One week before:
I was not normally a thief. I feel like I should start with that. Trickery, deceit, taking from others, all things that were not socially acceptable at Meadow Park daycare. As a childcare worker, it was all about setting a good example for the children (insert quote about the joys of working in childcare here). Despite my rigorous efforts to be a ‘professional role model,’ there was one exception to my law-abiding tendencies; the bread. Sometimes it was zucchini, others it was banana or carrot, but every third Thursday was the day that I stopped being a good example and started treating myself to the cinnamon bread. Seriously, that stuff could turn an army against each other.
Don’t get me wrong, I also let the children eat, but if there was even a crumb left over, my coworker Luna and I would devour that stuff like no tomorrow. When I arrived at work at 6:15am every weekday (aka the butt-crack of dawn), there was little else to look forward to and this day was not different in the slightest.
“Guess what day it is?” Luna asked as we got out of adjacently parked cars in the employees only section of the Meadow Park daycare facility. Initially, I ignored her question, I was trying to lock my car door with my ancient key fob with no avail.
“Well, let me see, it is not the day where my car decides to lock on the first try,” I said sarcastically as my fob continued to spurn my advances.
“Come on Celia, just leave it alone, who is going to break into your car in the middle of a childcare parking lot?” She asked. I groaned, but listened, joining her as she made her way into the building. “You still haven’t answered my question,” she said as she took her keys out of her pocket to unlock the door. I had not yet worked at Meadow Park long enough to have my own set of keys,
“Um. . . Thursday,” I said, Luna rolled her eyes. “Okay fine, I give up, just tell me,” I said.
“It’s cinnamon bread Thursday!” she exclaimed.
“Shut up! I totally forgot,” I said, real excitement slipping into my sleep deprived eyes. “I swear, if the kitchen staff hides it again, I am going to . . .” I started what was surely going to be an extremely deadly threat, but unfortunately, said kitchen staff were now within earshot.
“Close one,” Luna said. “You know how dangerous the kitchen staff can be with all those can openers.” With a light smack on the arm, Luna and I completed the normal opening duties; making water buckets, putting down miniscule chairs, and of course, getting breakfast ready. Let’s just say that the bag originally had 40 pieces and was down to 35 by the time that the first two kids arrived.
“Hey Mattie! Come on in, its cinnamon bread day,” I chirped as five-year-old Matilda came running into the room like she had gotten more sleep last night than I would through the entire course of my life. Mattie’s mom popped her head in to make sure that there were adults in the room and gave a wearied wave. Mattie was always the first kid to arrive, her mom worked the morning shift at the hospital, sometimes they were waiting for us in the parking lot.
Mattie ran straight to the paper tray, completely ignoring any attempt at conversation that I could muster. Her mom gave me an apologetic look as she checked Mattie in on the iPad and made her way out of the door.
“See you after school, eat some breakfast!” she called over.
“Bye mom,” Mattie replied, very intensely drawing something that resembled either a flower or a family portrait.
This pattern continued until we had almost 20 kids, more than the usual morning load. Luna and I worked the morning shift from 6:15 to 8:30 when the kids went to school and then came back at 2:00 to work the afternoon program. The mornings were usually the most relaxing part of the day. The key word there was usually.
It all depended on whether or not Shane and Lynn came. They were brother and sister; two of the biggest trouble makers to ever grace the Meadow Park daycare. During training we were taught to treat every kid with the same amount of kindness and attention. With those two, it was a chore. Lynn was manageable if not a little feisty, but Shane was a menace to both staff and students. To give you a taste, in the past year alone he had made an ice rink out of sunscreen, smashed the class puzzle onto the ground, and attacked others with a wooden stake he had found in the grass. As you might guess, I was not exactly thrilled when he and Lynn came racing down the stairs on this cinnamon bread Thursday. In fact, they were the reason that the bread thievery had occurred in the first place.
“Shane, stop it! I wanted to tell them.” The moment that the shrill shrieking voice of Lynn flooded down the stairs, Luna and I immediately exchanged the look, the one that always came after a child’s voice and before a headache. Don’t misinterpret things, I liked my job and the children, but I had the inexplicable 18-year-old need to complain that was not to be ignored.
“To bad I’m a faster runner than you!” Shane’s voice pierced back, his green and blue sneakers echoing vivaciously down the stairs and into the classroom.
“Good morning Shane, would you like some breakfast?” I asked as sickly sweet as a pixie stick. The back of Shane’s head answered by running in the opposite direction shouting.
“MISS CELIA, LYNN BROUGHT A WAND FOR SHOW AND TELL!” he screeched, waking me up with twice the efficiency as coffee ever would. Lynn’s extremely aggravated pigtails swung in fury as she stomped into the room holding a pink and yellow fairy wand.
