The Lung Capacity of Aquatic Mammals

The mirror above the driver’s head is a wide rectangle, tilted so I can see the entire bus, which keeps me from having to twist in my seat whenever I hear the sounds of mischief. I have the thought that I’m like Perseus, using the reflection in his shield to battle Medusa.

That’s not fair—there is lots of bad behavior, but none of these kids are gorgons. It’s the crucible of the bus that’s making me so unkind, something about the tight walls and bumpy ride that fires my nerves. Here I might have to deal with fights, disinterest, constant disruptions, same as I did in the classroom, but wasn’t that the whole point of this? To help in a place far from well-funded A.P. courses and Saturdays at fencing club?

A peal of adolescent laughter breaks out behind me, but when I look in the mirror, everyone is in their seats. I linger on a few kids who give me consistent trouble—the bullies and the pranksters—but even they are calm for the moment. That there hasn’t been an incident so far makes me uneasy. Half an hour is longer than they’ll typically behave, even in the controlled environment of the classroom. I lean forward and speak at a volume I hope only the driver will hear.

“How much longer until we’re there?”

Our eyes lock in the mirror, as they have a few times over the last thirty minutes, and I wonder if he thinks I’m flirting with him. I want it to be decidedly clear that I’m not, so I try to look serious, and make a point not to smile.

“Another ten,” he says. His tone is unamused in a way that makes me embarrassed at having thought, even for a moment, he might be interested.

Maureen is sitting across the aisle from me, working on a sudoku puzzle. She is one of the lunch ladies at Frederick Douglass Elementary School, and the only other person who volunteered to act as a chaperone for this field trip. Through the window beyond Maureen’s head, I see the academic buildings of IUPUI flying past, and I wonder which of my kids will make it there. When I volunteered, Teach for America told me less than thirty percent of my class would be educated beyond high school. The number seemed so impossible that it didn’t register—my graduating class had sent 158 out of 163 kids to college. We all live in the same country, don’t we? Now I understand that’s not the case.   

But Lacey had understood. She’d grown up nearby, and we met at a bar when I’d been feeling more alien than ever. Her local ease drew me in, warmed me. We flirted and were likely hurtling towards a night of drunken sex until she mentioned that she worked in the Oceans section of the Indianapolis Zoo. One of their dolphins was about to give birth, she said. That I was teaching a unit on marine mammals was too serendipitous to ignore. She latched onto my excitement, telling me she could probably arrange a discount on tickets, especially for a school in such an underserved area, as long the field trip took place during a slow period. I talked excitedly about the possibilities, about what it might mean to my students. Eventually, she kissed me, and the taste of rum and Coke on her tongue reminded me that good things existed in unexpected places.

I open the binder I’ve prepared for the trip and remind myself of the itinerary. After winding a path through the zoo’s other exhibits—tigers, birds, penguins, et cetera—our morning is going to culminate in Oceans, where Lacey has promised to introduce us to the new baby dolphin. When I explained the plan to the class, they actually seemed excited. Only a few of them had ever been to the zoo. Who could know where a new experience might lead?

On the next page of the binder are notes on how to guide the students at different points during the day—I’ve found I’m no good at controlling chaos when I have to think on my feet. I begin to rehearse what I’ll say when the bus comes to a halt. If I don’t have the right words, if I don’t speak with perfect confidence, I’m certain the kids will explode through the open doors and expand out of control to fill the zoo like an agitated gas. It’s already happened at the school more times than I care to admit.

Another burst of laughter erupts from the back of the bus. This time my anxiety peaks. After three months of teaching, I recognize that it’s mean laughter, sharp and performative. I turn in my seat to see the source of it, forgetting about the comforting distance provided by the mirror.

A game of keep away has taken shape, with Quincy Jackson at its unfortunate center. He stands in the aisle, lurching back and forth with his arms extended overhead, as his tormentors toss his glasses from seat to seat.

I try not to allow myself favorites among my students, but it’s hard not to care for Quincy, and there’s no doubt I pity him. He is smaller than most of the kids, and one of the few who seems excited by learning; his lack of popularity at least allows him that freedom, or maybe each exacerbates the other. I don’t know much about his home life except that it’s bad. He lives alone with his father, who, it seems, can’t be bothered to pack his lunch or dress him in clothes that fit. Once, I foolishly asked about a bruise on his neck, and he didn’t raise his hand in class for an entire week.

