The frantic conversation in an absolute whisper continued.
"Please?" The grownup in the position of child in a family not all together got off the cot and went to the fridge.
"You've re-invented us guests as your family."
"What's that supposed to mean?" The wife turned and scream-whispered at the man. The husband took the milk and put it back in the refrigerator. "You are not family."
"Got you to stop fighting."
"We're not fighting."
"Heated discussion."
The husband got a glass and poured some milk. "About what?"
Sighs. "Should I be sorry I just asked that?"
Neither answered. The husband poured two more glasses of milk. Everybody sat at the table in the kitchen.
After considering how to frame a little bit if the big picture, the wife revealed that both their almost grown children had started University but changes had them both not at school now. "Well, one's doing night school and ambulance driving."
"It's just not what we planned for them. For any of us," the Dad said.
"God has plans too," the guest said. "Thank you for the milk. I'll get more before we go tomorrow." They all sat with their own thoughts of the word tomorrow.
"I've never taught before," one young lady said to another. "So," she gulped the coffee, "I am kind of nervous." A slightly older man was about to speak when a ruckus broke out at the end of the hallway.
"Pull everyone off of everyone else." Other teachers headed that way reciting plan. With everyone standing as individuals, straightening hair and pulling sweaters back into good shape the students were asked, "Who wants to go first?"
Nobody. Folders were straightened. Shoelaces tied. "We'll just stand here then." People fidgeted backpacks on shoulders. Finally one tall girl said to the seventeen people, "Your friends are terrorizing my friends."
"Who are you telling?"
She looked out the window, then announced, "I'm late for class." She walked down the hall and entered a classroom. Others glanced out the window at a limousine parked on the street. Also went to class.
"That's not what I'm saying." A guy sat sideways in a breakroom chair.
"What are you saying?! Because it sounds, er, ah like you're suggesting communism."
"It's not communism to control yourself."
"I AM in control of myself. But nothing else." Other workers came into the breakroom. Most had no lunch. Someone ate a piece of bread in two bites.
"I think it's," the guy took forms out of a jacket pocket. The woman sat facing him. Put a hand on his flattening the creases in the forms. "What is it?" The guy looked in her eyes and didn't turn away. She removed her hand, reached into a cargo pocket and offered a pen. He shook his head no. From the other cargo pocket she pulled out a soda. "Share?"
"Bad for our teeth."
"What is it about?"
"My sister said kids at school are calling each other racists and," he took a folded notebook page out of a shirt pocket, "And this," he showed the word. "Zygote? Their calling each other zygotes?" The guy looked at the word under his thumb. "No. This one," he moved his thumb up an alphabetized list of words. "Xenophobia"
"I don't even know that one."
Together they finished the soda. "Let's go find a dictionary."
"I saw a bookshop!"
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