The Orchestra Pit and The Game of Tetris

Sunshine and I are judges and the only audience of this lavish St. Pain student production. What can I say, it's far better than any school production I've ever seen. The ambience of St. Cecilia's hall lends the whole thing some professionalism.

This tiny girl, Joanna (and I don't even remember having her as a student), makes a big entrance but misses the X spot marked for her on the stage and bounces off the big props and disappears down the orchestra pit --- the same pit I almost fell into years ago. We're all stunned into silence. It's so quiet that we hear her bones crack as she lands.

Could the pit really be that deep?

"Oh my God!" I scream and while I run to the pit I call out to the class president, "Chukis, run to the clinic! Run! Tell them we need an ambulance!"

"Sunshine? Sunshine?" Sunshine has disappeared.

By the time I get to the orchestra pit, the whole class is there and I see someone stroking Joanna's leg, trying to get her to move.

"Don't touch her! Don't move her!" There's so much crying and wailing and I myself want to start crying but I feel that as a teacher I must keep my composure.

"Everbody move away from her. Everyone except you, Balot. You can stay beside her and keep talking to her."

The pit clears and I see Joanna's broken face for the first time.

Bloody. Cracked into several pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle. Limbs twisted like gnarled branches.

I realize how tiny she really is. How tiny and broken. Like Barbie having a bad hair day.

I am unable to speak nor cry.

(At the next issue of The Blue Flame, an editorial will comment on my lack of tears and they will interpret my shock as unfeelingness.)

***

I want to say I'm sorry.

If you think that I could be forgiven. Wish you would.

I look at him from afar and practice my apology in my head but before I gather enough of myself he calls out to me, "Come, Camille and watch me play Tetris."

I come up to him from behind and watch. Nothing else is said.

I can't remember the last thing that you said to me as you were leaving. Now the days go by so fast.

To be able to follow the game more closely, I bend and rest my chin on his right shoulder. And he doesn't flinch so perhaps I have been forgiven.

I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself to hold on to these moments as they pass.

And this is the only tender moment we share. Me and this nameless, faceless man who has yet to tell me I have been forgiven.