Creative Writing: Climate Club

By Kris Paul, Ivanhoe Sol

Maria Esperanza Sanchez Bella’s hands shook from nerves. It had been three years since she had attended school in Ivanhoe. The flat oil field plains in Bakersfield had been traded for familiar flat horizons filled with orchards: orange, lemon, walnut, peach and even a few almonds.

The bell rang and the kids started shuffling off toward their assigned rooms. Espe, as she liked to be called, looked for a recycling bin to toss her empty plastic juice bottle, but found none, so she was forced to place the waste in a trashcan. The air held a slight hint of a metallic pesticide that misted the oranges that lived on the other side of the schoolyard fence, as the children lined up to file into their classrooms, none of whom were aware of the swirling atmosphere they were breathing in.

Espe fell in line with the others as some of the others chattered away. Her only other friend from 3rd grade had moved to the town of Goshen, on the other side of Visalia, two years before, so she was now alone in line, chatting with no one.

“You’re new here,” spoke one little kid.

“Sort of,” replied Espe. “I used to go here, but then we moved, and now we moved back.”

“Oh,” the other said. “What’s your name?”

“My name is Maria, but everyone calls me by my nickname, Espe.”

“I like your name. My name is Elena.” Her voice rose as she introduced herself. “It must be hard starting school in the middle of the year.”

Espe didn’t know what to say so she quickly muttered, “yeah…”.

The students found their seats, with Espe being informed by the teacher where to find her desk.

The day carried on as quickly, or slowly, as it chose. During science class, the students were presented with a chart of the water cycle. The picture showed the flow of the various states of water and where they were present. The teacher then asked the students to take out a piece of paper, write three questions on it, then pass it forward to the front of each row, where she would then pick up each stack.

Espe thought of her questions quickly, passed the paper up and waited to hear the teacher ask, then answer, as many of the questions as she could before lunch.

Other students waited patiently, while some did not, which slowed the overall process while the teacher attempted to calm them all. They eventually quieted themselves and she continued until she got to Espe’s questions. The teacher paused, re-read the words on the paper, and attempted to formulate a suitable answer that would satisfy the first question.

“What are people doing to conserve water?”

The teacher wasn’t sure. She knew that there were watering rules, but it appeared that very few actually followed them in a community so far from larger ones that had resources to enforce watering rules, but the smaller ones…

A loud bell rang just as these thoughts were passing through the teacher’s head. She dropped the entire pile of papers in the wastebasket and announced, “Well friends, that’s lunch. Okay, everybody line up so we can go to the cafeteria.”

Espe sat with Elena at lunch, which eased the anxiety around the sitting alone paradox that accompanied the elementary cafeteria at lunch time.

“Why did you move back?”

“My dad was working on a big oil pipeline, but then he didn’t have any work, so we moved back here so him and my mom could work in the packing house with his brother. Does your dad work in the packing house too?”

“No, my dad works doing construction.”

Espe sat and watched as student after student threw away their leftovers, their wrappers, their empty drink containers and napkins.

With no recycling bin options available, Espe was again forced to place her lunch leftovers into a regular garbage bin along with Elena.

“Are there still clubs at this school?”

“I think so. Why?”

“I was thinking that we could start a recycling club, if there wasn’t one already, I mean.”

“I think you have to go to the office to find out, but that doesn’t sound like a fun club. Who wants to join a club that picks up trash?”

“We had one at my old school. It’s not about picking up trash. It’s more of like, finding ways to help not make so much garbage and teaching other people how to not make so much garbage.”

The tenor of Espe’s voice reached Elena’s ears and convinced her to go with Espe. “Okay, let’s go to the office and see what we have to do next.”