Fringe Magazine - Longer Poetry Ethnos

LONGER POETRY:
Peeing in Punjabi
by Elaine Batcher

On the carpet he did it, if only it hadn’t been on the reading rug,
impossible now to use that little patch of colored squares
she’d worked so hard, called so many stores to scrounge, just so
kids could hear stories, get the fuzzy feelgood rhythm of school
and not have to sit on cold bare terrazzo, ’cause who knew,
despite requests, how often the caretakers actually

brought round the mop, not even a wet but a dry one, to swab
down the snit-spot of infant three-four-year-olds whose only
entry duty was toilet training, no admittance to Junior
Kindergarten without the basic social skill this lad hadn’t quite
managed, and the evidence was now spreading through the
unknown fibers of the rug and the only thing to do was march

all tots out to the hall, call the parent and hope to get through to
a caretaker if one could be found in the hundred thousand square
feet of space they mopped daily in school, they’d informed her
earlier . . . perhaps to fend off exactly this summons. Later,
the father collecting his boy was most abject, but surly somehow
to be taken from real duties, forced back here to deal with this,

when even his own wife had to work, and surely this must be
Teacher’s responsibility, hmm? this handling of pupils’
needs? This is a public school he kept saying, as though he
personally paid her wage to dry his son’s butt, and indeed she
was mindful of this truly Canadian story, of hardships
in leaving home to immigrate, with infants yanked from their

first culture, from extended families who would if they could
help, support their efforts to earn, rise up and exist in two worlds,
give and gain with each, and he was young and she grieved for
him as she did for most of her son’s generation, the ones who
wanted all and couldn’t settle, nor could they pay. You know
I’m most surprised by all this he tolled, voice raised

against the din of fledglings who’d been rounded to the hall to
jangle loudly as doors slammed through the general wipe-down
and finally collected back and calmed and herded to
a new activity, a standing exercise even more grabbing than
sitting on plush and listening, and then Teacher had to be
distracted at the door, kept from them by this other blunder,

the man who’d not leave but linger saying My wife has no
problem with him, knowing he could neither expunge nor
deny the liquid evidence that he’d lied, covering fears
his boy would ever be excluded, a collective shame
their helplessness, and so he persisted, flashing search-light
smile and crinkly eyes on her face, while aside she

could see and sense the other kidlets escaping from her, the class
getting lost from where she was leading them now on the brainy
and pushy path of tutoring tiny tots, twenty-nine more
than the one abject little fellow firmly being pulled by the arm
as his father finally receded, calling over his shoulder, See, he
does know how to pee in the toilet . . . ? In Punjabi he can do it?

End