Pay attention to the monitor, I said to the Side. He’s bleeding out. He’s got a big punchline. He wants us to cue his big punchline, I said.
They un-dug their heels, loosened their grips. Sepper and Voltz dropped their hands to their sides. All looked to Botha, who said to the teachers: “Thinks he’s Morc—thinks—boy thinks he’s Morc Antney!”
Sepper bit her lip. Voltz sucked his cheeks. No one on the Side had ever read Shakespeare.
“That’s not his last name,” said Salvador Curtis.
“He doesn’t even got one,” Mark Dingle agreed. “Why would he have one? He doesn’t even need one. Dude’s from Ork.”
Most of the Side had never seen Mork and Mindy, but “Ork” sounded funny, so some of them smiled.
Botha’s howling crashed on a “Tch” and ebbed. His grin went sneer and the sneer went purse-lipped, became another grin—saggy at the corners but a grin nonetheless—and the giggles that pushed through his husk of a face were made only of air now, purest breath, quick swishy sniffs and staccato exhalations; even his vocal cords refused to cooperate.
Pay attention to the monitor, I said to the Side. Always remember the monitor, I said. Always remember that you used to be like him. Understand that you could be like him again. All it takes is a giggle. Listen to that giggle. How hollow it is. Just so much quick breathing. He is caulking a face behind which is nothing. He doesn’t have a drop of snat left to trickle, and yet even as I speak of the Side of Damage, of the gathering of strength and the need for decisions, the giggle keeps shaking him, the grin keeps twisting him. Does he not believe the Side of Damage exists? He acts like he thinks he’s humoring us, no? Maybe he does. Maybe he thinks that. I speak as if I know he’s pretending, but maybe he’s even more desperate than I thought. Maybe he isn’t pretending at all. I’ve been talking in very certain terms about him, but the truth is, I don’t know what he’s thinking. At least not exactly. None of us do. At least not exactly. He might really believe that he’s humoring us, soldiers. It’s not within my power or yours to know. It’s not within anyone’s power but his. Some things are like that. Secrets forever. Look at baby smile. Baby smiles baby happy? Or baby just gassy? Maybe baby happy because baby gassy, right?
Leevon Ray burped.
Half the Side of Damage burped.
The other half tried, but didn’t know how.
Botha’s giggling had stopped, but the grin stayed in place.
Whether Botha, I said, is pretending or not, full of happy gas or just full of gas, convinced that he’s humoring us or faking his conviction, I say we’re better off assuming that he isn’t pretending. We are better off believing he does think I speak now at his discretion, that he is confusing fleeting stalemate for victory, and middle for end, and our threat for submission. We are better off believing he thinks he’s letting us save face. So let us let the monitor be with his thoughts, whatever they are. Let us let him believe whatever he believes. If he knows our strength, he knows we own him; if he doesn’t, we’re underestimated, and that works too. Main Man will sing at tomorrow’s pep rally, and tomorrow we’ll be stronger than we are today. We’ll see tomorrow if Botha’s still grinning. As for today: Today’s almost over, and a few minutes back I made a contract with the robots. I told them their ears would ring til kingdom come if they didn’t allow me to have the last word. When I made that contract, was I speaking for you?
“Yes!” the Side shouted.
Do I speak for you still?
“Yes!” it shouted.
Will you make us a liar?
No! we shouted.
There are fifteen minutes left in the schoolday, I said. That’s fifteen minutes before the no-hyperscoot contract ends. As long as the robots keep to the terms, the contract is ours to keep or to break. I say let us keep it. Let us honor the contract because our word is good. And so that no one may be mistaken, so that no one may think that we honor it out of fear of what the monitor might be hiding inside of his head, so that everyone will know that we honor it because we choose to, because our word is good, let us honor the contract beyond its demands. Let us be like the sweetest dream of the Arrangement. Let us be as the Cage has never been able to make us. Let us now all at once face forward in our boxes, still and silent as nightmares.
We did.
