from the carton. After a while we started making plans to meet outside of school. He brought me a note from his mother (no doubt written by Cristo himself) giving me permission to pick him up at his house, so I took him out for pizza, to the movies, and to the park to go sledding after a snowstorm. I took him to church on Easter, and for his birthday we went to the YMCA to swim in the indoor pool since heâd written a story called âThe Saddest Dayâ about how lost he felt when the public pool in his neighborhood closed down.
I know Iâve crossed the line. Iâm breaking rules that could cost me my job. But who else does he have? Who else do I have? Iâm not supposed to care this much about a student, to be this involved, but I donât know how to stop. Of course he is not my son. But he is not simply my student. He is another species entirely. Every school has a student like Cristo: a kid who lives on the border between civilization and wilderness. Every school has a teacher like me: a bridge between two worlds. If heâs not careful, heâll spend his whole life split in two. If Iâm not careful, Iâll spend mine holding his together.
Once school ends, I spend all my free time trying to convince myself Iâm not pregnant. After two weeks of denial, three days of eating nothing but egg rolls and ice cream, and five episodes of General Hospital I taped during the week, itâs finally time to take a pregnancy test.
I was pregnant once before, during my junior year of high school. I was sixteen years old. The boy lived in the projects where my Tia Sonia and Tio Ernesto lived. I went to their apartment every day after school so I saw him all the time. He was like a cousin to me. I didnât have a crush on him, not in the conventional sense, but I did like him. His eyes were a beautiful shade of green and his hair was shiny and black like licorice. He was quiet and kind to old people, and he always had change for the vending machine. He would buy me peanut M&Ms orGoobers almost every day and he didnât get mad or tease me when I ate the whole bag. He would simply buy another one.
His name was Alberto, but we all called him Tito. He wasnât handsome. He was small and frail like a middle schooler and I remember him getting carded for cigarettes well after he turned eighteen. One night he told me heâd actually started smoking because he wanted to look older, figuring the nicotine couldnât do anything to stunt his growth that his genes hadnât already achieved. He had thick glasses he never took off, even during the three times we had sex, and kids used to joke that he showered in those glasses. When they teased him he would bend his head and smile and never refute it. His skin was pocked with acne, even on his back, and I remember running my finger over the bumps when he was on top of me, wondering what they looked like in the light, if they hurt, and if he would bleed onto his sheets when he slept shirtless in the summertime.
But I knew he never did. He hid his body as well as I hide mine, in long-sleeved shirts, loose jeans, and puffy ski jackets that doubled his size, making him almost as chubby as me. He used to say he didnât mind that I was fat. Un poquito gordita , he would say, hugging me from behind. He used to tell me that he couldnât feel my bones, that I was like a perfect pillow since he could rest on any part of my body and be equally comfortable. We used to spend hours in the playground with the other teenagers, and while they rolled lopsided joints and played Spades on the concrete, we would eat candy bars and talk about the fastest trains in the world or what it would feel like to be stuck on a submarine for two years. Tito laid his head on my soft curves, both of us wishing we had the means to escape from that penned-in playground, by any mode of transportation modern science would allow.
I stood out for a lot of reasons growing
I know Iâve crossed the line. Iâm breaking rules that could cost me my job. But who else does he have? Who else do I have? Iâm not supposed to care this much about a student, to be this involved, but I donât know how to stop. Of course he is not my son. But he is not simply my student. He is another species entirely. Every school has a student like Cristo: a kid who lives on the border between civilization and wilderness. Every school has a teacher like me: a bridge between two worlds. If heâs not careful, heâll spend his whole life split in two. If Iâm not careful, Iâll spend mine holding his together.
Once school ends, I spend all my free time trying to convince myself Iâm not pregnant. After two weeks of denial, three days of eating nothing but egg rolls and ice cream, and five episodes of General Hospital I taped during the week, itâs finally time to take a pregnancy test.
I was pregnant once before, during my junior year of high school. I was sixteen years old. The boy lived in the projects where my Tia Sonia and Tio Ernesto lived. I went to their apartment every day after school so I saw him all the time. He was like a cousin to me. I didnât have a crush on him, not in the conventional sense, but I did like him. His eyes were a beautiful shade of green and his hair was shiny and black like licorice. He was quiet and kind to old people, and he always had change for the vending machine. He would buy me peanut M&Ms orGoobers almost every day and he didnât get mad or tease me when I ate the whole bag. He would simply buy another one.
His name was Alberto, but we all called him Tito. He wasnât handsome. He was small and frail like a middle schooler and I remember him getting carded for cigarettes well after he turned eighteen. One night he told me heâd actually started smoking because he wanted to look older, figuring the nicotine couldnât do anything to stunt his growth that his genes hadnât already achieved. He had thick glasses he never took off, even during the three times we had sex, and kids used to joke that he showered in those glasses. When they teased him he would bend his head and smile and never refute it. His skin was pocked with acne, even on his back, and I remember running my finger over the bumps when he was on top of me, wondering what they looked like in the light, if they hurt, and if he would bleed onto his sheets when he slept shirtless in the summertime.
But I knew he never did. He hid his body as well as I hide mine, in long-sleeved shirts, loose jeans, and puffy ski jackets that doubled his size, making him almost as chubby as me. He used to say he didnât mind that I was fat. Un poquito gordita , he would say, hugging me from behind. He used to tell me that he couldnât feel my bones, that I was like a perfect pillow since he could rest on any part of my body and be equally comfortable. We used to spend hours in the playground with the other teenagers, and while they rolled lopsided joints and played Spades on the concrete, we would eat candy bars and talk about the fastest trains in the world or what it would feel like to be stuck on a submarine for two years. Tito laid his head on my soft curves, both of us wishing we had the means to escape from that penned-in playground, by any mode of transportation modern science would allow.
I stood out for a lot of reasons growing
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