Korê in New York

What happens when a kid refuses to leave the past behind? What happens when the past won't go away? Read on and don't worry about the emotional damage.

1. Ground Zero

   Nervy’s sixth birthday party went off without a hitch. True there were some rude children who defamed the choice of sandwiches and salads, but most children found a sandwich and/or side dish that they liked. A few ate only cake, and that was fine. No one was starving anyway.

   The kids got bored occasionally, but adults and their friends could find ways to keep busy in the park. Since this was a long party, they came insides for seconds. Several kids spilled food on their clothes, and the table cloth took a hit, but one expects that even at all-grownup parties.

   If any one complained and was rude it was the adults. They said the party went on too long, and then they found their favorite sport. “This is ground zero for old school you realize,” a man in a white v-neck sweater told a more than willing audience of less-than-polite parents. The husband may work for ECBAS’ engineering division, but the wife is Dr. Testa, and Sammy Bihar’s ex is Wolf Balls. Yes, a grownup called my mother Wolf Balls. I went into the kitchen to hide, but a group of grownups was congregating there, and you know…they talk way more dirt than we kids.

   “…And that poor child, the youngest one is not going to Houghton next year.”

   “Where’s she going?”

   “Some full academic public school. Doktor Testa made sure  of that!”

   “And what about Ivanna?”

   “Full academic, public middle school. As they say around here: Friends has fallen. If you ask me it has gotten better. We have to realize that child-centered education is the only way kids can really learn. If learning has no meaning what’s the point. We’ve raised generation after generation of soul-dead adults, and now the worst of them want to fight to keep change. Don’t they know, change always wins?”

   “Change just got a six month head start,” I reminded myself, and as Dr. Angelus says: “Over time that advantage will diminish.” “See you next year,” I thought though I knew we wouldn’t be seeing these parents ever again. Most of the Houghton kids whose parents didn’t transfer them before fifth grade and Nervy were heading permanently down two different roads. I don’t know if Nervy knew this yet, and I did not ask her.

   About nine o’clock we got finished cleaning up the party. We’d have leftovers for several days. Dad announced he was leaving early Tuesday morning, and I had rehearsals until eight pm on Monday night. Monday riding back to Manhattan on the subway. I called both the Gross’ and the Meir’s on my Blackberry. I needed to find a time to drop off tickets to Mixed Bag. I was inviting both families, and I also wanted someone to walk Nervy back from services or even have her for lunch. I wouldn’t be able to go to services due to Saturday rehearsals. We even had Sunday rehearsals. The janitorial crew were part of the old guard and even though they were unionized, they opened the school for Los Jovenas Triumphadors. I suspected that some of them would even bring their kids to watch rehearsals. It was hard to think of myself as a role model. I was very glad I was behind the scenes.

   The Meir’s let their answering machine take the call for the third time, but nosey, old Ms. Gross answered.

   “They don’t give you Shabbos off!” she exclaimed when I explained about weekend rehearsals. I told her they positively did not.

   “All that just for a play,” she sighed.

   “It’s not just a play. It’s the best creative output that the Brooklyn Tech Drama Club can put together!” I boasted.

   “You need to get your priorities straight, Ko-ray. La Kadesh Borchu comes first.”

   “I think God understands,” I told Ms. Gross. Besides, I was sure God was a fan of Brooklyn Tech Drama Club, as silly as it sounds.

   “HaShem told us to keep Shabbos,” Ms. Gross would not back down, but in the end I  convinced her to take Nervy for lunch and have an older girl walk her home. I also set up a time to drop off the tickets Saturday evening.

   By Wednesday, I had taken to wearing my “lighting crew” sweater to school. It was just easier since it was suddenly too warm for an in-between coat but not warm enough for short sleeves. Having only one sweater made life easier. The sweater was stained all ready. It did not smell too bad, I thought.

   Eugenia worried about my letting myself go. Libba understood. Chin asked how I could stand myself. I told her, it made me feel better to wear the sweater that now suffered two stains and one tear. Perhaps I was emulating Lisle, though I still thought Piper was cute and sweet and….You get the idea. I’m not sure what having a crush is, but I might have had a longstanding one on Piper. I was glad I’d see plenty of Piper this summer, because we were both working at IS-179 in Queens.

   Thursday night, I found an ugly message on my Blackberry. It came from RoAnn who said she had gotten a call from Houghton that Nervy was in some kind of trouble over writing lies on an assignment. At least I knew this was lot La Kadesh Borchu’s revenge. Nervy was just a kid and it was not fair to make her collateral damage because I was going to weekend rehearsals. More likely there was some rude, sick, adult out there. I thought about the rude adults at Nervy’s six birthday what felt like an eon ago. I wished Dad were back, but he’d be gone until after my fifteenth birthday. I did not think Nervy would lie. I was very angry someone was after her.

   I felt light headed and sick as I emerged from the subway Thursday night. Who ever was after my little sister was going to get it!

2. Nervy Turns Six

   The white minibus stood outside Brooklyn Tech late Saturday afternoon. It was May 15, the day of Saturday rehearsals. The lights had held. I’d read Global Studies which was about the rise of Facism in Europe, and biology. The lighting had held. Even my own one act had gone smoothly. I remembered Kwaata’s sweaty embrace afterwards. She asked about my sister. I told her Ivanna had started taking the advanced beginner class. She’d spent her accumulated points wisely. There are good uses for pull in the world.

   I did not need that white minibus. Someone had chartered it. I did not have the strength to fight. One never feels brave when one needs real courage. I felt empty. “Kore get in!” Dad shouted. He was driving the thing. “What the…” I left off the expletive.

   I climbed inside in time to see Margolin Sidlow, and half a dozen other motley kids whom I did not recognize. “What’s going on?” I felt truely dazed.

   “We’re going to Fairway,” Dad explained.

   “In Red Hook?” I asked.

   “No, in Harlem. We just came out here to get you, and also to give some of these kids a tour of the city. You don’t see much if you travel by subway.”

   “You don’t see much if you just stay in your apartment all the time either,” Margolin added.

   I sat down. I felt nervous and a bit sick. The strange kids smiled. I looked them over. Some were dressed fashionably. Some wore only sweats, grumpy Saturday clothes. One wore pajamas, and several others wore generic jeans or kahkis and generic jackets or sweaters. I stared out the window and pretended everything was a normal occurance as we crossed the bridge and Dad chatted away about the sand hogs who had dug below the river and helped plant the foundations of what was once and still is an amazing structure.

   Then we headed uptown. The kids talked about the lack of trees. Manhattan was different from Roanoake, Rutland which is in Vermont, a small town in Maine and another town in Texas. “Academic migrants!” My mind slowly put it together. All the kids on the bus were staying at the Berna. Four of them were staying with an elderly great uncle. Another three were using their uncle and step aunt’s apartment since they were away in Europe and one place was as good as another when you are trying to get New York City residency so you can attend a Full Academic high school or middle school. The last little migrant had been sent to live with an exspouse, her mother whom she had not seen much of since she was in kindergarten.

   “Having divorced parents sucks,” Margolin sympathized. What the fuck was she doing here? She did not belong here! I wanted to tell Dad that. I wanted to tell the whole busload of clueless academic migrants that! Margolin Sidlow is not my friend. Margolin Sidlow can never be my friend! We are on opposite sides! It’s not just politics. It’s visceral. I hope you understand.

   I switched from staring out the window to staring at the floor. A dirty bus floor can be among the most interesting things in the world. “Kore, are you all right?” Margolin asked.

   “I’m fine,” I answered. “I couldn’t be better.”

   “How were Saturday rehearsals?”

   “Uneventful.”

