Kindergarten

Elicia, the first day of school, you were face down
on the floor
crying in front of my classroom
talking in gasps
of tears too old to be your own
saying that it was your mom’s boyfriend.
“It was all him.”
I laid down on the floor next to you,
my eyes teaming with yours.
You wouldn’t answer me with words,
Go ahead and touch this hand
if you want to come to my classroom and talk,
or this hand if you want me to give you space.

Your classroom teacher told me that no one would believe
the amount of meth your mom smoked
and heroin she intra-veined
when you were in utero
as your eyes would la la la down the hallway
laces loosening
your fingers gnawing at the staples holding
first-person narratives from the 1st graders on the bulletin boards,
your hair plopping
from shoulder to shoulder
in the tick of a second’s hand.

UNDERWRITTEN BY

Each week, The Colorado Sun and Colorado Humanities & Center For The Book feature an excerpt from a Colorado book and an interview with the author. Explore the SunLit archives at coloradosun.com/sunlit.

You’ve come to my classroom for 60 minutes every day since.
We usually work on reading or math
but it’s all life.
We start off with “Good Things” when I usually say
My Good Thing is that I get to teach awesome kids like you.
Your mouth jawing open
as if you’re about to ask if I’m lying.
Never leave your dreams behind.
Dear Perseverance, you took what God gave you
and made it even better.
Yes, you write your numbers from the bottom up,
but you still learned how to count 1-10
by jumping out each number.
You still learned how to decode consonant-vowel-consonant words
as though you wrote them yourself.
Sound it out.
“/w/ /i/ /g/?”
Mr. C. needs a…?
“Wig!”
And how your eyes time
when you call me crazy
because I sing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” in class
or re-enact the lifeboat scene between Rose and Jack in “Titanic”
Jackkkkkk! Jackkkkkkk!
Tourette-ing my neck with every gush,
you volley,
“Why do you do that Mr. C.?”
Because I get nervous.
“Why are you nervous?

You are a textbook blur between patience and hope
when you ask, “Are you a daddy, Mr. C.?”
The veins in your cheeks growing more apparent,
your bangs touching your eyebrows
and the fuzz on your forearms the other students like to riddle
as you sit smart in your chair
“My Good Thing is that I like Christmas,
Valentine’s Day,
and Mr. C.’s Birthday
and that’s it.”

It’s the last day of school,
and you’re tipping toes by my kidney table
story-eyed as you ask me what we are going to do today.
the expression on your face lucid
like a flame finding its shape,
You tell me your mom’s boyfriend finally moved out.
“You can’t make an apple hang like a peach.”
I ask you to draw a picture about what you’re going to do this summer.
after about five minutes, you walk up to me with your drawing.
Tell me about it…
You comma in the moment,
hoist your head,
and point.
“It’s a picture of you
and my mom
looking up
at the stars.”

Tell Me Something Good, Woohoo!

—To Vance Davis,
who will change the world someday.
I know, because you’ve already changed mine.

The first time we met
was through a Zoom meeting.
Your two front teeth tabbing your smile
as you shrugged your shoulders tough,
your eyes ballooning to meet your first male teacher,
which you had long wanted.
We’re going to do something called “Good Things”
where we talk about one “Good Thing” in our life.
Ready? What’s your “Good Thing” Vance?

And as the months of the COVID-19 Pandemic
fevered through schools,
we were both “staying safe” through remote learning,
where I would share my screen
to have you read sentences adapted from the reading curriculum.
“Mr. C. is sad because he does not have hair on his head.” You read.
“Don’t be sad, Mr. C. You’re perfect just the way you are!”
You ordained, stoked sapience,
surging as you surveyed my nervous tics.
In front of every disability is a person
working hard just to level the playing field.

No, Vance, you’re the perfect one.
You’re perfect like a hand reaching to forgive
because you don’t let your Ullrich congenital muscular dystrophy
or autism
keep you from living your life like a blank check,
the maker, an auditor of somehow,
leaving I-quit in the shadows indemnified.
You love as a love should,
and you never let your physical challenges sully your aplomb,
a spoonful of honesty people couldn’t buy even if they tried.
“Can you tell me a joke, Mr. C.??”
What do you eat when you’re freezing?
“What?”
Brrrr-reakfast!