16
NAMES
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Interim–Intramural Bus
“W
hat they meant was death to the idea of the Jew is what you’re telling me,” said Eliyahu of Brooklyn. Pretty much, I said.
We were speaking Hebrew. At the end-of-class tone, the Side of Damage had lined up single-file and silent, gone out the gate one at a time, not one of them running or shouting til they’d stepped over the threshhold. I’d been last in line, Eliyahu just in front of me. Now we were weaving our way through Main Hall. I wanted to go find June at her locker.
“So the Jew of their rallying cry,” said Eliyahu, “wasn’t this Shlomo person, but some kind of abstract Jew for whom the Shlomo person stood.”
Could’ve been, I said. It was ambiguous. It might not have referred to Shlomo at all—they might have been talking about themselves.
“I don’t understand,” said Eliyahu.
Just then, a Shover coming toward us decided not to make way. I could see by his eyes. They’d flicked at my chest, then over my shoulder.
I checked him into a locker and we didn’t lose a step. A couple seconds later, the sound of the impact repeated. Vincie was behind us. He’d locker-slammed the Shover on the rebound.
A little out of breath, he said, “I need to talk to you.”
It can wait, I said.
“English,” he said.
Can it wait? I said in English.
“I guess,” said Vincie, continuing to follow us.
Back to Hebrew: Are you a Jew or an Israelite?
“An Israelite,” said Eliyahu.
When did you become an Israelite? I said.
“If I understand what you mean by Israelite, then I have always been an Israelite,” he said. “However, if I understand what you mean by Jew, then I have, admittedly, sometimes behaved like a Jew.”
I said, You understand. You’re a scholar, though—the Five aren’t.
“And so?”
So when they shouted ‘Death to the Jew,’ they might not have understood they were Israelites who had been acting like Jews, I said. I said, I think they might have believed they were Jews who had to become Israelites. And to become a new kind of person, you have to kill the person you already are—I think the Five might have believed they had to kill the Jews they were.
“Even though they were never Jews, but always Israelites.”
To our left, Ben-Wa Wolf played the pratfalling game on linoleum with Chunkstyle, Boshka, Derrick Winnetka, and a rock.
Even though, I said.
Eliyahu was frowning.
Look, I said, the Five aren’t scholars, and in one way that’s unfortunate, but in another it’s not.
“How can you say that? How is it not?”
A lot of scholars did me wrong today, I said, and—
“How?” said Eliyahu.
I’ll explain some other time. For now, just trust me. What I’m trying to say is think of it like this: No one on the Side’s a scholar except for us, and the Side is good, right?
“We’re not talking about the Side. No one on the Side yelled, ‘Death to the Jew.’”
That’s true, Eliyahu, and I’m not saying… You’re right. It was a foolish thing to yell, I said. Let’s leave it at that, though. They made a mistake. They yelled something foolish.
“And so maybe they’re fools.”
I said, Maybe even foogs.
“You’ll makes jokes now?” he said.
Yes, I said. And so should you. These fools are with us, that’s all there is to it, and everything else is working out okay.
“It’s working out I have an in-school suspension.”
In a room less prisonlike than the Cage, I said, and with five new friends.
“Maybe so, but those others will be there, too,” he said. “I should have to sit all day in a room with a boy who bruised my face and crushed my hat?”
Two, I said. And if Shlomo’s back, then a third who’d like to do the same.
“That does not sound like something that I will enjoy. In the Office, that Co-Captain Baxter kept showing me his fist, his middle finger—”
Only because he knew it was safe, I said. I said, He knew you wouldn’t attack him in the Office.
“And why should he have been so sure?”
He shouldn’t have, I said.
“People look at me and think I’m weak,” Eliyahu said. “They push me around. I can’t hide it.”
Hide what? I said.
“That I’m an orphan—who are these chubniks saluting you?”
Isadore Momo and Beauregard Pate stood shoulder-to-shoulder with three other short, husky guys by the southern doorway of the cafeteria. Each one had a line of thick writing across his chest in Darker:
Beauregard
FIRED A BULLET THROUGH HIS RIGHT TEMPLE.