   Margolin sniggered and then her snigger stopped like someone had pulled the plug on it. I wondered if I could ask her discretely what the fuck she was doing where she clearly didn’t belong. Even I would have had the sense not to intrude on an ECBAS gathering in this way, and this was a Young Achiever’s trip to Fairway if such a thing existed.

   “How was your Saturday?” I asked back instead.

   “Pretty good. My dad told me to go out with all the academic migrants,” Margolin explained.

   “So you just went?” I asked.

   “I kind of wanted to go.”

   “Why?” Margolin brought it up, and I might just get a straight answer.

   “Because I don’t want to end up like my sister. I want to go to a regular college, not Santa Balandina’s.”

   I thought back to last winter when Margolin learned, with a less than polite shock, that she had lived a very sheltered existence. She’d worked on her survival skills since then. “How’s the algebra?” I asked Margolin. I could also ask her how her Chinese was doing too. That Margolin was a self-centered, cynic at heart really did not bother me. Margolin was one step ahead  of half the ECBAS kids with tutors. She might even treat her tutors with respect. I could understand that, and on one level it left me half satisfied.

   “I don’t take algebra yet,” Margolin explained. “I start that this summer,” she told me. “Do you have a tutor, I mean a professional one, not just me?” I asked.

   “I’m going to go to summer school,” Margolin replied.

   “At Saint Blans?” I inquired.

   “No there’s a camp in a church near IS-179. It’s in Queens. Dad said it would teach me what it’s really like to be a grubbing academic.” Margolin laughed. I was glad it was college students who taught remedial high school math. “I fix computers at that camp and teach computer skills sometimes,” I explained to Margolin. “We’ll probably see a lot of each other.”

   “Yeah,” Margolin sighed. I realized she was less than pleased with the prospect. I did not care. At least she was not entirely clueless, and that was a big relief.

   “What happens to you in the fall?” I asked. As long as Margolin had started this conversation, I was damn well going to finish it.

   “My parents haven’t decided yet,” was Margolin’s rather prim answer.

   “What do you want to happen?” Boy was I fucking good at this.

   “I want to go to a Full Academic high school here in New York,” Margolin replied.

   “Are you serious?” I could not believe my ears. I thought of Margolin six months ago unable to make change in a store. I tried to imagine how rotten and stupid inside she must have felt, and how cheated by the fact that no one had taught her things people around her expected as second nature. Margolin must have gone home to New York quite angry, and must have sat through Realitee quite angry, and gone back to California quite angry.  It had never occured to me that Margolin would be angry at the right people and then use that anger to do something constructive.

   “Yeah, I am,” Margolin glared at me. Maybe she wanted this interrogation to stop, but it was not going to stop. It had a life of its own.

   “Aren’t your parents trying to stop you?” I asked.

   “My Dad is, but he’s real sly about it . He wants to see me take enough rope and hang myself so I can be a poster child for ECBAS, but I’m too smart to hang myself, you know? My mom thinks I’m slumming, but most of the private schools have fallen. I don’t want that.”

   “You’re going to be taking Math A if you’re in New York and sit for the Regents some time in tenth grade,” I explained.

   “I know,” answered Margolin. “My teacher told me about it at Saint Blans.”

   “Did she try to scare you?”

   “No, it’s a he and he just told me. That was why he said I needed summer school.”

   “What else are you taking in summer school?” I asked.

   “English and Chinese. I’m still missing Chinese and something called Global Studies. They make academic high school real tough in New York.”

   I had nothing to say. Now, ask me if I was sorry about the previous week. I still really wasn’t. Margolin had only apologized for insulting my mother and stepmother under duress. She was at the end of what she could deal with and was probably close to it now. I understood that much. This time, I would not torture her. That should be enough, I reasoned.

   We pulled into the Fairway parking lot. My job was to help the academic migrants shop. Margolin got premade smoothie and custom juices and even asked for a box for all her heavy containers. She stood in a corner of produce waiting for them to bring her a flattened box that she assembled by tucking the bottom pieces together.

   The migrants were supposed to learn to shop for themselves even if they bought mainly, sandwich makings and prepared foods of various types so that they were not dependent on the Berna’s concierge. Soon there was a whole line of migrants asking for boxes in the corner of produce. Margolin told them who to ask. I barely got my own shopping and Nervy’s shopping done. RoAnn, Nervy, and Ivanna had arrived in the family van, and I stopped to see my stepmom in the coffee bar where she nibbled pastry and drank coffee and worked on correcting a paper amid all the hubbub of the supermarket.

   “How are you holding up?” she greeted me.

   “Fine,” I answered. Being behind on the learning curve happens to everybody, I reasoned. I rode back on the bus and watched the migrants and Margolin exit at the Berna. “Margolin doesn’t know the price she’s going to pay,” I told Dad as we rode back.

   “I think she’s all ready paying,” Dad answered.

   “You think she’ll really defect?” I asked.

   “Did you hear what she told you?”

   “Yeah, but it’s all in the future tense.”

   “Not all of it.”

   “I’m not sorry for last weekend!” I told Dad. “Margolin had it coming!”

   “Who else has it coming?” Dad was good at this.

   “Lots of people. I have a whole list of people.”

   “Then Dr. Angelus didn’t help?”

   “I held my tongue today.”

   “Really?”

   “I could have been really mean and snotty.  I just asked questions and Margolin wanted to talk, Dad. You don’t know how mean a girl can be.”

   “I’m getting some ideas. Remember your mother and I got divorced.”

   “Oh fuck! Sorry for the curse word.”

   “I know all of them, Kore.”

   “If Margolin pulls this off, she’s going to be one of us,” I spoke it aloud.

   “How are you going to feel about her then.”

   “She’s going to need help, Dad.”

   “I know,” he answered.

   “This could cost you your job.”

   “I don’t care.”

   Back at the Ardsley, I helped unload the groceries. Then it was time for Dad to start baking. RoAnn came out of the study to watch. Ivanna watched a little, but she had no interest in cake. Dad said he would make a cake for Nervy’s sixth birthday. He’d also make cupcakes at the same time by doubling the recipe.

   The cake was going to be an applesauce cake. I was going to help make it. I’d done some baking with Mom, so I knew what words meant like: “Cream the butter and the sugar.” I did my share of stirring and I helped grease and flour the sheet cake pan and then sweep and dust up the mess I made on the floor. It’s hard to bake without spilling. At least Dad didn’t pitch a hairy fit over messes. We just took care of them.

   Dad explained to Nervy that all her cakes had to cool. We’d ice them in the morning. Her weekend party was tomorrow. Young Achievers did not have a meeting until the first week of June and then we’d have camps in various places all summer. I had a slot in the computer room at the IS-179 camp since I’d been working there all year. I would also be working with some of the academic migrants from the Lincoln Square group which meant they’d probably be with  me at IS-179.  I realized there were probably more than two such kids.

   “New York City is where all the refugees will come,” I thought. “New York City is the place for the last stand.” It almost sounded like the words to a song.

   I helped Dad make egg salad and slice mozzerela cheese. We were having canape sandwiches tomorrow for Nervy. There were honey flavored soynut butter and preserves, cream cheese and jelly, egg salad with and without anchovy or pickle, mozzerela and roast pepper, and of course roast beef spread. It was pretty much something for everyone, and no peanut butter in case one of the five or six year olds was allergic.

   In addition, there were two deli salads. There was a home made tomato salad WITHOUT CHEESE. Nervy liked caprese salad but gave all the cheese balls to any one who would take them. Dad made Italian tomato cherry salad with thawed frozen string beans instead of cheese. There was also a potato and mixed vegetables salad with ranch sauce. I helped cook most of this. I did not mind giving up study time.

