The Jail and the Storm

The principal had called, irritated and accusatory—the third time this week Luis had been sent to his office—and now Fernando needed to take his kid home, but not before meeting with Mr. Lark who, as he said on the phone, “Needed to set a few things straight when it comes to kids like Luis.” Fernando knew exactly what kids like Luis meant. It meant dark kids, like Luis.

Now, thirty minutes and counting as they waited for the principal, Fernando felt as if he and Luis were serving out a sentence in the windowless room barely large enough to contain its one, small table with its small stack of blank paper and two pencils shoved to side. Fernando pictured the older students told to write down their wrongs, filling the page with the same, repeated sentence. I will not call my teacher stupid. I will not call my teacher stupid.

“Luis, draw me something,” he said, pushing a piece of paper and pencil in front of his kid. “Draw anything you want. Got to pass the time, right?”

Luis nodded, but he still looked beaten down. I won’t ever do it again, I promise, he’d told Fernando when he’d arrived, the same thing he’d told Fernando a few days ago. And again, Fernando explained that, as far as he was concerned, Luis wasn’t in trouble with him.

Luis began to draw something that resembled a house. He added a few clouds, a sun which he blackened in, and then drew vertical lines all across the page.

“What’s happening?” Fernando asked.

“It’s storming.”

“And what’s that?” Fernando pointed to the house.

“The jail.”

Something sank in Fernando: his kid also felt jailed up in the room. “A jail. Tell me about the jail,” he said.

“It’s a jail with bad people,” Luis said, as if his dad was being stupid. He added a gridwork of lines around the jail. “It needs a fence,” he said. “To make sure the people stay inside. They try to get out, but we can’t let them.”

“Okay. How come?”

“‘Cause.”

Fernando nodded as if he understood, but he didn’t.

He waited, and after a minute Luis glanced at him, checking him out. It was a brooding, evaluating look. A look that Fernando knew: something was coming.

Luis said, “The bad people do bad things. And they can’t never ever ever get out.”

“Never ever ever! That’s a long time,” Fernando said.

“Yeah,” Luis agreed.

Like sitting in this room, Fernando thought. He wanted to correct the factual error—people in jail do get out—but he let it go. The facts didn’t matter because his kid felt like he was always in prison and would never get out, the story so many kids get told about themselves. Fernando felt the sinking feeling again, along with a panicked fury in his chest, but he tamped it down.

“What’s up with the storm?” he asked.

Luis shrugged. “It storms a lot.” He added some lightning that struck the jail, and whispered, Boooom. “Lightning,” he said. “Lots and lots.”

More lightning struck the jail. Those prisoners were really getting it, Fernando thought. “Those people in the jail,” he said, “how they doing with all that lightning?”

A shrug. “It’s fine. They’re used to it.”

“It doesn’t bother them,” Fernando said and Luis shook his head.

Great, Fernando thought, my kid is used to all this punishment.

“So, what’d the people do to end up in jail?” he asked.

“Boom. Boom, boom,” Luis chanted as he added more lightning that made little explosions over the jail. “They got mad,” he said.

“That’s what got them in jail?”

“And they can’t never be let out.”

“Or what?”

Luis stopped and looked at his dad straight on. “They get mad all over again.”

“I get it,” Fernando said. And he did.

Luis’ jail didn’t just lock up people, it locked up their anger. That’s what his kid was drawing, and that’s what his kid had promised the moment Fernando arrived, that he’d never get angry again. All that nonstop lightning with its explosions. Fernando didn’t blame him. After all, how many times had he and Jorge considered other schools for their kids?

The door opened suddenly, and Mr. Lark gazed down at them. “Okay, now,” he said. He regarded Luis with his drawing, the man’s lips squinched to the side as if his tongue was picking lunch from his teeth. A dullness came over his eyes when they lifted towards Fernando as if the principal couldn’t be bothered. Then he turned and left. Fernando knew the way to Mr. Lark’s office—he’d made this same walk two days earlier—and now he would have to listen to Mr. Lark “set a few things straight when it comes to kids like Luis.”

He rose and felt a bead of bile eating at him like a tumor. He wanted to set Mr. Lark straight when it came to people like Mr. Lark who were always blaming kids like Luis. But he knew this would only make it worse for his son. There was no talking to men like Mr. Lark. At least not by men like Fernando.

Instead, that night, he and Jorge would have to sit Luis down for another Talk with a capital T. But for now, he’d sit in Mr. Lark’s office, looking at the man without seeing him, letting the words ricochet off him as he swallowed the rage, the lightning blossoming in his chest.