What are you wearing?

"What are you wearing?"

Unfortunately, it wasn't a handsome man on the other end of the telephone with me, it was somebody's mother. Shemekia had told her that she was late coming home today because she'd been with me, helping me close up my classroom for the summer.

She hadn't. I hadn't seen her all day, in fact.

"Really?" she said. "Because she claims she was with you for four hours and you were helping her get her cell phone back."

I laughed. Four hours? I was pretty sure I'd have remembered that.

"You'd think Shemekia would remember that, too," she replied. "In fact, if she'd spent such a long time with you today, you'd think she'd even know what you were wearing. What are you wearing?"

I looked down at my outfit. A blue shirt and green skirt. White sandals.

I heard her turn to Shemekia and ask the question. "What?" I heard Shemekia's voice in the background. "How should I know what she was wearing? I wasn't paying attention."

"Okay," her mother said. "But you'd probably remember how she was wearing her hair. How did you wear your hair today, Miss Baader?"

Down, I said. Pulled back with a headband because of the heat.

"Huh," said her mother. "A girl who spent four hours with you should remember that, don't you think? I mean, if she'd been with you this whole time, she'd know. What did her hair look like Shemekia?" She didn't even give Shemekia time to answer. "You don't know? How curious. See, Shemekia thinks I was born her mother. She doesn't understand that I was once a teenager too. She doesn't understand that her mother is an investigator."

I can see that.

"I want to thank you, Miss Baader, for spending all that time with Shemekia today. It must have been so important because she remembers so much about it."

I laughed. Tell Shemekia that I'll see her in the fall. She's got me for English again next year.

"Oh, I will," she said. "And I'll see you, too. Next open school night, I'll make a point of it. Shemekia's going to know that we've got her on all sides, you and I. You have a good summer, Miss Baader."

You, too. You too.

My Real Mother

"My mother's here," said Anthony.

I'd never seen him so happy.

You mean your grandmother? I asked. She'd been up to the school several times, especially after he'd gotten in trouble. See, there was that incident when I caught him with the survival knife in his bookbag. Apparently he'd felt it necessary to carry it for protection.

With the way he got picked on every day, I could understand why.

"No. My mother's here," he said again. "My real mother."

I wondered briefly if it were possible to spontaneously combust from sheer joy.

"She's in the office," he said. "She's waiting for me."

Can I meet her?

"No," he said. "She can't stay. I just wanted to tell you she's here. My mother's here. My real mother." He grinned one last time and ran out of the classroom.

For half a minute I was tempted to follow him, tempted to find her in the office and ask her where the hell she'd been. But I didn't. Anthony deserved this moment.

Later, when he was older, he'd ask her that question himself. For now, I could only hope that he' be satisfied with her answer.

Aw, Nuts.

There's been a report on the news all day about a woman who died enroute from Haiti to NYC. Her family brought a suit against American Airlines, complaining that they should have been better prepared to help her. I watched the report and thought: they're absolutely right.

Let me tell you about the time when I almost died on an airplane.

Okay. Maybe that's a slight exaggeration. I could have almost died, though.

Yes, I know. You've already dismissed my argument because I began it with a (slight) exaggeration, but you need to understand: I could have almost died. The flight attendants couldn't have known the difference just by looking at me.

You see, I'm allergic to peanuts. When I eat peanuts, I usually know immediately because my throat reacts. At first, it's only mildly uncomfortable. I want to spit. Then, it starts to feel like I have strep throat. My lips will start to swell as if someone's punched me. Or a bee stung me. Yes, that's what it looks like. A bee sting. If I don't get Benadryl in me immediately, my throat and lungs start to close up and I start to wheeze. Then I itch. My whole body feels like I want to peel it off, and all I can do is curl up in a little ball and shake.

It's, shall we say, not pretty.

I haven't had a reaction like that in years because I'm usually very careful. If I go to a new restaurant, I'll tell the people serving me that I can't have nuts and even have them check with the chef to make sure that an iffy dish isn't cooked in peanut oil. Once, back when I lived in Brooklyn, I had to leave a restaurant, run two blocks to the nearest drug store, take a Benadryl, and come back. It was mildly embarassing, to say the least, but I was with friends who pretended not to notice how strange I looked afterwards. That one never got past the throat-closing stage, thank god.