Chubnik X
LIKE AN OVERGROWN HALO.
Chubnik Y
VANISHED COMPLETELY INTO THE DARKNESS OF NIGHT.
Chubnik Z
ONLY HATE AND HATE, SOLID AS STONE.
Momo
I PUSH THROUGH.
They were showing me victory fists.
That’s Big Ending, I said to Eliyahu. I said, They’re with us, too.
“What’s with the shirts?”
I don’t know, I said.
Like an overgrown halo and I push through were familiar phrases, but I couldn’t place them. Vanished completely into the darkness of night also seemed familiar, except how couldn’t it?
“I was saying—”
You don’t need to hide that you’re an orphan, I said. I said, Anyone who knows you’re an orphan—and I don’t think that many people do—could just as easily be scared of you for being an orphan as think you’re weak for being an orphan. So the ones who do think you’re weak—don’t let them push you around.
“I know I shouldn’t let them, but I do.”
I said, Not always. I said, You led that hyperscoot. And before that you fought back hard in the two-hill field—I saw some of it.
“I was very verklempt then. I told you that. I didn’t know up from down. If I knew up from down, I never would have done those things. So what am I supposed to do? Be verklempt all the time? I think it would be worse than getting pushed around.”
I spotted June. She wasn’t at her locker. She was about a quarter of the hallway away, talking to a big-eyed girl with an almost-shaved head and clown-pants.
I said, Anything you do, Bathsheba Wasserman might hear about it.
“Sure,” said Eliyahu. “And probably from me.”
I said, So imagine she hears you’re getting pushed around.
“I should worry Bathsheba will think I’m a coward? Don’t manipulate me.”
That’s not what I’m saying at all, I said. If Bathsheba hears that you get pushed around, it’ll cause her pain. Protect her from that, I said. There’s June. Would you like to meet her?
“When can I talk to you?” Vincie said to me.
I’d forgotten he was there.
Just let me talk to June first, I said to Vincie.
“Oh God,” he said.
Oh God what? I said.
Before he could answer, we were saying hello. I kissed June’s cheek and she pinched my neck. “This is Starla,” she said to us, chinning air at the clown-pantsed girl. Then to Starla: “You know Vincie Portite. Do you know Vincie? Anyway—this is Vincie. And that’s Gurion, and I don’t know who you are.”
“I am Eliyahu of Brooklyn,” Eliyahu said.
Vincie’s face was all red.
To Starla I said: I hear you don’t think I’m dark enough.
June punched me in the shoulder.
“Gurion’s dark as fuck,” Vincie told Starla. “And bracelets for causes are not punkrock.” He pointed at a yellow plastic bracelet on her left wrist. It looked like one of those Cancer Foundation bracelets that said LIVESTRONG.
Starla made the noise “Tch,” and turned the bracelet so we could see it said LIVESTOCK.
“That’s subtle,” said Vincie. “And your name is really fucken pretty, too. I’ve been wanting to tell you that since kindergarten.”
“Is that why you’re always staring at me at lunch?” said Starla.
“Yeah,” said Vincie. “That’s the reason. Cat’s outta the bag now.”
Wait, I said. Since kindergarten?
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Just like I said. Cat’s outta the bag.”
“What cat?” June said.
“Don’t worry about the cat,” Vincie said. “The cat’s no concern of yours.”
“Gurion,” June said.
Vincie’s cat, Vincie’s bag, I said.
“Anyway,” Vincie said to Starla, “that’s a pretty fucken name you’ve got, that’s all I’m saying.”
“It’s the name of a song,” said Starla.
“I know,” said Vincie.
“Liar.”
“When you can’t decide what’s on your mind, it’s clear. I’m here. Starla dear. Please take me home.”
“You know it!” said Starla.
“Yeah, and it’s fucken hammy, don’t you think?”
“Vincie,” June said.
“What?” said Vincie. “Starla knows the lyrics are hammy. It’s got nothing to do with her. It’s her fucked-up grunger parents I’m laughing at. Who names their daughter after a Smashing Pumpkins song, right Starla?”
