Jungle Room

At some point around year four of teaching Mariela became known as the "plant person" and her room became an ersatz greenhouse. The place where kids would store the overgrown bean plants trying to burst from their Solo cup bases and where anything left behind would end up. Year four was the year because it is where parents stopped sending kitschy mugs or jelly bean samplers and instead send a bag of potting soil and the sad five dollar starts from the floral section at Marc's. 

Mariela did earn this, albeit she didn't do this purposefully. Her first year she began simple with just a leggy Norfolk Island Pine in the far left corner and then a single Boston fern hanging planter. That she kept on her desk until year two when through a mix of union back and forth and some awkward flirting she got the custodian to anchor an eyelet into the ceiling. She then hung it from a netted rope holder.

Each year she would add more items, especially after her three year apprenticeship ended and she internally said "why not" and committed to the long term. At this point she dropped various cacti on the swollen wooden window frames.  The kids all loved the old man cactus which stood six inches from above a cornflower blue clay pot and had wonky modified needles that looked like a Rip Van Winkle beard. That is what she called it, Rip.

But in year four it exploded. Snake plants recovered from someone who retired, a pair dropped akimbo behind her desk. All the window wells lined with philodendrons and crotons and aloes. On warm muggy days, especially soupy days in early August or late May, the edges of the windows would briefly bead with moisture from all the back and forth transpiration of the plants. She had a defunct classroom phone that would only blared out mumbled public announcements lined with the clinging air plants that needed just a brief hint of mist every few weeks. 

"It really is a jungle in here!" That is what everyone said when they walked into Room 213B (At one point there had been a larger 213 that had a bright side with all the windows and then a dark side with wider floor, a short squat T shape, that was then, in the early 90s split into two with a wall. Mariela got the sunny side and the other side, which people guessed was the end of an old dance class space, became a pull out room for kids. Which needed to be illuminated by spindly halogen lamps) and Mariela had a canned response of "Yeah and Im Tarzan!" that got some laughs. The parent group insisted that the police do a walkthrough of the school to test for the horrifying yet always looming possibility of a shooting. Someone's  husband was a so and so lieutenant on the force so he found the time albeit the administration did argue to do this when there were no children in the building. Walking into 213 the officer, who internally acknowledged the performativeness of the entire event but it was overtime so why not, noticed the bramble vibes and hungry green of the space and asked Mariela "What would you do if you heard someone was coming in shooting?"

Mariela went through the canned responses of trying to bar the door and get the children as far away as possible. Her mother had actually bought her a rope ladder that could be draped over a window and used to escape. It would still leave about four feet of clearance at the end but her mother said better broken ankles then dying.

But she then added that she would just shove all the plants by the door and hopefully the tangle wire would slow down the perpetrator who would give the same frustrated guffaw of someone trying to weed out a garden. 

"I would clutch this barrel cactus in my hand and slaw it into their face, as a last resort, I guess." Mariela showed the officer the plump little malicious thing with half inch spines the color of pus. The office laughed maybe to be kind or maybe at the thought of Mariela, who was about 5' 2" and had 3rd graders who likely weighed as much as her, going Amazon in her own personal jungle to defend the homestead. 

When summer came, she arranged all the plants into a circle of magic on the floor. On top of a plastic shower liner and asked the cleaners if they would water them and just work around the space when doing the floors. Every plant but the air plants and the emerging trellised ivy plants on the tack board above the white boards in that square. And the pile grew over the summer because people would forget their own plants in their rooms and the cleaners knew just the spot.