“Tell Me Something Good”

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SunLit present new excerpts from some of the best Colorado authors that not only spin engaging narratives but also illuminate who we are as a community. Read more.

The next school year, we were both in-person again,
and I transferred to your school.
When your first saw me in the hallway,
you asked me to pull down my mask,
and you remembered all the virtual hi-five’s over Zoom.
I told you we were going to work together again
and you were so happy, you told the other sped teacher,
“I.
Love.
Mr.
C.”
The other sped teacher soliciting
“What about me, Vance? Don’t you love me?”
Your eyes triangle-ing up at him.
“Uh.
Just Mr. C.”

And we read about Ping Pong Pig fixing the farm,
why Sophie shouldn’t get angry,
and reverenced about the new Sonic the Hedgehog movie
in between you asking me to lower your stander.
“My legs hurt!”
But before every lesson,
you’d sing our song, “Tell me something good, woohoo!”
And wait for me to tell mine.

As Christmas Break approached, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you
that I had resigned from the school district.
I caterpillar-ed past you in the hallway
while your brigade of support was strapping you in to your stander,
the belts, buckles, and Velcro alchemizing agitation from amity
and I wanted to pretend you weren’t clapping at my soul
as you cried, “I just want to walk again!”
Your words aggregating
between the deified symmetry
of happenchance
and must.
“Every minute’s a new minute.”

I kept walking back to my classroom,
my eyelid toiled to a twitch,
neck tics insurrecting
and my cognition disordered from Klonopin-withdrawal insomnia,
I said a prayer,
abled by the chaired looks of everyone that meets your glow
with grow,
that the world would look at you
and witness the rote genius of perseverance
apexed with the thunder of now,
All along, my real “Good Thing”
was that I got to be your teacher.
and that I could never feel sorry for myself again.
You are the butterfly
of souls.

My First Tourette

I was seven years old
the summer my mother and father had decided to divorce.
It had been weeks since I’d seen my father
but my mother had promised me I would go to camp instead.
One day, she had me hop in the backseat of the car
with a spiral notebook
and an already gassed bottle of Pepsi.
Are we going to camp today?
“I’ll take you tomorrow.”

That night, we went to a diner in Minneola,
sat down and ordered two sodas and two burgers,
but four minutes after the waitress left,
my mother hooked me by the arm
and headed for the door.
But I’m hungry.
“Your father is watching us”
Can I say hi to him? I soprano-ed.
The prayer-ed pavement was par
with my running to stay with my mother’s pull.
“He’s watching.”

The next day, we got in the car again,
passing many of the same corners,
“STOP” signs, and songs on the radio.
Are you taking me to camp today?
“Tomorrow.”
She ended up taking me to the Emergency Room.
Why are we here?
“Because we’re sick.”
What’s wrong with us?
“We’re allergic to dust.”
The nurse took my blood pressure,
“It’s normal.”
And when she checked my ears,
I told her my teachers said I have a hearing problem
The nurse jotted some notes down,
and said the doctor would be with us shortly.
I sat there, drawing in my notebook, on a chair
that felt like its legs were moving.
After four minutes, my mother took me by the arm again
Why are we leaving?
“Because we’re sick.”

The next day, we drove again,
only the streets seemed longer,
the stops shorter,
my mother marrying cigarette after cigarette,
expelling fricative sound after fricative sound,
playing tag with turning the windshield wipers—on—off—on again
searching for the sorta God she wanted
and the administration of a hurt carved
from when she met my father at 17
after she ran away from the nuns in the convent
who fostered her after she found her mother dead
in the bath tub,
the night my mother fled the house
and told her mother she wished she would die.
Are we going to camp today?
“He’s watching.”