   Nervy fell asleep before we finished, and we decorated in her absence, putting up a kalideoscope design sign that said Happy Birthday Nervy on it and getting the flowers out of the master bedroom. They were gerbera daisies and yellow roses. Nervy was having a “formal luncheon” for her sixth birthday party. This was Dad’s idea. RoAnn thought it was funny and got some bond paper on which to print off detailed invitations.

   On the invitations it said that a “luncheon buffet” would be served and that the “pleasure of your company was requested.” It also advised party goers to wear dressy clothes but comfortable shoes since there would be outdoor games in Central Park. Finally, in lieu of presents, each party goer was asked to donate two dollars to Unicef which was Nervy’s favorite charity. Dad and RoAnn had explained to Nervy that if the kids in her class had to bring presents, some of them might not show up, but if the party only cost two dollars per kid, no one would stay away due to money issues. Nervy wanted to invite everyone in her class.

   That was why at close to midnight on Saturday, I went downstairs to fetch the dining room table leaf from our pantry/store room. Flemming was on duty. “What is going on up there at this time of night?” he asked me as I crossed the lobby. “We’re getting ready for my sister’s sixth birthday party.”

   “It must be some party?” Flemming was curious.

   “We invited thirty-one kids and their parents and we’re getting about twenty five, plus a stray sibling here or there,” I smiled.

   “All for Ivanna.”

   “No this is Nervy. She turns six.”

   “Wow! And not even her family.”

   “No, her class from school. She’s going to a different school in the fall, so this is like a last reunion,” I explained.

   “Such a big party. Isn’t she going to get spoiled?”

   “No, the kids have to bring two dollars for charity instead of presents.”

   “That is wise,” answered Flemming. “I saw the note about all those children. What are your parents going to do with them.”

   “Let them run around in Central Park. The parents can help supervise them.”

   Flemming shook his head. “My Dad has never celebrated any of Nervy’s birthdays except when she was born,” I told Flemming. Then he had held his daughter and swore that she was his no matter what the genetic tests would say. I also got to see Nervy when she was only a few hours old. Dad’s mom, my Grandma Bihar, took me to the hospital. Nervy lay in a bassinet next to Mom’s bed.

   The birth had taken eight long, hard hours. This would be Mom’s last kid. I worried about Mom. I worried even more about the pinched, red creature in the bassinet. I have seen pictures of me when I was born, but somehow a photo is different. No one imagines they come into the world looking naked and ugly.

   No one imagines how small they were, when they were born. Nervy actually weighed a whole twenty ounces more than I did at birth, but to me she looked small, helpless, ugly, and doomed. Everything at home was crazy. Someone could easily forget about this small, ugly creature and let it die. I did not want my newest sibling to die, but in a few days after Nervy was born, I turned nine. Kryil had turned six the previous month. There was no place for someone so small and helpless in our family. That was why Nervy was doomed.

   I’m glad now that I was wrong. I was glad that in a few hours, Nervy would have a grownup style formal party, or as formal a party as a six year old can have and still have it be fun. Across my desk in our bedroom stretched Nervy’s favorite red dress with the big white Peter Pan collar and the little silk roses for buttons. It was a coulotte dress, perfect for a May morning and a birthday girl. My favorite Nervy Worm was turning six, and in a few days I would be fifteen. Kyril was all ready twelve. That made me forget about Margolin and feel good. It even made me feel good when I thought of Margolin. It was only fair that Magolin deserved a shot at whatever she wanted to try. If she did not defect, I would not be surprised. If she defected…. You realize an apology for last week would never be enough. It was also never enough if she didn’t defect.

3. How I Stained My Sweater

   The sweater was lavender, a lovely orchid shade. I thought it would look great with my olive drab parachute skirt. I packed the skirt for Friday night services. There was no way I was going to climb battens in a long skirt.

   No production is ready to go a week before. This is the time when Murphy’s law sinks its teeth into things. I knew after school, I might get in a lot of study time if I was lucky. I was not lucky.

   We blew a succession of gels on batten number two. They popped like the devil’s popcorn,  and Lisle, Micah, and Javonovitch had an argument with the student producing the fake Rockette’s production and the student’s co-producing their own one act of Ray Bradbury’s Rocket Ship, which is a great short story about a man who builds a fake rocket ship ride for those too poor to travel to Mars and Venus for fun.

   “There’s an electrical problem!” thundered Javonovitch, “And it’s going to fuck up every time we use those lights. It’s going to fuck up opening night. It’s going to fuck up Saturday night, and if it just fucks up, you’re going to be fucking lucky! You could get a fucking fire up there. This needs to be fixed now. Bring up the house and the work lights. You can rehearse without lights. We’ll get the lights fixed while you rehearse down there.”

   The drama club kids were still not happy. Lighting crew did not run the stage. “Safety comes first,” Lisle replied. How did that kid get a Southern drawl or maybe it was a Texas drawl. I did not know much about Lisle except that he was a senior and did not run lighting crew. He also did not have a one act though he could have had his pick of them. According to Micah, who sometimes let things slip, Lisle was anti-social and hated drama club kids. That was not a good position for a lighting crew member, but Lisle was such a bang up programmer and such an absolutely fantastic electrician and batten monkey that he was indispensible.

   In the end the drama club students fetched the drama club advisor who was sitting in the back of the auditorium grading papers. As at Houghton drama club ran its own show most of the time. Mr. Luce stood on stage with one hand on his hip. He wore a white sweater with navy blue trim and stone colored kahkis. He could have played a leading man when he was younger. He should have favored the drama club kids, some of whom were handsome like he was. Lisle was a hulking brute who had a pastey face turned red with lots of half healed and scratched open zits. Even though he was probably eighteen all ready, he often forgot to blow his nose. I suspected he did not wear a clean shirt every day or use deoderant either.

   I knew who would win the argument. I turned away and looked for my biology book. I sat for a practice Regents on Monday. I’d come to rehearsals late that day. It was just that time of the year. I tried not to listen to the argument. Then the stage went black. I blinked. “Bihar, get your fucking harness on and your belt stocked,” Javonovitch screamed. “You and Lisle are going up number two and you’re going to fix every piece of fucking wiring. The one acts can rehearse without lighting while we get this shirt done.”

   I gathered my tools together and secured my harness. “Hey Bihar,” asked Micah. “What’s the joke?”

   “There’s no joke,” I answered.

   “Why do you have that shit eating grin on your face?”

   The grin vanished, replaced by a very sore throat. This one was going to be so hard to explain in just a few quick and hard boy words. I couldn’t do it. “You don’t want to know,” I croaked and blinked back a few tears as I quickly made for the ladder. “Brooklyn Tech is not Houghton,” I told myself as I climbed toward the batten. “Brooklyn Tech is not Houghton. Brooklyn Tech is not Hought!” Why was it so easy to forget? Why is it so hard to learn new ways?

   I crawled out on the batten. Lisle worked from the opposite end. There were many burnt wires, badly applied insulation, stuff we did not usually inspect deeply during safety checks. This went beyond a safety check. We were going to fix everything, fix it right, and fix it so it stayed flx. In my tool kit, I carried WD-40. Lisle, I noticed carried it too. Some of the boys were too macho to bring this stuff up with them and then found themselves with screws that wouldn’t undo or doors that wouldn’t open. This lubricant was necessary.

   I fixed six lights. Lisle fixed nine. Afterwards he thanked me. “How’d you learn this shit?” he asked.

   “My parents taught me,” I answered.

   “Her dad’s an engineer,” Javonovitch explained.