Another time, I was at Denny's with some camp friends. We decided to order dessert, and even though I said no peanuts, one or two got in mine. I started hacking and Spaz said, "Simon, I swear to god if you die on me I'm going to kill you."

I didn't die.

(On a side note, I believe that was the same night that someone called the restaurant and asked them if Mike Hunt was there. The security guard went from table to table asking for Mike Hunt until, suddenly, he caught on. It was damn funny, even if I was wheezing.)

One time it happened to me when I was at work. I'd gone to Subway for lunch, and that one day I said to myself: hey. I'm going to have cookies. So I bought the cookies, brought them back to my desk, and ate about two bites.

That was when I learned that I was allergic to Macadamia nuts, too.

I remember I went to the bathroom to try to throw up, but it was too late: the reaction had already set in. It was faster than usual, too. I ended up shaking on a couch in a corner when somebody found me. Scared the hell out of them, too. They were about ready to call for an ambulance. I still remember how Oliver ran to the store for me. Oliver. Sigh. He was hot.

Where was I? Oh. Dying on the airplane.

So I was on a flight home from Japan. We were about two hours over the Pacific when the flight attendants came with snacks and drinks. All of us were starving because they'd loaded the plane early, sat on the tarmac for about a thousand years, and then took off. I think it had been five hours since I'd eaten, and when they handed me the small bag of trail mix, I didn't look at the list of ingredients too closely.

Again, it didn't take long. I tried to talk myself out of what I was feeling. It was probably just the airplane air getting to me, I thought. Please, please, please. I read the list of ingredients: no peanuts. Then, when I flipped the little thing over to the side, it said: may contain trace elements of nuts.

Trace elements? Again I tried to talk myself out of what I was feeling. My throat wasn't closing. It wasn't. My arms weren't starting to shake. Shit. They were. They really were.

Now, at this point in any peanut story, people are going to say, well, you should have been able to reach into your purse and just pull out the Benadryl, right?

Well, right. Except that my Benadryl wasn't in my purse. It was in my suitcase. Which I'd checked. Yeah.

The thing is, you never think it's going to happen. Not again. Years go by between accidental peanut attacks. I'm very careful. I swear.

So I climb out of my seat. I'm sitting next to this woman who's a Marine on her way back to the states and she's not friendly at all. I tell her I need to get out and she huffs and moves her knees so I have to do a bit of mountain climbing in order to get out.

The flight attendants are cleaning up from the snacks. Excuse me, I say. I think I just ate peanuts.

They look at me blankly.

I'm allergic, I explain. Mildly, so as not to panic anyone.

Again, they look at me blankly.

My Benadryl is in my suitcase, I go on, and I need some. Now. Or else I'll go into shock. We've got a very small window of time before I start wheezing.

The head flight attendant looks at me. "Why did you eat the trail mix if it had peanuts in it?"

It doesn't have peanuts in it, I say. But it has something in it that is causing a reaction. I need Benadryl.

"I'm not allowed to administer Benadryl," she says. "Only a doctor is allowed."

Do you have Benadryl?

"Yes," she admits, "But it won't do any good. The paperwork requires that a certified M.D. opens up the first aid kit."

I stare at her. I want this to be over, and she's making that impossible. So what do we do?

"We page a doctor," she explains. "There's usually one an any airplane."

And if there isn't?

She avoids answering. Instead, she walks to the P.A. and starts the page. We wait. No one answers.

The Japanese flight attendant comes to the galley. She offers to repeat the page in Japanese. We wait.

Still nothing.

At this point, I'm starting to shake. Try again, I urge. I need this Benadryl now.

They page again, this time in English. And from the back of the plane, a man climbs out from the middle of a row. He's just lovely. Tall, with a soldier's haircut. Yes. Lovely. I'm not too sick that I don't notice that.

He makes his way to the galley. "What do you need?" he asks.

"I'll need to see some identification," says the nasty one.

He hands her his wallet.

