Category: Fiction

Back at School!

A story about the future of teaching in a coronavirus world.

Thank the stars and the powers that be! We’re back in school! I am so excited: I finally get to be in the same room with my students!

Wearing a mask handmade by a friend.


It was tough working with students through a screen, especially since our school day was shortened and screen time was limited to 150 minutes a day, while our curriculum of course did not get any smaller. We had more to do: we taught how to wash hands, wear masks, use a device appropriately, where to pick up food, and how to describe and improve one’s emotional well-being, among other duties. It seemed like every week there was an additional way for educators to extend a helping hand through the screen.


Because so many students enrolled in e-learning and home-school programs, I ended up being the only 5th grade teacher in the school. So, no teaching partner to bounce ideas off of. At first this was all right. I’d still see colleagues in the school building, and before the expectations and anxieties became too intense, I could find people to join me in a video meeting for an idea exchange or just to vent and commiserate. Thank goodness I am naturally an introvert or I would have gone off of the deep end and other teachers on staff would have had to absorb my students into their digital classrooms.


I got really good at recognizing people from the eyes up. When they kept on their hats after coming in from the long, cold 45ºF-below Alaskan winter I only had the mask design to go by. Then everyone starting buying or making new masks because our original ones were giving out. We started calling out greetings so we could recognize each other: “Good morning, I’m Erica!” “Hello, this is Richard!”


The winter did not kill the virus like someone said it was supposed to. Maybe that was because the cold and the dim winter light (or, where I live, the lack of light) prompted people to huddle together in friend and family groups. Maybe it was because the virus was fighting harder for its life. Whatever the reason, the bug did not die. It grew, multiplied, and strengthened. People of all ages contracted the illness more frequently; half of these died, while those who recovered could still get ill again, at greater ferocity.

Sadly, the heat of the second summer did not destroy the virus either. Scientists eventually determined that a quarter of the original population who showed no symptoms were in fact carriers, and there were a very, very, very special few who were completely immune. Despite all of the thorough, exhaustive tests governments around the world are running on these blesséd people, no drug, vaccine, or immunization procedure has proven effective.

This doesn’t matter anymore because schools have found a way to bring the children back into the buildings! Yay!

I’m so excited that I have to force myself to take deep breaths and look over the checklist I made for myself. I have all of the paperwork (real paper!) my students will use this year, all of the textbooks, the writing and art supplies. I wrote the schedule on the board yesterday, and sanitized the desks and the chairs.

I take another long inhale to quiet my excitement then pull on the straps at my wrists to synch up my sleeves. The school district is providing me with this new uniform and only taking the cost of it out of eight of my paychecks. My salary, like all teachers’, was reduced to help purchase an outfit for all of the returning students. The custodians who lived are receiving double what I used to earn — for hazard pay.

Before I get out of my car, I press the buttons at my neck again. I’ve never taken ill, which could mean I’m a carrier. I would rather be that than immune.

I greet my students at the classroom door. They are so excited to be in the classroom but after a joyful loud noise as they shout out to each other, they settle into chairs at their six-foot-apart desks. It’s strange that we’re still automatically maintaining social distancing. I suppose it has become a habit. I admit I feel undressed not wearing a mask, even though logically I know that my new uniform makes a mask unnecessary, assuming I’m wearing it properly. I pull at the fastenings and check the collar.

“Welcome, boys and girls! Welcome back into the school building!”

Cheers bounce echoingly, but jubilantly.

“I am going to come round to each of you to ask the health questions. Remember to answer honestly, just like you’ve been doing at home. We’ll do this at regular intervals every day, just like at home.”

A couple of groans go up. One child lays his head on the desk with a clunk.


I can’t help but smile because I know what I’m about to announce. “I know it might take a long time for me to get to everyone, and that’s why I have put some paper, pencils, and crayons in your desk. You can use them to draw whatever you want.”


Cheers again. I grin wider as I listen to the pupils.

“Look! I’ve got two pencils!”

“What’s this?”

“My older sister had one! Until she broke it. It’s a pencil sharpener.”

