I took this picture of Mike (not his real name) a few months ago. He knew I had an iPhone, and he didn’t own a picture of himself, so I took this portrait and presented him several 5 by 7 inch copies. We bonded over those prints.
Mike rides his bicycle to attend the literacy classes that I teach to parolees. He’s been faithfully attending for nearly a year, gaining remedial reading and math skills.
He is one of 18 brothers and sisters. His father, who died at age 65, was a janitor. To help the family make ends meet, all the children worked in the janitorial business nearly from the time they could walk.
Mike, who stands four feet eleven inches tall, has been in and out of prison for most of his life. Because he has no top teeth left and only a few bottom teeth remain, it is sometimes hard to understand my Zacchaeus-sized student’s speech.
His hearty laughter explodes through his broom-bristle mustache as he relates stories of his elderly grandmother, who stood much shorter than even himself; he holds an outstretched hand to his mid-chest. Other family members didn’t dare cross her; she would curse them if they did, flailing exclamatory fingers in all directions. They lived in awe of her, and she always got her way.
Last week Mike didn’t show up for classes. There were no phone calls or messages conveyed to his other parole classmates. When he eventually showed up in class this week, his eyes were bleary with weariness. He asked to speak with me in private. Though my desk is in the middle of the classroom, I invited him into my “office”. He closed the imaginary glass door behind him. When this door to my make-believe private office is closed, the rest of the class is instructed to pretend they can’t hear anything we’re saying. And they honor the agreement.
Mike’s stubby fingers tried to divert the tears flowing freely down his cheeks, as he explained why he hadn’t been in class last week. Of all his brothers and sisters (evenly divided: nine boys and nine girls), his older sister always cared for and looked after him. He relied on her completely. Now, he explained, she was gone. Last week, she had taken her own life. I sat in silence while he cried, then attempted to give comfort. I offered his weeping voice a willing ear, a feeble attempt at solace, and a Kleenex from my desk. Probably the Kleenex provided the greatest help.
He exited the invisible door to my office and settled into his day’s studies behind his computer monitor.
A few minutes after our conference, his friend, also a student of mine, barely an inch taller than Mike, entered my office and closed the pretend door to my office.
“Look after him,” he begged me. “He needs help.”
I promised that I would, and I wondered what to do next.
Postscript
Barely a day after the narrative about his sister, Mike related the story of yet another, even more recent loss in his life.
Mike lives in an old camper, the kind that fits on the bed of a small pickup truck, except his camper rests in the weeds next to the freeway, in the backyard of the person who rents it to him.
Exiting his dilapidated camper home, tiny Mike noticed his pet, a tiny chihuahua, asleep on the grass. Mike’s approach did not seem to awaken the dog, who appeared to be resting with eyes wide open.
“Suicide,” mused a fellow student as Mike related the story, unaware of the death of Mike’s sister and the irony of his comment.
Mike wrapped his beloved chihuahua in a blanket and laid her in a shallow grave. As a final act of reverence, he removed the dog’s name from the miniature doghouse and fashioned a headstone from it.