Thomas McEvoy
Performative Acts of Falling
You know nothing about the boy because he’s not in one of your classes, until you see his performative acts of falling.
The first time it happens, you’re reading in the classroom, cramming lesson prep you forgot about. Mind on autopilot, distracted with the words on the page, your senses take notice of a disturbance across the hallway. When the noise is too much, the senses react and alert you, enough for you to close the book and cross the threshold to see what’s happening.
Twenty children have been left unsupervised. The boy is on the floor, his arm clutched against his ribcage.
You ask, “what happened?”
Twenty pairs of eyes, all at waist level, stare at you.
“He ran around the desks until he tripped!” the boy’s classmate says.
“No,” another says. “Someone tripped him!”
A girl points to another girl. “It was her fault! She did it!”
The voices are a chorus, layered on top of each other, high-pitched. The voices are each spoken with alarm, trying to tell their version of the story.
There’s something about the fallen boy, like he’s not truly hurt. His mouth is twisted in pain, moaning noises coming from deep in his throat, but his eyes are open, peeking around at the crowd, seeing who’s watching. Unreal. You bury those thoughts because they make you cold, unsympathetic, and void of feeling. Here is a boy needing help. Your help. You decide he has to get up by himself and solve the issue with his small limbs.
“Are you ok?” you say. “Go to the bathroom and splash water on your arm.” As if that will do anything.
A few days later, it happens again. This time, it occurs on the playground and other teachers are present. You watch the crowding of the boy from a distance, interested in how other adults react to the situation; teaching children is new to you, and it’s your first term at a Spanish public school.
The days turn into weeks that become months, and the boy keeps falling in different parts of the school. Different students and teachers around him each time, until basically the whole school has witnessed his performances. Every time someone steps forward to help, sympathy and shock on their face, he nods thankfully, says reassuring things about how “it’s not that bad, I’m okay,” and he walks away with a small smile.
One afternoon, you get a ride home from a colleague because there’s a bus strike. That year, the whole of Europe strikes. In England it’s the railway workers, post office workers, emergency workers, and teachers. In France, the president increases the retirement age to sixty-four and thousands of people flock the streets to protest.
“What’s the name of that boy?” you ask. “I don’t teach him. You know the one. The one who keeps falling everywhere.”
The teacher swishes her arm, dismissive. “That’s Miguel. The poor boy who cried wolf. One day he’ll harm himself by falling. Although I hope that day never comes.”
“Why does he do it?”
“It’s an obvious call for attention. He doesn’t get love at home, you see. The boy knows the teachers will always be there to help pick up the pieces of himself.”
“That’s terrible,” you say.
“We find out things we shouldn’t know. Sometimes the children have tired eyes and tell you they weren’t fed in the morning. That their parents were asleep. I’ve been at it for twenty years. You’re new at this school, but you’ll see. If you dare ask, the children will tell you. Sometimes it’s better not to. I learned quickly and stopped. Now, I’d rather not know.”
That weekend, you read a magazine article at the local café. It’s about a group of anthropologists in Argentina. Organized by an American, they dig up graves of the disappeared. Individuals killed by the military dictatorship. People from other countries hire the group to identify their vanished loved ones. The article reports a massacre in Guatemala, your home country. The article goes into detail about the uncovering of small delicate bones. Children. A whole village disappeared… you shut the magazine. You gulp the coffee and slip the magazine into your purse to read at home. To save bullets the military cracked the children’s skulls against a water well. Children similar age to Miguel and the ones in your classes.
The article mentions an anthropologist who dreams of chalk-white bones, and that the bones are a recurring image.
That night you dream that a naked boy steps out of a shower, covering himself with a towel. It’s a boy you’ve never seen. You know Miguel planted the vision in your subconscious mind. The boy is Miguel, although he isn’t, because the boy looks different. But Miguel placed the image there. You associate the two. With every false fall, Miguel has suggested this image. A cry for help in the only way he thinks he’ll be heard; he has no words for the emptiness of his life.
The next morning, you forget about the dream while on autopilot as you eat a quick breakfast. You’re an adult. You don’t depend on your parents to be fed in the same way your students do. That day, there’s no strike, and you ride the public bus to school. It’s not until you see Miguel in the hallway that you remember the dream, his constant cries for help, and the performative acts of falling.
You approach Miguel to see how he’s doing, but you remember what the teacher said about daring to ask things you don’t want the answer to.
You carry the mass of your silence through the corridor.
“My mother is from Guatemala and we make an effort to visit when we can, a country which has a brutal and violent past, enduring a thirty year civil war that ended in 1996. This piece was in response to the impact of that conflict and how they endure in our collective memory, even when one is far away from the place they call home.” —Thomas McEvoy
Thomas McEvoy is British-Guatemalan and was born in Paraguay. He currently lives in Liverpool, England. His writing can be found in J Journal: New Writing on Justice and Scoundrel Time.