It began while we were doing our class presentation: the Amazon Council of Beings. The secretary’s flat voice announced it just as Keisha Jones was introducing herself as a harpy eagle. The Council of Beings capped off the kindergarten’s Amazon rainforest unit and involved twenty-two five-year-olds sitting in a circle wearing paper-plate masks they had made of their assigned endangered animals, with Mrs. Reeves, the senior teacher, on a bongo drum. Keisha Jones announced she was a harpy eagle, and we all said, in unison, “You are one of us!” and Keisha was describing what foods she ate and before we could tell her, also in unison, “We hear your needs,” and watch Mrs. Reeves majestically bang the bongo, the secretary said, statically, over the intercom, “Lockdown. School is currently in lockdown.” The golden lion, tamarin, manatee, and jaguar were mad because they hadn’t announced yet what they were; Mrs. Reeves told me to lock the door and draw the blinds while she got the safer job of herding the kids into the reading nook.
