Denise

This thermos was filled with cherry red Kool-Aid and ice cubes on the hot summer field day in my fourth grade year. The one day a year we kids were let out of the classroom to awkwardly run around the dusty track field, our chubby arms wobbling from disuse. Our teacher, Mr. Picket pursed his lips in disapproval. My friend Janet laughed after taking a sip out of the big thermos. Her teeth, like mine, were already covered with a faint red film that glistened in the sun.
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Mr. Picket was the first man I had ever met who did carry the smell of cigarette smoke. I knew this because when he would kneel down next to me in math class, his veined tense eyes asking me why I was so horrible at division. He smelled only of hand soap and wooden pencil shavings. It is possible that the whole room smelled of pencil shavings, and Mr. Picket just smelled only of hand soap and disappointment. When the last school bell would finally ring, bringing his red streaked gaze away from mine, I would be free to sprint across the weather beaten sidewalks home. Slamming the screen door behind me, I could climb into my bed, heart pounding. There I could calm, safely hidden in the darkness under the blankets and stuffed animals, until my nicotine permeated father would rouse me for dinner. It would be better then, him seated across from me, pouring a glass of milk.
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When he asked me what I did that day at school, the evening after field day, I would shyly lift the yellow folded note out of my pocket and hand it to him terrified. Mr. Picket had pulled me aside that day before I could run away, taking away the dredges of Kool-Aid and melted ice cubes in my red thermos. My father’s deep eyes looked up from the little note, he told me to put on my shoes.
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The yellowing sneakers ran almost as quickly towards the school as they had away, keeping up with my father’s steady pace through the twilight. It was absolutely foreign when he opened the doors into my classroom, his nicotine meeting the pencil shavings.
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And there I stayed, in the coat closet entryway to the classroom, glued to the spot, as my father rounded the corner to Mr. Picket’s desk. The note was discussed, both in Mr. Picket’s slow discretionary tone and in my father’s loud guffaw, which boomed louder as he reprimanded him for something which I don’t quite remember. It was about privacy, or income, or human decency.
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He walked back around corner and handed me the thermos in less than 3 minutes. Outside again with the nighttime chill finally setting in he lifted me onto his shoulders. Safely seated there I rode home, the red thermos with the Marlboro logo swinging in my hand.