Greyhound Bus

He looked up from the book in his lap as the Greyhound bus squeaked to a stop at the Greenville station.

The old woman next to him fell asleep on the trip up from Charleston and leaned her head on his shoulder.

Her face was as wrinkled as the bark of an ancient magnolia tree, and was colored the same beautiful brown as it’s trunk and branches.

She breathed in, and the air made a soft, whistling sound through her nose. She breathed out, and it made a gentle, flapping sound through her lips.

“Life is a symphony,” he chuckled to himself, “Of whistles and kazoos.”

“Ma’am,” he whispered.

She didn’t move.

She kept right on sleeping and snoring.

“Ma’am,” he said a little louder.

Still only whistles and kazoos.

“Ma’am,” he said a little louder still.

This time he reached out and patted her weathered hand. She opened her tired, brown eyes and smiled a small smile at him.

“Thanks for a lettin’ me use yo shoulda as my pilla,” she said with a gravelly voice.

“First time I woked up beside a man in a long time. Hope my snorin’ didn’t bother you none,” she giggled.

“No ma’am,” he said with a giggle of his own, “It was music to my ears.”

His knees and back snapped and popped as he stood up slowly and smoothed out the wrinkles in his pants and tee shirt.

“My goodness,” said the old woman, “You make music, too.”

He placed his hand gently on her bony shoulder.

“We could start a band called The Human Experience,” he laughed. “People would come from all over to hear us whistle, flap, snap and pop. What do you think?”

“Yep, they’d pay us a bundle of money to hear that.”

He pulled on his jacket and waved his hand to her. “Goodbye, my friend,” he said. “Thanks for the song.”

She waved back. “Thank you,” she said. “And do me a favor. Lean on down here and let me tell you somethin’.”

He leaned down and was surprised as she kissed him on his forehead with a light, tender kiss.

“That’s the kiss of a guardian angel,” she whispered. “Listen to life, and do not be afraid.”

He stepped off the bus and onto the street.

Small groups of people were standing around the bus, waiting to welcome their travelers with hugs and kisses and an “I’m so glad you’re here.”

No one was waiting for him.

“Oh well,” he thought, “I might not be welcomed with a kiss, but I was sent out with one. And by a guardian angel at that.”

The early sun was bright in his eyes and made him squint to see the people and buildings around him. A hint of warmth was beginning to ease the chill of the upstate morning.

He put two quarters into the slot of a newspaper rack beside the bus station and took out a copy of The Greenville News. The headline of the day read “Governor Seeks To Keep Sanctuary Cities Out Of South Carolina.”

He walked a block toward Main Street and found a small diner that served breakfast from 5 A.M. until 10:30 A.M. and meat and three vegetable plates for the rest of the day.

Little bells rang as he opened the glass door and stepped inside.

“Buenos dias,” said a waitress. “Welcome to the Scrambled Egg. My name’s Gabby and today’s my third anniversary of workin’ here. I love it and I’ll be servin’ you today.”

“Buenos dias,” he said.

He reached out to shake her hand and take a menu from her.

“My name is Elias. Happy Anniversary!”

“¡Gracias! Where you comin’ from?”

“I came up from Charleston through the night on the Greyhound bus.”

“Charleston, huh? I love the low country. There’s nothin’ like wakin’ up early, just before sunrise, and takin’ a walk on the beach. Goodness. I bet you didn’t get much sleep on that bus. Come on over and have a seat at this table by the window. It’s the best seat in the house.”

“Muchas gracias.”

“What can I get for you?”

“Well, I could use a hot cup of coffee and a warm breakfast.”

“Then you’ve come to the right place. I’ll be right back with your coffee.”

He took out his notebook and pen. He wrote as he read the article in the newspaper.

“I don’t mean to interrupt what you’re doing but your coffee’s here.”

Gabby came back with the coffee.

There was a deep kindness in Gabby’s brown eyes.

“Hmm,” she noted, “You’re writing with a pen in a notebook. Don’t see that much anymore.”

