Signs of Life

by Natalie Taylor

  During lunch, I flip through their surveys. I am most interested in the question about their transformations that may or may not have happened during their tenth-grade year. In response to question number fifteen, Delaney Rob writes, “OMG I hope so.” Charlie Moore writes, “Sorry if I was a jerk in your class in ninth grade. I’m better now.” Blake Forman writes, “Yes. I am more handsome, funnier, and I can grow a beard.” What a year for Blake Forman. He wins for best answer to question number fifteen.

  This year, instead of starting with The Great Gatsby, we start with Macbeth and No Exit. It’s just as well as far as I’m concerned. Gatsby would not have felt the same this year as it did last year. I think starting the year off with Jean-Paul Sartre is a great idea. Every text we read after No Exit will challenge Sartre’s idea of free will.

  At the end of the year, instead of reading The Color Purple, we’ll read Fences, a play by August Wilson. In Fences, Troy Maxson is a middle-aged African American man living in the year 1957. The audience learns that Troy was an amazing baseball player, but when he was in his prime, black men could only play in the Negro League. Now Troy is a garbage man. His son, Cory, desperately wants to pursue football and Cory tells his dad that college scouts are interested, but Troy tells Cory he has to quit football and get a job at the A&P. Because of Troy’s experiences as an African American athlete, he believes that Cory doesn’t stand a chance in following his football dream, no matter how good he is. Because Cory is black in America, he does not have access to such dreams, or so his father believes. The play is amazing, and makes the reader think about where people come from and how much our ancestors have to do with our destinies.

  The interesting part about starting with Sartre is that we can continue to use him throughout the entire year. What would Jean-Paul Sartre say to Troy Maxson? What would Troy Maxson say back?

  Of course, all of these issues are ones that we ultimately contemplate in terms of our own lives. How free are we? What kind of power do we have in life? And if we don’t have power over our own lives, then who does? What do our actions say about our identity? The hope is that all of these ideas can collide, and students can be exposed to all different ways to look at the world.

  On the second day of school, my English class brainstorms our classroom rules. I have them talk about it in small groups first, and then we meet as a big group. We do this so they can think about and understand why it’s necessary to have rules like “One person talks at a time” or “Make sure you participate.” We do a lot of small-group and large-group discussions in this class. I like to take half a period at the beginning of the year and talk about what we need from each other and what they need from me in order to make those conversations successful.

  “Be respectful,” Sean Hay says. I ask what the word respect means. We say it all the time, but what does it look like or sound like? Melanie Ritman raises her hand.

  “I don’t think you need to be respectful. I just think you need to be polite. You don’t have to respect everyone’s ideas, but you do need to have manners.” I am a little caught off guard by her shrewdness, but I don’t disagree with her comment.

  We go over each group’s list. Sam Stafford, the girl who shouted at the ninth-grader yesterday, holds up her sheet. Under classroom procedures and expectations she wrote, “Play Kanye West softly in the background during group work.” Maybe starting with existentialism is setting the bar too high, I think to myself.

  • • •

  My single moms’ group officially ended in May. The Beaumont volunteers, Janet and Heidi, were only to be with us for six months. They explained to us that we could carry on the group on our own if we wanted. Of course, all of us were interested. Over the summer we did a really good job of holding the group together on our own. I had everyone over to my house a few times. But once we stopped meeting one another at the church, things just felt weird. Instead of meeting in a neutral space, everyone in the group had to expose a little more about their lives in these strange, unintentional ways. They would come over and look at my house and I could tell they felt a little awkward about it.

  We went to Ellen’s house a few times. Her house is really nice too. Rose has her own room, and there is Princess stuff everywhere. But there isn’t a park anywhere, at least not within a half mile. Ellen doesn’t have a car, and the only thing within walking distance is a liquor store. There is a television right across from Rose’s crib. She can see it when she stands up. I think if I would have walked in here six months ago, I would have thought, You have a TV across from her crib? And it would’ve been in this real judging tone. But now that I know Ellen, I don’t think it’s fair to judge her. If I didn’t have a car and I had to be home with a baby all day and I didn’t have a park to walk to or neighbors to play with or family members to come over when I was ready to crack, the television would play a much larger role in our lives.