“What? How do you use it?”

“I’ve never had crayons before.”

“I’ve never had new ones.”

“We don’t get these unless we go to school,” a girl said proudly, admiring the six brilliant colors.


“Whoa…! There are real books in here too!”

I am so very glad I dipped into my food money to purchase these gifts for my students.

“Okay,” I say to the first child, gripping my plastic-sheathed school device in one hand. “What is your name?…Nice to meet you. I’m Ms. Swift. Have you or someone in your family been out of the city in the last three weeks?…Have you or anyone in your home had a sore throat in the last three weeks?…a cough?…loss of smell?…body aches for unknown reasons?…”

I run through the questions, keeping my eyes open for wiggling students who look about to get up. None do. It’s amazing how a couple of years will change behavior. I read this child’s temperature measurement and type it into the records.

I’m nearly done with the morning health check when a girl raises her hand. “Do I have to leave to go to the bathroom?” She asks.

“Students cannot leave their classroom.” I shake my head. “Is your sound filter installed?” I have a few extra in a sealed package on my cart just in case.
She nods her head.

“Good. Go ahead.”

I finish making my rounds, then I pass out water pouches, checking that the children can easily access the contents. A pair of students suspiciously refuse the water until I point out the stamped seal, and then they accept.

“Attention please,” and I wait for everyone to put down their writing utensils. “Everyone looks healthy.” I smile. “Now, get ready. When I say ‘go’, you need to press the two center buttons on your collar. When I say ‘stop’, push your head covering back on. Ready? Set. Go.”

Hsss… The pneumatic helmets crack open at the collar, letting in the classroom air. While I watch the timer, I also scan the room, making sure each child has opened his or her hazmat suit. We practiced this repeatedly during our school district professional development day.

“Stop!” I mime pushing my helmet back into place.

Click-click, click. I scan the room once more. The buttons circling the metal collar at each child’s neck are lit up solid green. Still, I walk the room quickly, making sure that the locks have indeed firmly closed and each child is in its own sealed environment. A couple of students nervously suck on the straws that connect to the water pouches fastened at their shoulders.

“Why do we have to do this again?”

“We’re exposing you slowly to the virus so that you build up a natural immunity. This time it was only one second. Each time it will be a different number of seconds. Our next exposure is in two hours.”

I really hope this natural immunity process theory works — without the “acceptable losses” everyone talks about.

I give a short math lesson and my students instinctively pull out their devices.

“If you finish your work early, please check the Google Classroom for additional math practice, or you can look at the Language Arts assignments. If you are comfortable that you understand what to do, you can work on them, or practice your typing skills. Lessons are in the Classroom topic folder. You can even read the textbooks that are in your desks.” I’m pleased at the eager looks in some children’s eyes when I mention the hardcovers. “When I come back, I’ll do another health check and refill water if you need it, and I’ll have a snack too.”

Some students clap or smile. A couple have already turned their focus to their studies.

“Lunch is at 11:30.” I point at the schedule. “You can see, too, that twice a day I’ll be emptying your holding tanks.” I smile reassuringly at the girl who has already made use of hers.

The instructional tutor appears at the doorway. After making sure that everyone is paying attention, I introduce her and leave the class in her hands.

As I am heading out, I notice a temperature indicator wired into a helmet has bumped up one degree. I hope this is just a minor fluctuation and not an indication of the child’s sensitivity to the virus. Not on my first day…

I make sure the suit’s fan system is working properly before I leave.

I roll my cart down the hallway to the next room, where the next group of students is waiting. I greet them, usher them in, and begin the same routine I ran through with my first group.

Each of the six remaining teachers have five classrooms to manage. The staggered starts mean that the pods of students will be even less likely to interact. It also means that my day, and each of the next 199 days, is going to be a long one. I know that my job description has changed significantly in the last two years, but I still reserve hope that in these forty weeks of school I will be able to teach some of my eighty elementary students at least a little of the academic skills they have lost due to the virus — without losing many of them to it.

