Punctuation Lesson

“He burned up, they say.”

My brain doesn’t register what I’m hearing through the phone. “The house caught on fire, middle of the night. Damn kerosene heaters. Ms. Lacey pulled Marquis from bed, but when they got to the doors they were melted shut. They went for the windows, busted the glass, but they have the bars on them. It wasn’t any use. They say they just huddled together and waited to die.”

Waited to die… waited to die. Somehow that part gets through to me. All I can see is his face. Marquis grinning guilty as a cat with a canary in the cafeteria after school. Marquis huddling with his grandmother waiting to die. “Okay,” I reply weakly. “Yeah, okay, right.” Michelle’s strong voice comes through on the other end buoying me to the earth. “Prayer service is all set for tomorrow at the school. I’ll meet you.” We hang up. I’m sitting in my car with the engine running. Just a moment ago I was annoyed, waiting for red lights, waiting for grocery lines, waiting for perscriptions. Marquis, yeah, he was waiting to die.

I get home and throw my keys on the counter. Scout looks up. “Marquis died today." I walk through the living room to the bedroom. I lay down on the cool sheets and press my face into mattress to get my bearings. There was this gigantic rip in time just a few minutes ago yet I find myself in my house, time moving forward still. I don’t get it. Scout comes in and sits on the bed. I’m thankful he knows not to say anything. I don’t get why I think I should be comforted. Why I have a right in this moment to think about myself. Here one of my students dies at the age of six and not ten minutes later I’m already about myself. Is our selfishness part of our survival instinct? He’s gone, now you must survive, says your body. Breathe the next breath; make a way.

It hit me as soon as Michelle said it, but I only now feel the fury rise up. Marquis would not be dead had he not been poor.There would have been no kerosene heater, no bars on the windows to hold him in. How do you make sense of a world like that?We aren’t really free, I think. Any of us. We think we are, some of us are fooled more than others.For Marquis, the truth just snuffed him out.Fury turns to ache. “It hurts,” I tell him.

The kids line up on the damp, green grass. They stare at the adults who somberly look into space. Their faces say: we should be sad. “Marquis died,” James tells me, waiting for my reaction. Like he’s getting to share the latest news. “Yeah, he did,” I reply. If I can’t process this, how would a six year old? Michelle walks among the school staff and parents. Her presence holds it all together it seems. Like some magnet that keeps us all from floating away. Later, when the art therapist comes the kids draw pictures. James writes in big block letters: WHY DID HE HAVE TO DIE? I trace the question mark with my finger. We were just working on punctuation last week, and here is James learning better than I could teach him how to put a question mark when you don’t know the answer.

I look hard at each of my kids. I want so badly to believe there is choice out there for them. For a moment I picture bars on the classroom windows and suddenly I shoot up from my chair. “What is it Mrs. Jackson?” asks Kayla. What is freedom, anyway?