The School Guard
Slice of life Americana
Anaise was chosen for guard on a day when her parents had no time to celebrate it, so she hid the sash. She ate her dinner and listened while they discussed the onset of war. War was familiar to her, not that there was time either for her to share her expertise, having participated in a series of playground experiments on the topic: boys versus girls, poor versus rich, brown versus white, black versus white, brown and black versus white. She knew what it was to make friends in arms who wouldn’t look at her twice when it was over. She knew about betrayal – the swapping of sides, a humiliating strategic decision for all involved – and she knew about losing, and she knew about winning. Unfortunately, she didn’t know much about the war her country was about to involve itself in. She pushed her rice around, taking snippets from the higher conversation between her mother and father.
“I just don’t understand terrorists,” her mother said.
“There’s nothing to understand,” her father replied.
Anaise didn’t want her parents to be concerned she hadn’t told them something. They might think she had other secrets – she did not – so she concealed the sash until the walk-up to the school doors, after they’d dropped her off. It was bright, hi-v yellow, and it said ‘School Guard’ in blocky blue letters. She felt ordained as she walked across the quad that morning.
St. Odrian Elementary was flat, beige, a single building, with trailers to one side that acted as temporary classrooms. The maple trees sent whirlers down around Anaise, rice at the wedding, confetti at the parade. The air smelled like the first moment of the first bite of an apple, before the sweetness, when the aroma of it hits the nose, and the waxy edge makes contact with the teeth.
The boy, Deacon, was wearing his hi-v yellow sash too.
Anaise didn’t look at him when she walked by, and hoped he would notice.
But nothing hurt Deacon. He was too big and tall – the world bounced off of him.
He sat on the couch under the whiteboard that said Mr. Wooster on the opposite side of the room from Anaise, when they gathered for the club meeting.
It was a new room for her. Legend had it the fourth graders met for Student Democracy there, and it bore the hallowed aura of a sacred place. The walls were covered in the same shag as the floor, muffling the world around them, the guard, gathered around a circular wooden table – except for Deacon. Anaise sat at the side by the door, across from Mr. Worcester, turned away from the chicken-wire mesh window that would hypothetically let someone peer inside. But the other kids were too small to look in through the window, and the librarian’s assistant (who had been filling in for the librarian for years) was petrified of eye-contact.
There were six others in total. Five in sashes, and the chaperone, picked at animal crackers on paper plates. The bland sweetness paired well with ducking out of class half an hour before lunch.
Mr. Worcester looked up from his plate and smiled at Anaise. “Are you thirsty?” he asked.
She nodded, breaking a leg off the lion in her hand.
“Good,” he said. “We’re all thirsty.”
He was a new person for her. People colloquially called him Mr. Woo. Hair exploded from his every pore. He wore a watch and a woven orange band with a buckle. The band seemed decorative, but Anaise suspected an ulterior purpose. Her eyes followed it instead of his face.
Anaise’s mother told her that diligent workers always take notes, so she took out the notebook she’d picked out for Guard. Glittery gold, flame-flecked, spiral-bound, thick as her finger, the Memo Pad drew eyes from the others as they calculated her level of enthusiasm, enviously. Mr. Woo smiled and nodded. Deacon stared up at the ceiling, bouncing both his knees under his hands like basketballs.
“Well, let’s get into it,” their hirsute leader announced. “Today, we’ll start with a quick strategic rundown, then the perimeter check. Report back here, and we’ll get lunch.” He held his hand out at Anaise. “Before that, let’s welcome Anai– An-nase - Ana to Guard. It’s a big honor to be chosen, and as our ranks grow, we must not leave the initiates behind. So, everyone, round of applause.”
The attention was sparse, reluctant. The other guards looked at the new kid with narrowed eyes. They were thirsty, and trying to see if she was the type to conceal water.
“Good. Okay. Today’s topic is, if the school was invaded by ground forces, let’s call them ‘zombies’, what would our defensive strategy look like?”
Anaise’s hand shot up, to laughs.
“We just speak our minds here,” Mr. Woo explained. “No need to raise your hand.”
Before she could, someone else brightly interjected: “The front isn’t safe because of the big windows. We should barricade in the basement!”
“Mhm, mhm. What do we think of Heidi’s suggestion? Anybody?” Mr. Woo looked pleased with the ball rolling. Anaise tucked what she was going to ask away, in the back of her mind, before she embarrassed herself.
“No, no, we’d end up losing the cafeteria, and we need food stores.”
“We’d achieve the same outcome by boarding the front windows up.”
“We should put an observation on the rooftop!”
A loud, derisive snort from Deacon quieted the room.
“Haven’t you guys ever heard the best defense is a good offense?”
Mr. Woo nodded his patented nod, and smiled his patented smile. “Thank you, Deacon, that’s a very interesting point. Can anybody think of offensive tactics we have available to us?”
Anaise’s frown deepened. This was beyond her. By some mistake, she’d been put in a war room, on a project far past her scope of knowledge; but as great awe and fear moved through her, Anaise also recognized the great national importance of the project. They had told her she’d be protecting the school. She imagined it meant hall monitor duty. But they’d been underselling it. This was real.
