I don't even particularly think she knew what she was really doing, and of course we, being fifth graders, had no idea. But we came to school that morning and there were cars outside, and thousands of people milling around. It was fun for a while: Mike and me ran through the crowd pretending we were spies and then trying to find out what it was all about. Nobody seemed to want to tell us when they saw us. But we saw men dressed in silk kimonos and women wearing gold masks and other childred dressed in suits and ties (we asked them who died, who's funeral they were attending, but they weren't allowed to answer.) There were men in plaid hats and women in long leather pants. A hundred thousand people, all standing around outside the square brick buildings of Desert Horizon school. After a while, we stopped running and started getting a little scared. So we quieted down and headed for our class. Outside the class, there were lines of men in black suits with sunglasses on. And soldiers with real guns. We asked them if we could see them, but they just stood there like statues. "Dummy!" Mike said. "We can already see them!" We walked for the door, expecting one of the men to stop us, but they just stepped aside and let us through. The crowd around the building was silent near the door of the clasroom, as if the black of the men's suits were hooked up to amplifiers so loud that no other sound could be heard. We heard their black shoes scrape on the sidewalk, but there was no other noise.
We pushed open the door and went inside. Everyone was already in their seats, quiet and staring straight ahead at nothing. Mike and I sat down. One by one the last few kids sauntered in, trying to pretend like there was nothing wrong, that they were taking it all in stride.
Ms. Bagnall was nervous. She fluttered her hands and placed one to the side of her nose. That was her signal that she was nervous. That day, she just left a hand pressed to the side of her nose, like she had a nosebleed. She didn't shake, but she didn't say anything either.
The clock hummed nearly inaudibly. I slowly turned my head towards the window. Outside, the crowd was pressing forwards against the line of soldiers and the line of men in black suits. They were reaching out, their mouths open, their faces, white and black and brown and pink and red staring at us with unreadable expressions. Terror, pain, longing, did they want us to do something? Or were they afraid we would?
Ms. Bagnall looked over at the box. She picked it up, and held it gingerly in her hands. "Class," she said, and it was so relieving to know we hadn't gone deaf that we all jerked like fish on a line. "Class, instead of going along and having each of you pick out a country from the box, I've decided to do things a little differently."
Outside, the crowd surged forwards, and the soldiers fell back. The crowd was pressed up against the window, decorated with construction paper hearts and tissue paper lace and signs that said HAPPY VALENTINES DAY in smudged marker that smelled like mint. Their hands pressed against the window. We couldn't see out---there were too many people staring in at us.
"I'm just going to let things fall where they may," Ms. Bagnall said, rather awkwardly. She looked as if she didn't expect us to understand it. But we understood what came after, or thought we did. Ms. Bagnall took the box and flung it high in the air, country names spiralling down out of it like confetti, flapping down among us with their neatly handwritten names. The world was blown about in the gentle breath from the air vents, and came to rest down on the cheap brown carpet and in our jean and skirt-covered laps. I got New Zealand, and that was all the significance I could see in the whole event, then.
But now I know that I was there.
I was there at the Creation. I was there when the world was born. I saw the world being made, and I helped. It wasn't particularly titanic and it didn't use a lot of mind-bogglingly terrible forces, but there it was. We made the world. I guess we didn't do a great job, but we did the best we could. Anyway, it was a long time ago. Ms. Bagnall is dead, and I don't know if anyone in that tremendous huge crowd went to the funeral. They wanted to see the world made, but they didn't want to see the woman that made it end her life in it. I can't blame them, I guess.
Who wants to see God lying in a coffin, asleep, and waiting to be buried?