Push

Once I started reading I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop to write. All I could do was make quick marks on the book to tell me to go back to that later when writing about what I was doing while I read. I was completely absorbed in the book, both by the story and the emotions it aroused in me.
I had no problem reading it the way it was written until page 183. At this point, I read every misspelled word as a nonsense word, gaining no meaning from it. I didn’t initially notice that I was doing this. Now, I recognize that this is something I do often with poems—read it the first time to hear it only, not to understand it. I don’t do it purposely, I just do it. It gives me a feel for the rhythm of the poem and allows me to experience it as sounds before I experience it as meaningful.
The actual story being told was difficult to read. More difficult now than it would have been a few years ago. I saw first A, who, in middle school still spells with mostly consonants, and few of them at that. I saw him and his thirst to succeed at reading along with the absence of people willing to help. I saw B, who is struggling with the conceptions of love and being "loved" by someone much older. I have to hold in my gag with this situation, as I did throughout the book. I saw C, who began telling people about being raped by her brother. She told people as nonchalantly as Precious told the nurse the name of the father of her baby. I saw all the people around C who thought of her as a burden, a problem, ugly. I saw all of these people mixed into this one character and I couldn’t let go of how real it felt.
Every time a character was introduced who was attempting to help Precious I became a bit anxious. I am in that role now and every time I sit with a student I wonder what they are thinking. Do they think, as did Precious with Ms. Weiss, that they do not want to talk to me. Do they feel I am not really there to help them? How do I become Blue Rain? How do I empower A, B, C and all the others?
Push was an emotional book for me, but I had to embrace all of the emotions and read without major stops. I had to get to the end. I’m not sure why, but I did.