She was courageous. That was why she had selected the sparkly gold notebook with flame decals. It spoke to her. She sat up straight and wrote it all down in her painful cursive: thirsty, defense, offense. Not ready to contribute that day, she would be more prepared for the next one.
Teachers liked putting Anaise and Deacon together as partners or in desk assignments. They gave a lot of reasons for it (‘complimentary personalities’, ‘opposites attract’, ‘Deacon needs a little help’, ‘Anaise needs to express herself’) both to her and to themselves. Anaise was neat, timely, and dull. Deacon was messy, late, and rambunctious. The attempts to balance their traits by forcing them to work together had never yielded anything more than pain for Anaise: when he wasn’t pulling her ponytail or calling her names, she would wind up doing all the work, while also keeping Deacon in line. She told herself she didn’t mind. She liked the idea of being the teacher, and the teachers wanted her to share in their authority. Of course, as a nine-year-old, the shortest in her class, she was ill-equipped to corral the big bully of their grade. Though she didn’t let his behavior trouble her (even knowing, as adults had told her, that he was flirting), she was never able to finish a day that involved Deacon without feeling a sense of failure.
So, when they were paired up for that day’s perimeter check, she tried to keep her expression from falling.
“Deacon, you show Ana the perimeter we run. Everybody else,” Mr. Woo poured out a cardboard box full of tiny army figures, “will be doing more strategy practice.”
Anaise looked in yearning at the adorable plastic toys, and the kids who were already getting to play with them, then at Deacon, whose expression hadn’t changed since that morning. “Okay!” She said with a big push of enthusiasm. “Let’s go!”
He rolled his eyes and they left the Student Democracy room.
The first step was to get armed. Deacon took Anaise to get bolt action rifles from the gym’s equipment room, and showed her how to hold it in her hands. For once, he seemed too excited to make fun of her, even holding her hand with his own around the butt of the rifle. “Yeah,” he urged as she practiced walking around with the barrel resting against her shoulder. “Don’t let it wave around.”
It wasn’t until their perimeter had started, both of them carrying their guns, that Anaise decided to use Deacon’s seeming popularity in School Guard to compensate for the number of projects she’d done for him. “What did you mean by what you said in there?” she asked him. She was slightly out of breath keeping up with the taller boy.
“Uh, exactly what I said, dummy. The best defense is to get the other guys first.”
She furrowed her brow. Frustrating. What was she not understanding about it? “But then – what if you’re too late, and they get you?”
“Just don’t be too late.”
“But what if you don’t know anyone’s coming? Like we don’t. But – if we had defenses, then, it’s better, right?”
Deacon mulled over this; they were walking along the edge of the school grounds, where the recently-watered field still glittered in the late morning. The air smelled fresh and clean, the gun felt comfortingly heavy in her palm. He shook his head. “I guess it doesn’t matter if you get them first, as long as you get them. Getting them is more important than keeping everybody safe, all the time. That’s impossible.”
Anaise wondered if it really was impossible.
“You walk so slow, Ana,” Deacon complained. He paused on the sidewalk to pretend to aim his rifle at a person walking a dog.
“Stop it!” Anaise blanched. “Don’t point that at her! She’s not ground forces or zombies!”
Deacon’s eyes sparkled at her anger. “Oh, I shouldn’t do that?” He aimed the muzzle at the sky. “What about birds, huh? I can shoot a bird, I bet.” He shut one eye. “Probably not that hard, even.”
“Deacon, I’m gonna tell Mr. Woo if you shoot your rifle.” Anaise’s back was ramrod straight, her eyes steely.
“Whatever. I’ll tell him you did it.”
“Deacon!” Anaise’s shriek was loud, and the dog-walker looked their way. She was staring – Deacon looked at her, and then he looked down, and Anaise thought she could see a hint of shame in his gaze.
“Whatever,” he clacked the rifle back onto his shoulder, looking down at the ground. “We’re gonna be late for lunch.”
They walked back in through the cafeteria. The lower grade was having their lunch period, and it was nearly over. They’d be let out to play while Anaise and Deacon’s grade ate next. Nonetheless, every faux-terrazzo table was packed, and as the two Guards entered, everyone turned to look.
The public address system crackled to life from speakers embedded in the ceiling. It was the voice of the principal. “Attention all students. We have just declared war, and so the school administration has decided to make today a half-day. Repeat, today is a half-day. Classes will be dismissed three hours early at 1:30 PM. Again, we are ending today at 1:30 PM. If you take Bus C, you will be taking Bus D today. Thank you.”
Their sashes were luminous. Their rifles were cold and serious. Their faces were unknown to the younger kids, but the authority they carried with them was real, realer than any other. They knew it might be them someday, wearing the sash, and carrying the weapon. What they planned to do with that authority was unspoken by its nature– even when their plans were enacted, someday, it wouldn’t be words that allowed it. For many, what they wanted couldn’t be put into words. But they all thought about it, their great, national projects. Every kid wondered when they would get their bright yellow sash; when they’d get their gun.
Collage Credits:
Garry Gay - Toy Box (2013)
Oak Street Elementary (Homes.com)
People - Unknown Source
Chicken Wire - GadoImages.com (1956)
Henri Delval Maroc Travel Poster (1956)
Beautifully written!