My first year as a working professional, I was placed at an East Harlem elementary school, courtesy of a large, local non-profit. Through AmeriCorps, this organization got a slew of employees annually that could be spread across the 90+ square blocks of Upper Manhattan that they served. I, along with many other Corps members, were deployed largely as classroom bouncers in local public schools. I did technically have a specialized job because I had a degree-- as did a cohort of maybe 10 other employees across our level at the organization-- but what we were generally called upon to do was the menu of things everyone else was tasked with: fight management, classwork distribution, avoiding bedbugs and ringworm, and monitoring the cafeteria during each lunch period. At least, during the school day, this was the order of things. Once 3pm hit, we were solely responsible for running three hours of after school programming for the same students we’d support-wrangled under their teachers’ watches all day. Every afternoon, we became both the front lines and the backup.
The job was dire on every conceivable level, a report I’ve heard from many other former AmeriCorps members; particularly those placed in cities or extremely rural areas. But what made the situation that my coworkers and I were in particularly challenging was how unwell the larger community was. Our students were physically, emotionally, and mentally ill, and it manifested in a whole spectrum of ways. There were several universal “understandings” that we all had to work with, if anyone was going to get through a workday; parental separation anxiety dogged even the oldest kids; there was the student who beat one of my coworkers in the back of the head and neck with a chair on his “bad” mornings; obesity was rampant; one of our 6-year-old students had a recurring urinary tract infection, for example, that we all suspected stemmed directly from either total parental neglect, assault, or both. In the latter’s case, we could not enter a bathroom stall with her, or make sure she was wiping from front to back, so she would sit and cry on the toilet, whilst one of us stood on the other side of the divider, passing her paper towels soaked in cold water, under the mandated gaze of another employee standing half in the doorway, half in the hall. This was one kid, mind you-- many others needed specific care, too, and a lot more of it than what we could offer.
I personally spent a lot of time sitting on floors during my years with that organization. Whenever a student would snap, the tantrum that ensued often wound up with them lying down or slumped against a wall, but until they ran out of steam, whichever one of us managing the situation would try to stand between the child and something they could hit or otherwise use to hurt themselves (also, to protect student work stapled on bulletin boards, other children, and school property). But once we hit the wind-down part of the screaming or crying or fury, I would sit with the kid and wait for them to steady themselves. Sometimes I talked. Sometimes I was more angry than they were. Sometimes I didn’t say anything because the desire to cry or fly off the handle was too great. But also, sometimes words were totally useless and I knew that.
One of the pervasive fears we lived with was asthma attacks (a subject I wrote about in some more detail here). Many of the kids, not to mention adults, were prone to them, but parents did not consistently provide inhalers for emergency school use. Coping with this was very ad hoc: we would watch our students, like vultures over dying animals along a highway, during gym class, recess, or any remotely movement-involved activity. We looked for bent-over breathing, hands at chests or throats, fast inhales and exhales, ragged coughs, and at the first sign, we’d call a student over and check in. As a former kid with asthma, myself, I was familiar with these management strategies. After my family moved out of Brooklyn, NY in 2000, my lungs started to heal, but even now, over twenty years later, I can remember the sensation of paper crumpling in my chest and the loudness of my struggling lungs. So the first thing I did every time I pulled a kid who was fighting to breathe was check how they sounded. Sitting on the gym floor, I’d have a child scoot backwards until they were alongside my hip and outer leg. This kept me in the safe zone of “no contact,” while also allowing me access to their upper backs. I’d hunch sideways until my ear was pressed into a student’s yellow school shirt: upper right, “take a big breath in;” upper left, “take a big breath in.” I listened for the rattling or rustling or fluttering that indicated some sort of asthmatic activation. Then, depending on whether I found evidence, or determined it was the child’s trying to avoid gym or their being unhealthy, I’d keep them on the sideline or send them back into the fray.
One student, Aiden, came stumbling over to me one day, grasping at the flimsy little collar on his shirt. “Miss! Miss! My asthma!” he shouted. I looked at him oddly. Asthma? This was new.
“Aiden, since when do you have asthma?”
“I used to!”
First grader logic. I sighed, but obliged him, and we sat down. Before I could give any instructions, he sat straight up, leaned back towards me, and took an enormous breath in. He gusted it out. He took in another.
I could hear some rasping in there, but remembered he and his older brother had been out with strep the previous week. I had him turn and face me. “Okay, Aiden. I don’t think it’s asthma.” He started to protest, but I interrupted him. “Aiden, let me finish! I know you were coughing-sick last weekend. I think it could be that. It’s okay if you want to sit out.” He looked confused. “I don’t wanna sit out, miss.” I eyed him. He eyed me. I made him a deal: “you’ll sit out for five minutes. You can watch the timer on my phone. You said you didn’t feel well so I’m going to hold you to it, okay?”