“I WAS GOING TO TELL HER YOU JERKFACE,” she responded, charging at her brother. The problem here was deciding what to reprimand first. Lynn and Shane’s mom, Laurel, poked her head in with an expression that was clearly sorry. I waved her away, knowing that it had to be hard when your kids misbehaved.
“Lynn, please do not use that language at daycare,” I said calmly.
“Well its true,” she said, sitting down at the breakfast table after spying the bread in my hand. Luna shrugged her shoulders in agreement to Lynn’s statement. With the Lynn part of the situation under control, I knew that the next thing I had to do was calm Shane (who was currently hitting the wall with wooden blocks) into sitting down at the table with his sister. News flash, it didn’t go well. Since the wall had not appeased his anger, he decided that my shins would be the next target for his wooden block.
“Hey Shane, do you have a new Rubik cube I could look at?” I asked him. The thing about Shane was that despite being one of the most troublesome kids I knew, he was also a genius. Math, circuits, marble tracks; he lived and breathed those things. The entire situation was perplexing, he would probably go on to invent a new type of lawnmower or make a fortune designing airplanes, but he was determined to lash out and make a mess wherever he went.
At the mention of the Rubik cube, Shane did seem to visibly calm down (a minor victory for the morning), and after a few more times asking, he eventually reached the point where he was able to get a hexagonal Rubik cube from his backpack and show me how fast he was able to solve it. Once he seemed stable, I got up from the miniature table (my knees only slightly cracking) and rejoined Luna at the breakfast cart.
“Girl, you are the Julia Child of childcare,” she said, passing me a piece of bread. I rolled my eyes.
“You are only saying that because you didn’t want to handle it,” I said.
“Regardless, my shins thank you for your sacrifice,” she said, eyeing the bruises already forming on my shins, and I couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. After this occurrence, I assumed incorrectly that the rest of the morning would be a bit calmer. The moment that Calex and Geoffrey sat down next to Shane, I knew that we were in trouble. Calex and Geoffrey were best friends but were not exactly the most considerate towards the feelings of others.
“Why are you working on that dumb thing again, don’t you know that you can just take off the panels to solve it?” Calex asked as he sank down into the round stool next to Shane. That was where I should have intervened, but to be honest, I was taking a bit of a mental nap. To Shane’s credit, he tried to ignore Calex and Geoffrey as they hectored him about his Rubik cube. The last thread broke when Calex took the cube from his hands and started playing with it. Most boys in Shane’s situation would have gotten angry, sure; but when Shane got angry, it was more than just yelling and pushing. It was choking.
My initial reaction was propelled by the deranged scream that detonated from Shane’s mouth as he pushed Calex to the ground and wrapped his hands around his throat. Feet moving without me, I shouted a command for the rest of the kids to go to the other side of the room. Luna met me at Calex’s side as we both attempted to pry Shane’s fingers off his neck. Calex’s face was bright red and he was still able to get noise out through his mouth, so I knew Shane wasn’t killing him.
“SHANE STOP! Don’t make mom leave work early again.” I heard Lynn’s voice break through the frightened mutters of Mattie, Geoffrey and the other kids. It couldn’t have taken us more than 15 seconds to get Shane off of Calex, but it felt like a millennia. There was always the thought of what would happen if we couldn’t get Shane under control when he was having an episode like this one, how things could get one hundred times worse with one second longer on a chokehold.
Once I had removed Shane from the situation and brought him out into the hallway, he calmed down within minutes. Sometimes that was the freakiest part about instances like that one; how it didn’t even seem to faze him, as if he saw no problem in what he had just done. I brought him the Rubik cube and he solved it within 20 seconds.
“Shane, you know why we can choke others right?” I asked, once I was positive he wouldn’t start attacking the nearest person (coincidentally me). He avoided my eye-contact and began tapping an irregular beat on the ground with his sneakers. “Shane, if you want Calex to be the one in trouble, you cannot hurt him, do you understand?” I asked, and the tapping increased its fervor. “I know that Calex took your cube and that wasn’t nice, but there is a better way to handle that than to choke him, do you understand?” I asked.
After a brief pause, Shane nodded his head.
“But he was taking my. . .” he started.
“Shane, if you keep choking people, you and Lynn can’t come back to day care anymore, is that what you want?” I asked. Shane’s eyes were wide as the cracked tile at his feet and shook his head. Just then, Luna peered her head in and gave me a questioning thumbs up which I returned with a nod. “Are you ready to go back inside Shane?” I asked.
“I guess so,” he said, burrowing his neck into his shoulders. I stood up and he followed suit.
“Okay, let’s go. Shane when we go in, I need you and Calex to play in separate areas, got it?” I asked.
