CHAOS: a story about gods and afternoon recess (#ONC2023)

Chapter Nine

I am the first person at the school in the morning. I watch a man come and unlock the doors. The principal's big black SUV rumbles around to the back of the building where the administrators park. After forty-five minutes, Ms. Williams arrives in a tiny purple car with eyelashes glued to the headlights. She steps out and her crystalline eyes immediately light on me. Color blooms in her creamy cheeks, and my heart beats faster with the knowledge that my presence affects her. As soon as she is within earshot, I ask the question I've been pondering since talking with Matthew in his backyard. "Do you ever feel stuck in the same old routine?"

She adjusts the strap of the bag hanging from her shoulder. "Not so much since you turned up."

The warmth of pride, of certainty of a job well done, spreads through me. Still, I need more information. "But do you long for a break from the routine? For a new challenge?"

"I need to change out the clips on the green tags in my room before the children arrive. Walk with me."

I haven't the slightest idea what it means to change clips on green tags, but I fall in step beside her and we enter the building together.

"Sometimes," she begins, but then stops and sighs. "It's just that there is so much bureaucracy, you know? I love my kids. They're fantastic, right? But I have to wonder, when we spend so much of the year taking tests or preparing for taking tests, or recovering from taking tests, or reviewing test scores... I mean... They're so little. Maybe I'd help them more in some other way?"

"What way?" I ask, following her into her classroom.

"I don't know, Mr. Zatyafan. Maybe it's not the routine I need a break from, exactly. It's the system. The system exhausts me some days."

I sit on the chair behind her desk and consider this as she removes purple-painted wooden clips from a row of green cards with short words printed on them in black and puts yellow-painted clips in their place. The reason for this task still escapes me, but I'm too invested in our conversation to ask. "What would break the system?"

She laughs. It is the sound of cool waves lapping against sun-warmed white sand beaches. "Who knows? The apocalypse?"

It's not out of the question. Gods bring about apocalypses all the time, of course. There are plagues and earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, meteors raining down from the sky. But none of that is really my style. I love a good joke, but extinction level events are the domain of a different kind of god. Or God. But if God pulls the plug, it's lights out for everyone, even the gods.

"Mr. Zatyafan?" She circles the desk and leans one generous hip against the edge of it.

"Yes?" I gaze up at her perfect face.

"What's your first name?"

Mentally scrambling, I make sense of the question, but I have no answer, so I tell her the truth. "I have only one name."

"Like Beyonce?"

Deflecting, I ask, "What is your first name, Ms. Williams?"

"Emilia. Feel free to call me that."

"Emilia, you're beautiful."

The pink spots on her cheeks return and spread all the way across her face.

I stammer, trying to recover. "I mean, that's beautiful. The name. It's a beautiful name."

"Thank you." She looks down at her hands clasped in front of her. "Do you have playground duty today? Perhaps I'll see you when I take the children outside."

Only an apocalypse brought on by the big-G God would keep me away.

***

None of the children are scheduled to come to the playground until the first two hours of the day have passed, so I make my way to the library, wait for the librarian to be otherwise occupied, and slip in to grab an armful of books from the shelf labeled CHAPTER BOOKS, GR 4-5. Before she notices me, I slip back out and carry the entire stack to the playground where I pass the time learning about Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lyra and her golden compass, and Eragon. New words and new ideas soak into the fertile soil of my mind and take root. What a marvelous species, humans! One will have a grand adventure and recount it for the enrichment of others. Another has no adventure and so he creates one even more extraordinary. I'm so engrossed in these tales, the sound of the first group of children crashing through the doors startles me. Setting the book aside, I rise. Mr. Pattinson, now in loose-fitting blue jeans that are unlikely to tear, emerges from the building.

I have work to do.

As far as I've figured, "the system" is the structured network of rules and jobs that includes teachers and the principal and the other adults working at the school. If I can disrupt that structure, I will have granted Ms. Williams'—Emilia's—wish.

That should be easy enough. Using the same trick I used to plant the pepper on field day, I silently call upon a fat white pigeon. It makes its way to the playground and circles overhead. Patient, I hold it in that pattern until the perfect moment and then suggest it let go. A thick stream of waste falls from the bird and lands directly on the close-shaven head of Pattinson, who had been crossing the playground, barking orders at some boys tossing a ball back and forth. Startled, the man yelps and makes a fast turn, apparently forgetting that he is right next to the swingset. He smacks into a pole face-first and in an instant blood is pouring down his face. Children scream and run away. One girl stands staring at him for several seconds before falling into a dead faint. I cross to where he sits splay-legged on the soft mulch and ask if he'd like me to get the principal. He looks up at me, opens his mouth, his eyes roll up in his head, and he flops down beside the unconscious girl.

Rather than leaving the children with no adult supervision, I grasp a girl I recognize—the wild-haired female—by the shoulders and send her off to find the principal. She dashes inside with a speed she'd not once displayed during field day.

Just as Pattinson begins to stir and moan, the principal hurries out, already growling orders into a cellphone—something about an ambulance and calling Jennifer Whitley's mother. On her heels is Emilia and her class.

Emilia stares down at the two figures on the ground, looks to the principal, and finally meets my gaze. "What in the world happened?" Her class crowded into the doorway, trying to catch a glimpse of the drama.

I shrug. "A bird's droppings fell on his head."

She gaped at the man's bloody face. "Bird droppings?"

My reply is cut short by the wail of approaching sirens. The next several minutes pass in a blur as Emilia and I direct the children off the playground and into the school. I'm heading for her room when she suggests we go to the gym, as there are now nearly fifty little ones in our care. She directs them to sit on the wide steps that lead up to the stage and most of them flop down there. Matthew starts running laps around the room. The wild-haired girl goes all the way up to the stage and lays flat on her back to stare up at the ceiling. Bentley stands to the side, softly bopping his head against the rough brick wall.

I sidle close enough to Emilia to smell her sweet scent. "The system has been disrupted," I whisper.

She huffs. "He was really hurt, Zatyafan. I'm not sure it's the time for jokes."

Before I can recover from this verbal blow, the principal storms in. For such a large woman, she moves from one place to another with remarkable speed. She glares at Matthew and he scampers to join his classmates on the steps. Bentley drops down to sit beside him. "Mr. Pattinson is going to be fine."

"Is he dead?" Bentley asks.

"If he were dead, I would not be telling you he's going to be fine. He simply bumped his head and got a cut. Cuts on a person's head bleed more than cuts on other parts of the body, so it looked frightening, but he is not badly hurt."

"He looked dead," Bentley says.

"I saw a dead person once at the funeral home," the wild hair girls says. She is still gazing at the ceiling. "My mom made me kiss her cold, rubbery cheek."

"He is not dead," the principal repeats. She turns to Emilia and I. "Ms. Williams, our substitute list is exhausted. I will need you to teach both classes today and possibly—"

"No."

"Excuse me?" The bull-like woman stamps her foot and, for a moment, I worry she might charge us.

"This is bullshit."

Several children gasp.

"You're always telling us to take it up with the union. We come early and stay late and eat lunch at our desks. We give up prep time to cover for each other and every teacher accepted an additional number of students this year and now you want to double my class. Fuck this. I'm going to the union."

Jenny clamps both hands over her mouth.

Matthew grins at his teacher.

All fifty kids, the principal and I watch as Ms. Emilia Williams turns her back and walks away.