“I’m old fashioned, I guess. I still like to see the words I write on a page. Helps me see that I’m moving from one place to another and getting somewhere.”

“If you don’t mind me askin’, what’re you writin’?”

“I don’t mind you asking at all. I’m working on a story for my newspaper, The South Carolina Defender. I’m a journalist.”

“Oh yeah? What’s your story about?”

“It’s about a family I met in Charleston, a migrant family picking peaches and tomatoes in the fields and on the farms around Berkeley County.

When I met them, they were living in a gutted out school bus behind the lower 40 acres of a peach farm on Johns Island.

I wrote a series of articles about them last summer.”

- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown eyed girl, 2020

Notes from public school - day 120

This morning, at 7:45 a.m., a student from across the hall walked into my classroom over to my teaching table.

She handed me a sheet of notebook paper neatly folded into eighths.

I unfolded the note.

It was a sketch for a math teacher.

I love it, especially the drawing of a smiling calculator.

“Abby,” I smiled, “This means so much to me.”

It did.

This year I’m teaching 4th grade math for the first time.

It’s hard.

But teachers are called to do hard things.

In the middle of the doing of the hard thing, we need someone to pat us on our backs and say, “You can do it. I believe in you. I’m with you.”

Teachers need encouragement.

We all need encouragement.

Mine came from a drawing and a smile by a 10-year-old on a weary Friday morning in public school.

Now I want to pass it along to you.

If I could draw a picture on a piece of notebook paper of the hard thing you have to do, and fold it into eighths, and hand it to you with a smile...I would.

You can do it. I believe in you. I’m with you.

Notes from public school - day 119

Today, one of my students created a flag with paper and some magic markers.

She is my quiet student.

Sometimes she is quiet for the whole morning, sitting silently and working diligently in the sanctuary of her seat at her table.

She never speaks to me first.

She simply stands beside me and waits for me to notice her.

She stood beside me at the end of the day, just before the afternoon announcements came across the loudspeaker.

“Hey Emily,” I said. “Do you have something to show me?”

She handed me her flag.

“Wow,” I said, “Is this the flag of the United States of Emily?”

She grinned and shook her head no.

“Is it for me?” I asked.

She grinned again and shook her head yes.

“Oh,” I said. “You are a wonderful, ingenious artist, Emily.”

I treasure gifts like this, for they come from the giftedness and the hearts of the children in my Title I school and mean the world to me.

“¡Muchas gracias!” I said.

A friend taught me that the Spanish word ‘gracias’ has an element of the word ‘grace’ in it, and I use it often when someone extends grace to me.

Emily’s artwork is one of those graces.

Look at her flag.

The five stars are the first stars that appear on crisp, cold, cloudless nights when you look up at the sky and listen to the silence in absolute wonder.

The four colors are the simplicity and depth of the earth, sky, water and sunlight.

She is a silent, simple, deep and wonderful kid. 

In the preface to the original edition of his book Awakenings, the great neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks wrote, "My aim is not to make a system, or to see patients as systems, but to picture a world, a variety of worlds - the landscapes of being in which these patients reside." 

I’ve learned to see my students, not as individual countries, but as a variety of worlds.

What beautiful worlds they are.

Ash Wednesday Story

The night was cool and clear, as nights tend to be after hot, rainy days in the city. The old priest started a fire and tended it until it warmed the community around it.

"You are doing God's work in this Revolution," said the Priest to Gabby and Tomás and the Doctor.

"But Padre," answered Tomás, "There is one problem with your kind thought. I don't believe in God. So how can I be doing God's work?"

"It doesn't matter," replied the Priest, "That you don't believe in God. 

I saw you with the family in the barrio today, how you held the little girl in your arms, how the dirt on her face smudged your cheek, how her joke about the stubborn donkey made you laugh, how her story about her abuelo made you cry. 

I saw you share your food with the family and I know how little food you have. 