  We’ve also been to Laura’s apartment for single moms’ night. Laura lives in a very tall building off of a highway. She lives on the eighth floor. All I can think about when we get there is how much of a pain in the ass it would be to get groceries and a baby from the car to the apartment building, up eight floors and into the apartment.

  Laura made us Hamburger Helper and canned peas. Again, had I been here six months ago, I would’ve judged her about her choices in food. But now I get it. This is the best she can do. Laura is raising a daughter by herself on a single income. She works at a day care that pays her by the hour. This is the only food she can afford to buy, and if she has any plans on moving into a house or to another apartment, she’ll have to continue to buy the least expensive stuff at the grocery store.

  Jean-Paul Sartre had the opportunity to attend prestigious schools when he was young, and went on to study at a top university. I’m sure he had a lot of his great ideas because he had the time and space to think. The same goes for Henry David Thoreau. He could only do what he did because he was financially secure. Had he been born into a different social class or to a different racial group, even if he still retained a keen interest for nature, his career as a writer would have been completely different. I wonder what Troy Maxson would say to Henry David Thoreau. That would be one hell of a conversation. I think Troy would be pretty annoyed with him.

  The other day on This American Life the episode was “Going Big.” The first act was about the Harlem Children’s Zone in Harlem, New York. A guy named Geoffrey Canada had been working with teenagers from Harlem for years, and he had watched as a lot of the kids he tried to help just couldn’t do it. They couldn’t get out of their neighborhood and create a better life. They couldn’t break the cycle. The show talked about a lot of current research that basically says that from age zero to three is a crucial time in a child’s life. So Canada overhauled his ideas. Instead of working with teenagers, Canada decided to work with parents and their babies. The Harlem Children’s Zone is this place where parents take classes about how to enrich the lives of their kids. They have classes that help parents learn how to discipline and the importance of reading, and they have all sorts of different classes for kids of all ages.

  Where we live, there are all sorts of educational structures like this already in place. We have the park, the library, the zoo, not to mention a million different preschools to choose from. Not because I did anything to get us here, but just because of where I was born. Sure, I tried really hard in high school and college, but come on, how hard is that really, when you live in a great neighborhood where safety is never an issue, and your mom cooks you dinner every night? Even kids like Eric Heller, who don’t even bring a pencil to class, will have more opportunities just because of where he lives and the public school he attends.

  I never realized that certain people really are stuck. And they’re not stuck because they don’t work hard or because they don’t want to get out of where they are. They’re stuck because certain forces in the world won’t let them out. If Laura wanted to buy a house in my neighborhood, or a ni
cer neighborhood than where her apartment is, or any house at all, could she do it? Where would she go? What bank would she call? Would they give her honest information or just help her secure a loan that she could never pay off? I can see Troy Maxson shaking his head as Sartre tries to explain the idea of “ultimate responsibility.” Troy would probably walk out of the room if Thoreau started going off about “living simply.” You’d really need somebody in there to referee that conversation. I’m sure Ira Glass could handle it.

  I guess the bottom line is, I’m always trying to make sense out of things. But these things, the idea that two kids the same age, born in the same hospital, will have two incredibly different futures because of factors that neither the child nor the mother can control, despite the fact that both moms work really fucking hard and want the best for their children. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. There certainly are more fences than I ever knew about.

  If Josh were here, I would never know any of this. I would be living my happy life getting stressed out over things like how badly we need a new refrigerator. And I know I still sound like a spoiled white girl. It’s like that scene from Clueless in which Cher gives the speech in her debate class about immigration and says, “It does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty!” I don’t mean to sound like I know everything just because my husband died. If anything, I’ve realized that I don’t know anything about anything. I just found out there is so much more that I don’t know about. Then again, even one of the twentieth century’s greatest philosophers doesn’t seem to know all of the answers either.

