Bootstraps

Jamal’s brother died on the second day of class so Jamal missed two weeks. When he came back, while I was explaining how he could catch up, he told me he had to miss next class as well—he had to take his mother to see a psychiatrist.

Kara and Katy, twins, have missed multiple classes because their car wouldn’t start. They apologized for not having bus fare. Victoria has missed quite a few as well, because class is early and she’s still suffering morning sickness.

In my online course Richard emergency-dropped after the wildfires in California forced him to evacuate. This was a week after he asked for an extension on his paper because he could not breathe with all the smoke in the air. Anna needed an extension when Hurricane Isaias knocked out power along the East Coast. She frantically emailed from her dying phone to tell me she’d get her work done.

On her first discussion board assignment, in which we were analyzing “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Yolanda said she knew men like the husband in the story, though most of them were worse, like her ex, who still won’t stay away.

Michelle has to get tested for coronavirus every two weeks because she works at a nursing home. Casey and Clint were in the military, as was Alyssa, who worked as an MP in a prison. She says she can always go back to prison-work if she has to, but Clint says he will never re-enlist. Both Clint and Casey served in Iraq. Clint’s first paper detailed how soldiers are often mistreated if they suffer from PTSD.

Jamal finally came to class to turn in his first paper, in which he advocated for the Black Lives Matter movement. That was three weeks ago, and I haven’t seen him since. Ellen has stopped coming as well, as have Brandon and Van and Charles, who all disappeared on the same day, amid rumors of ICE in Kansas City.

In my students’ informal essays I see stories of love and loss, how Rachel suffered an ovarian cyst and can’t have kids—she hopes writing about it will help her depression. Laura’s been looking for her birth mother all her life. Ethan’s brother was developmentally disabled so the other kids called him Retard. Jamal can’t wear a hoodie. Clint’s seen dead bodies; he and Casey have both seen battle. Alyssa says men cry at night in prison. Yolanda’s been beaten multiple times, as have Marsha and Samantha. Grace’s granddaughter drowned in a pond; her daughter has slipped in and out of drugs ever since.

Mitchell’s dad died of a thrombotic aneurysm three years ago. He didn’t die right away, Mitchell wrote in his first paper, the getting-to-know-you essay I assign all my first-year students, the ones that often hurt when I read them. He hung on for a while, but he was changed. He suffered mood swings, from wild anger to sudden weeping, and it was hard to watch, Mitchell wrote, though not as hard as him dying. Afterward, Mitchell felt suicidal. He wants to be a writer, so I write him a little note telling him that to be a writer he has to hang in there, which makes me think about the fallibility, the futility, of words.

After her cyst Rachel said she felt like something had been cut out of her. Laura said she’s always felt unmoored not knowing who her mother was. Jamal said someone was always watching him, that Black men can’t move through public spaces unnoticed. Clint says dead bodies don’t look real, but they are. Casey’s dealing with addiction. Grace didn’t know what to do when her granddaughter died so she just held on. Michelle is scared of the virus, not that she might get it, but that she might give it to one of the elderly patients she cares for. In class we all wear masks. We aren’t allowed to take them off.

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“People should pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” said an old friend on Facebook. In his early 20s he fell into his father’s field of work. He’s never stood in line at a job fair, never lost a loved one, never woken up in the morning wondering if there’s any reason to get out of bed.

“Go back to school. There’s all kinds of opportunity out there. Some people just don’t want it enough.”

*Note: I wrote this essay in fall 2020, when I was teaching at three different colleges. The names have been changed, but the stories are real, all of them.