Mother on a Mission

Soup. She craved some warm, delicious soup. Her children needed soup. This favorite dish was not always easy to find, but lucky her: So many restaurants had just moved into the neighborhood!

She stopped by the nearest, but the smell turned her off. The owner had just painted the façade.

She hurried to the next eatery.

What? She would have sworn she could sense a delectable aroma emanating from the kitchen, but this place was boarded up.

The next locale was open. Hm, the food must be good. Crowds were swarming to it. Finding a place to sit was tricky, but she was able to squeeze in. Yum, the soup was fantastic. With her belly as full as she could get it, she sighed and started to leave. Suddenly, a wind storm hit!

She ducked through a doorway then sprang back as a flat section of the bistro smashed onto two of her fellow diners. She shrieked and darted away as fast as she could.

Ah, man. She was already hungry again, and her unborn children still needed her to obtain as much of that tasty red soup as possible, so she flew towards another potentially open establishment. If she were lucky, she could grab another meal there too.

           Don’t get bitten!

She had always enjoyed these fly-by outdoor cafes. She sang as she perused the dining options. This was going to be a good day.

Story inspiration: Group hiking in the mountains, through the shade of tree boughs, after a rain. Long pants, long sleeves, bug spray, head net…my deli’s closed!

Photographs: I am by far an expert at fiber art, but I do enjoy it. I wanted a fun accompaniment to a gift I was giving to my adventurer friend, so I scanned the Web for crochet patterns, and was sucked in by Ziggy Mosquito’s looks, especially her prominent proboscis. Plus, I could easily adapt this cute pattern by Marie Lize (2013) to the gauge, type, and color of the yarn I had handy. When the mosquito was finished I realized she would also be perfect to illustrate this short story.

             Knitted mosquito.

Death of Her Parents

A fictional short story inspired by world event worries:

    Black spruce in the rain.

Both of her parents died in an explosion of disease that gutted the world, but which neither of them really believed in, not even on their deathbeds.

“Your father always thinks he’s sick. He goes to the doctor all of the time,” mother said, wheezing. “He thought he would die at thirty, you know…”

The daughter nodded, remembering.

As if surviving that milestone, his fortieth birthday, and then becoming longer-lived than his own father seven years later proved that he would not die now at seventy-five, despite the machine coaxing air in and out of his lungs. Poor health was not an adequate excuse for avoiding a conversation.

Mother was not sick. She never got sick — even if she were coming down with or getting over something — she was not really sick. She ate small, healthy portions, each meal containing every food group. She jogged through parking lots from car to building entrance. At work, she always took the stairs through the doorway in the wall across the large room from her partitioned workspace.

During long-distance phone calls with her daughter, the septuagenarian rued the fact that she could no longer attend her normal socializing activities because masks meant she could not clearly hear what, for example, her book circle was saying. When the members met outside she had to be the martyr who kept her face covering on — because no one really understood how far apart six feet actually was. She had measured it, so she knew.

“It’s farther than you think.”

Even joining in the after-service receptions on Sundays fell flat. So few people showed, and then everyone was masked and separate, so it was hard to carry on a fulfilling conversation. She could not even see her other daughter or her youngest grandchild because they had to stay cloistered in the daycare room where they worked, and where sometimes the young woman’s two eldest children helped out. One by one, families decided not to attend at all, and so waving at her daughter’s family from a distance was not even possible.

Shopping was now mother’s primary avenue to be around people. She no longer went to just one grocery store: She went to three. Because purchasers were clearing out the shelves, the products she wanted were not available. The shops made suggestions, but the woman scoffed.

“Of course if someone knows they like a particular product they are not going to take the risk on something they might not like.”

On the other end of the phone line, her daughter silently stirred a creamy potato soup she would never have discovered if what she had been looking for had not instead created a hole on a shelf.

Instead of grocery shopping taking usually only an hour, mother sighed, it now took over two. Sometimes she forgot her mask and had to go back to get it. She knew how important masks were, so she did not complain about wearing one, even at work, although they were annoyingly hot and confining. Other people did not wear them correctly.