You may not believe in God, Tomás, but you love the family in the barrio. 

Whether it is God's love or your love, it doesn't matter. 

They are loved. That’s what matters."

"Ah, Padre," said the Doctor, "I still remember the catechism of my childhood, I still hear the sing-song Latin phrases from my parish priest, phrases that were mysterious,  words that I didn't understand.

In my third year of medical school, I went home to my old church. 'Bless me Father, for I have sinned,' I said to my priest, 'It has been many years, too many years to count, since my last confession.'

I told the priest the truth. I didn’t understand the church. I didn’t understand God. I no longer believed in the church. I no longer believed in God. 

'My child,' the priest responded, 'Hear these words of St. Anselm - credo et intelligam - you must believe in order to understand.'

But I couldn't believe so I didn’t understand. 

Yet, I want to understand you, Padre. 

I wonder if the words should be - actio et intelligam - you must act in order to understand. Perhaps I could believe then. At least your actions give me hope that I could."

"Father Eusebio," said Gabby, "When I was a girl, the cathedral in our province was across the street from the government offices. It was a meeting place for rich people. It was a school for rich people. It was a church for rich people. The priests would go out to the campesinos in the countryside on rare occasions - for the baptism of babies or a mass for the dead. But there were so many of us and only a few of them. No priest ever came to my village.

 I would go to town with my Papi and while he went into stores seeking credit to help us live on our land for the next year, I stood in front of the cathedral and looked up into the sky at it's stones and spires. I saw it's cross at the very top of the structure, so small and far away. I thought, 'The God of this church is small and far away, is only for the small number of people who are far away from the struggle and the suffering of our life and the lives of the people around us.' I knew then...that small, far away God would not hold us or help us."

"I understand," said the Priest. "That small, far away God doesn't need us...and we don't need that small, far away God. The church of that God threw me out...and I'm glad...because it never helped you...but it helped me meet you.

I can only say...being with you...helps me know in my heart...that there is something I am willing to sacrifice...what I have...what I am...that there is something I am willing to die for...but not willing to kill for. 

I call this something the kingdom of God. 

You call it the Revolution."

I am willing to sacrifice what I have and what I am for the Revolution. I am willing to die for the Revolution. I am willing to kill for the Revolution. 

I hope you will respect me...respect my courage...respect my commitment to life...for by using my hands to end the lives of the soldiers who perpetrated this massacre I am saving the lives of the old women, the small boys, the fathers and mothers, and the toddlers who will open their eyes tomorrow to another day on the land. By bringing justice to the regime, I am bringing peace to the people. 

I am not God, Padre, but when the campesinos stand in front of me and look into my eyes, I hope they see that I am big and close up to them...that I am with them."

The old priest was silent. He stared humbly into the fire, watching the embers glow softly with the stars of the dark sky and the wood crack and pop rhythmically with the night sounds of the barrio.

After a while, he walked to Gabby, Tomás, and the Doctor and kissed each one tenderly on the forehead.

Without saying a word, he hobbled out of the light of the fire and disappeared into the night.

Notes from public school - day 118

When I was in elementary school, I did a book report on The Contender by Robert Lipsyte.

I chose it because of it’s cover.

There was an illustration of a young black man with a towel around his shoulders and white tape around his hands, showing me that he was a boxer.

You might be surprised to learn that I’m a boxing fan.

I’ve been deeply influenced by the pacifism of my Anabaptist forbears and the non-violence teaching of my Civil Rights Movement forbears.

I don’t even like to squash a bug if I can help it.

“Ooh, there’s a bug in the hallway!” exclaim students at my school. “Get Mr. Barton so he can scoop it up and let it go outside the door.”

That’s the kind of person I am.

I don’t like professional boxing because it has a lot of pizzazz associated with it and I’m not a pizzazz kind of person.

I do like amateur boxing, though, because in it I find some of the essence of life - self discipline, courage, persistence, intelligence, respect, confidence and humility.

