What's This?

The basis of art is truth, both in matter and mode.                                              - Flannery O.

We were at the end of our Social Studies unit and wrapping up our final week of talking about neighbors. Considering my Kindergarten class (Mars Class) is still pretty young, instilling the idea of "what is a neighbor" and "who are your neighbors" can be a little tricky. Much less asking them to give me defining characteristics about those neighbors that I can work with in our discussion. 

Some of the questions got pretty specific, like "what kind of job does your neighbor have?" and "how many neighbors?". And let me tell you this now, unless this neighbor has a specific and strong connection with the family, my six yearold is not going to remember who they are. If only because they live in an apartment building that can house the entire population of my home town. 

Thankfully, Chloe Teacher came to my rescue. As it so happen, she is next door neighbors with Lila, and also informed me that Gabby's neighbor was Debi from Sun class (7 year olds), and Janie's neighbor was Joe from Post Sun 1 (8ish year olds). I was relieved. Since I also teach Debi and Joe, it made it easier to help guide answers to questions, and tweak them as need be. 

I'd been told by Tharek Teacher that Janie and Joe's families were really close, and that their mom's would sometimes give them rides to school. In my mind this created a pretty standard image in my mind. Joe and Janie playing, Joe pulling a pigtail, Janie punching him. Joe laughing because it probably didn't hurt that much. Janie has a bit of a temper, and Joe is an incorrigible flirt and tease. Joe's sass makes him one of my favorites in his class, but doesn't always endear him to the younger girls who get exasperated with him. 

That being the case, I was a little wary of what Janie's reaction might be when we asked her to write about Joe but she went for it, and cheerfully repeated our speaking sentences without any comment. Getting past things like "Joe is nice because..." and "I like to be a good neighbor" with no hitches. 

We got to the final portion of the assignment where each child was asked to draw a picture of their neighbor. My girls are fantastic artists, and whatever they lack in skill they make up for with detail and commitment. The topic they were supposed to draw was "their favorite neighbor" and then underneath write something they liked about them. 

Lila called me over to her seat asking me to help her draw, which isn't unusual. Lila has a habit of outsourcing some of the more tedious parts of her drawings - skies, grassy ground, anything that is simple, requires one color, and can't be messed up. This time she wanted me to erase the vast building she had gotten a third of the way through and changed her mind, and by the time I had come up from negotiating it down to only erasing the basic structure (this contractor isn't a pushover), Gabby and Janie were mostly through their drawing. 

As Gabby was closest to me I took a look at her drawing, admiring the depiction of two girls playing happily. I eyed Lila's drawing again as I moved, noting that she had finally moved on from the building to creating an adorable depiction of Chloe Teacher. Smiling a little, I turned to look at Janie's book where I was confronted with something that startled me so much I almost dropped my pen.

With a morbid curiosity I leaned forward and stared deeply into the eyes of the piece that Janie was creating. There was no happy sun, no birds flying around a tall skyscraper. Instead black eyes stared back at me, smiling with a large gaping mouth sporting few teeth and a black throat. It was like something from a Tim Burton film had slinked into our classroom. It had that same feeling, where everything is recognizable, but different in just the right ways to make you uncomfortable. The only exception to this was the big circle on its forehead. Possible options that came to mind included a third eye, or perhaps an exit for a laser beam. The more morbid part of me secretly hoped that Janie didn't have ready access to a gun. 

"Janie." I said, coughing as I fought a burst of horrified laughter. "Janie, is this Joe?"

She had been working on deepening the color of his eyes when I'd come up, and she paused to look up at me. She stared into my eyes and silently she nodded. There wasn't a hint of irony. No indication that this was a joke. As far as she was concerned, the demon staring up at me from her book was just as faithful a representation of Joe as taking a picture would be. It was her seriousness that broke me. I laughed. I laughed long, and I laughed hard. And Janie went back to deepening Demon Joe's eyes. 

I worried about leaving her with the picture, not sure what parents would think or the other teachers. But in the end, Demon Joe stayed. Considering how seriously she had drawn it, this seemed to be a sincere work, and I wasn't going to be one to censor creative expression. But I also felt morally obligated as a teacher to teach some kind of principle, if only to absolve me if Janie were ever to be charged with murderous intent.

Which was why Mars Class wrote "I should be kind to my neighbor." as their final sentence. To this day, I'm not sure if Janie wrote that as a personal reminder, or as some kind of ominous foreshadowing. But I will say this, she meant it. With every stroke of her pencil, she meant it. 

-Shayla