All Over the Place: The Incident with Mace

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

The first thing you notice about mace is how pungent it is. Then you notice the taste. Then eyes begin to burn. This was the order for me. For Stanley, the order came differently. The mace hit him full in the eyes. He bent over and vomited. Then the pain came and he could not see. The third person only felt its anger in his nose, and he sneezed, coughed a bit, drank a few glasses of water and it was gone.
    The taste remained strong in my mouth. Someone asked me what happened to my forehead, and when I touched it, it felt tender, but I do not remember anyone hitting me in my head. I don’t even remember when the mace was sprayed. One second I was breathing and the next second my entire mouth felt like it had filled itself with a great ugliness.

This is how it happened: I walked the special needs child down the street as I do whenever his parents do not come for him. I don’t walk with him. He runs ahead of me, looks back, and keeps walking and then runs and turns around again and runs. When he makes it to the crossing guard at the corner, I know he’s safe. The gang that was attacking him is no longer entertained. Perhaps it’s because I walk him down the street. Perhaps they have just lost interest. I don’t know.
    When I arrived back to the school, the parents were massing. Not parents to pick up their children. Not even parents who come by to help. No, these were the parents from Hell – the parents who tell their children to fight, you have to fight, I don’t care what anyone says, fight, fight, fight, kick some ---, beat some ----.
    They have been out before and I stopped one fight. The next day I just stood with them until everyone left and, since they no longer had an audience, they left too. But this after-school massing was not going to let go.
    One of my students came out and they moved towards her – parents and students. The assistant principal immediately got another member of my school to walk her across the street. She went with him. But the parents did not leave. They cursed. They made noises. They kept a crowd of other children around them. So I stood with them.
    The other children did not want to leave. This could be how a horror film starts. Everyone smells blood and they can’t wash the smell away, so they stay and wait and wait.
    I was able to get most of the students to go home, and I might have succeeded with all of them, but another family from Hell came out from their building and crossed the street like an arrow straight into the other parents and adults from Hell and the students who wanted to fight.

Have you ever knocked on a door to get someone inside to safety and the people inside won’t open the door? That’s what happened at first. Then the surge of bodies reached the door, the fighting began, and one by one I pushed individuals into the school – even the grandmother who had brought her children across the street – for what?
    I heard her scream to follow me. I heard her scream that they should do as I asked. Another teacher was suddenly in the fray. Grandmother broke loose. I grabbed her and pushed her into the school. Then there was a flash of a child and feet and fists and I saw this girl go down and the adults and the students were on her and the teacher and I – Stanley and others, perhaps another adult or two – were in the middle of everything.
    Someone shot mace. It filled the fight space like a plague. Stanley went down and the fight pressed into him. It took everything we had to push the fighters back and get Stanley into the school for help. He was blinded and my mouth suddenly tasted ugly and everywhere the smell tainted the air.
    But it wasn’t over. We got one group into safety, but now the other group from Hell was coming back to the front door. They wanted in. They wanted the fight to spill into the school. So there I was at the front door now, giving orders, keeping everybody out.
    The police were already on the scene. Stanley was getting first aid from two teachers. Other teachers were in a classroom calming individuals down. I was everywhere.

The police let me go home an hour later. They had my statement. I don’t know what happened after that. One of the officers told me someone was going to jail.
    I need to tell you this: One parent who would not let it end is also on the Local School Council.
    I had enough.
    On the way home the mace dripped into my eye, blinding me temporarily.
    After the mace incident. the police hauled off one girl and one adult – the girl’s aunt. When they reached the police station, they were processed and held for about an hour, and then they were told they were free to go. It seems the witness who saw whoever sprayed the mace wasn’t a good enough witness.
    Everything fell back onto the throat of the school. Members from the Board showed up and I was asked to testify. They were meeting to see if they should expel the child who had sprayed the mace.
    In the afternoon everything hung on the principal’s decision. No one was charged with any crime. No one was expelled. I was called down again for the suspension hearing. The adults started bickering. Their children began to talk louder and louder. The principal suddenly looked around and yelled, “Quiet everyone. We must get along. Everyone gets five days. I’m done. You can go, Mr. Brownstein.”
    Later that day, we were asked if we wanted to press charges against any of the adults. We were told to hang together and the police would arrest the adults and prosecute them. I wanted consequences.
    No one else did.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.