“Aw. Awwww, man.”
“O-kay, Aiden?”
“Ohhh-kaaay.”
He took his sentence, albeit grumpily. The day carried on. And for the whole subsequent time I worked with him and his parents, I was never informed of his having, or having had, asthma. But I thought about it-- that day in gym, checking his breathing-- a year later, when Aiden’s mom brought his new baby brother to school to meet the after school staff.
Tiny Noah was beautiful: pale, pale brown skin, with an unwrinkled squish of a face. Mom made the rounds, then came back and found me running dismissal at the main entrance of the building. We were weird buds— she had been the parent coordinator the year before, stolen a bunch of money from the PTA, and then made sure to not set foot in the school between 8am and 3pm ever since. But prior to that, I’d hidden out in her “office” a lot in my first months on the job. She handed me Noah, and I cradled him in my right elbow while talking to another parent. He settled in quickly, and Mom watched him. A few minutes later, he was conked out, sleeping. The late afternoon was beautiful, and we were out on the school’s steps together. After another couple of seconds, Mom reached over and slapped the baby in the face.
“Hey! HEY!” she said to him. He shifted a little, then stilled.
“Hey, kid!” Slap.
The baby roused, and I looked up at Mom, bewildered; “what’d he do?!”
“He’s never quiet like that with me!” she exclaimed. “What the hell!” She laughed to herself, enjoying her joke, while I stood there fully dumbfounded. Then, Aiden trotted out with his older brother. Faces upturned, they grinned at me with older-sibling pride. Did I like their new brother? They asked. Yes! I said. Did they like their new brother? Yes! they said.
“Lookit him!” Aiden added, whole face alight. My chest got tight with the moment. Then it passed. Mom reclaimed Noah, dropped him in his stroller, and the family headed home.
I thought about Aiden, watching them leave. Aiden and his sudden-onset asthma. My listening ear against his back as we sat on the floor of the gym so many months prior. His mother’s impatience with the baby’s calmness and ease with someone else, and her quick, sharp physicality in that impatience. I hated the no-contact rule we lived with at work because of how badly so many of our students needed hugs from us, pats from us, scoop-ups-and-spins from us. Aiden, I realized, might have needed that. Maybe he’d seen the affection from me that other kids had gotten during asthma checks, and decided to try to get ahold of some, too. If physical closeness was not something easy at home, or kind, wouldn’t you seek it out elsewhere?
Several years later, Aiden and his asthma came back to me. I was still in New York City, and everything was descending into COVID-19-induced lockdown. It was early March, which, in Manhattan, meant we were experiencing a wide variety of weathers, and experiencing the inevitable allergy and cold episodes that accompany temperature shifts like that. So everyone was also convinced that every or cough and headache was a possible symptom of pending COVID death. No matter how healthy we were, most of us were living from one self-diagnosis-fueled panic attack to the next, and I was no exception. One afternoon, out for a walk in the chilled March sun after spending hours indoors, I felt a faint rustle in my bronchial tubes. It was as if an extremely unwelcome old enemy had arrived, knocking on the door with cruel news. Asthma relapse? A chest cold? Call an ambulance?
As my pandemic anxiety began to kick in, I did my best to prevent a full-on spiral: think of the delicious, cool spring air you’re inhaling, I prompted myself. Look at this beautiful afternoon. Slow inhale. Even slower exhale. I stood without moving in the middle of the sidewalk, commanding myself to slow down and regain control, for what felt like hours. And then, suddenly, I thought of Aiden. In that moment of panic, I was afraid of what might be happening with my body, as well as what was happening in the world at large. I badly wanted some kind of physical comfort from a loved one; I hadn’t had a hug from anyone in weeks, and I eventually wouldn’t get one for months. But the pandemic had rendered physical contact impossible, just as it had been (and is) in the public schools I worked in. Aiden, all those years ago, had wanted physical closeness. He had found a way to safely get it from me, in the form of asking for an asthma check.
Now, seven years later, longing for comfort myself, that whole scene in the gym came rushing back. I felt the ache in a new way, and wished I had done more than just check Aiden’s heaving, six-year-old lungs. Wished that I could, right then, ask someone to press an ear to my upper back, and check my breathing. Comfort me. Damn the rules. The endless list of unknowns that comprised life during the pandemic made my former student’s straightforward need for human closeness make that much more sense.
Damn if I, like Aiden, didn’t need someone to lean in. Ask me to inhale. And listen.