The Time I Heard the Pitter-Patter of Little Feet and Bombs, Also the Mouth of Hell and Racism

     Last night I dreamt that I was working as a teacher during WWII. Most of my students were Ethiopian, but we weren't in Ethiopia. It might have been London. Anyway, bombs were going off everywhere and, rather than schoolwork, our classes consisted of running between makeshift shelters in gray, damp slums while urban warfare bang-bang-bangbangbangbangbanged around us.

Like London during the Blitz, but without the civility.

     Then we met this Russian sailor who had blue tattoos all over his massive arms and bald head. He was on leave, and he helped my little team of refugees find a safeish, dry hotel to sleep in for a few nights. I tried not to smell the sheets or think about what might live in them. The sailor and I hit it off, and when he had to go back to his ship, there were all sorts of swelling-music goodbye kisses.

     Anyway, pretty much as soon as he left, we were kicked out of the hotel. My Ethiopian students got a chance to ride a refugee bus back to safe, safe Ethiopia, so most of them got on. However, one super-cute five-year-old girl was left behind, and her teenage sister jumped off to get her.

Even cuter than these girls.

     We jumped forward in time, and the teenage girl was being rushed to the hospital in labor—but wait, it was me! "Are you going to have a black baby like I just did?" the teenager asked, holding her baby. "Well, I hardly think it would be really black," I responded between contractions. "Your baby is super light, and I'm white already. It'll just be kind of tannish."
     "But, ew!" I suddenly realized, "If I have a black baby, then I would have had sex with one of my students! Gross!" (Apparently the only Africans in the whole town had been my students.)
     Then something went wrong with my labor, and I was suddenly on a white plaza with the sun shining and four dark-haired people in black and red powersuits were carrying me by each arm and each leg. Other scary businesspeople surrounded them and looked down hungrily. I was dying! I was being dragged down to hell! I woke up (in my dream) in the hospital and realized it was just a hallucination brought on by blood loss.
     "Don't give up now! Keep pushing!" said the dirty-faced nurse. I slipped back into hell's foyer. The sky was darker and glowering. The businesspeople's eyes glowed red. I—this is so gross, but I'm the only one who reads my blog—sprayed blood all over them. I thought the blood loss would take me closer to hell, but instead the demons were repulsed. I finally woke up (in my dream) again, and there was my baby! I missed all the awful parts of childbirth because I was fighting demons in my head!
     What color was my baby? Um, red. So that told me nothing. I really didn't want to have had sex with a fifteen-year-old boy. They're just so incredibly unsexy.

This baby could literally be any race.

     Then the door to my filthy hospital room opened and my giant Russian sailor walked in! He asked to hold the baby and sang a Scots lullaby to it. He looked up at me with teary ice-blue eyes, "I was worried it wouldn't be mine," he intoned in a Scottish brogue. "I told myself that I'd be happy as long as the baby was light-skinned enough to pass. But I'm glad he's mine!"
     I was a bit confused because I couldn't remember having sex with the sailor either, but, whatever, at least he was, like, a fully grown man with muscles and working facial hair follicles and stuff. And he apparently was Scottish now, so communication would be simpler, and he probably wouldn't drink as much as he did when he was Russian. That was a plus. But why did everyone assume I slept with my students?! I smiled at my sailor, and then I woke up and had to shower again. Oi.