For the Love of Cars

By Chrissy Anderson-Zavala

Thursday
Kenny loves cars. Muscle cars, new cars, old cars, classic cars, the cars on the street, the cars of his imagination, space cars, robot cars, cars with their own planet of cars, mean cars, nice cars, big cars, tiny cars, skinny cars, but most of all, Kenny loves race cars. Kenny is nine years old and is the only one to always show up to Thursday’s Mercy Housing after-school poetry program. Kenny used to say one-word answers to my questions but after I told him that my father was a race car driver, a light rose in his eyes and now he never stops talking. I didn’t know then that this light, this excitement would lead to a poem about cars every week for eight months.

This love shocked me the way that five-year-old Emoniee shocked me when she said, “I love you,” in response to me reading her a children’s book or showing her how to draw a butterfly or answering her question that yes, I am her friend. I feel the need to confess that I’m not necessarily a kid person or around kids much. I don’t make gooey noises when faced with a toddler and, other than through my job, I have very few little ones in my life. And love is expressed in a way amongst children that I don’t see in adults or in myself. The word “love” is so loaded and scary for adults that we trip over it, try to not to say it freely. I started to survey friends and family to ask about what they love and no one was able to match the joy that I saw in these kids at being able to do simply what they love to do.

At the end of each lesson, we played chess or raced paper airplanes because they love chess and love paper airplanes, but I assure you that no love ever rivaled the love Kenny feels for cars.

Tuesday
This is my second year at Everett Middle School. Tuesdays, I teach every single 7th grader and this year, teaching feels much simpler. I have a rhythm to every class now. Pass out journals, free-write, talk about free-write, read poems, discuss poems, explain the assignment, circulate, look for raised hands, ask for volunteers to share their poems, collect journals, run to the next class. Start over.

This year Everett Middle School is a “dream school,” which means that a mass standardization of the school day has taken place. The teachers tell me at first that I am a break for the students and applaud the time I take with including the students’ voices in the classroom. Later, due to the pressure of standardized tests, I’m asked to be less “creative.” The students hate the dream school structure. The teachers hate it. The school district drops in randomly and the teachers suggest that, if they show up, I should use the language of the standards. The language of standards consists of the same words that we use in the classroom as poets: alliteration, metaphor, simile. However, they do not cradle the same meaning when I use them with the outline of standards in my head. It is as if I am asking them to remember that metaphor is whether they will be allowed to take advanced classes in high school, simile merely a measurement by which they will be judged and deemed proficient. I want to say metaphor is comparing your heart to water balloon or a fist, that it is their tool, not something that will be used against them. Everything is tense this year. Everyone is unhappy and no one seems to care who hears about it.

Thursday
The first day of class at Mercy was Halloween, so we cut out pumpkin shapes and named our pumpkins. Kenny couldn’t deal with this. “Pumpkins don’t have names!” Then we talked about what the pumpkins wanted to be when they grow up (His pumpkin wants to be a race car driver, but really it doesn’t want to be anything because it’s a pumpkin!) and what they’re scared of (His pumpkin is not afraid of anything because he’s a pumpkin!). He finally looks at me like I’m a lunatic and says, “Okay, now I understand that we’re using our imaginations and that you know that a pumpkin doesn’t really have a name or fears or favorite foods, and that teachers like imagination, but how are our imaginations going to make us money?”

Tuesday
I dropped in to talk to one of the 8th grade teachers I worked with last year and asked about a number of my past students. She told me that one student I was close to never finished 8th grade and lied to me about it. The student told me once that she thought about being a call girl or maybe she’d do this poetry thing some more. She told me she’d love to be a singer and live in Hollywood but couldn’t sing, so the best money was in being a call girl. I go home and dig out her cell phone number, her aunt’s number, her best friend from class’s number and they’re all disconnected. I’m afraid of getting attached to my students. I’m afraid of the secrets we are handed as poetry teachers.

This year teaching is easier but as time passes, something is much harder. I feel myself needing to drift a little bit. Everyone is so complimentary of this work. A compliment that is usually followed by asking if I’m scared of my students. I want to say, “No, I’m scared of the society they live in. I’m scared of the way it’s so acceptable to ask if I’m scared of my students who are filled with more love than I can sometimes fathom just because they live in the city and are brown.”