“I know!” said Starla.
“It’s still a pretty name, though. And a pretty song, too, if you don’t pay attention to the words too close.”
“Weird, right?” said Starla.
“Not that weird,” said Vincie. “My favorite kind of pretty’s always mixed in with a little fucked-up. You got a bike, right?”
“Yeah,” Starla said.
“You should ride your bike to my house around midnight and we’ll go to the railroad tracks and smash some bottles. I got all these bottles in the recycling in my garage.”
“Why don’t we just meet at the tracks?” said Starla.
“I can’t carry all those bottles by myself,” Vincie said.
“What if we just skipped the bottles?” said Starla.
“How the fuck are we gonna skip bottles if we don’t have any bottles?”
“What? No. Wait… Not skip them like throw them, skip them like forget about them.”
“Why the fuck would we go to the tracks if we didn’t want to break some bottles?”
“I—I don’t—”
“If we’re not gonna break anything, we might as well just hang out in my room.”
“What about your parents, though?”
“After midnight? Why do you think I got so many bottles? We could smash bottles on them and they wouldn’t wake up.”
“Okay,” said Starla. She was breathless.
“Okay?” Vincie said. “What’s wrong with you?” Vincie said. “I was exaggerating. I’m not gonna let you hit my mom with a fucken bottle.”
I kicked Vincie’s shoe and when he tried to kick mine back, June stomped his foot away. Eliyahu was chewing the insides of his cheeks.
“No, I—your room,” Starla was saying. “We could just hang out in your room.”
“Sure,” said Vincie, “if you say so. Whatever. But there’s not much to do in my room, so if it’s boring, then tomorrow night I’m smashing bottles, with or without you.”
Vincie wrote his address down while June and I agreed to ditch detention, and Eliyahu, eyes burning, told me, “Don’t help.”
Help what? I said.
He’d already gotten past me.
“I’ve attained verklemptness!” he answere
d as he ran.
A familiar cracking noise resounded and I spun.
BryGuy Maholtz was doing wallnd tricks. He and Blonde Lonnie had Big Ending backed up inside the south doorway of the cafeteria, and Brooklyn and the Co-Captain were rushing toward them from opposite directions.
I dropped my bag and gave June my jacket.
“Steal these and meet me in the field,” I told her.
Vincie showed teeth, said, “Maholtz or Lonnie?”
Maholtz, I said.
Big Ending, in the doorway, bit lips and twitched. Every time Maholtz sapped a flake of wall off, Blonde Lonnie said, “What! Play that, you hermaphrodites!” Vincie muttered curses. I muttered commands: Walk slow, be stealth, we’ll get there any second. As soon as he noticed Eliyahu was rushing him, Co-Captain Baxter used basketball skills. First he went from topspeed to floor-squeaking deadstop in just two steps. Then he tried to pivot. He should have faked left.
Eliyahu caught his backpack by the loop with one hand and rabbit-punched him twice with the other. Squinching his neck up, the Co-Captain yelped, spun them in circles til he wiggled from his straps, and then from the thin boy whose hat he had stomped, this thin pale boy who he’d thrown in the mud, the Co-Captain, pop-eyed and whinnying, sprinted—just tucked in and bolted the long way down Main Hall, stunned and cowering, swift and southerly. The freed-up inertia of the captured backpack sent Eliyahu a couple yards north. When he regained his balance, he got a running start, hoisted the bag, deployed it like a natural. The bag’s arc ended at Baxter’s knee-backs. He didn’t fall, but his stride got limped. Eliyahu chased him into C-Hall.
Vincie, in the meantime, kept trying to run at the scuffle in the doorway, but running would bring on the robots too soon—Brooklyn’d just spent the day’s luck for the stealthless—so I held Vincie’s elbow and kept our pace steady. I wanted that sap.
Out of nowhere I placed like an overgrown halo: the last four words of Roth’s “Conversion of the Jews.”
That chubnik had excellent taste in big endings. What was his name? I didn’t know his name.