   “My mom fixes lamps and stuff. She’s also very handy,” I answered. When I thought about it, Kyril too could probably splice wires. Nervy Worm on the other hand would not grow up learning this stuff. She just came along too late for it.

   “I thought your mom became the new College Admissions Counselor. I’m sorry she got canned last December.”

   “You know about my mom?” I asked Lisle.

   “Four years ago, I escaped from Houghton same as you,” he answered.

   “Fuck!” was all I could reply. “Your mom got hired the year after I left.”

   “You kept up with people?”

   “Are you fucking kidding? I have younger siblings at Houghton so I’d hear from my parents. No, I just wanted to get as far away from that shit pit as possible. They don’t really teach there, not in the middle school, and maybe some in the high school. It’s a playground for spoiled brats. I’m no political, but it’s no surprise the place fell.”

   “Bihar, why are you fucking crying?” Javonovitch asked. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I could barely hear myself sob. “It’s something I remember,” I stammered. Chin put her arm around me. “She’ll be OK. It’s emotional when your mom gets fired for no good reason,” she told the boys.

   We crouched in the shadows as Micah called out “Safety check!” The auditorium went black and the lights came up.

   Gathered around the piano in the orchestra pit, a drama club girl with long black hair played a tune that had become familiar last fall, and a boy with beautiful features began to sing. Here is the song. It is the opening song to Life After Paradise.

   Cast Adrift

   Sitting on the beach at low tied
   Waiting for the sea
   To pour over these tired sands
   To lift and carry me
   I know not where I’m going
   Except along for the ride
   I’ll be ebbing and flowing
   And moving with the tide
   
   CHORUS Cast adrift
   After four years love and loss
   Like a scrap of wood upon the sea
   Aimlessly I toss
   I’ll keep my head above the water
   Keep my hope and more
   Until the day I find my place
   Upon a distant shore
   Cast adrift.
   
   Goodbye to all the girls I knew
   Goodbye late nights and song.
   Four years went by too quickly.
   They only last so long.
   Now the good times have come and gone
   And now I’m all alone
   I need to find the precious strength
   To make it on my own.
   
   CHORUS Cast adrift
   I will keep my muse with me
   I will cherish my small voice
   And not let it drown at sea
   I have things to say and I have passion
   I have words to write
   The world’s not heard the last of me,
   I’ll not give up the fight
   Though cast adrift.
   
   New York City waits for me.
   Let the waters bring me there.
   I’ll find the fortune I deserve.
   And maybe a heart that cares.
   Though the ocean may be blue and cold.
   Inside me there is fire.
   I still no my life’s ahead of me,
   And I’m burning with desire.
   
   CHORUS Cast adrift
   Some day I’ll reach the shore.
   Life doesn’t end at twnety-two.
   I know that there is more.
   I will keep my head held high
   Keep a smile upon my face.
   The future is bright as the sun,
   And I’m ready for the race
   Even though right now,
   I’m cast adrift.

   Words and music by Rachielle Maple, September, 2009
   

   “Is Bihard still fucking crying?” asked Javonovitch. Chin wiped the tears from her own eyes. “It’s a very emotional song,” she informed the boys. “It’s an incredible song,” I gulped.

   Rehearsal was more or less over, so I staggered to the subway. Only when I got on the train did I realize that I had not changed into my skirt. I found the Meir’s midtown apartment. Like my family, the Meir’s were wealthy. They had a three bedroom with the spare room turned into a kind of dormitory for the two refugees from Kentucky. They were both girls. One wore a tight skirt and the other a broomstick skirt that looked like a hand me down. I wore olive kahkis, my orchid sweater and…

   “Kore, what happened to your sweater?” asked Ms. Meir as I entered an apartment that smelled of roast chicken and some sort of stew.

   “I don’t know,” I replied.

   “You have a big stain on it!”

   I glanced down at the orchid colored cotton knit and saw a huge nearly black stain. “That’s WD-40,” I said. “We had an electrical inspection on the battens and you have a lot of screws and bolts that won’t move without WD-40. It’s a great lubricant.”

   “You came straight from school?” asked Ms. Meir. “Do they really work you that hard for just a play?”

   “It’s not just a play,” I countered. “Would you guys like free tickets to the May 23rd matinee.”

   “Is it suitible for…children.”

   “Yes,” I replied. “Thought it might make them want to get into the theater.” I smiled. In the bathroom I got a really good look at the stain on my sweater. “Don’t lord it over those poor kids from Kentucky,” I told myself, though I was wondering how I could keep from crossing the line between explaining and lording. I was proud of who I was and what I did.

   In the end, the kids from Kentucky monopolised the table. The girl in the tight skirt who was sixteen lamented the loss of her drivers’ license. and having to sell her car. The driving age in New York City is eighteen. The other girl, who was only twelve, talked about her favorite country music star. I said I’d try to burn a CD for her. I told the girls about the study center and summer prep camp.

   “Are there boys at the camp?” asked Ms. Meir.

   “Of course. It’s co-ed,” I replied. The girls from Kentucky giggled. Livi winced. Mr. Meir steered the conversation toward the week’s Torah portion which was about kashrus. I thought about blood and tongue loaf and said nothing. Because it was Shabbos, I could not leave any written messages, but I did leave my business card. As I was going, Ms. Meir took me aside and said: “Next time  you visit for Shabbos, please wear proper clothing.”

   I felt like slapping her face. Some grownups are utter and total assholes.

4. Math at Houghton

   Actually Dr. Angelus’ assignment started out pretty easy. I wasn’t dumb. My parents’ divorce had taught me that adults do not always put the needs and interests of children or teenagers first. They don’t neglect them either, but sometimes it’s take a number while we fight, or “we’re in love and stuff happens,” or there’s a big fight that distracts them from everything else. Just think about Barry who walked out on my mom. Kyril loved Barry. My brother, an angrly little turd (No forget that, turds get used for fertilizer and are therefore useful) , was collateral damage. Dad and RoAnn moved to New York when I was in fifth grade. Kyril and I had to take the Greyhound bus every other weekend to see him. I didn’t mind because I liked travelling and I loved Dad passionately. He was a refuge from Mom who was a bit crazy with anger and resentment at the time. Breaking up does that to you, and kids take a number. Kyril hated it. We both had to endure it. Nobody thought anything was wrong with it. RoAnn had a new and exciting job, and Dad could work anywhere.

   You can see then that there was nothing exciting or earth shaking about the Middle School Drama Club advisor, Ms. Shane, letting Stephenna and Moira (knowns as @Sxxy_Raven and @Sxxy_Pache on Twitter) play favorites and even agreeing with them and supporting them. Teachers were adults and adults as I said above did not always act in kids’ best interests. Drama Club in middle school was Ms. Shane’s club and if I didn’t like the way she let Stephenna and Moira run it, I could find some other activity or none at all. Extra-curriculars in middle school did not count except they made you feel mature, and I liked feeling mature, and I couldn’t get rid of the idea that I needed a chance like anybody else. That was my problem.

   On the scale of adult bullshit, what Ms. Shane did was small time. I had a better story for Dr. Angelus. By the end of sixth grade, I pretty well knew that things sucked incredibly badly at Houghton. RoAnn taught me office skills over the summer in the hopes that I could get a good volunteer berth. I talked about trying to change schools, but Mom didn’t have to pay for Houghton because she was their College Admissions Counselor. I talked about entrance exam high schools, and Mom told me that I wasn’t good enough in math, and I knew I wasn’t good enough in math.

   In short, I was trapped and could only hope that seventh grade was better than sixth. It wasn’t. In fact it was worse. Math was what made it worse. The math teacher’s name was Ms. Dominique. That’s a nice name, but she was an evil person because she not only loved fast crowd kids, she catered to their slacker nature by often not teaching math. Sometimes we got to make vaguely math related art work. Concepts were more important than the dull working of problems. Of course you have to work problems to learn math. Even a poor, wretched, seventh grader knows this.

