by David Yourdon
After the incident, we decide to pull Greta out of school. The decision isn’t an easy one, but it feels right. Our nerves are jangled. So are Greta’s. There was never any real danger. It was a false alarm. Still, Greta is a different person in class, her teacher tells us. She paces during circle time, her drawings become chaotic, and she doesn’t talk to her friends. The other kids exhibit similar behaviors, yet they seem to rebound in a matter of days. Greta does not.
Homeschooling isn’t common in our area. But I’m not the breadwinner, and we have space in our budget for me to quit my job. I look up the kindergarten curriculum. It seems doable for a novice teacher, given how astute Greta is.
My plan is to ease into things, but Greta doesn’t want to waste time. Her mood brightens fast. Soon she’s drawing again, laughing gaily, adapting the circle time songs from her old school to her new environment. She helps me with lunch prep, learns how to do the laundry, even plans field trips.
But we never go on any field trips. Within a month, the spell of novelty, or perhaps safety, wears off. Greta turns argumentative. When I make a lunch she doesn’t like, she throws it on the floor and yells at me. However, this mood turns out to be a phase too. She enters into a depressive state next: monosyllabic, sleepy, her hand too limp to hold a crayon.
Dad, she says eventually, drawing a long breath, we need to do active shooter drills at home. I startle. It takes me a minute to answer her. But you’re not in school anymore, I say. Nobody is coming to our house with a gun. What about Uncle Freddy? she whispers. He has a gun. Sure, I say, but Uncle Freddy is safe, and we’re at home, we’re completely safe.
She can’t be convinced. She tells me what to do. We have to lock the door, hide in her closet, take shallow inhales. Wait for the all clear before you come out, Dad. Fight if you have to. Okay, Greta, I say. Did you hear me, Dad? Yes, I say, I hear you.
These drills become part of our routine. Every morning, first thing. Greta won’t relax otherwise. What if a shooter comes in the bathroom window? she asks. What if there are two of them? What if the lock in my bedroom breaks? I encourage Greta to discuss this with her therapist, but she refuses therapy. When I trick her into attending an online session, she clamps her mouth shut.
One day, Uncle Freddy comes by for an unannounced visit. Greta sees his truck in the driveway and screams. Gun!
Sometimes Greta asks for dinner in the closet. I read her stories there and let her fall asleep. Although the slats on the doors provide some ventilation, her cheeks turn red and her back gets sweaty. I bring a fan down from the attic and plug it into the outlet outside the closet. We can’t fully shut the door because of that cord. This distresses Greta.
I picture her many years later, when she’s thirty-five and has a child of her own — when this period of our lives is still a dark cloud, but not the lone cloud in the sky. How long do we have to wait until then? How many seconds? In the heat of the closet, I try to calculate the answer. Sixty — times sixty — times twenty-four — times three hundred sixty-five — times thirty. The number spirals away from me.
Greta wakes up from a doze. Hi, honey, I say. Want to count with me? Let’s count. Let’s count to a billion. She squints and asks, How long will that take?
Homeschooling isn’t common in our area. But I’m not the breadwinner, and we have space in our budget for me to quit my job. I look up the kindergarten curriculum. It seems doable for a novice teacher, given how astute Greta is.
My plan is to ease into things, but Greta doesn’t want to waste time. Her mood brightens fast. Soon she’s drawing again, laughing gaily, adapting the circle time songs from her old school to her new environment. She helps me with lunch prep, learns how to do the laundry, even plans field trips.
But we never go on any field trips. Within a month, the spell of novelty, or perhaps safety, wears off. Greta turns argumentative. When I make a lunch she doesn’t like, she throws it on the floor and yells at me. However, this mood turns out to be a phase too. She enters into a depressive state next: monosyllabic, sleepy, her hand too limp to hold a crayon.
Dad, she says eventually, drawing a long breath, we need to do active shooter drills at home. I startle. It takes me a minute to answer her. But you’re not in school anymore, I say. Nobody is coming to our house with a gun. What about Uncle Freddy? she whispers. He has a gun. Sure, I say, but Uncle Freddy is safe, and we’re at home, we’re completely safe.
She can’t be convinced. She tells me what to do. We have to lock the door, hide in her closet, take shallow inhales. Wait for the all clear before you come out, Dad. Fight if you have to. Okay, Greta, I say. Did you hear me, Dad? Yes, I say, I hear you.
These drills become part of our routine. Every morning, first thing. Greta won’t relax otherwise. What if a shooter comes in the bathroom window? she asks. What if there are two of them? What if the lock in my bedroom breaks? I encourage Greta to discuss this with her therapist, but she refuses therapy. When I trick her into attending an online session, she clamps her mouth shut.
One day, Uncle Freddy comes by for an unannounced visit. Greta sees his truck in the driveway and screams. Gun!
Sometimes Greta asks for dinner in the closet. I read her stories there and let her fall asleep. Although the slats on the doors provide some ventilation, her cheeks turn red and her back gets sweaty. I bring a fan down from the attic and plug it into the outlet outside the closet. We can’t fully shut the door because of that cord. This distresses Greta.
I picture her many years later, when she’s thirty-five and has a child of her own — when this period of our lives is still a dark cloud, but not the lone cloud in the sky. How long do we have to wait until then? How many seconds? In the heat of the closet, I try to calculate the answer. Sixty — times sixty — times twenty-four — times three hundred sixty-five — times thirty. The number spirals away from me.
Greta wakes up from a doze. Hi, honey, I say. Want to count with me? Let’s count. Let’s count to a billion. She squints and asks, How long will that take?
David Yourdon is a writer based in Canada. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, HAD, Peatsmoke Journal, Bending Genres, and Rejection Letters; this last story appeared in the 2022 Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist. He has also completed a novel and posts fiction on his Substack, What Will It Be Like.
Emerge Literary Journal 