I don’t understand the fear of a twelve or thirteen year old. Perhaps, it is because I’ve read the love poem he wrote for his mom or the poem about her puppy the color of chocolate milk or their poems of hope for the world. This job fills me with fear but never of my students. I am afraid of not doing enough. I am afraid of the people who fear these kids because they’ll block doors and block futures.

When I come back to ask if there are any other telephone numbers for this student from last year, the teacher tells me to let go of the stories that we cannot help. I think of the distillation of a person to a story, to a bundle of poems or tattered journal. I am much less concerned with the story than with this student and I struggle to come up with what exactly writing it down can do.

Thursday
Ten-year-old Tino is upset. He says he hates girls. HATES GIRLS! A girl won’t stop picking on him at school and his teacher won’t do anything about it! He and Kenny agree that boys aren’t crazy like girls and therefore girls are not to be trusted. They are finishing a drawing of their dream football team. Kenny insists that his team is made up of football playing cars.

Kenny and I begin to play chess and Emoniee is playing with an extra board and pieces. The pieces are speaking to each other and she explains that it is the town of her dreams. Kenny wants to prove once and for all that boys are better than girls and is increasingly frustrated that I’m not letting him win. All of a sudden, Emoniee sweeps all the pieces to the floor and carefully places each black piece onto the board. When she accidentally puts a white rook on the board, she knocks it to the ground and proclaims, “I’m only going to put the people that talk to us. White people never come to this part of town do they, Chrissy? White people don’t want to talk to us.” Before I can answer she continues, “Do you think my town is beautiful?”

I say, “Yes, it’s very beautiful,” and she says, “I love you.”

Tuesday
William loves MapleStory. MapleStory is a videogame and, like Kenny, William will not diverge from this one topic all year. He asks me at the beginning of every class, every class for four months, “Are you a real teacher?” And for four months I tell him that I am.

For four months, he says, “No! You’re weird!” to his classmates. I tried giving the situation the ol’ “we’re all special” treatment, but to no avail. His classmates treat him like he’s from a different planet and I think he’d say that they’re right. He’s from MapleStory. He will only ask me if I am a teacher and say nothing else for four months.

One day, one of his classmates tells him that he’s weird, as per usual.

I say, “No. William is normal. Everyone else is weird.”

William looks up and smiles, “YAH!”

The next week, he’s the first one waiting to come in. He comes in without making eye contact and says, “Hi Weird Teacher Lady.”

I say “hello” and try to hide my enthusiasm for having broken the code.

Thursday
DeWayne sits down quietly and puts his head down. He won’t tell me what’s wrong. He doesn’t want to draw, paint, write or talk. He’s not sick but is obviously really sad. I ask him to help me draw a race car and he does. He decides that it is a rainy day, but half way through the dots, he gathers a handful of thick markers and draws a giant rainbow. He tells me that he doesn’t want it to rain anymore and draws a lightening bolt down the center of the car.

Tuesday
After each day of teaching at Everett, I try to think of one pedagogical lesson I learned and write it down. There was a point in the year when each entry started to say things like “fatigue is bad for teaching,” “try not to take the stories home with you,” and “there is no way to explain what it is like to see your student’s eyes dim and never return, to someone who has never taught.” I think about the student who writes about needing to lose more weight if she wants to be a professional ballerina and she’s stick thin or the student that writes about her brother’s recent death and the way she writes much more and talks much less or having to talk to and yet another class about why the word “faggot” is not acceptable.

Thursday
Janaejah is eleven and writes about worms and farts and poop and mud. When she thinks about her next line of poetry her brow furrows and she bites her top lip slightly. She wants to tell me a story about the silhouette on the “Children Crossing” sign. The silhouette is her friend. She starts to draw a different friend “The Blob,” and begins to write his story. Kenny asks his one and only non-car related question of the year, “Chrissy, where do seeds come from?”

“From flowers or fruit,” I answer.

His eyes roll as he says,”I know THAT, but where did the first seed come from?” I try to stretch my mind back to biology class and he looks at me suspiciously, “Is this like the chicken or the egg?” He looks frustrated and bored with me and my obvious shortcomings.

I walk over to my purse and tell him that I want to show him something. I pull out one of my muscle car magazines and you’d think it was Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. “Is this… for me!?”

