Rachel:

The Monday before the election, I was working in a middle school in northeast Portland. It was a Social Studies class, and it was being run by a student teacher.

This is a substitute’s dream. The student teacher has to do all the hard work, and you, as the substitute, get to go around and connect with the students, or hover over them in your threatening 5’3” way if they dare start whispering when they’re supposed to be working. Not being the teacher means you get to be the good guy. You’re on their side. You’re engaging with them. You’re not the authority in the room, so they don’t get irrationally angry at you for telling them that ‘studies prove reading a book is easier if you open it.’ It is the best, and it is rare.

That day, they were doing a mock election. They had voter pamphlets and other resources for the candidates and measures. Their task was to cast their vote and give one factual reason for their decision.

These were sixth-graders, so their level of discourse was only slightly higher than that of televised media. And their facts were on a par with it, so I had to spend a lot of time explaining what a ‘fact’ is. Halfway through the class, most of them had filled out one or two spots and were digressing.

But one little dude had the whole first page filled out. I looked over it, starting from the bottom, to make sure he was giving evidence, that there wouldn’t just be ‘no grumpy old judges’ written in the ‘nay’ vote for measure 94 (based off of a true story). And his was solid. He had picked Ron Wyden for Senator, with the reason being ‘He will make the first two years of community college free.’ He liked Alan Zundel for Secretary of State because he promised to ‘update voting technology.’ I mean, this kid wasn’t digging deeper by asking how these candidates would keep their promises, but he was supporting his statements with specific text, which is exactly what we ask for at this level.

But when I got to the top of the page, where he had selected his choice for president, there was no quote from the pamphlet. In the first column, he’d written ‘Hillary Clinton.’

I can still see the graphite on the paper, the way her name was written with her first name on top, her last name underneath, starting just below the two ‘l’s. His reason was small, a less confident pencil stroke than his direct quotes from the voter’s pamphlet. It was ‘because I want to stay’.

And I—in retrospect, being a complete dumbass—was confused.

“What do you mean, you want to stay?” I asked, tapping the box where that sentence, with its lack of punctuation or capitalization, stood. I thought he was talking about staying in the classroom, like if he didn’t write something in the box, he’d be told to leave. This was completely illogical.

He turned his head to look at me, his eyes dark with a personal, quiet, terror.

“I’m Muslim.”

I don’t have kids. For a long time, I thought I just didn’t have that nurturing gene that makes people want to have them. But that gene comes out when you’re a teacher, and you end up loving your kids, and celebrating them, and wanting to leave them on the side of the road, and wishing they would just shut up, and also wishing that they would say something.

And you want to swear to them that everything will be okay. You want to banish the monsters under their bed.

I feel queasy writing about this. In fact, every sentence is breaking me further. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen bald fear like that, and for it to be molded into an eleven-year-old’s face is something I’m not sure I can handle. Normally essays come easy for me, but I am ripping this one out with shaking, tear-covered hands.

What do you say?

What I said was, “Oh.”

It may seem like it wasn’t my finest moment, steeped in inadequacy as it was. But I feel like I met his fear. I didn’t belittle him, or tell him he was being dramatic, or make excuses for a country that had allowed a man to rise in the ranks on promises to dismantle the very reason it was formed.

“I think a good way to phrase that would be, ‘she has promised to protect the freedom of religion,’” I said.

The sixth-grader nodded and erased what he’d written with intense focus, then carefully wrote over the faded pencil marks. It was like he thought if he articulated his fear correctly it would fix everything.

As he was writing, I added, “And nobody is going to make you leave.”

This was Monday, so I was able to tell him that while believing it. But on Tuesday, as Tiff and I watched the United States turn red, I could only think of Nasir*.

Tiff and I were among the last to leave the Hillary Clinton Victory Party, but before getting into the car, we sat on the curb and cried. I don’t know what her fear looked like, but mine had a face, and it was Nasir’s.

Nasir wasn’t my first encounter with how the ubiquity of Trump’s message affected middle schoolers. A couple months ago, I was subbing in a class for English language learners. In my small group, some were chatting about the election as they readied their books, papers, and pencils. A Russian American kid said, “I want Trump to win because he’ll keep us safe.” A Mexican American replied, “He won’t keep me safe.” I sat silently, wondering what I was supposed to and allowed to say. But the other kid just shook his head and said, “Oh, no, not you.”

He wasn’t being malicious; he was being thoughtless and honest. And the other middle schooler didn’t get offended. He just nodded nervously and rolled his pencil around. I interrupted to say, “I will keep you safe. You don’t need to worry.”

I looked down at my teacher’s manual, wondering how to move on from there. What I’d said was hollow at best, and at worst a continuation of the damaging myth of the ‘white savior.’ I was failing at the most important job in the world by slapping on a poisoned bandage and reeling in my own helplessness.

This feeling that has been sitting in my stomach is laced with the fear and understanding that I was dishonest with these kids. That I can’t keep my promise to protect them. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, or how to do it. I don’t know if my furious donations and calls to my representatives will help. I don’t know what their future is or what my part in securing it is. I don’t know how to open people’s eyes to the very real oppression and danger that my kids face every day. My ‘to do’ lists and spreadsheets are inadequate. My frustration is blinding, and I don’t know what to do.

So I write.

*Name has been changed