When we got to customs,
I decided we were going to see my grandparents in Montreal,
but as we got closer
we drove the same four blocks around their house,
my mother always slowing down near the dépanneur,
an abyss look
as if she recognized the descension plugging the window,
We did that drive for hours.
Are we going to see Granny and Grandpappy?
“He’s watching.”
But I have to go to the bathroom.
Looking at me as if she were playing with food,
she handed me a Pepsi bottle,
sharpshooting, “Go in here.”
I cuffed my notebook,
my mind turnstile-ing,
vampire-ed by the wiry spirals,
and scrummed them across my lips
back and forth—back and forth.
The amalgamation of the metal and my flesh obsessing my hands
harder, faster every time
until it.     Felt.     Just.     Right.
Camp! We’re sick! He’s watching!
The romance of a schizophrenia proxied to a child
raising an axis of imbalance
until my hands tardy-ed,
my lips inked in blood,
mouth blistered.
We finally stopped at a gas station
where my grandfather opened the back door,
remanded me from my mother’s hook
and ran.

When I saw my dad,
he said we were going home.
He let me stand on the arm rest in the car
and stick my head out the sunroof the entire way home,
the lion wind soothing my blisters,
only he didn’t take me home to Long Island.
He took me to 125th and Broadway instead,
the fang of Spanish Harlem,
where I would meet the woman
who would become my almost-stepmother.
The next morning, I woke up on the couch,
to the sound of a pan frying
Puerto Rican chicken and rice,
the sizzle antagonizing the dopamine
voodoo-ing my mind for my spiral notebook.
I went to grab the phone
to call my father
to ask about camp
when a woman with a mole the size of mean
and a bandana totem-ing her hair
grabbed my arm,
the bruise from my mother’s hook still tender
and told me to hang up.
She lashed, “You’ve got a face even a mother couldn’t love.”
I gagged what tears were left
except for the one
that rolled down my face
and hit the last blister yet to scab.
I named that one,
mommy.

Fingerprint

In this dream, I’m nine years old again,
lying in bed next to my grandmother, the person in a position of trust.
I’m on her left,
naked.
Her body budges, shunting the covers,
speaking in confessions, voyeuristic phrases,
her myriad flesh takes occupancy
as the avatar of her hand,
obtund, jaundiced with Formaldehyde
cocoons my private part
while I lie there in a state of blankness
she continues adjusting
boob-ing into my back.
She clucks in my ear, “You’re my affliction.”
I’m sandwiched by phallic flies
every one, an itch infidel of fault,
as she sprouts seven limbs
from her side,
mummied hands
each one tarantula-ing me,
criminalizing my body,
as they lather and urticate
my soul’s skin.
Her abdomen opens, to swallow me
like a piece of candy
gungy, sugared to inclemency,
encumbering me to her gravity.
I’m reaching through the walls,
screaming through my dream,
Daddy!        Daddy!
I’m in the outside now,
an epilogue of panic.
The reuptake and antagonism of neurotransmitters
as I rinse through the puddle of the prescription pills
that have become my own pretty fiction,
that the haunt and the harm
can be comic-stripped
ornamenting my least restrictive impairment,
a false pathology adjunct to her carnal denervation.
She is no longer ash in the “sinus of God” to me
She is the empty end of an hourglass,
an exercise of futility, necromance-ed,
told in two acts—one a David, the other a Goliath,
venom-ed with why,
a one-way séance that can’t evoke the good of her,
hijacked by the panhandling paraphernalia for a binge
that someday the little-boy me who woke up in the middle of the night
with enuresis soaking my Superman PJ’s
will index the cold whispers’ say,
You are not your trauma.
You are not your disabilities.
Purpose yourself.
The cogent argument that every injury, every recovery
is idiosyncratic
like a fingerprint
of assimilating the white noise of her middle-night touch
to my nail-biting,
hand-to-mouth addiction
to hope

Mark Chartier developed symptoms of Tourette’s syndrome when he was 7 years old and demonstrated significant behaviors throughout school.  He persevered thanks to positive relationships with school staff. He moved to Colorado Springs in 1991 after growing up on Long Island, N.Y.  He earned a BA in English at Colorado State University-Pueblo, and two master’s degrees at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs despite suffering from newly diagnosed disabilities including a brain injury and a significant stutter. He now teaches special education in southern Colorado and gives motivational speeches. His first collection of poetry, “Fingerprints,” was published in 2018. Learn more at  www.teacherwithtourettes.com.

Type of Story: Review

An assessment or critique of a service, product, or creative endeavor such as art, literature or a performance.