Quincy’s expression is blank, even as he grabs helplessly at his flying glasses. He has accepted that this is his lot. Already, at only eleven years old, he knows that he isn’t going to get his glasses back until someone intervenes or the bullies get bored.

I can’t allow it to be the latter because I’m sure that will lead to further torment. The bullies will lash out, angry at having been outlasted by this weakling.

“Hey!” I say. “You stop that right now. Give him his glasses back.”

They ignore me. Some students even laugh harder, throwing themselves against their seat backs like they can’t control their bodies through the fits. Only the kids closest to me, those not directly involved in Quincy’s bullying, bother to look my way.

I stand and shout again, but this time I can barely hear my own voice over the ruckus. With no other choice, I begin moving down the aisle, steadying myself with each row of seats as I go, but when the bus hits a bump, I still almost fall.

Quincy has stopped trying to catch his glasses. He stands there, eyes downcast, while the students around him cackle and jump and toss his glasses around.

Behind me, a voice crashes over everything like a wave.

“You all sit your asses down! You better believe I’ll come back there!”

Maureen. She is standing in the aisle, her sudoku book rolled in one hand like a club. I don’t think she’d use it, but the image is enough to silence the class. In the relative quiet, I hear a soft clatter over the road noise. I turn toward the sound to see Quincy on his knees in the aisle, pressing his glasses onto his face.

I linger, hoping he’ll look at me, so I can at least give him a reassuring expression. I try to catch his eye, but he slides silently into his seat and presses his forehead against the window.

When I turn around, the gates of the zoo are looming through the windshield. The bus turns slowly, then halts in front of them. I stutter. I’ve forgotten what I’m meant to say to keep control. But Maureen is there, and when I look at her, she understands without my speaking.

“We getting off the bus now,” she says. “You stay close to your buddy, and always keep me or Miss Berry in sight. Anybody who acts up is going right back on the bus, and you can spend the whole day with Mr. Leeds.”

On cue, the driver stands up, faces the children, and crosses his arms. I wonder what I’m even doing here, until Maureen smiles at me, expectant, as if to remind me that all this was my idea. I clear my throat.

“Two lines behind me. Buddies next to buddies.” I say, projecting my voice as best I can. “We’re going to see the polar bears first.”

From the sidewalk outside the zoo, the crowds look thin, just a few groups of people moving through the park with their hands in their pockets—there is a reason we were able to secure discounted tickets. The November air is biting, and I shiver. Most of the kids’ coats are worn or too small. Some don’t have gloves or hats. I tell myself that these are problems for another time.

I walk backward at the head of the formation until the last two students have passed underneath the sign above the zoo entrance. Quincy’s assigned buddy, a girl named Sharise, has broken the symmetry of the lines by putting an extra few feet between her and Quincy. I catch her attention and motion for her to move behind the person in front of her. She rolls her eyes but takes her place.

Only then do I give the class my back. I want to text Lacey, but I don’t want the kids to see me using my phone. I send her a message saying that we’re here, that I’d meant to text earlier but there had been some trouble on the bus, and that I’m excited.

By the time she responds, we’ve already seen the polar bears, the penguins, and the walruses, as well as passed by the tiger, red panda, and bear exhibits. My stomach turns over when all she does is give my message a thumbs up. I feel the tug of neediness, and suddenly I’m ten, battling with Sebastian for Dad’s attention at that benefit for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. A cartwheel in front of a crowd gathered for Matisse’s Femme au chapeau. My dress falling around my ears. The tight line of Dad’s mouth, like a desiccated river.

She’s busy, I tell myself. You haven’t done anything wrong yet.

I lead the class past flamingos and alligators and snakes. We spend almost thirty minutes with the meerkats because the students are so entertained by their cartoonish movements and expressive faces. The enclosure is elevated so visitors can walk underneath and pop their heads into glass bubbles, the same way the meerkats peek out of their holes—it’s not uncommon to come face to face with one of the animals. It warms me to see that Quincy is grinning, and so are the kids who bully him. Joyous screams sound through the area under the habitat. I do my best to appreciate the beautiful chaos.

It’s nearly eleven o’clock, and Lacey still hasn’t communicated more than the thumbs up. I text her again, this time to confirm that she will be at the dolphin pavilion to speak to the class before lunch. Though I don’t have to wait as long, her response is nearly as terse as the first one.

Yes.

