaned in and said, "Give me your phone." "Nope, you take it, I'm not giving it to you." So I grabbed it. My finger hit his home button and his home screen lit up. There it was...hints of gang association masqueraded in a lock screen pic. My heart plummeted to the floor so fast, my chest tightened. "Outside the classroom now." He followed me quietly, and there it all unloaded. The rest was all too familiar, almost every word.That night I went home and started to spiral. PTSD symptoms started blaring like EMT sirens. The next day I was barely functioning. "Write this down guys," as I faced the board while tears started streaming down my face. I acted like I wanted to check out in the hallway for something and quickly used my scarf to wipe them away, but they weren't going away. Then Abel's face, our Burlington conversation started replaying. His last comments to me in my classroom started repeating like an old record on a needle, "You a nice little teacher, you a nice little teacher, you a nice little teacher..." I finally had to confess to that class what was going on because I wasn't sure if I was gonna make it. They probed a little, and I answered in broken sentences. There was a hush of silence for a moment, and just barely I survived to my prep period. Ricky and Abel had crushed my heart, and under my desk, metaphorically, I was trying to find the broken pieces.Telling my colleagues at lunch, their eyes gouged open. "You should write a memoir on this, we'd buy it." You know what, I'm entertaining that idea. For a sole purpose. To give all the victims and their families a voice. To pay tribute, homage to the fallen. They were ALL kids, none past 21 years old. I will not be abdicating their responsibility, but I promised a grieving mother, as I have aforementioned, that in the name of her dead son, I would do something, anything in my classroom to promote peace and reconciliation. I'm indebted to that promise. Perhaps I'm thinking of naming it, Teacher Chronicles: The First 10 years. I heard the subtitle in a dream recently. And you know what, maybe I will...