  • • •

  Tonight, right before I put Kai down for bed, I sit with him in his rocking chair. Putting Kai to bed is such a joy. It is the one time of day during which he sits with me and holds on to me as much as I hold on to him. For fourteen hours, with a brief nap in between, Kai is in motion. He pulls himself up, moves while holding on to furniture, takes one scoot with a foot, then falls and gets up and does it all over. He wants to see and touch and taste everything. This is a problem when I’m trying to sweep the kitchen. He runs after the dust pile like it’s a puppy. So like all eleven-month-old boys, and maybe even girls, he does not stop, literally, until eight o’clock at night.

  Tonight we snuggle for a long time. Finally, after about twenty minutes, I set him down in his crib. As I walk out his door I can feel my heart rate pick up a little. Tomorrow at 5:30 a.m., Maggie is picking me up for the airport. We land in Washington, D.C., around nine a.m. The triathlon is Sunday morning.

  I won’t see Kai until Sunday evening, which is technically only two full days without him, but it’s still hard to think about. Everyone else on the team is flying back on Monday afternoon, but I have Meet the Teacher Night on Monday evening, and I just can’t risk missing it. And once I’m done with the race, I’ll really have no desire to stick around.

  Up until this moment, the last several weeks have been full of stuff to think about other than the triathlon. But right now, after putting Kai to bed, there are no more distractions. I go to my room and start to pack.

  I call Maggie about sixty times to make sure I have everything. She guides me through the details and reads off her lists. “Make sure you buy a CO2 cartridge in D.C., because you can’t take them on the plane.” Cyclists usually store CO2 cartridges on their bikes in case they get a flat. With a tire tool and CO2 cartridge, you can fix a flat in less than five minutes.

  “Maggie,” I say, “I have no idea how to fix a flat tire. I’m not buying CO2.” There is a pause.

  “What are you going to do if you get a flat?”

  “Flag down a police car and do the Miss America wave out the passenger’s side window.” She tells me she can teach me once we get there. I say forget it. If I get a flat, I’ll be responsible for my own stupidity and pay the consequences.

  A woman from our team named Diana sits next to me on the plane. I’ve met her a few times at the handful of practices I attended. She’s probably in her forties. She’s a big, strong lady and when I did see her at practice, she was always at the front of the pack with the cyclists. Diana’s boyfriend, Jim, is meeting her in D.C. He came to practices with her. He’s a great cyclist too.

  We get to talking and eventually I ask her how she got into cycling. She says, “Well, I got a divorce. I was an overweight divorcée who smoked. I decided to do something else other than eat and smoke. I needed something else, so I tried biking. Now I love it.” Diana ended up losing thirty pounds and she has no interest in cigarettes anymore. This is her first triathlon. She tells her story like it’s no big deal. As if making the transition from overweight smoker to triathlete was as easy as deciding to make the bed in the morning. I’m sure it wasn’t that easy. But she seems so far from her past life that it’s not even something she considers too often.

  Our conversation naturally trails off. I sit back in my seat and think about how I get to sit still for two hours. I don’t have to empty the dishwasher or chase a toddler or cook a meal or change a diaper. I can’t even move if I want to. I glance over at Diana. She is staring out the window. Can you reinvent yourself? Can you change from one year to the next even after high school? Do we really have any free will? Diana says sure, why not?

  The night before the race, there is this huge Team in Training pasta dinner. Every athlete who is participating in the triathlon from Team in Training is at the dinner. At our table are people from Team Michigan, none of whom I really know that well because I only went to three training sessions. But now that I’m here I’m slowly meeting people. Lindsay, for example, sits on the other side of our table. She is a little older than me. She is in medical school. Yesterday I learned that Lindsay decided to do the triathlon because when she was six she was diagnosed with leukemia. She tried some very experimental treatment and ended up beating the cancer. For years, she was in a hospital almost as often as she was at school. Her battle with leukemia sparked her interest in the medical profession, which is why she is now on her way to being a doctor.

