Why, with every out breath

A sculpture by Rose B. Simpson at the Whitney Museum

“In the beginning, my children objected to my smoking. Then they too picked up the habit.”

*

We’re flying home from LA.

In the row behind us, a small child is asking, “Why,” with every out breath, as if the question itself is his out breath.

“Mama, are we flying?”

“Not yet.”

“Why?”

And later:

“What’s the green?” 

“The land.”

“What’s the blue?”

“The ocean.”

“Why?”

Later still:

“Why are we still flying?”

We listened. To his every “why,” and to his subsequent quiet, as he listened to the answer.

*

Mr. Hansen was the science teacher for all of P. S. 91. He had a funny mustache, and wore tan safari shirts and pants with many pockets. 

“Boys and girls,” he called us.

He traveled classroom to classroom with canvas totes of plants he’d rescued from curbs.

“Cuttings,” he called them. 

During science, we’d put these cuttings in small plastic cups of water. Then, when roots had sprouted, we’d transfer them to cups of soil. 

Mr. Hansen would ask the kid nearest him for a pencil. He’d stick the pencil into the soil, eraser first.

Eraser ruined. No recourse for the kid.  

Mr. Hansen came to us once a week. When he arrived, and our teacher left — where did she go? — the whole class went wild. The boys especially. They chased each other and yelled and shot spitballs out of straws. 

The girls gossiped, or tucked their noses into R. L. Stine paperbacks. 

At the board, Mr. Hansen started a “Not Cooperating” list. Scott, Anthony, James. Each subsequent offense earned a chalk checkmark. 

For homework, we were supposed to watch Scientific American Frontiers on PBS, and answer five questions on a worksheet provided by the show, which Mr. Hansen would then mail to the station, to enter us in a contest. 

I don’t know that Mr. Hansen ever mailed anything anywhere. 

I know I watched the show, anxiously scanning for answers to questions that felt unanswerable. Trick questions.

Perhaps the questions were actually quite simple. Perhaps I was diving into puddles.

*

A woman I know, her horse, Alvin, inhaled a cigarette someone was smoking near the corral.

“Horses can’t throw up,” she told me, “so the cigarette made its way through him, like an apple, or a sugar cube.”

*

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