My imagination tries to make sense of my confusion by recounting, in great detail, every misstep I might have made in the weeks Lacey and I have been talking. Last week, she called me a tourist when I got frustrated by the absence of a garbage disposal in her kitchen sink. We’d been smoking weed, and she laughed after, but it stayed with me. It wasn’t the first time she’d made fun of the way I interacted with things in her world, the rougher edges I was still getting used to. Does she assume I will inevitably retreat to the safety of my Bay Area bubble? Is she trying to hasten my exit?

At the entrance to the dolphin pavilion, I take a deep breath. This is the highlight of the day, I remind myself, a way to tie our work in the classroom to a seminal memory. It shouldn’t be about anyone but the students.

I turn to the class and raise both hands. To my surprise, they respect the gesture, and wait for me to speak. Maybe it’s the unknown, the threshold of the dark tunnel behind me, that keeps their attention.

“We’re going to see the dolphins now,” I say. “Inside, a woman named Miss Lacey is going to teach us all about them. Maybe we’ll even get to meet the baby!” I’m pleased to see some wide eyes. “Keep away from the glass unless she says otherwise. Remember what we’ve learned already and ask lots of questions, okay?” A few students nod. A few others snicker quietly about something but it doesn’t go beyond that. “Follow me.”

We move through the tunnel. When the kids realize their voices echo, they start making noises, hooting and screeching to hear the distortion of the sounds.

But two by two, they enter the glass dome and fall silent. I watch from the center of the room, glowing at the awe in their faces as they crane their necks around to take in the wonder of the world they’re now inside. Someone says, “We’re underwater!” and other voices agree. The light shimmers on the floor and across the children’s hands, and they wonder at it.

Then there’s a sound, the swift gurgling of a torpedo. Heads flash this way and that to find the source of the noise.

Three dolphins appear, and the class lets out a unanimous, reverent Whoa. Another dolphin glides into view, then another. Soon, six dolphins are swimming around us, observing, playing. I am as wrapped up in the scene as the students. I don’t notice Lacey is there until she puts a hand on my shoulder.

Before I decide how to react, whether I want to act cold and aloof or give in to the joy I’m feeling at the class’s reaction, I notice signs that Lacey has been crying. Her mouth is curved upward, but her eyes are glassy and sad. Her nose has been rubbed red. I feel compelled to hug her, but I resist.

I settle for asking, “Are you alright?”

Before she can answer, Quincy is standing between us. He cranes his head upward, eyes bright, mouth open in a smile. I see the movement of the water reflected in his glasses.

“Is this Miss Lacey?” he asks.

I look at her, and she nods.

“Yes, Quincy, it is. Hang on.” I raise my voice to address the room. “Class, gather around, please. Miss Lacey is here, and she’s going to teach us about dolphins.”

The students surge inward with such enthusiasm that they have to retreat to regain a good viewing distance. I touch Lacey on the arm, before moving off to the side so the class can focus on her. She clears her throat.

“Hi, kids.” She pauses, and the class waits. “My name is Lacey, and I work with the dolphins here at the zoo. We have—” She clears her throat. “We have ten dolphins in our pod. Did everyone know that a group of dolphins is called a pod?”

I nod at the question because we’d covered that in class, and most of the kids do, as well.

“Dolphins are mammals,” Lacey continues, “air breathers who live under water.”

“We know,” Demetrius says, but he’s smiling, and not a typical troublemaker, so I let the interruption go. Lacey gives him the same sort of sad smile she had given me.

“Oh, so your teacher has already covered a lot of this, huh?”

Some students nod.

“Does anyone know how dolphins sleep?” Lacey asks. A few heads shake, a few quiet voices say No. “Well, neither do we.” This elicits a few laughs. “Actually, we believe that they have the ability to rest half of their brains at a time. That way, they can keep breathing while they nap.”

Quincy’s hand shoots into the air. Lacey points at him. “Go ahead.”

“How come they need to have half their brain awake to breathe? Humans are mammals and they don’t need to have awake brains to breathe at night.”

The question is sophisticated; even I hadn’t thought of it right away. A boy named Marcus, one of Quincy’s worst tormentors, sticks out his tongue and blows a raspberry through his lips. He is mostly ignored, so I decide it’s better not to call attention to his meanness by reprimanding him.