It wasn’t, but I say, “yes,” and write his name on it with a sharpie. Janaejah announces that she is done with her story and she wants to read it. I tell Kenny that he needs to put the magazine down for a second and so he closes the magazine, props it up on his backpack and says, “I just want to look at the cover.” He stares at the cover as if it holds the wonders of the universe.

Afterward, we read the magazine together and I try my best to explain the different words, “intake manifold,”piston.” He patiently nods and then explains what they really are to me.

Tuesday
I found out that one of my students jumped a staff member with her sister and got expelled. I was supposed to meet with her the prior week to write a poem one-on-one but we rescheduled because I was running around collecting poems for the end-of-the-year book. I took her journal and put it on the top shelf of the poetry journal cabinet. The top shelf is where I put all the journals of the students who aren’t coming back. The teacher says I can just throw them away, “No point keeping the memory around.”

Thursday
Brittany shows up to poetry twice all year. Both just happen to be the photography days. She is seven and very excited about using the cameras. The cord on the camera goes around her wrist three times and she goes straight for the flowers. She gets really close to everything that she takes a picture of and most of what she captures I have never noticed before. She drags me around the housing complex and into her doorway where she introduces me to her grandfather. Kind of. She more says, “Grandpa, this is Poetry,” and runs inside. I explain that I am the poetry teacher as she comes back out and drags me to chase an unsuspecting pigeon that is about to be a model. She stops suddenly and points at the hills in the background of the buildings. She tells me that that is where the castle is, but doesn’t take a picture, and giggles as the pigeon lands once again.

Tuesday
Cora has told a bunch of the other girls at school that she’s a poet. When I told her that I decided to name the poetry book after her poem, she nodded the way someone might nod when they are given a top-secret assignment. I thought at the time that she didn’t care or didn’t even want to have the attention, but now everyone knows that she is the poet of the class.

I wrote on the board, “What worlds are you apart of?” and before I could explain the assignment, she already answered the prompt in her own way. When it came time for volunteers, everyone looked her direction and she began, “I am part of the hopeful world, the world of dreams, the world of punches and death, the world of let down, the world of tomorrow…”

Everyone claps for her and she smiles and she’s a poet.

Thursday
On my last teaching day, Kenny is quiet for a long time and suddenly asks why I can’t just live there. “Come on! The housing is free! We’ll write poetry and race paper airplanes all the time!” I tell him that I can’t and that I’ll miss all of them.

Kenny asks why I always talk about poetry and I ask him why he always talks about cars. He looks shocked at the question and at first looks at me as if he will not dignify it with an answer.

“Cars are cool!”

“Poetry’s cool.”

“Uh uh!”

“Uh huh!”

I think the debate is officially lost when he compares the price of a car to the price of a poem.

After drawing our customary race car, I ask Kenny to write about what he thinks poetry is and he writes, “Poetry is your heart on paper. Poetry is a car that takes you places no other car can go.”

William loves Maplestory. Jahnaejah loves Blob. Tino loves mansions. Cora loves poetry. Emoniee loves her town. Chris loves the Giants. Denise loves saying, “psyche!” Angela loves her mind. Richel loves ballet. Leif loves his dream of being an artist. LeFebre loves debates with sports stats. DeWayne loves drawing with thick markers. Rosa loves pink. Giselle loves sparkly barrettes. Miguel loves praise. Christian loves volunteering even if he doesn’t know what he’s volunteering for. Brittany loves daisies. Johannna loves her activist aunt. Meshawn loves to make jokes. D’stefano loves to get up and dance. Eddie loves to stand up tall. Alberto loves crossing his eyes. Michala loves her mom. Giselle loves drawing hearts. Giancarlo loves writing about trees. Mary Rose loves love. Citlaly loves popping her gum. Anna loves her dog. Alejandro loves saying, “money.” Cora loves poetry.

Kenny loves cars.

The students all wrote letters to themselves ten years from now in which I asked them to write what they hope they don’t forget and in each group someone asked about the point of it, “the journals will be lost,” “we’ll be too old to care about ten years ago,” but they all wrote and everyone wrote about who and what they love. We offer poetry as this place to put their loves on paper, to preserve them. There is no guarantee in this; all we can do is ask that they are written down and hope those loves will carry them forward, that those loves will be a car that takes them places no other car can go.