Zoey didn't feel the weight of years of teaching in her knees or back but instead in the layer of dust and cob webs on her classroom windows. This was true even though the building had four floors and no elevator. Built in 1925 and rehabbed last in 1961 the entire hulk of March Meadow Middle School was exempt from ADA and, in more modern times, has always been "just a swing site" until some rehab elsewhere finished. Or a levy passed. March Meadow was now on a full ten years of being a temporary solution. The school previously had a music teacher, Yanira DeLeon, who always said climbing to the top of the room was like climbing the hills of Yauco, a small town in Puerto Rico, that made it seem like it was cut into the side of a mountain. "It has amazing coffee and will make your thighs into pure steel!" she would say quite loudly in the teacher's lounge and the slap her knees. Zoe never learned if that was Yanira's hometown but she preferred that instead of thinking of it as schlepping or "mountain goating" it to the fourth floor. "I'm going to Yauco!" she said over the din of a class transition when she had to cover a homeroom for three months during someone's maternity leave. People only got this if they had spent more than five years at March Meadow and the pool of people who sincerely smiled about it kept getting smaller.
Zoey was only 34 but, beyond student teaching out of state, she had never known anything but March Meadow. She felt old when she looked out the windows and saw the spindle of cob webs and dust bunnies behind her framed photos and mementos. Her room was lucky enough to have a small window mounted AC and here is where she dropped a picture of her graduating from OU surrounded by friends which she really didn't talk to anymore but who she did know most left teaching. It also had a snow globe and hand molded clay coffee mug and a tangle of Chromebook chargers that still worked but were seemingly impossible to unwind. This is when she thought to herself "I really should clean that" which was something that came to mind anytime the weather turned bad. The thought they flittered away which is why she felt old whenever she peered into that liminal space avoided by both her and the cleaners.
Outside it poured snow. In big gauzy flakes that lumped themselves together as soon as they hit anything. Earlier, the weather report said a lake effect clipper could materialize by end of day but by 12noon it spun into a chilling purple blue band on the radar that just engulfed all of Cuyahoga County from west to east. "This is a serious one," the voice on the radio said as she walked into the office to make some copies. The receptionist turned it down when she heard footfalls but then returned it to normal when she say it was just a teacher.
She heard a knock on her door and looked up to see her neighbor motioning through the narrow built in window to come over. She could hear her mouthing "ZO! Come here!"
Zoey checked on the trio of student in front of her and asked "Is everyone ok? How are we doing with the chapter books?" Each student said they were OK and she doubted Aidan was actually taking in much of "I Survived the Titanic" but she would check later. "I am going to go check on something Mrs. Baltic wants. I will be right hear just in door way so lets keep the SSR going for another five and I will check after that."
At the door she creaked it open and saw Natalie Baltic flipping through her phone and then poking her eyes up and showing Zoey the weather app on her phone. "Zo, its going to be a snow day. Early release."
Zoey's eyes widen and she couldn't hold back the sort of goofy semi smug smile that happens when you hear something just out of pocket. "Like now?" She inched closer to Natalie and collared up the edge of her hoodie to cover her lips slightly. "That is going to be a shit show."
March Meadow was not a large school. It had 154 kids across 6th to 8th grades only about half of those took the bus. There were walkers and then the usual parents that zoomed through car line. Being a reading intervention teacher Zoey did not have a homeroom so she had all the crap jobs assigned to people who were "free" in the morning. This include car line which was sweet saying "Good morning!" to every come out their cars but also meant standing in all sorts of weather, including today's cold.
"Are there even going to get buses here in time? There will be so many parents who just don't come." Zoey looked back at her students and then up and down the hall. "I don't want to get stuck here. Did Alexis say anything about this?"
Natalie shrugged and threw a glance at her class who were all bent over tables working on poster boards for class presentations on different kingdoms of life. "She is likely waiting on word from the district. Just as helpless as us. I think she should just go rogue and make the call. I've already had three parents text me and the kids will not stop about it."
Outside it kept pouring and already ankles would be swallowed by the drifts.
No comments:
Post a Comment