“Great question,” Lacey says, and Quincy beams. “Dolphins are what’s called conscious breathers, which means—” Her voice catches, and her eyes flit around the dome, searching. For what? It’s strange to see the façade of her confidence crack—I’m used to watching her deliver effortless screeds against the environmental impact of late-stage capitalism in bars full of drunk strangers. When she speaks again, I detect the effort of restraint. “Dolphins are conscious breathers, which means it doesn’t just happen automatically. They have to think about it. They have to choose to do it.”

This seems to confuse the kids, but none of them follow up. Lacey’s mouth hangs open, expectant, but she doesn’t speak. She closes her mouth and swallows, before continuing in a robotic cadence, like she’s reading from a cue card. 

“Dolphins are very smart animals. Their brains are the third largest—”

Quincy’s hand is in the air again. Lacey sees it and looks relieved at having been interrupted. She nods at him. A few students snicker.

“Where’s the baby dolphin? Does he know how to sleep like a dolphin yet or does he have to learn?”

Lacey lets out a tremulous breath, as though Quincy has just punched her in the stomach. She looks at me, her eyes pleading, but for what I don’t know. Just answer the question, I think.

“The baby dolphin—” She looks at me again. She is in pain. Obliquely, at least, I begin to understand.

“It seems like Miss Lacey doesn’t want to talk about the baby dolphin right now,” I say, “so why don’t we talk about some of the things we learned in class? Who can tell me what dolphins eat?”

“How come the dolphin lady doesn’t want to talk about the dolphin?” Julius asks.

Tears well in the bottom of Lacey’s eyes. She wipes them quickly away, but I haven’t captured the students’ attention completely enough, and one of the kids says, “She crying.”

Lacey’s skin flushes red. Something shatters in her expression, subtle but undeniable. Whatever sadness she is feeling is tinged with the heat of anger.

“Dione—that was the baby’s name, Dione—died two days ago.” She looks across the mass of students. They stay silent. I cover my mouth with my hands. This poor girl, I think. All her behavior this morning begins to make sense.

Lacey continues. “We named her after a Greek sea nymph because her mom’s name was Doris, like the oceanid. Dione didn’t acclimate to her enclosure.”

Even as I understand that I’m witness to a strange tragedy, it registers that she has an affinity for Greek mythology. I want to blurt out that it’s something we share, hoping that might be a comfort. But I know I can’t.  

“That’s sad,” Demetrius says.

Lacey nods, jaw set harshly, her face now a mask of manufactured stoicism. “Yes, it is. But even when we try to take good care of them, dolphins in captivity die at about twice the rate of dolphins in the wild.”

All is quiet except for the sound of the water moving around us. I haven’t rehearsed for this. I don’t know what to say, and that’s how I know I shouldn’t be allowing it to happen.

Quincy asks, “Is Doris sad?”

Lacey shakes her head, allowing two tears to escape and trickle down her cheeks. She doesn’t bother wiping them away.

“Doris is dead, too. She died last night.”

The kids' faces are rapt. Lacey has them under her control in a way I’ve only dreamt of; they aren’t even watching the dolphins swimming around us. My whole body is on fire, but instead of spurring me to action, to stopping this, the feeling paralyzes me, shrinks my consciousness so it couldn’t possibly be capable of controlling my body.

Maureen tilts her head in Lacey’s direction, eyes wide. Do something, she is saying. Her touch gives me back a part of my strength. I open my lips, but Lacey is speaking again, and I can’t talk loud enough to interrupt her.

“You remember how I said dolphins are conscious breathers? That means every breath is an effort. If life gets too unbearable, a dolphin can take a breath and sink to the bottom. Then they just don’t take another breath.”

Quincy raises his hand. Lacey ignores him.

“It takes less than twenty minutes for a dolphin to drown itself.”

Quincy lowers his hand.

To my surprise, Marcus asks the next question.

“How come you didn’t just take Doris out the water?”

This is the question that breaks Lacey. I see it happen. She barely gets the words out.

“It was night. We didn’t know. There wasn’t time.”

She exits the dome without fanfare or apology, her face so slack it looks like she’s melting. She escapes into the darkness of the tunnel. A cry echoes from the mouth of the tunnel and dissipates in the glass dome.

I want to go after her, but I don’t. I can’t leave the class. I pity her for the loss she’s suffering, but the pity is tinged by the heat of an anger I feel an instinct to repress. I’m trapped in a strange limbo—lonely, but not alone enough to parse my thoughts. There’s too much noise, too many small faces.

