Their little eyes

That familiar Los Angeles air is always suffocating. It’s always either too hot, or too humid, or too cold, or too dry as the bi-polar city always tends to be. Cement jackets both the buildings and the ground and you’re lucky if you spot a tree or a bush. Yet they play and laugh and run around in their second-hand uniforms as if they don’t go to a school that needs to be guarded by secured gates, as if they don’t live in the same neighborhood as gang members, as if they don’t need to rely on scholarship money from strangers to eat lunch.

Every time I step inside those gates, I am bombarded by little hands slipping into my own hands, tugging at the bottom of my shirt, and shoving un-opened mini chocolate milk cartons in my face. Every time I step inside those gates, without fail, I am smothered in hugs and a monotonous little question, “Wanna play tag?!”

They don’t know me as “white” or “rich” or “charitable.” Most of them don’t even remember my name from week to week. They don’t care. They only see me as another person, someone else to play with, and that’s all that matters to them.

They are five and six years old and most of them don’t know English very well, which makes them difficult to understand. But this means nothing. We still laugh and play and read picture books as if language were trivial.

In the classroom, I sit in the same tiny chairs as them at the same short table. My knees almost touch my chin and my thighs spill over the sides of the chair and somehow I’m supposed to look authoritative and respectable. We all know I don’t so we laugh and attempt to talk about our brothers and sisters or The Little Mermaid or Hot Wheels. Most of the time I just smile or nod my head or say something general like “That’s silly,” or “So Cool!” because I have no idea what they’re trying to giggle in my ears.

Regardless, their eyes say it all. Their small, glistering eyes whether eager, or tired, or wearied, or curious, or joyous tell me everything and nothing at the same time. Their eyes hold their stories, their struggles, their secrets. They tell me everything they want me to know. They tell me everything they don’t want me to know. But I can’t articulate it. I know, but I can’t understand the specificities. This kills me. I want nothing more than to stuff all of them inside my little apartment and give them all my food and clothes and books and love them like they deserve to be loved.

I don’t know their histories or the details of their daily life. I don’t know if they in fact have loving arms taking care of them. But I do know. Their eyes told me.