My Arturo

My Arturo

I looked at the faces staring back at me with red, swollen eyes and shining cheeks. They looked exhausted and sad. I understood why because I felt the same way, but I had no idea how to help them. I was their teacher, and I was clueless about what they needed from me. I knew what our leaders told us they needed, but I had my doubts.

“Okay, kids, we have been told to carry on with class because you need normalcy. So I’m going to turn on Channel One,” I said to the classroom of 28, no, 27 kids. I reached up to the television, and punched the button. Lisa Ling was on, chatting cheerfully about school dances and the perfect dresses for them. Ollie stood up, and without speaking, turned off the television I had just turned on. He looked back at me with defiance on his sad face, and he sat back at his desk.

Arturo Renteria. I still remember his full name, and I can’t say the same about almost any of the students I had back in Yuma. I had some of those kids for four years, and I don’t remember their last names. That was thirty years ago, of course. Arturo was in my fourth period English IV class: British Literature. That class was a fun bunch of kids--very likeable students, funny, charming, smart. Arturo was quiet in comparison to most of the others, like Ollie, and Mark, and Xochitl. I remember that we all actually gave Arturo a little grief over being shy. He would respond with a small grin, barely showing any teeth, but smiling big with his eyes. He loved the attention, thrived under it, I could see. I often wondered about him just because he was so shy. I didn’t know him as well as I knew some of the other kids. But I enjoyed his presence in my class. I knew that we could tease him about being so quiet and that it would draw him in.

I loved those kids. It was my first year as a high school teacher, and this was the first class that I really connected with. That happens sometimes. You get a group of kids that you are drawn to, that you really feel close to. This was the case for me and fourth period English.

I also connected with many of the staff at Cibola High School. Half of the staff had been recruited from the Midwest, and we were all young, new teachers. Often we went out together, sometimes traveling the three hours to San Diego to hang out. On one particular weekend, we were at John’s apartment, having a grading party, which we sometimes do in order to get through all the papers we collect from our classes. The news was on the television that played in the background. All of a sudden, the newscaster announced breaking news.

“Gang violence erupted in Yuma earlier this weekend. A young man was fatally stabbed in a fight between rival gangs. Arturo--”

“Oh, God,” I thought. “It’s my Arturo.” I don’t know what made me think that. I just knew it.

“--Renteria was pronounced dead at the scene,” the newscaster finished. They put a picture of him on the screen. I assumed it was one they got from the school because there was the fresh-faced, shy kid that I saw every day in my classroom.

“Oh my God,” I said out loud. “That’s my student.”

My colleagues and friends immediately gathered around me to provide comfort and support. I just needed to be alone to process it, though. It seemed weirdly unreal. I felt disconnected from the event, and that disturbed me. I went back to my apartment. I spent the rest of the weekend there, feeling unmoored, adrift. I just couldn’t get a handle on the reality of the situation. I honestly don’t remember what I did during that time.

My next memory is of being at school on the Monday following that terrible weekend. We met as a faculty to discuss the possibility of gang retaliation at the school and how to respond. We came up with a code word. All three of our security guards were at school that day. We were nervous and edgy, hoping against hope that nothing would happen, that the feared retaliation wouldn’t erupt on our campus. We were right to be on edge: Cibola High School was built between the territories of two violent rival gangs.

When fourth period started, and Ollie shut off the television, I realized that these were scared, sad children. They were shocked and traumatized by the death of one of their peers. I didn’t see anger on their faces, nor a desire for revenge. I just saw an exhausted despair. This was in the early 90s, and gang violence was rampant. Large cities especially were struggling to find solutions to the dangerous criminal activities that were escalating, seemingly on a daily basis. These kids had been living under that umbrella of fear and uncertainty all their lives. And now it had affected--it had stolen--one of their own. They were tired.

I got through the rest of that day. Later, I met with an assistant principal about the possibility of dedicating the yearbook to Arturo. He wasn’t in favor of that.

“Arturo was not innocent in that fight, you know,” he said. I must have met that statement with a blank look because he elaborated. “Arturo was a gang member, too.” I left his office, feeling surprised, first of all, because I couldn’t reconcile that shy, sweet boy with the violence and disregard for life that I associated with gangs. Secondly, I was disturbed by the seeming lack of feeling the administrator had for Arturo and for the kids who were affected so deeply by his loss. The principal seemed to suggest that because Arturo was a gang member, his death was inconsequential, inevitable, perhaps even justified. I couldn’t see it from his perspective. Maybe he was just tired, too.

My naivete was tested again when I spoke to a veteran teacher, one who was also a native of Yuma. She told me that it was likely that the person or persons who stabbed Arturo were students in my other classes. I was dumbfounded. That possibility had never really occurred to me. Of course. Cibola’s population included members of rival gangs. Why wouldn’t the killer or killers be students there? I wondered briefly if it would be hard to teach, knowing that I might be looking at the person who took a deadly weapon to Arturo. How would I respond if I found out that it was true? What if one of my other beloved students had killed someone I knew? But then I got into the classroom, and that question disappeared from my mind. These were kids, human beings, worthy of my love and attention. They were products of a flawed society, but they were also God’s children.

When Ollie turned off the television, I shrugged and nodded at him.

“Okay, guys. I understand. Let’s just do what we need to do to deal with our sadness right now. Talk to each other. See one of the counselors if you need to. Let me know if you need anything else.” I turned around to sit at my desk, but I was interrupted by Julie, who wrapped her arms around me in a hug that allowed me to finally let the tears go.

I could not blame Ollie. I understood on some level that the defiance was not aimed at me particularly. It was aimed at the adults who could not protect him from the ugly touch of violence. It was aimed at the adults who just couldn’t understand what he needed as a child of this time. He was taking charge for his peers because we had failed them. As I navigated my way through the experience of losing a student, I began to understand more clearly my role in that failure. I had naively assumed that the white bread world I grew up in was the same for all kids. I had failed to consider that these kids might lack the safety and security I had always taken for granted. I was part of the problem, but I had no earthly idea how to make up for that.

Except, of course, to remember Arturo. To allow myself to grieve him. To keep him alive in my mind. And to always remember that my students are just human beings, capable of great good and great evil, like everyone else, and they deserved my affection and my best efforts to teach them and prepare them for a future they might or might not have.

I taught for four more years in Yuma. More students came and went. Arturo seemed to have been forgotten by most people. As far as I know, no one ever solved the murder. I never found out who killed him. I never discovered whether I was teaching his murderer in another class. I had to go on and treat all my students as flawed, but beautiful human beings. I have continued to do that. I occasionally think about Arturo. I wonder what kind of a man he would have turned out to be. I wonder if he would have ever escaped gang life. I wonder if he would have gotten married, or had children, or found his dream job. I do know that he left a legacy. I know that I would not see my students as I do if I had never met and lost Arturo. And for that, I am thankful for the short time Arturo was in my life.