   After several months of seventh grade, I knew things were not going to get better. I looked to see if I needed parental consent to take the New York City Specialty High School Exam. I couldn’t take it until October of eighth grade. At the time that was ten months in the future, but maybe the time would be to my advantage. Could a person make themselves good in math in ten months? I thought about this and told Dad I wanted to at least try taking the exam.

   Dad shook his head. RoAnn told all of us: “It can’t hurt. Are you really serious about this, Kore?”

   I said I was, and RoAnn took Dad and me to a store that sold academic books of various kinds. I found myself with a bunch of old math textbooks and Amsco Preliminary Math and the beginnings of Amsco Mathemaitcs A. RoAnn also told me to ask my math teacher at school for help. Teachers, according to RoAnn could be my best friends and allies. She also said that Mom had something to lose if I transferred out for high school. I didn’t care about what Mom had to lose. I cared about me!

   One miserable day in late January of seventh grade, Ms. Dominique tossed aside her lesson plan and gave us all sheets of paper. She said she wanted us to get along better. Each of us needed a change of attitude. She said this could be a life changing exercise. She was right, but not in the way she intended. She asked each of us to write down one positive thing about the name of a classmate written on the sheet. I got a girl who hardly ever talked to me. She was pretty and had long, blonde, straight hair. For all I know, she is still at Houghton, but to tell the truth, I could have cared less about her. I don’t even remember her name now.

   I pushed my papers to the end of my desk and flipped them back over. Ms. Dominique asked me: “Why aren’t you writing, Kore?”

   I told her that this wasn’t math.

   “But there are more important things than math.”

   “Not in math class.”

   Several of the kids snickered.

   “Why do you want to learn math so much today anyway?” Ms. Dominique probed further. I of course had a reason. I remembered last weekend’s book run. I even had one of the books with me. “I need math to pass the New York City Speciality High School Exam next year,” I replied.

   Ms. Dominique gave me a library pass and told me to go to the library and study math. She did that pretty much every class after that. To my credit, I did not spend my library period reading magazines, something I might have done the year before, but having to do that bullshit exercise really galvanized me. It was one thing to get crapped on. It was another thing having to publicly deny it. The exercise was mind control. I was free in the library, and determined to make good use of my freedom. I was going to break out of the looney bin, and those old math books were my key to the lock on the wrought iron gate.

   All of this went along quite well until April of seventh grade when someone got wise to the kid who was always in the library when she should have been in math class. Ms. Dominique was now on the hot seat. She said I wanted to study math independently with books from home. No one believed this. They took me down to the Guidance Office and gave me a math test. It was not that hard, and my scores were fantastic.

   The counselor wondered how I did not cheat. He gave me another different kind of test. He asked me to solve problems from an old 1930’s book that used a lot more forumlas and fancier language. I did all that and a bit more. He then congratulatedme on my improved math skills. “We’re going to have to think of changing your schedule for eighth grade, Kore,” he said and then he asked. “Tell me, how did you become interested in mathematics?”

   I told the counselor of my plans to take the New York City Specialty High School Exam in eighth grade. The counselor than talked to my mother. Mom was not pleased. “Kore,” she told me. “You don’t really like math do you?”

   “It’s not a question of liking it Mom,” I answered. “It’s a question of needing it for the exam.”

   “You know the exam is in October. If you are planning to attend an entrance exam high school next year you are going to need to be in Math A in eighth grade.”

   That was fine with me. Serious math would help me with the exam. Anything that helped me with the exam was what I wanted. “And Math A will go on long after you take the test. It’s going to be very hard.”

   “It’s ninth grade math, Mom!” I retorted.

   “Yes, but you’ll be starting a year early when it’s harder.”

   “I don’t care,” I answered.

   Needless to say, I was in Math A for eighth grade, real math, hard math, and that was good. I’d spent the summer studying for the Specialty Exam, reading, doing m ath problems, and reading more. My head swam with fear. This was a test on which my life depended. RoAnn understood that. Even Mom understood that. It was a nervous time.

   I was glad to be in Math A since it boosted my morale. I also hated Math A, not for the subject matter. Math was now a part of my life. It was in my blood and sweated out of my pores. In eight months I had morphed into a serious and capable math student, if not necessarily a talented one. I hated Math A because I hated my fellow students. I did not hate them because they mistreated me. I hated them because they had given up.

   I feel guilty about this now as I write it down. I was “giving up” too of course, but half the kids in my Math A course were just marking time one way or another until they could escape. This was what happened to kids who were social failures in Houghton Middle School. Many of the kids were going away to boarding prep schools for high school. One boy was going away to middle school. Another kid talked about living with his other parent so he could attend Stepanec in Westchester County. Other kids gave up and escaped in other ways. Many dodged the volunteer requirement by volunteering through people their parents knew or their church. They escaped being under the supervision of kids who would treat them like dirt. Many were active in churches and synagogues and other outside organizations since “middle school extracurriculars sucked.” I had no such alternatives. Unless I was willing to try chess club or hang out with the boys in the AV room who had their own private thing going, I was stuck with working under the Fast Crowd. It was easy to mix jealousy with hatred, and that I was trying to make my own break, only made things worse. Math A was the end of the line, and that it led to something better was immaterial. We were at the end of the line because we had failed!

   I was such a failure, in fact, that I did not get my first or second choice of entrance examination high school. “Do you still want to go to Brooklyn Tech?” Mom asked me. It was a dreary November morning in eighth grade. It was a Saturday. We made a family pilgrimage to Brooklyn to look over the place. It was huge, hulking, and old. It was thousands of students. It was the size of a college. It was NOT HOUGHTON. I loved it. I had gotten in under my own power. Someone else had recognize that I was smart and special. I told my Mom “YES!”

   I remember attending the orientation. I felt proud to sit among elite kids from all over the city. Suddenly, I was no longer a failure. And you know, that is where grownups would like the story to end, but that’s not how I would end it.

   As I tought of Math A and of Ms. Dominique, I thought back to all those other kids. What had become of them? Where were they now? I did not want to keep in touch at the time. Now I wished I had. Was I really so damaged that I could no longer reach out and help others in their own bids to escape? Where had my compassion gone? Had fear really paralyzed it? Was I really that uempathetic a little blob of an eighth grader? How had I let myself get poisoned like that? Writing about math in seventh and eighth grade made me feel sick about myself.

   Well, there was Assignment One for Doctor Angelus. I had to go back to studying biology anyway. It was Wednesday night. Around midnight, I took a break to check my Brooklyn Tech email. I try to check it twice a week, and that was how I noticed the letter from Livi Meir. Livi was the kid I called side part, the one in the black jumper and unimaginative white shell, and neat back oxfords. I’d love a pair of shoes like those to wear with kahkis.

   I read her letter. She had two cousins coming to live with the family next week. They were going to try to establish New York City residency so they could go to school here in a Full Academic. The schools where they had lived in Louisville, Kentucky, had more or less fallen or been replaced by one anemic little charter. These were not Livi’s words, but that was the gist of the letter. The cousins were Jewish. This was very important to Livi, but they were not frum. “Acadmeic migrants,” I thought. They needed someone to be their friend.

   “Fuck those truck loads of snot!” I thought. Why hadn’t I thought about nonreligious or less religious (Oh that’s the wrong word! I believe as much as anybody else and so too do Livi’s cousins) relatives. You can’t hide in your Orthodox Jewish bunker forever! I was glad I had my blackberry back, but I emailed Livi immediately to let her know I had Saturday rehearsals so would be unavailable for Shabbos lunch.