The Contender tells the story of Alfred Brooks, an inner-city kid who drops out of school and works as a sweeper and stocker in a family owned grocery store.

His best friend, James, is falling into gang life and Alfred is trying to save him before he is lost to the streets.

James gets arrested for breaking into and stealing from the grocery store where Alfred works.

One night, after James’ arrest, Alfred walks up the rickety, dimly lit stairs of Donatelli’s Gym, where he meets Mr. Donatelli, a grizzled, old boxing trainer who is much like the beloved Micky in the Rocky movies.

Alfred becomes a boxer and learns that he must become a contender before he can become a champion.

There is a quote from Mr. Donatelli that I always keep close to me.

“You have to start by wanting to be a contender,” he tells Alfred, “The person coming up, the person who knows there's a good chance you’ll never get to the top, the person who's willing to sweat and bleed to get up as high as your legs and your brain and your heart will take you.”

I think about these words each morning I open my eyes to a new day as a teacher and a writer.

They inspire me to be a contender like Alfred is a contender.

In that first reading, I realized that I’m the black, inner-city kid on the cover and he is me.

What an important thing for a ten year old to understand.

I’m thankful I learned it in the Taylor’s Elementary School library,

It’s a story about friendship, too.

One of the most moving scenes I’ve ever read in literature happens at the end of the story.

Alfred climbs into the old hiding spot where he and James go when times get hard, like when James’ alcoholic, abusive father lashed out at him, like when Alfred’s mom died from cancer.

James is there.

He is running from the police because he has broken into the grocery store again, this time through the front window, where he has cut himself real bad.

“Alfred felt James’ outstretched arms around his neck. Slowly, he pulled James out of the cave into the biting wind.

‘Easy, man, you be all right.’ He lifted James to his feet and half-carried him through the stunted trees. James moaned.

‘Hang in there, James. Can you walk?’

‘Try.’ He leaned heavily on Alfred. ‘Weak as a baby. Lost all that blood.’

‘Don’t worry about that, James, I got plenty of blood for you.’ Carefully, Alfred guided him over the rocks and bushes and the new snow, toward the lights of the avenue.”

In that first reading I realized that friendship is everything, that carrying your friends, that being carried by your friends, is everything.

I’m thankful I learned that, too.

All in a library in public school.

The Holy City

The Holy City

Once
I walked along
Queen Street
into the middle
of downtown Charleston
to the waterfront park
at the harbor.

As I ambled
the cobbled street
past Poogan's Porch,
Mother Emmanuel,
and Meeting Street
I thought
about the Civil Rights Movement history
of Charleston.

I saw tourists huddled
around tour guides
hearing stories
of the places
and people
of the old city.

Patrons of pubs wobbled
with their arms around each others shoulders enjoying their pints of beer,
their glasses of wine.

Reservers of restaurants huddled
In small groups together
waiting for their shrimp and grits,
their low country boil.

A young black man sat
in solitude
on top of a table
on the harbor walkway
weaving flowers and crosses
out of sweet grass
in the way
of the Gullah people.

I wondered
that sixty some-odd years ago
J. Judge Waties Waring heard
Marshall’s plea
and was despised
by the high society folk
of the city
and was offered
a one way train ticket
out of the state
by the South Carolina legislature.

Do I still ask the old questions -
What does it mean to be human?
How can we weave a more human world
for everyone?

I wonder.

I breathe.

I hope.

Notes from public school - day 117

There were deep wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and across her forehead. They didn't seem to be wrinkles of worry that he'd seen form on his mami and abuelo's faces as they worked the fields and lived among strangers in small Southern towns. No, they seemed to be wrinkles of kindness that might have come from years and years of loving and hoping, the kind of wrinkles you get when you cradle a baby in your arms and rock it deep into the night, the kind that come when you study the small, quiet things in the world and wonder why so few people see or hear the beauty they hold.

These words come from a story I’m writing about a migrant family in the lowcountry of South Carolina.

They come from my heart, too.

