Abigail

She is the queen of magical thinking, of "I wish it: make it so." She knows what she wants if only it were easy. She knows what she wants if only it were possible. She is dramatic and mercurial, charming and sometimes giving. She is beautiful. She is young. She is in too many was exactly the same person she was when she was twelve. She is only a kid, only a student. Delete the onlys, make it true. She is a constant presence in my life whom a few short days hence I will likely never see again. The thought of it makes me cry.

It's not that I will miss her in a way I'd miss a friend. It's not that the ending here is necessarily unhappy. I hope, I wish. It's just that it's so final, in every sense the end.



Her family is moving back to Mexico; her older brother is already gone. That came as a shock to both of us, that he got up the nerve to do it. Ciudad Juarez is not the suburban midwest, and we both understood that calm, quiet boy didn't know what he was getting into. His messages home have been brief and blunt, protective of his sister: "Abi shouldn't come." Think on that for a little while, imagine what truths are stretched around those few warning words.

And so while her Senior classmates mostly prepare to celebrate their launch out into the world, their independence, their next step, she sits, half serious, half sentimental, and wonders what to do. Reality has sobered her in unaccustomed ways, and there's nothing I can say. No good answers I can give her. That has mostly been my role in her life: six years of telling her how things work. Yelling in frustration. Offering advice. Explaining and explaining and explaining. Being whoever Ms. P is to her. Certainly not just a teacher. I cannot even articulate, but when she turns in a PowerPoint, one of her lasts projects, with "Love ya, Ms. P" randomly on the title slide, well. Maybe she is trying.

I wish she were heading off to something. Anything. I wish her unrealistic half-baked dreams were attainable. I wish she could just visit her old home--"I remember the cardboard houses on the corner," she says, when she makes that same wish. "But now they have paved streets."--so she would know for sure what she's missing. But for someone in her position, cross the border, north to south, and for all practical purposes, jig's up. The commentators may argue differently, but in her mind, there's no coming back. But maybe there's also no staying. Living with her Jehovah's Witness aunt and her ex-military husband in Georgia until she reaches 18 this fall is the other option she's been given. Neither of us can see that, not to mention the big Then What. So maybe she just stays with her family--so important to her--and tries to make a life in the land that's now foreign. A place that makes her uneasy to contemplate. I imagine that she will. And maybe it works out okay. But her brother's words still echo: "Abi shouldn't come."

On June 1, she and I will both wear caps and gowns, both walk through the commencement. I'll sit at the end of her row. She'll get her diploma--hallelujah--and we will celebrate our accomplishment. Plural possessive adjective there intentional. And then I'll greet her family, minus her big brother, another former student, again for the last time. I will tell them how much I've appreciated knowing them. I will wish them well. I will tell her that she better, somehow, let me know what happens. And then I'll say goodbye.