   “What about Shabbos dinner Friday night?” she asked in the next letter.

   I asked what time it was. She replied it was around 8:30pm. I said I could squeeze it in, but I might be a bit late. Being no longer grounded meant I would be at rehearsals, and this close to production, they could run long.

   “You sit in a lighting booth that long?” she said.

   “I climb on the battens too and I study when I have to wait around. Sometimes I help other kids,” I answered. With Livi, I realized, one had to explain everything. Livi had never been part of a serious dramatic production, not even as a lowly painter of scenery. Livi needed an education….and so did I.

5. Two Assignments

   I got home from school Monday night to find Dad fixing Nervy’s, his, and my dinner. Nervyworm, my favorite Nervy worm had had her shower and sat in her robe and PJ’s looking, hungry, happy, and impatient. It was kind of a sweet look. RoAnn and Ivanna were in the office/study. This was as good a family tableau as it got.

   I was glad when Dad did not mention the Blackberry and its disappearance at dinner. I figured he was either making plans to get it back or he wasn’t. If he was, fantastic since it was rather useful. If he wasn’t, I was not going  to beg. I’d just gotten  unlucky with a random backpack inspection. That was going to be my story.

   So far I’d survived one day of being grounded. I figured I could handle quite a few more. After dinner, Dad turned RoAnn and Ivanna out of the study and put me in with the door closed. “Where is your laptop?” he began.

   “I didn’t bring it to school,” I answered. I was glad of that. I smiled with nervous relief.

   “I figured that out, but where is it? I want to see it.”

   “Why?” I asked.

   “I want to look at your social networking.”

   “I deleted my Facebook account,” I told Dad which was absolutely true.

   “There are other services: MySpace, Eons, Piczoo, Tumblr, Twitter, Plurk….”

   “This isn’t your business.”

   “Your mom and I paid for the laptop.”

   “You’re not going to see it. It’s my private space.”

   “I’m gonig to find it.”

   “What makes you think so?” I asked.

   “Because it has to be in this apartment unless you are asking a friend to hold it.” Dad opened the study door. “I can call up the Pipers and find that one out easily. I can even call the Wangs or the Ropas or the Howards.” Dad had all my friends’ last names memorized. That was fantastic!

   “The computer is not at Kore’s friends’ house,” RoAnn said tersely from the living room. “She had it here this weekend and left it home.”

   “Then where is it Ro?”

   “Where do you think? Kore’s female. Think where your exwife would hide a computer.”

   “Oh shit,” Dad cussed.

   “What’s wrong?” RoAnn asked my father?

   “I can’t do it. Kore, please get me your computer.”

   “No.”

   “Kore, I asked you.”

   “And I said, ‘no.’ What can you do to me? I ‘m all ready grounded.”

   “Kore, don’t you want to go to synagogue?” Dad knew how to bargain.

   “Not until May 29th,” I answered. “Saturday rehearsals are next week and then the one acts are the twenty-second.”

   “Yes, but the twenty-ninth is only two and a half weeks from now. Kore, I’m your father.”

   “Dad, it’s my private space.”

   “I can get the computer out,” RoAnn broke the deadlock.

   “Oooooh,” groaned Nervy Worm. “Kore’s going to get in trouble.”

   “Kore is all ready in trouble,” I answered. “It’s permanent you know.”

   “Either you dig out the computer or I do,” RoAnn threatened me, “and if you have any other secrets in there, I’ll dig those out too.”

   “There’s nothing that exciting in there,” I responded. “Even the computer’s not that exciting.”

   RoAnn headed to my bedroom. She made a bee line for my dresser with the underware drawer in it and opened it up. There was a sock with a hundred and forty dollars in it, mostly in twenties. There were some photos from Drama Club, outtakes with curse fingers in them, and of course the computer. RoAnn examined everything. She reburied the photos and the money and brought the computer out to Dad.

   He booted it up and had me login. Then he asked me to show him Twitter. “Dad,” I drew the line. “I’m not unfollowing the Fast Crowd. You can’t make me. You can take the computer away but that won’t change things. You can delete my account, but I’ll just start another one from the library at school or from Kinko’s.”

   Dad sat busily reading my Twitter screen. Then he passed me back the computer. “Kore,” he asked. “What is so important about the Fast Crowd?”

   “They’re my enemies. They made my life hell for three years?” I replied. Dad knew the story. He’d seen the damage! “You know this!”

   “I know some of it. I want to follow your logic. Kore where are they now?”

   “Stephenna Crowe is supposed to be at Grinnell in Iowa. Mom helped her get in there but she hates it so she comes to New York as much as possible….Unity is a college student out west. She went to Santa Balandina. I don’t know her last name. Moira Cuthbert is a student at Hofstra. She had a brain tumor and wears a scarf around her head as if it were still shaved bald for the operation or from the chemo. She says ‘live each day to the fullest and who cares at whose expense.’ Eliza and Nicole are wannabees. There still at Houghton.

   Marta Arrowhood is a holleywood reporter. Inner Beauty is Caren Fish, last year’s America’s Hottest Teen Model. Silver Feet is Bari DeVilliers….”

   “You didn’t go to school with Troy DeVillier’s wife?” Dad wanted to laugh. “Kore none of the people you mentioned except for Nicole and Eliza are at Houghton any more. Do you realize that?”

   “I’m not at Houghton any more. Kids graduate when they turn eighteen.”

   “Kids grow up. That’s how you move on.”

   “So, I’m supposed to let go, move on, forgive and forget? BULLSHIT!”

   “OK….Kore, what do you hope to do to the Fast Crowd?”

   “Wait for an opportunity…”

   “An opportunity to do what?”

   “I want to make it so Stephenna can’t hurt anybody ever again.”

   “That sounds like a death threat.”

   “It’s not. She’s a piece of scum not worth going to jail over.”

   “OK,” Dad sighed. “I can’t solve this so you’re going to talk to another adult.”

   “You mean Ms. Marmlestein?” I asked. I was not sure I fully trusted Ms. Marmlestein because when you thought about it she really did make her living off the conflict. That made her a parasite.

   “No, someone you trust….I don’t think it’s too late for you to call Dr. Angelus is it?”

   “Can I do it in private?” I asked.

   “Yes, but you put me on the line afterwards.”

   “It’s a deal,” I said. I was scaird, but I dialed. I had to use Dad’s cell phone. I had to explain why Brooklyn Tech had confiscated my Blackberry, the real reason, not the reason I was giving everyone else. Then I told the story of Margolin and the insults and dragging her around Brooklyn and Long Island until she cried Uncle?”

   “And what did Margolin Sidlow do to you?” asked Dr. Angelus.

   “She annoys me. She’s a smug little ECBAS twirp. She’s a slacker who gets patted on the back for doing one quarter of the work I’m doing.”

   “OK, and then she insulted your mother…” Dr. Angelus tried to get the whole story straight.

   “He insulted my mom and RoAnn,” I corrected him.

   “OK, but she was a handy target and you had a valid pretext.”

   “That’s better than no pretext.”

   “But Margolin Sidlow is not Stephenna Crowe or Moira Cuthbert.”

   “It’s a good thing Stephenna and Moira don’t spend any time with me any more,” I smiled.

   “What do you want to do to Stephenna?” Dr. Angelus asked me.

   “Tell her how much she hurt me and then let her know I haven’t forgotten and never will. I also want to make sure she never hurts anybody else.”

   “And how will Stephenna hurt other people?” asked Dr. Angelus as if he did not know.