They tell the story of how I’ve come to study life.

They paint the picture of my student, Daniel.

He’s one of those small, quiet people.

He and his family are from Mexico.

He’s a big brother to three younger siblings.

He speaks fluent Spanish at home and fluent English at school.

He’s a math whiz.

He’s a great writer.

At the end of the school day, when all of my students are swinging their backpacks over their shoulders and saying their goodbyes, he’s straightening up the tables and picking up bits and pieces of paper on the floor.

If students are struggling with reading, writing or ‘rithmatic, he’s always there to help.

If students are crying from skinned knees or hurt feelings, he’s always there to comfort them.

Sometimes he whispers to his neighbors when he’s not supposed to be talking or tries to play a game on his Chromebook when he’s supposed to be working, but most times he’s as saintly as a ten year old can be.

By that I mean this.

There is a Latin phrase that is etched on the side of my college ring.

“Esse Quam Videri,” it reads.

To be, rather than to seem.

The essence is more important than the video.

He’s small and quiet.

He brings beauty and wonder to my classroom and our world.

All in a day in public school.

Notes from public school - day 116

As an humble schoolteacher and writer, my days are filled with moments of joy.

One of those moments happened today.

My students and I were working on ‘Logical Lingo’ posters. They were in groups of four, trying to match measurements with things they could logically measure.

I was a little concerned when one of my students matched ‘1 Ton’ with ‘The Weight of a Newborn Baby’ but we figured it out. Now he has a good idea for a story!

But the student who brought me joy was Breanna.

She is from Honduras.

She speaks Spanish at home and English at school.

As I tell her and all of my bilingual students, “You have to be really smart to speak TWO languages.”

She smiles when I tell her that, a smile that warms my classroom as if it were the sun rising on an early spring day.

She loves to draw, and is quite gifted and talented as an artist.

One of the parts of the assignment was to draw and color a picture of the thing that was measured.

She had matched ‘3 inches’ with ‘The Length of a Crayon.’ She set out to create a picture of that crayon.

When our timer went off, she took me by the arm and led me to her table.

“Look at this crayon I drew and colored, Mr. Barton,” she said in her Spanish/English mix that endears her to me.

There on her poster was the likeness of a yellow crayon.

“Ah, Breanna, ¡Es magnifico! It’s terrific,” I said. “And yellow happens to be my favorite color.”

“I know, Mr. Barton, I know that yellow is your favorite color. That’s why I drew these pictures of the sun and a lemon, too. I drew them for you.”

She took out two exquisite pictures from her desk, one of a beautiful sunrise and the other of a bright lemon on a lemon tree, and gave them to me.

I gave her a fist bump.

What a gift they are.

What a gift she is.

All in a day in public school.

abuelo

“Remember Nieto. I’m a farmer, not a barber.”

Hilcias looked into his abuelo’s eyes.

They were farmer’s eyes, he thought. They were brown, the color of a field just after it is turned by plow in early spring. They were tired, weakened from years and years of looking for one more peach in a tree and one more tomato on a vine to fill his basket and make one more days pay. And they were kind because he was a migrant worker and had learned to look into the lives of people and see all that was human in them.

Then he looked at himself in the small, cracked mirror in his abuelo’s big, calloused hands.

His black hair was cut in a crooked line across his forehead and there were uneven gaps above his floppy ears. His own brown eyes sparkled like starlight off a mountain river on a dark, El Salvadoran night.

“Yep, you’re definitely not a barber,” he giggled.

Small Space

During my junior year in college, I spent spring break week in Washington, D.C. One night I went out with a group of people to provide soup, sandwiches and hot chocolate to homeless folks around the capital. We rode around in an old bakery truck, stopped in designated spots and set up two stations, one for the food and one for the drink.

At one of the stops, I worked the hot drink station. There was a long line of people in front of me. The night was bitterly, unbearably cold and the wind off the Potomac River cut through my coveralls and chilled me to my bones.