She looks it over carefully. "This doesn't say MD," she says. "Are you certified to practice medicine?"

He clears his throat. "The army seems to think so, ma'am."

My hero.

He breaks open the kit and checks out the contents. I'm kind of leaning against a corner at this point. "Well," he says. "I've got some good news and some bad news."

What's the good news? I ask.

"There's Benadryl here."

And the bad news?

"No pills. I'll have to administer it as a shot."

Do I have to drop my pants? I said it with trepidation, but the truth is, I wouldn't have minded getting a little naked for this one.

He laughs. "No. I can do it in your arm. Why don't we go in the back where we can have a little privacy."

It was then that, for the first time, I looked around. Half the airplane was looking back. Christ.

We make our way to the back of the plane. I have to take my shirt off so he can get to my arm. I think to myself, damn. There are much better reasons to be taking your shirt off than this. I look down at his hand. Wedding ring. Even worse. I decide that I didn't see it. The fantasy was better that way.

He swabs me down with alcohol, puts the syringe in me, and it's over.

"By the way," he says. "That Benadryl is a pretty high dosage. You're probably going to sleep all the way to L.A."

He was right, too. The flight that seemed impossibly long on the way there passed in a Benadryl blur on the way back. At one point, my hero sought me out to check on me. I was in a fog, but I managed a response or two. I might have told him I loved him; I don't know.

All I know is I could have died. It's possible. And if it weren't for my lovely, hot heroic (did I mention hot?) medic, who knows what could have happened? The flight attendants were crippled by the rules. They were more worried about the paperwork than they were about me possibly expiring on their floor.

I didn't die, though. Aren't you glad?

Pee-Nice

I think I must have a freak magnet stapled to my forehead.

So not too long ago, I'm at the bar with the teachers. We'd been out a while, having a good time. Two of us had already gone home, and we had two empty seats. Two empty seats at a table full of women at a bar populated with about a billion men? They didn't stay empty long. Some guy sat down next to me and started talking.

He and his friend ordered beer and wings almost immediately. Clearly, they meant to stay awhile.

So okay. A man sits down next to me, and I'm going to talk to him, especially if I've had a beer or three. This is what I do. I talk to men. Most of them I hate after about five minutes, but still. You've got to try them on a while before you decide. I can't hate everybody, can I? Well, yes.

So this one worked for AT&T and he wanted to see my phone. Then he wanted to know what I do. He has one of the typical reactions to my job ("Oh, what do you do with all those bad kids? Punish them?"), and I'm bored already. But he'd ordered wings, and I was stuck. So I answered his questions. This happens to me a lot. I get cornered by somebody and I get stuck answering questions.

My friends in Brooklyn had a theory about this. "It's because you're from the midwest," they'd say. "A real New Yorker would have told that guy to fuck himself long ago." It's funny -- anything a New Yorker doesn't understand about the conservativism of rest of the country they blame on the midwest. Susan used to tell me that my real problem is I let people make eye contact. Once they make eye contact, they've got an in.

She's probably right.

Ivonne leans over and says she can get rid of these guys for me if I want. But it won't be pleasant. I sort of cringed. One must always be polite, mustn't one? I said I'd deal with it.

Telephone guy tapped me on the elbow. "I've got something to show you," he said. Then he flipped open his cell phone and told me to look at the picture. The picture? A penis. Erect.

Yeah. That was my reaction, too. I mean, what did the guy expect? That I would see the penis picture and say "take me, I'm yours"? I mean, seriously.

I wondered if he ran around showing off his dick to unsuspecting women all the time. We were in the middle of a bar, so of course he couldn't drop his pants. I suppose he chose the next best thing.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened to me.

Once I was walking down the street on my way to the train. This was a few years ago -- I was still living in Brooklyn. So I'm walking in my morning cloud (I'm impossible before nine o'clock in the morning. It's a wonder I can even function) and a man steps out from between two cars and shakes his dick at me.

At first, I didn't even notice. That's how much of a morning person I am not. And to be honest, there wasn't much to notice. When I did see what he was waving at me, I said, "Oh, for chrissakes," and kept walking. When I got to school that day, I told the story. Everyone said they'd have handled it differently. I should have pointed and laughed. I should have taken out my cell phone and called the cops. I should have, I should have, I should have...