After everything had calmed down, Luna hunted down an incident report and I called Shane’s mom. The Costellas had been going to Meadow Park since Shane was old enough to be accepted. They had a great relationship with most of the staff, including myself, even though I’d only been working for a few months. Luckily (or unluckily), her name and phone number were tacked directly above the site phone. That was how often we had to call them.
“Hello,” Laurel said. I could hear the dread in her voice. She knew what a call from this number meant.
“Hi Laurel, it’s Celia from Meadow Park, I’m calling because we had a bit of an incident this morning with Shane,” I said, maintaining a cheer in my voice as I relayed the news that no one wanted to hear. The sigh on the other end was heavy.
“What was it this time?” she asked.
“He got into an argument with Calex again . . .” I began.
You are interrupting me at work because my son got into an argument?” She said, the annoyance in her voice was pressing.
“I’m sorry ma’am, you didn’t let me finish, He began choking Calex and had to be physically removed from the room,” I said. Luna looked up from the incident report she was filling out and nodded sympathetically. I would be upset too if my son continued to get into trouble, day after week after month.
“No, I’m sorry Celia, I just can’t get out of this meeting and we’ve been trying a new system that has not been working whatsoever and . . . I guess I’m just frustrated is all” she started.
“I’m sorry to do this to you Laurel, but we can’t take him on the bus with us this morning, you know our policy,” I said. A deeper, heavier breath set in on the other line.
“I’ll ask Rigo to come pick him up,” she said, referring to her husband.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Of course,” she said. A click signified the dead signal from the other line. When I looked back to the group of unruly kids to make sure Calex was alright, he sat with a smug grin on his face as Luna questioned him about the events that led up to the incident. Shane sat in the corner of the carpet with his head between his knees and his arms wrapped around his ears. He reminded me of a child during a tornado drill, waiting for the debris of his life to encircle him in a storm; his Rubik cube lay still in his hand.
So yes, after Shane got picked up by his dad, and after Calex went to school without a consequence or a call home, I stole some of the bread.
“Hey, don’t let it get to you,” Lua said as we wiped down and sprayed the tables.
“I know, but it’s just not fair,” I said, wringing out the rag. “Calex can continue to bully Shane and no one cares because of his reaction. It feels like the bully just keeps on winning.”
“Yeah, but we can’t just excuse Shane’s behavior either, no matter what Calex did, he didn’t deserve to be chocked, no one does,” Luna said.
“Which I totally get, but we aren’t helping anybody by punishing him, we need to get ahead of the problem. I mean, isn’t that the point of this job? To help the kids and mold a future generation?” I asked dramatically while Luna guaffed.
“The point of this job is to make money, newbie,” She said. Rolling my eyes, I emptied the water bucket into the sink, watching the soggy cinnamon bread crumbs sink to the bottom of the drain. It was a running joke to call me the newbie even though I’d been working for over three months. “By the way, did you hear that we’re getting a new staff today? Some guy named Evan I think.”
“Oh good, Brenn will be happy to have another guy around,” I said.
“Yeah and you won’t be the newbie anymore,” she said, pausing before what she said next, “hey, you know what might make you feel better? There is an extra bag of bread in the kitchen,” she said.
“As much as I would love to rob the Meadow Park kitchen staff, isn’t the leftover bread for the kids?” I asked. Luna nodded.
“I don’t see any children around here, do you?” she asked.
So yes, I did steal the bread, but after watching Shane get picked up by his dad and Calex boarding the bus giggling about it, eating the bread didn’t feel like the worst thing that I’d done that day. It was still on my mind when I walked out into the parking lot and yanked on the car door, expecting it to fling open. Instead, I nearly pulled of the door handle. The car was locked, and as the realization hit me, I felt my blood frost.
“Luna, I didn’t lock my car, did I?” I asked, my voice bouncing within me. Luna looked up from her key fob.
“I don’t think you got the fob to work,” she said, leaving a long silence between us. “Maybe it locked but the horn is just broken or something,” she reasoned. The stirring feeling in my gut told me that this was not the reason, but any alternative was something I could not make myself imagine. Sure, I had taken Tae Kwon Do like every eight-year-old with anger issues, but that didn’t mean I was ready to face off with a stranger who had inexplicably locked my car door.
“You’re probably right,” I said, manually unlocking the door. Nothing looked out of place; my chick-fil-a cup still sat half empty in the cupholder, my choir folder was propped up with music spilling out just as I had left it. The only thing indicating a problem was the locked door, and the unease that I couldn’t seem to shake. No matter how good my playlist was, I couldn’t shake the feeling that a storm was coming. I wish that I was wrong, but that feeling was just the beginning.