My eyes glazed over from the crowd and the cold, and though I said, “God bless you,” and, “Go in peace,” with every cup of hot chocolate I gave to every person who held out hands to me, I stopped seeing the tired, sad eyes and grizzled faces of the people and started thinking of the gentle warmth of the heater in the truck and in my room back home.

I felt a tug on my arm. I looked down and the face of a little girl came into focus. She was so slight and thin I would have missed her, would not have seen her, were it not for the tugging.

She put her little hand into my hand. In that moment our hands formed a small, open space between us.

“Excuse me,” she whispered, so softly I could barely hear her, would not have heard her were it not for careful listening, “Could you give some hot chocolate for my mom?”

Her mom was sick at home. 

This small one did a big thing and came out into the cold and braved the crowds to find something for her mom to eat and drink.

I made a little package of food and drink, put it in her hands, and sent her on her way.

“You’re a kind, wonderful person,” I whispered to her, “And your mom is lucky to have you.” 

She walked away into the mass of people and disappeared.

I would never have seen her, would never have heard her, would never have been moved by her kindness, had she not reached out for my hand, had she not created the small, open space between us.

Notes from public school - day 115

“You should have a little voice in your head that says, ‘Mr. Barton want me to be the best person I can be and do the best work I can do.’ Do you hear that voice?”

These are things I say and questions I ask day after day for the 180 days of the school year.

I try to teach my students what they can say to themselves to help them grow as people and as students.

I try to teach them that the way they talk to themselves matters.

I try to teach them that their thoughts matter.

I try to teach myself, too.

I try to practice what I teach.

This is a part of the whole of being a teacher.

All in a day in public school.

Notes from public school - day 114

When I was a kid, I loved the possibility of a snow day.

When it was supposed to snow, I’d cut off my light, climb under my blanket, and dream of the snowflakes that’d land on my frozen window.

Early in the morning, I’d open my eyes slowly and hope with all of my heart for a snow covered ground.

Sometimes, it’d be.

 I’d climb out from under my blanket and tip toe to my Mom and Dad’s bedroom.

“Is there school today?” I’d whisper.

“It’s a snow day. You can go back to bed,” they’d whisper back.

I’d run as fast as my feet could carry me and jump as high as my legs

could take me back into my bed and count the snowflakes that’d land on my frozen window.

Still, I love the possibility of a snow day.

I’m counting the snowflakes now.

Notes from public school - day 113

“I tried to find a coffee mug like that everywhere,” said Delilah as I stopped to give her a fist bump in the hall during afternoon dismissal, “But I couldn’t find one anywhere. So I used an app to create one for you. The company sent it to my house so I could give it to you.”

She designed the mug just for me.

Earlier in the day, she had knocked on my classroom door.

“I have a present for you,” she said with a twinkle in her kind, brown eyes and a “sonrisa,” a sunrise kind of smile, on her 10 year old face.

“Can I open it now?”

“Of course,” she answered. “But you have to be careful because there’s something breakable in there.”

I carefully opened the present.

I knew by it’s shape and feel that it was a coffee mug.

My students know I like coffee.

“You have to have your coffee every morning,” laugh my students.

“Well, it’s ALL because of YOU,” I laugh back.

Because of this, they give me Christmas coffee mugs, Valentine’s Day coffee mugs, Teacher Appreciation Week coffee mugs, and birthday coffee mugs.

That’s a lot of mugs, more than my little cupboard can bear.

But as I unwrapped this coffee mug, I saw that it had the face of Albert Einstein on it.

My students also know I like Albert Einstein. 

I have a giant poster of him sticking out his tongue at the front of the classroom.

And I have his quote, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,” outside of the classroom door.

“Wow,” I said. 

And I couldn’t say anything else.

I was overwhelmed by wonder.

I was overcome by kindness.

So I could only say, “Wow.”

Today, I wore my hoodie to school that says “Be Kind” across the front.

She wore that saying in her life.

And it meant the world to me.

All in a day in public school.