It's because I was from the midwest, they said. They really couldn't blame me all that much. He probably sensed I was from the midwest and that's why he waved his dick at me.

But really: does anybody know what to do when that happens? I'm just so bemused by the unreality of the thing that reason escapes me.

Another incident: I was in Paris and I was on a rush hour train with my friend Kari. It was packed, and so when I felt a certain body part rubbing against my rear, I just shifted away. Then it happened again. The train car was packed. Whoever it was, wasn't going to move away without help. I stuck a sharp elbow in him.

We were on our way to the airport, and I had a heavy suitcase with me. The car began to empty out. We were one stop away from Charles de Gaulle when the lone remaining man in the car reached into his pants and pulled out his penis.

Kari and I looked at each other. "Put that away!" we said. In English. He was French. We tried to get out of the car, but when the train is in motion the doors don't open. We were stuck with penis guy. He started rubbing himself.

A minute or two later, the train pulled to a stop: Charles de Gaulle. Kari and I scrambled out and sped up the platform. He'd followed, and was standing there, staring. A few feet up, there was a gendarme. I hurried towards him, then stopped because I realized that I didn't know the French word for penis. Knowing me, I would have said something so convoluted that he'd have arrested me minutes before I was supposed to leave the country.

So I did the only thing I could do. I nodded to him. "Bonjour," I said, as if that was what I'd meant to do all along. And then I left the country.

By the way, the French word for penis? It's pénis. For your future reference.

Anyway, back to the bar. Deus ex machina. My cell phone lit up at that moment with a text from Matt. I grinned when I read it. I had no idea what it meant, but that didn't matter. He'd just given me an out.

"Who's that from?" telephone guy said. "Your boyfriend?"

Yes, I said, feeling absolutely zero guilt about my baldfaced lie. I then turned my back to him and started talking to the girls.

He tried to talk to me again. "Your boyfriend's a lucky man," he said.

But no. I was done being nice. "Listen," I finally said. "You just showed me a picture of your penis. That's just fucking weird."

I turned my back again and eventually he disappeared. I had no idea where he went, and I didn't care.

I don't know why these things happen to me. I really don't.

Somebody's gotta do it

"Yo, Miss Baader, can you give me a job?" This from Marlon, not little Marlon but the other one, the one I worry about because he's the king of bad decisions. I'd taken them outside during homeroom because it was such a nice day. Marlon decided not to play football because some freshmen girls joined us and he's all about the girls.

Right, I said. You can work for the company I don't have.

"It don't matter," he said, putting his arm around Crystal. "I can do anything. Mow your lawn ..."

I don't have a lawn. I live in an apartment building.

"Then I can come over and clean your house. Or maybe build something. You wouldn't have to pay me much. Sixty dollars a day."

I snorted. I don't have sixty dollars a day to give you. I'm a teacher, remember?

"See?" said Dante. Dante wasn't playing with the rest of the boys either, not because he didn't like football but because his mother died last week and right now he's not participating in anything. "This is why young men turn to crime. Nobody will hire us." It's true, too. All spring, I'd been working with them on finding part-time jobs. They applied and applied and nobody called them back.

"Yeah," said Marlon. "It wouldn't take much for me to make sixty dollars on the streets. Drug dealing pays. You want me to become a drug dealer?"

Of course not, I said. But decisions like that are the reason why young african-american boys from the city have a better statistical chance of going to jail than to college. Listen, tomorrow we'll work on your resumes and I'll ask around about jobs.

He pulled Crystal closer. She giggled. "You gonna get me a job by this weekend? Because I need sixty dollars by Saturday."

I just looked at him. I didn't ask why: I didn't want to know. Not too long ago, Marlon went through a bad phase where he quit the basketball team and quit coming to school for a little while. When he managed to show up one day and I asked him where he'd been, he said he'd been smoking with his cousin. Why? He didn't want to leave his house -- he'd been at basketball practice when his house got robbed -- and he didn't have anything better to do.