As if proving her right, someone in her cubicle-filled office space had tested positive one day, but mother assured she was safe.

“They could not say who it is, of course, for privacy reasons, just which department they’re from. But it’s okay, they work on the opposite side of the office and my department doesn’t do business with theirs.”

Mother felt lucky that she and her family (except for the far-flung daughter who did not visit anymore) lived in a county that had such low resident-case numbers. She certainly did not know anyone who had contracted the germ. A few acquaintances knew of someone in other states or cities who had taken ill — which may or may not have been due to the malady because no one mentioned had indeed died.

Mother was not sick.

“I’m just having a little… difficulty breathing,” she assured. “If I do have anything, your father gave it to me.”

Father went to work everyday, either to his fields where he escaped from duties and people he disliked, or to the shop where he and his business partners sold natural herb products, some with CBD oil, which mother was certain to insist every time that she brought it up on the phone that it was not a drug.

“But don’t ask me about it,” she added, washing her hands of any connection to the (possibly unseemly) business. “I don’t know what products it’s in.”

She had never tried any merchandise her husband had brought home to her, even before the Marijuana Legalization Act was passed. Since the wide-spread affliction had reared its head after the launch of the new product line, father’s business was deemed essential and he could continue working, possibly to the relief of them both.

Mother coughed, sweat beading at her brow, and continued weakly elucidating from whom her husband might have contracted his ailment.

“He goes to work every day of the week,” she repeated. “Did you know that?”

Her daughter, fully clothed in scrubs, booties, plastic face shield and cloth mask, gently held her mother’s bony, crepe-skinned hand in her gloved ones, and nodded. She was not sure if her mother had noticed.

“When he gets better I will tell him… again… He shouldn’t do that… He gets tired.”

“I think he enjoyed it,” the daughter posed. She was not sure if her mother had heard.

“He was at the shop at least…” The gray-haired woman continued groggily, “three times a week, and his fields the other days…. Who knew how he got it…. I thought it was just your father being your father,” she croaked. She attempted a wan smile. “He never forgets my birthday, Mother’s Day, our anniversary… I had a cough several days… before he started complaining, you know.” She took a deep, rattling breath and confirmed, “It was nothing, but I wanted him to… at least notice… I wasn’t feeling well. Maybe he will now.” She squinted up at her daughter. “When is he going to visit?”

“I just saw him,” the younger woman assured. “He’ll see you soon.”

It was not a lie. She had just seen her father, and she had no doubt that her mother would see him in only a little while. She saw no point in sharing her conversation with the doctor about hope, health, future prospects, and the sad reality of needing a bed for someone else. Breathing deeply, and benumbed, she had walked down the hallway to her mother’s room after all of the equipment in her father’s had been unplugged.

“Good.” Mother harrumphed. “He should notice… when I’m not feeling well…”

Her daughter squeezed her mother’s hand once more and listened to her panting chatter become weaker and more broken by pauses until the pause was all there was.

Contact tracing never proved who had infected whom. There had been too many possibilities. Her father’s business had had to close because two of his three co-partners had been hospitalized. Half of her mother’s office floor was now empty, and many older members of the congregation would never be returning to church. The pestilence had swept through the daycare, too, and the daughter had had to close out her sister’s house as well as her parents’. When she could not reach her niece and oldest nephew on the phone, she found them in the apartment they had rented together. Anesthetized, she placed a call to their raspy-voiced landlord.

She left a bouquet on each of the six new graves before she boarded the nearly empty airplane for home.

Back at home, the remaining daughter stared out through the glass towards the black spruce outside her window. At the end of her quarantine and closer to a second, hopefully negative test result, she did not see the wind sway the trees nor hear the rain clink againt the panes. Her eyes held no more moisture to finish washing the grief from her soul.

She still could not contact her brother. The last she had heard he was living in his car.

The clock ticked.

The daughter changed her clothes, washed her hands and face, looped the mask’s elastics about her ears, and slid on a pair of blue gloves. She drove down her muddy driveway and through the silent streets towards the clinic to stand in a subdued dashed line for her turn at future.