Evolution

“It might be a good thing for you to go,” I say. “Your wife can take care of you, make sure you eat enough.” David looks at me for a second, then he looks down at the letter again.

“She could,” he says.

“I’d be glad if you two were able to work things out,” I say. David puts his hand on my arm. His fingers are dry, a little rough.

“You really would?” he asks.

“Of course,” I say. I move toward the door, begin to turn the knob. “It sounds like it would be the best thing. I need to get back now.”

“I’ll go,” David says, and I turn to look at him from the doorway.

“You will?”

“Yeah. I’m going to call Raquel right now.” He takes out his cell phone and begins to dial the number, stops and looks down at the paper, then continues dialing. I close the door softly behind me as I leave the classroom. I get a drink of water from the fountain. In the hall outside my own classroom, I can hear the shrieks of the monkeys on the film and the sound of my students giggling and imitating the noises. I listen for a minute, and it becomes hard to tell the difference between the two.

It is dark in the room, and warm, even though everywhere else in the building is freezing now that the air conditioning has been turned on for the summer. The air is heavy and damp, and it smells of sweat, of thirty small bodies exhaling. The film will be over in five minutes or so, and I sit at my desk and watch my students as they watch it. They are hunched over their desks, and they stare at the screen, their eyes a strange yellowy-green in the light from the television. Their breathing seems heavier, excited, as they watch the orangutans and spider monkeys swing from tree branches and chase one another, howl and yell across the jungle. They call back to the monkeys and to each other, and it seems they are talking to one another in a real language, one they all understand. Even after the film ends, they continue to call, back and forth across the room, across the tree tops and vines, the rivers.

When I turn on the lights, the students are changed, into little wild things with fur and sharp teeth and small brains. I can see long, slender tails brushing the floor next to their desks. Their clothes are too big for them, and they pull at them and frown. Their bodies are elastic and strong, and if they chose to, they could set upon me, and I would not be able to fight them off. Small as they are, they are stronger than I am, but they don’t seem to know this.

“It’s time for a report,” I tell them, and I see their eyes get wide. They begin to make noises—chattering, and a few growls, and their wrinkled hands grope around in their desks until they bring out pencils, erasers, boxes of crayons and bottles of glue. “Just the pencils,” I tell them, and they put them in their mouths and return the rest of the materials to the desks. “I would like you to tell me about evolution,” I say, as I pass out sheets of writing paper. “Tell me how we evolve.”