Giselle George-Gilkes: Losing My Heart

Math teacher Giselle George-Gilkes is on a trip with her students when she receives terrible news from home.

Giselle George-Gilkes is originally from the Nature Island of the Caribbean, Dominica. She’s been the 8th grade Math teacher, at East Side Community High School, since 2005. She graduated from Brooklyn College with a BS in Mathematics and from NYU with an MA in Mathematics Education. She loves mathematics and tries her best to help each student who walks through my door, either fall in love with it or gain a deeper appreciation of it. She is currently in her third fellowship as a Math for America Master Teacher, where she gets to work with an amazing group of educators, from whom she has learned a lot as she's grown as an educator.

This story originally aired on Oct. 19, 2018, in an episode titled “Rescue”.

Story Transcript

So 2015 was a bad year for me.  One day, I’m on a journey to have a baby boy and what seems like the next day, I’m having a miscarriage.  In the blink of an eye, life threw me a fucking curve ball. 

One good thing I do remember about this experience was my work wife, Ilyanna who lives in the Bronx drove from the Bronx to Brooklyn to bring me Brooklyn cupcakes.  One, this chick hates driving from the Bronx to Brooklyn.  Two, if you've never had Brooklyn cupcakes, let’s talk after this.  I have a lot of coupons.  We buy coupons all the time. 

Sometimes I feel like, as teachers, we can’t have bad days, we can’t have bad weeks, we can’t have bad lives.  We must always be ready to step upon that stage of a classroom.  And I’m also weird.  I don't show my emotions.  I keep to myself, sometimes a lot, so it was hard coming back to school after that experience with happy kids and pregnant colleagues.  But c’est la vie. 

Fast forward to October see in 2015, we are getting ready for advisory day trip.  We take the kids on a college trip.  My mom had fallen ill the night before so I kept my phone close by so that my younger brother and I could keep in touch. 

Like my mom, I was born and raised on the island of Dominica, not to be confused with the Dominican Republic.  My childhood was fun.  You're in the Caribbean.  Didn’t own a jacket.  Didn’t own any UGGs at that time.  Small island living: the beach, church, home, school, music.  Lots and lots of music. 

I would wake up on a Saturday morning around 7:00 and my mother had already been to the market, gotten fresh fish, meat, fruits, whatever we needed for that week. 

I remember when I moved from the Caribbean to New York, I cried for almost two weeks straight.  I moved to New York in August 2001.  When the Twin Towers fell in September, I remember my mom being so worried because we couldn’t make calls and you couldn’t get in touch.  She didn’t understand the concept at that time that her daughter lived in Brooklyn and the towers had been in Manhattan.  She knew that shit went down in New York and her daughter was in New York, point blank, period. 

We stayed in touch all the time.  Phone cards, costly phone bills to AT&T, Skype, WhatsApp.  Name it, we did it.  I never let more than two years pass before I traveled home.  Eventually when she got her visa, she was able to come visit. 

At that time I'd already done so much traveling and so many things with my life which just meant to show the amount of sacrifice that my mom did for me and for my younger brother. 

So we’re back at school.  We came back with 100% of the kids.  We like to fuck with them and tell them we’re only supposed to come back with 94% of you all.  All right.  Don’t stand next to me when the train door is closing.  Let me see.

So we’re back and packing up and I got a phone call, but this time it’s my older brother calling.  He says, “G, you need to come home.  Yeah, you need to come home.  She's not going to make it this time.”

I remember grabbing my stuff, running down to my principal’s office, to Mark, best principal ever.  In the midst of my tears I’m like, “Okay.  I got to go home.  I don't know what’s going on.  I just know I can’t be at work tomorrow.” 

In the midst of my tears I’m telling him, “You need to get somebody to get Leticia,” who was my most recent student teacher, who my team knew and who I think would have been an amazing fit to just cover me.  “I don't know how long I’m going to be gone.”

I get home that night, get in touch with one work wife.  “I got to go home.  Tell the team.”

Another work wife is on the phone with my cousin buying one ticket.  Mark kept sending pictures of the credit card, “Get this other ticket.” 

Again, we’ll meet in the back to talk about how you get to Dominica.  It’s quite a journey but it’s amazing.  Let’s talk, cupcakes and Dominica. 

I call one of my best friends, “Hey, I think I’m going to need a dress.”  I don’t say what.  She knows exactly what I mean because she's a fashionista.  I hate shopping. 

I go into my Chase Bank and do I have enough cash on hand?  I don't know what I’m going to need.  The Chase QuickPay comes in. 

“Hold this.  I think you're going to need some extra cash.”  That’s the power of my team. 

I don’t get a direct flight.  The next night finds me in Antigua, another beautiful Caribbean island, if you have never been.  Did you just catch on I’m just promoting the Caribbean Islands as I go around? 