A dolphin sails overhead, then glides toward the bottom of the tank and around the base of the enclosure. One of the kids asks, “Is it lunchtime yet?” and I nod. Most of them look already to have moved past Lacey’s breakdown. I tell them to line up so we can leave the enclosure. Quincy is standing at the glass, staring at one of the dolphins.

“Quincy,” I say, “get in line, please.” He turns his body toward his place next to Sharise, but he walks slowly, his gaze lingering on the dolphins.

“Yeah, Quincy,” Marcus echoes, “get your gay ass in line.”

It’s the sort of insult that plays well among ten-year-olds. Cruel laughter reverberates around the dome. Quincy shrivels under the weight of it. His steps become smaller. I worry he’s going to trip, or worse, run off into the darkness of the tunnel never to be found again.

“Marcus!” My control is gone. “If you worried less about Quincy and more about yourself, maybe you wouldn’t be failing half your subjects.”

Marcus’s self-satisfied expression transforms into one of shock, then fury, as the derision of his classmates turns on him. Quincy looks no happier that I’ve defended him. I wonder if he feels the same dread as me.

Maureen is able to get the first students in line to start moving, and the rest follow, still chattering and giggling. Marcus fumes, but his attention isn’t attached to me anymore. He stares at the ground instead, a look of intense concentration across his face.

Hunger is enough to compel the class into their seats at the picnic area just south of the Oceans exhibit. They sit under heat lamps, eating and talking, and I stand watching all of it like a prison guard, certain we are on the cusp of a riot. But the tension never breaks.

It’s only when lunch is nearly over, and I am ready to shepherd the students back to the bus, that Marcus stands abruptly. He makes a beeline towards Quincy.

All I can manage to say is, “No.” I force myself forward. My legs feel weak, but they are moving, at least. I am getting closer. “No,” I say again. “No.”

I’m nearly there, nearly to the table but still too far to stop anything, as Marcus leans over and puts his lips next to Quincy’s ear. He whispers something—it can’t be more than a few words. Quincy is very still. Marcus stands and walks back to his seat. That’s it. I stop a few feet shy and observe the aftermath. Quincy still hasn’t moved.

My attention has already caused problems for Quincy, but he is a child, and I am his teacher, and I can’t shake the feeling that he needs my help. These are elementary school students, I think, and by tomorrow they’ll forget that I sat across from Quincy and asked him if everything was alright. That can’t be the thing that stays with a kid. The world can’t be that unfair.

For the moment, I decide none of that matters anyway—I am overwhelmed by my desire to make him feel better.

I slide onto the bench across the table from him. He doesn’t look up, and he is shaking from the effort of holding back tears. The sight of his emotion threatens to choke me.

“Are you okay, Quincy?”

He doesn’t say anything. Of course he’s not okay. The only thing I can think to do is offer him a different misery.

“Do you need me to call your dad to come pick you up? Nobody will mind at all if you need to go home.”

He doesn’t consider his answer longer than the time it takes him to meet my gaze. The choice is that clear, and that makes me frightened for him.

“I’ll stay at school.”

He raises his hood, then crosses his arms on the table. He lays his head on his arms like he means to take a nap. I stand and retreat.

After lunch, we make our way to the bus. After some jostling for the desirable seats near the back, all the kids find their places. I nod at Maureen, and she tells Mr. Leeds we’re ready to go. The bus lurches forward, and I try to sink as deeply into my seat as the pleather cushion will allow.

I watch my students in the big rectangular mirror. Mostly, I focus on Marcus, hopeful that my scrutiny will keep him from exacting some misguided revenge. By the time we reach the highway, he looks to be in a better mood, talking and laughing with his friends. He has not looked towards Quincy’s seat in a while. I breathe a little easier.

I turn my attention to Quincy, hoping to see evidence of a similarly short memory. A short memory might be the thing that saves a kid like him.

He is sitting alone, of course, but he is not just looking idly out the window, letting time pass. His cheeks are puffed out, full of air, and he is shaking with effort. It takes me a moment to realize what he’s doing.

When he can’t keep his breath in any longer, when the pain in his chest becomes unbearable, he lets the captured air out with a wheezing gasp. He is teary-eyed, frustrated by failure. After a moment, he breathes deep and tries to drown himself again.

R. B. Miner is a New York City native, West Point graduate, and occupational dilettante. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in, among others, The Saturday Evening Post, New World Writing, Identity Theory, and Pigeon Review. He lives in Kansas City with his wife, daughter, and dog.

Published July 15 2023