   “I told the story of how the Fast Crowd had made sixth, seventh, and eighth grade Hell. I told him of not being able to try out for drama club parts. I told him of having to beg to paint scenery with the boys who spent their time impersonating superheroes and flipping baseball cards. I told him of volunteer service where I got treated like a slave while Stephenna and her all her friends got all the credit and her favorite younger kids, of whom I was not one, got the easier jobs.”

   To his credit Dr. Angelus listened to the whole thing and even sounded interested afterwards.

   “You know,” he told me. “You’re not going to believe me right now, but Stephenna and Moira were not at fault.”

   “Are you telling me I brought my suffering on myself. You sound like my mom at the time.”

   “No,” answreed Dr. Angelus. “Kore, how old was Stephenna when she ran drama club for the middle schoolers?”

   I did the math in my head…”Tenth grade,” I answered. That would make her a year younger than Piper is now. It made her younger than Micah and the same age as Frank and Ho. Kwaata was in tenth grade.

   “Don’t you think there were adults supervising her who knew what was going on?” asked Dr. Angelus.

   “My mom,” I blurted out but then I added. “Please, I can’t be angry at my parents or I’ll have  no family left.”

   “Did your mom run all of Houghton?” Dr. Angelus asked.

   “No,” I confessed. “Then I want you to write down the whole chain of command that permitted the abuse. Can you do that?”

   “I try not to think about Houghton,” I confessed.

   Dr. Angelus did not see the irony in that or at least pretended not to.

   “It may hurt,” Dr. Angelus counseled me. “Being betrayed by adults can be worse than being betrayed by your peers. Now I have a second assignment and this one is much harder.”

   “What is it?” I asked.

   “I want you to look into ways that Stephenna Crowe and Moira Cuthbert have hurt themselves. Follow them on Twitter and in the news but start keeping score. Can you do that?”

   I said I could and then I put Dad on with Dr. Angelus. I got to keep my computer. I got to keep my Twitter and Tumblr accounts which is why I’m still writing this diary. RoAnn did not touch my weird Drama Club pictures, and I even got my Blackberry back. I’d won…well not really.

6. Leaving Margolin

   I was still awake Sunday morning when Dad arrived around 3am. The town car dropped him. He entered the office/study. I was the only one awake. I greeted him. I hugged him. He stank. He dropped his duffle in the center of the room and got out his pajamas. He went in the bathroom to change and wash his face and then went to sleep on the day bed which meant I had to go to sleep too.

   I realized we weren’t going to see much of eachother. I realized Dad was going to see even less of Nervyworm which was criminal, but I had a plot in mind. Margolin Sidlow, Chin Wang, and I of all people had hatched it out on my Blackberry in the cozy, safe, sancutary of the Applied Linguistics Department of Main Hall Saturday evening. Chin and I wanted to do group study. Nervy could sit and color quiety. RoAnn said “yes” to a kidnapping.

   Sunday I arose around 6am and by 7am Dad was in the kitchen with me drinking tea and discussing the day’s plans. Although the study/office smelled like the bottom of a hamper, Dad was up for the kidnapping and agreed to meet us at a mall that we found on Bing Maps which is better than Mapquest.

   “I’ll take all three of you out for a real Chinese meal somewhere in Queens,” he announced. All of us would not include RoAnn and Ivanna, but I did not care. That all of us included Margolin made me think back to Christmas and then to Realitee. I never got rid of Margolin. I never got rid of the Fast Crowd. I had even seen a few of them at the Saturday night protest in front of Main Hall. I wondered if half the country associated RoAnn with heinous child abuse. The other half of the country clearly did not care.

   I rushed out with Nervy to catch the cross town bus. The weather had warmed and my new in between coat had finally arrived. It was an ornage fleece jacket that fit through the sleeves and the butt and bust. Yay!. I felt spiffy walking up third avenue in my new coat. I did not even feel one bit intimidated by the door person/security guard or the desk person at the Berna. Of course the Sidlow’s cavernous apartment spooked poor NervyWorm? “How do people live here?” she whispered to me.

   “Dysfunctionally,” I thought and then I fought back the thought. I thought of last night’s protests against my stepmother. I thought I had seen Marta Arrowhood and Stphenna Crowe all standing in the back rows watching and smiling. Their faces, though, melted into shadows as Marcus Sidlow came out to greet me. “You look so chipper,” he began. He ignored Nervyworm. She was too young to be interesting, and too young for the stupid games we played.

   “Of course I am,” I answered. “We had a great dress rehearsal Friday, and we’re going to meet my dad later.”

   “And what about your mom?” “Dig deeper” I thought. “Dig away?”

   “Mom is in Arizona these days.” I thought of Mom’s suggestion to buy Crazy Mixed Up Salt, Crazy Mixed Up Salt, for the asparagus. 

   “I meant Dr. Testa,” Mr. Sidlow toyed with the words.

   “RoAnn is fine!” I answered, and it was absolutely true. “Very, very busy. Finals are in a week. Students are handing her papers right and left.”

   Marcus Sidlow shook his head, just as Margolin entered. She wore professionally tattered jeans that sat on her hip bones, a gold belt that could not have been real and a cropped, pale blue sweater over a cropped blouse, all way open at the neck.

   “At least I don’t have to remember my hat and gloves like last winter,” she told me. “I’m so glad spring is finally here. Don’t you get cabin fever or something?” she greeted us.

   I told her I was fine. I asked if she liked my new in between coat. She said it was OK if you liked orange. “You need someone to take you shopping. Why doesn’t your dad hire a fashion consultant?”

   “Because we don’t believe in those things?” I replied. Boy did I sound like one of the idiots at Lincoln Square. “Did somone hire a fashion consultant for you?” I asked. “Much better,” I t hought.

   “No, I don’t need one. I mean I go to St. Blans and we know about stuff like that.”

   “You couldn’t go to Brooklyn Tech in what you’re wearing,” it was time to lob the ball back into Margolin’s conversational court.

   “Fuck Brooklyn Tech,” Margolin maneuvered out of a tight spot. I suggested we hit Barnes and Noble so she could have a book to read so we could do group study in peace.

   Margolin said she had her laptop in her messenger bag which was a big black shoulder bag she wore in addition to a white sequined evening purse. Margolin though a few months shy of fifteen turned heads all along fifth avenue and in Time Square where we walked to get the subway.

   I stopped at a bakery to buy a pumpernickel bagel unsliced and fresh for myself and a Dr. Pepper to go with it. Nervy got a bran muffin and an orange soda. Margolin sighed at the carbs and bought a fruit cup. I noticed she could estimate and make change. She paid in cash for her purchases.

   “I’m not a total klutz with money any more,” Margolin told us as we reemerged on the street and found our way into the bowels of the Time Square Subway Station. Our subway ride was a long one. I was not sure if it was Margolin’s first subway trip or not, but it was definitely her longest. When the train went under the river and we came out in the first round station in Brooklyn, she pressed her face to the window and stared with surprise. When we changed trains near Brooklyn Tech she glanced at all the working people and church going folks on the platform. Margolin no longer turned heads in Brooklyn. She just stood out.  Let her learn, I thought.

   When the train became elevated again, Margolin again stared out the windows. I had seen this view before. I’d always found it pretty impressive too. The idea that now that Margolin had a few survival skills that she and I would have something in common felt ugly and unsettled. I liked to see Margolin squirm. She really wasn’t my friend. To see her happy was frankly quite unnerving.

   We made our way to the cement barriers that formed the bus yard for the bus over the Verazzano Narrows Bridge. The seagulls were hard at work. They don’t get a day off. Margolin watched them dip, soar, squawk, and squabble for food. She tried to avoid the eyes of the working people and the men in suits and the women in their Sunday best. Finally, she had seen enough. She dug out her MP3 player and locked herself down inside her ear buds.

