This is a sad tale. There once was a boy I taught, who was perfect. He helped his best friend, the sweet but confused Kevin "Flowers", with the math that I was teaching, long after I had run out of patience. He was smart and empathetic and likeable. He made his classmates and me laugh with him rolling up his pants legs and folding his eyelids into their sockets and walking around with a funny gait, perhaps imitating a character from a Univision program, I don't know, but the pure joy from his classmates made me smile. He wrote an essay in ELA class about turning 13 and wanting to be Superman. And then, he was gone.
It's probable that, if one teaches long enough, one of your students will die. More than one of mine has died, but only one while I was still helping to mold him: Guarionex. He went by many nicknames: Guachy, Watchy-Mono (I understood this to mean a night watchman monkey from his English Language Learner classmates), but I called him Guari. As I later found out, his mother moved him to Queens from the Bronx for safety. But, the part of Queens that we were in, was deceptively dangerous. Many of my students saw drive-bys and dead bodies, and in the 7th grade, they were already getting arrested. There were many homeless shelters that were in the zone, some for families, and some for kids whose parents were unable to care for them because of drugs, abuse or incarceration. These kids had tumultuous lives, and math was low on their priority lists. I loved them all, even the ones that left a bad taste in my mouth, because I understood the hardships they were experiencing at very young ages. I was amazed that some of them still had an innocence about them. Guari was one of those. He had a twinkle in his eye that reminded me of my beloved grandfather. He formed a tight relationship with his mostly Spanish speaking ELL classmates and was friends with everyone. He was also small, and his friendliness with one particular student was his undoing.
I don't have all the details. What I gather is Guari was selected because he was small and easily overpowered, not because there was any bad blood. His murderer, another 7th grader, was a notorious bad seed. The New York Times wrote a "balanced" article about this tragedy that inferred that the killer couldn't hurt a fly, but I knew him and knew he was capable of depravity. The title hinted at the true reason for Guari's death but never explicitly said it: gang initiation. It was a senseless death, and it stopped my altruism in its tracks. I was never again the idealistic teacher that I was for the first 5 years of my education career. I stayed to help my students deal with it, but I wasn't dealing with it very well myself. Recently married and heavily pregnant, my emotions were heightened. Seeing Guari's mother come to the wake uncontrollably grieving was beyond comprehension. My new husband seemed uninterested in my situation and the feelings that an expectant mother has when a child is taken. He did not accompany me to the wake. There would soon be other disappointments from my husband when I gave birth, not two months later. But Tootie Pie was more than a welcome distraction from pain. There were moments when I thought she could be Guari reincarnated. The post-partum mind can play some spooky tricks; my daughter is very much her own person of course.
I didn't last much longer at that school. My maternity leave ended just before the end of the school year. I went back for 8th grade graduation and, let's be honest, the 7th grade was already on holiday mode, so it was easy professionally to spend a few days to say goodbye. I love the survivors to this day and needed closure. I had them again the next school year, but so too did I have some of the students involved in the gang culture and in Guari's death and subsequent poor attempts at coverups. Just when I should have seen my tiny daughter in all these kids, I fell prey to the forces of evil and became selfish. Everything and everyone associated with the event was lawyering up, clamming up and it was disgusting. I left in December. I had to. I still feel awful for my ELLs and what they went through, but I was too powerless to stop the bad inclinations of savage children.
A former assistant principal heard of my leaving and snapped me up in a part-time role at an elementary in Queen's Chinatown. Eventually, I returned to a "better" school full-time in my neighborhood, but it was something of a culture shock, and my wariness of kids never subsided, and so I left there after two awful years to return to the 'hood, not the same one, but there are plenty of poverty filled schools with needy students. But, it was never the same. I somehow cranked out 15 more years. And I ended up leaving because of a foreseen attempt to remove me, which I fought and won, returned to the classroom, but knew they'd be after me again. I had a visitor show up from the legal office with a promise to try again, and then had winter break, grand jury duty, and then the pandemic. So the pressure was off for a couple of years. Eventually things returned to normal and I went back, and this time, before I got caught up in the legal process again, I left and returned to my former career. My mother was thrilled. I was happy. The nightmare was over. I had survived.
The nightmare will never end for Guari's mother, family and friends. I talk about him to anyone who'll listen. I had EDMR treatment at a PTSD clinic for first responders. At first, I felt imposter syndrome since I didn't go into a burning building or anything equally dramatic, but upon telling my story of the rapid succession of Guari's death, Tootie Pie's premature birth, and stroke, the other participants were shocked. In the treatment, I spoke of another small statured student who was in with the gang kids, and I accessed something that I hadn't recalled before about him at the wake, now again I've forgotten the detail, but I saw him for who he truly was: a kid. A mixed up, stressed child who may have been afraid for his own safety and did what he could to survive. It gave me the strength to continue my mission, and so I did.
Perhaps I've never approached the family that I had with my ragtag group of ELLs and maybe motherhood does necessarily make you focus on those you love to the detriment of others, but I have since returned to teaching and I now am amazed to find that there is still joy in helping others access what can be a terrifying subject. And I've stalked the murderer, fully expecting he'd be in jail, and found that he's made a life for himself and owns his own business in a blue collar field, still in Queens.
Is there a takeaway? Can a senseless loss of a beautiful soul taken too young be neatly tied up with a bow as a moral tale? If it can, I still haven't found the greater meaning of it. I of course would give anything to allow Guari to live a full life, and I'm certain he'd become a good man. Maybe if this hadn't happened, he would become another faded memory of an amazing individual I had the pleasure of meeting as a wonderful child full of promise. But, it did happen and it altered my path in ways that were painful. Growth is painful, and it is necessary for becoming who we are. All I know is, I love Guari and always will. He brought joy to me, his classmates and everyone who met him, and I am the better for it. It has taken me an unreasonable amount of time to come close to something resembling forgiveness to the killer, and I'm not sure that I have completely. Some of the adults I know I will always despise. From the administration of the school, to the Queen's borough president, my heart will never release the hatred I have for the shocking way this tragedy was handled. I survived with my humanity, barely, and I hope that at some point they made changes for the better, but Guari was by design quickly forgotten. They barely knew him, having just moved, and I feel sorry for them for it. He came into my life and brought beauty, and all the evil forces in the world can not take that. Rest in peace, Guarionex.
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