  Also sitting at the table with Lindsay are her parents and boyfriend. Her parents flew in this morning so they could watch her race tomorrow. At one point during the program, one of the representatives from the Leukemia Lymphoma Society asks if the people in the room who had cancer or who are fighting a cancer can stand up. Obviously, it is a very moving moment. The room is thunderous with applause. Some of the people standing, of course, feel a little strange to be spotlighted. They look a little bashful as if they are thinking, You’re clapping for me because I had cancer? But then there are other cancer survivors who know exactly why the room is shaking with noise. They survived. Something really bad had happened to them, and they survived. These people are applauding themselves, standing on chairs, flexing their muscles, high-fiving the whole table.

  In addition to watching the response of the room, I can’t help but look at Lindsay’s parents. They look like they are holding back tears. Twenty years ago a doctor told them that their six-year-old daughter had cancer. Now she is about to become a doctor, and tomorrow she’ll complete an Olympic distance triathlon to raise money for other cancer patients and their families. I really want the Leukemia Lymphoma Society representative to ask the parents of a cancer survivor to stand so we can clap for Lindsay’s parents too. They have certainly earned it. I can’t imagine those years of hospital visits. How could they go to work every day or think about anything besides their daughter?

  My FMG takes her second brownie from the middle of the table. “Nobody claps for the parents,” she says, taking a bite. “Just get used to it.”

  The morning of the triathlon is incredible. The transition area is monstrous. It feels like an entire football field filled with bikes. The swim begins at 8:20 a.m. I really don’t have any sort of strategy. I should, considering I hardly trained for this. I tell myself that I’m just going to focus on the stage I’m in. When I’m swimming, I won’t think about the bike or the run. When I bike, I won’t think about how slow the swim was or how t
ired I’ll be for the run. I’ll just focus on not getting a flat tire.

  Maggie and I stand on the platform together waiting for our group to be signaled into the water. Moo is in the group behind us. The swim is in the Potomac River. The water is brown.

  “Didn’t George Washington paddle a canoe across here?” I ask Maggie, trying to give myself something inspiring to think about instead of how I probably should have taken an antibiotic before jumping in here.

  “That was the Delaware,” she says, staring at the water.

  I pause. “Right.”

  “What happened in this one?” I ask her. She is still staring at the water.

  “I don’t think I want to know.” She looks at me and tells me it’s all the more reason to swim faster.

  Fast is not a word I am really considering right now, let alone one of its superlatives.

  The gun goes off. We start. Maggie quickly disappears, as does every other person we were just standing with on the platform. I start counting my strokes. One, two, three, four, breathe. One, two, three, four, breathe. Yes, that’s right, I breathe every fourth stroke. I’m not exactly Dara Torres. More like the old ladies who do laps during adult swim.

  We swim down past the bridge. I come around the turn and all I can think is, There is only one way out of this river—you have to swim back. Just keep swimming.

  I make it back to the dock and jump out of the water. I am really fucking tired, but there is an unbelievable amount of joy surging through my body at the idea that the swim is over and I never have to swim again in my life if I don’t want to. I rip off my cap on my way to the transition area. I find my bike—Josh’s bike—and say a little prayer to the Gods of Flat Tires.

  I secretly thought that because this was Josh’s bike, I would jump on and glide through the course. I would fly through the course because Josh’s spirit would somehow come alive once I started riding. I really didn’t need to train all that hard because the bike would do the work for me. Something magical would happen when this bike and I met the pavement of a real race. We would somehow join forces and suddenly it would be Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on two wheels. I would fly past people. “Whoa!” spectators would yell. “Who was that girl?” And miraculously, I would have one of the fastest bike times of the entire triathlon. A picture of me passing elite male riders would appear in the Washington Post beneath the headline WIDOW FINDS HOPE ON HUSBAND’S BIKE. The mayor of Washington, Adrian Fenty, an elite rider himself, wants to meet me. The bike and I are national heroes.