Luckily I have a childhood friend who lives there so I spend the night there.  I remember praying that night, “Lord, no matter what you do, don’t take her tonight.  Let me get home, please.  Let me just get home to Dominica.  I’m trying my best.  They called and I left.”

The next morning, I land in Dominica.  We head straight to the hospital from the airport.  The palm trees and the ocean just calm my soul and I guess got me ready for the journey ahead of me. 

I’m looking at my phone.  I get a picture from Ilyanna and Chris, only the school dean smiling up at me.  P.S. I've got that picture from since then because this dude hates taking pictures. 

I walk into the hospital.  I can’t even remember any details about it but I walk behind my younger brother and she's there.  She's alive but she's in a coma.  I breathe a sigh of relief and kind of quickly check myself.  Remember, her prognosis is not good. 

From that minute my younger brother and I make a pact.  We cannot lose it at the same time.  Only one person is allowed to lose it at a time. 

Then we start a grueling routing.  Morning ICU visiting hours, go home.  Lunch ICU visiting hours, go home.  Evening hours, go home. 

The next day I get a picture from my team.  It’s our weekly grade team meeting.  Everybody is there.  I tried my best to stay in touch, to send lesson plans.  I have compulsive issues.  I tried my best to stay in touch to send lesson plans and just to hold things down even if I’m miles away but that was so taxing and so tiring that most times in between visiting hours we just went home and knocked the fuck out. 

Fast forward to Friday.  I've been home for about a week and we are at the ICU for evening visiting hours.  Everybody is there.  My dad, my brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, long-time friends.  P.S. The ICU evening doctors were a lot nicer so we took advantage of that shit. 

My brother and I go in first.  We’re dressed.  Gowns, hat, mask, everything.  Unbeknownst to us, a surprise is waiting.  A few hours before we got there, my mom started coming out of her coma. 

We walk into the hospital room and she sees the two of us and she shouts out to my younger brother, “Raul, you're in America?” 

P.S. My brother had never visited America. 

And we were like, “No, he's not in America.” 

She turns to me.  “You don’t have school in America right now?” 

“Mama, you're sick so I came home.  Mark said it’s okay.  I came home to check up on you.” 

P.S. When my brother came to America for the first time last summer, as he walked through JFK that was the first thing he shouted and opened his arms.  Raul, you're in America! 

That night she spoke to everybody: cousins, aunts, uncles, even the little kids.  She kept on asking who else was out there and we remembered dressing the little kids in these huge gowns and taking them in to see her. 

Eventually, the ICU doctors pull a few of us aside and said, “So we need to know if we should resuscitate her or not?” 

Fuck the pact.  That time, both my brother and I lost it. 

One of my older cousins stepped up and said, “No, it wouldn’t be fair to her at this time.” 

The next day, Saturday, we’re at home in between afternoon and evening visiting hours and we get a call.  “You need to come to the hospital.  Her heart is slowing down.” 

Now, if you've never driven with me, sorry, there are a few people in the room who have driven with me, when they tell you come quickly, yeah, I come quickly.  But we don’t make it on time.  My mom died on October 17, 2015 at 6:05 p.m. 

I kiss her at that point.  I tell her thank you.  Thank you for having me at twenty-one.  Thank you for loving me.  Thank you for always fighting for me.  Thank you for being proud of me.  And I hope that I had been the daughter that you loved. 

Fuck.  Sorry, I cuss a lot. 

We buried her nine days later and I remember at that time calling Mark and being like, “I can’t come back right now.” 

Like, “Why?” 

I didn’t want to come back to America.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love East Side.  I love my job, East Side all day, but I had just lost my heart.  I'd just lost the reason why I moved to America, why I worked so hard so I could have given her everything that she gave to me and then some. 

He simply said, “Take all the time you need.” 

I came back a month later to East Side.  I remember that day.  I drove in dumb early so I could get there before everybody.  Again, my control freak issues.  Eventually everybody came in and there were hugs and tears and conversations and just connecting back with my team. 

I pulled it together before the kids came because I have a reputation.  Not going to mess that up.  Can’t see Giselle crying, sorry. 

That day I didn’t teach.  I just assisted Leticia and, by all reports, she had done frickin’ well.  She survived the death of my smartboard.  Yeah, the smartboard died while I was gone.  She had to teach with whiteboard and chart paper, but now she's our ninth grade Algebra 1 teacher so she's a keeper. 

At the end of the week, my work wife Ilyanna hands me an envelope.  There's money in the envelope and I’m like, “Yo, you all need to stop.”  Apparently they’d made a collection.  Funerals are so expensive and we had spent a lot of money so I wanted to give it back but I wasn’t allowed to.  Honestly, it did help a lot at that time. 

It’s hard.  I try to cope with my grief every day as best as I can.  But one thing I know is I would not have been able to make it through this with my biological family nor without my family at East Side Community High School.  At the end of the day, all I can say is they are my rock.  Thank you.