It took us a little while to work through that one, and he's throwing a new one at me today. I looked over at Dante. He was nodding. He's the other one I'm really worried about. No mother. Shit.

Don't you know there's only a fifty-one percent chance you'll graduate from high school?

"Then get me a job and I won't have to deal drugs," said Dante. He looked at me with the kind of dead eyes I'd hoped never to see on him.

I'll help you get you a job, I said. I promise.

Iron Men

"If they really did have guns like that, there would me no more wars," said Dekores. He'd brought in a bootleg copy of "Iron Man" and I let them watch it during lunchtime. He said his cousin sold bootlegs, and they weren't bad bootlegs, either. You couldn't see the audience at all. He could get any movie I wanted.

They have guns like that and there's still wars, I commented from my desk. People will always kill people. Didn't you learn anything from our Holocaust unit?

"I didn't read that book," said Dekores. "English is boring." Dekores has the other English teacher, but we're all reading the same book, Night.  He likes to brag about how he doesn't do any of her work while I try to convince him that's not the best route to his future.   Right now, we're at an impasse.

"I did," said Lester. He probably didn't, but Lester's in my class and knows better than to admit any wrongdoing in front of me. His mother and I have an understanding. They stood around the tv watching the movie almost solemnly.

Byron shook his head. "You think they really have weapons like that?" 

"They've got everything," said Lester. "They could kill everybody if they wanted, but they don't."

"I don't know why they don't just kill all those people over in Iraq," said Dekores. "If they've got the guns, they could take them out and then they wouldn't be any more problems."

"You can't do that," said Byron. "You can't kill all them kids." 

"What do I care about them kids?" said Dekores. "We should end it right now so I don't have to go over there. They're killing us, aren't they?"

"Not them kids," said Lester. 

"I done tole you I don't care about no kids. It's me I care about. They kill kids here, all the time. Those kids didn't ask for it neither. And they send us over there with no protection. You know those soldiers don't have no vests. And they could make 'em, too. They just don't, because they don't care.  They don't care cause they're not fighting that war.  They gonna make us fight that war.  You watch.  And I'm not going to go over there with no damn armor."

"What they should do," said Byron, "Is send over more guns. George Bush has got a whole basement full of guns. Like ten thousand. He could end this war and then none of us would have to go. But he doesn't. He likes this war."

"I ain't going over there," said Lester. "I don't want to shoot nobody." At this I grinned, because Lester's favorite activity is stealth paper bombs.  Unsuspecting classmates are always finding themselves pelted in the head.  He's good, too.  It took me a while to figure out who was doing it.  Now I'm always making him stay after to clean up the classroom floor.

They all watched the movie for a while longer.  Something exploded.

"Shit," said Dekores. "Like I said, if they had weapons like that, there'd be no wars.  Everybody would be too scared."

Cougar!

"Did you hear about the cougar?" This from one of my boys, a regular group who hangs out in my classroom because they can't stand the kids in the lunchroom. I had, but only on the radio this morning. Sometimes I can't stand to watch the news at night. In a city with a crime rate as high as Chicago, it's too depressing.

"Where?" said Marlon. I pulled up the story in the newspaper. Roscoe Village, I said. (North Side. It might as well be China.) "Did it bite anyone?" said Marlon. No. "I don't care then. If it didn't kill anybody, no, scratch that: if it didn't bite me, I don't care. Just another thing in the white people's neighborhood." This was a typical reaction from Marlon. I've been trying to get him to care about things all year. His grades, for instance.

I looked at another article and saw they had a picture. The boys immediately gathered round. They never pass up the chance to see some blood. "Yo, yo, yo!" said Maynor. "You never told me it was a brown cougar."

What does that matter?

"A brown cougar in the white people's neighborhood? Course it got shot."

The police said it was charging at them. "That's what the police always say," said Marlon.

"Yeah," said Maynor. "The po-po are just looking for an excuse. That's just another Mexican to them. That's it! A Mexican cougar!"

"Why the brown cougar always gotta die first?" said Marlon. Now, he was outraged. I shook my head. They stared at the picture for a minute longer, shrugged, then sat down.

"Yo," said Maynor. "When's lunch over?"