How to tell your teacher you fell off the bed

Brianna Cheng, 2T6 PB

Look in the mirror. Trace the welt across your neck, a fat wobbly thread. Reassure the girl with the comma-shaped eyes and bowl cut that falling is natural. Everyone falls off the bed and scratches themselves at some point. Believe this until you head to school, where your kindergarten teacher interrupts your painting in the afternoon to talk to you in the hallway. She squats, as older adults tend to do when speaking to you. Speaks softly. Takes your hand. You already know she will ask about your neck. 

What happened to your neck

Can you tell me how you got that cut

It’s a simple answer. Tell her. Tell her it was as simple as your small kid body falling into the crevice between the wall and the bed, how you scratched yourself on the open cardboard box full of yarn balls. Really, that’s it. All you have to do is tell her.

But if it’s so simple then why are you holding back tears. Why does it suddenly feel like you’ve swallowed your paints red orange yellow and they’re now all tumbling as a hot curdle in your throat.

You make a few false starts. 

I got the cut because I

Because I

And you have to pause. In your kid brain, colours chase each other’s tails. You think about what would happen if your teacher pulled the thread too hard. You think about how one question can lead to another. That people can fall without falling, that people can be hurt without ever being touched. You’d think about how to condemn an injustice without naming it, but then again you are only a kid, and kids don’t have those thoughts.

You cry openly now, and in all your noisy quietude, you tell her you just fell off the bed.