   We caught our bus to Chin’s street and Margolin remained in her private music universe the whole way. “I didn’t know your friends lived so far away,” said Nervy Worm. I told her that it really wasn’t so far. Margolin removed her ear buds before we entered Chin’s father’s shop. They were hard at work on Sunday, sawing and beveling and finishing cabinets and counters. Chin’s father showed Margolin, Nervy, and me the different work tables and chatted with his workers in Fukien dialect of Chinese.

   “I’m going to learn Chinese,” announced Margolin as we climbed toward the bedroom Chin shared with an older cousin.

   “Mandarin or Cantonese?” I asked wanting to see Margolin go splat.

   “Mandarin,” Margolin replied. “I all ready have a teacher. I started this winter.”

   “Fuck,” I answered.

   Margolin had to be pulling my leg. “See, you though tall ECBAS kids were dumb.”

   “No I don’t. I have a brilliant sister who is a total point whore?”

   “Who?”

   “Ivanna of course.”

   I knocked on Chin’s door, glad my friend was there to dilute things and hoping her cousin wasn’t. The cousin was at church. Chin’s room was messy and crowded. It smelled of female clothes and deoderant and some kind of nasty perfume. We made our nests and got down to work. Margolin took a break to show me her math course pack and her Chinese program on her computer which had the proper font installed so she could memorize characters.

   “I want to go to UCLA not St. Blans for college,” was Margolin’s explanation.

   Margolin was an ECBAS hypocrite with a tutor. That was what I told myself to make myself feel a bit better. For all I knew, it was true. For all I knew the answer was a bit more complex which is a nice way of saying just outside my grasp. I told myself I had work to do to get my mind off figuring out Margolin whom I felt was not getting hers the way I wanted to dish it out.

   Chin did end up giving Margolin a geography lesson and a lesson on Chinese dialects. In the early afternoon she walked us to the edge of the neighborhood showing Margolin stores. Margolin tried to read the signs. Her pronunciation if it was good for a Mandarin speaker was something Chin could not understand because Cantonese, Fukien, and  Mandarin share the same written language but with completely different pronunciations.

   I bought a pair of China doll shoes for school and I bought Nervy a pair too. “Mom won’t like those shoes,” she said.

   “Why they’re good for summer,” I told my younger sister.

   “Not RoAnn, my real mom!” Nervy protested.

   “You mean Wolf Balls!” laughed Margolin who had just crossed the line.

   “What did you call my mother?” I pounced.

   “Georgia Wolfson is Wolf Balls.”

   “She’s also my mother. You owe me an apology!”

   “Why?”

   “You just insulted Kore’s mom and her family,” Chin had to explain.

   “Kore’s mother is an asshole. That’s why people call her Wolf Balls, and her stepmother is a child abuser. Everyone knows that.”

   “Margolin are you trying to go two for one?” I asked.

   “What does that mean?”

   “You’re insulting my stepmother and my real mother.”

   “So…”

   “You take it back and fucking apologize…now!”

   “Why should I? I’m only telling you the truth like the time your Dad made me learn to make change. I’m opening up the world for you.”

   “Bullshit!” I snarled. “Look you asshole, you either apoligze for disrepecting my family, or we’re going to leave you here in Staten Island and you’ll have to find your own way home?”

   “Yeah…big threat.”

   I saw Nervy shift from foot to foot. She was having to watch all this. I wanted to make good on my threat in the worst way. Nervy needed to see me stand up to an asshole.

   I wondered how we could leave Margolin flat. There had to be a way. Then I knew. This was not going to be easy. I told Chin I needed to go home. I told Nervy we were going home now. Nervy looked crestfallen and probably a big scaird. I wondered if she knew something was up.

   Margolin followed Nervy and me out to the nearest bus stop. The bus took it’s good sweet time in coming. The fun was going to start when we reached Brooklyn.

   This was an unplanned trip. I did check my Blackberry to make sure it had a good charge on it. I’d have to call home some time and tell Dad my plans had changed. My goal was Queens and the Study Center near IS-179, but that was not really my goal. My goal was to lose Margolin which meant I’d have to get pretty lost myself.

   I got off the bus and did not walk toward the subway. Margolin stayed with me. She had her choice. If she was smart, she’d leave now. Instead I looked around the bus yard for where people were waiting and joined the largest crowd. I had no idea where the local bus would take me, and I had boarded a local. Margolin stared at tired, and sometimes reviving, and sometimes industrial neighborhoods. I suspected from the angle of the sun that we were heading east. I forgot Margolin liked to watch scenery, but sooner or later she’d overload.

   I could wait. I just hoped the bus would not run out of stops or come full circle. “Do you know where we are?” Margolin finaly asked. She was not wearing ear buds. She wanted to be aware of her surroundings, but too much working class Brooklyn with a few slums thrown in for good measure, had left her unnerved.

   “Heding east along the southern border of Brooklyn,” was my reply.

   “Fuck that!” Margolin’s scream turned heads for the first time since Manhattan. I heard an older woman say something maternally  nasty in Spanish.

   I felt like telling her “fuck you,” but she was not the person I was interested in torturing. When the bus’ computer system announced an LIRR station, I said we were getting off.

   “Where are we?” asked a now quite unhappy Margolin.

   “Near an LIRR station,” I said. “See it’s just up the street!”

   “You don’t know where we are!”

   “I just told you where we are. If you don’t like it go back to Manhattan.”

   “I don’t know how to go back.”

   “Figure it out. You’re smart enough to take Chinese. I wasn’t keeping you a prisoner. You could have taken the subway back Fort Pierce.”

   “I was scaird. I trusted you.”

   “You didn’t trust me. You disrespected my mother and RoAnn.”

   “So you’re getting back at me,”

   “Fuck yes. We’re going to Suffolk County. Want to come with us?”

   “That’s way out on Long Island,” said the ever alert and none too stupid Nervyworm.

   “That’s OK, I’ve got money for train tickets. Dad’s got the van. I’ll just call him from my Blackberry. You might want to call your parents too.”

   Margolin looked around. “What if I apologize?” she asked.

   “You can apologize and come to Suffolk County,” I showed no mercy.

   “I’m really sorry!” Margolin was starting to cry. Nervyworm gasped.

   “OK, I accept your apology. Now let’s go to Suffolk County.”

   “I want to go home!”

   “Then go.”

   “You can’t leave me flat!”

   “Yes, I can.  You’re a big girl. You can do middle school math. You are learning Mandarin. You can figure out how to get back to Manhattan and if you can’t, you can call your parents on the cell phone.”

   “They’ll ask me what happened.”

   “It will be all my fault,” I answered.

   “Yeah but I started it.”

   “You sure did.”

   “Plaese…Kore.”

   “No you can either go back to Manhattan or come with us to Suffolk County. The choice is yours.”

   Margolin stood shaking, tears streaming down her face. It’s a lot of fun to see a fifteen year old kid have a melt down especially when this kid has never been your friend. Of course Margolin’s version of it would be all over Twitter by this evening. I went into the station and bought rail road tickets for Nervy and me. Margolin also bought a ticket. Our destination was not Montauk though I thought about that. Instead, I decided we were going to Dix Hills.

   NervyWorm at least did not ask if we were going to see the cousins. I remembered a shopping center near the train station. As soon as we were underway I called Dad and let him know about our change of plans.

   “Why are you going to Long Island?” Dad asked.

   “Felt like it,” I replied. I hated having to lie to my Dad. I realized that the whole  ugly story was going to out sooner or later. Margolin at least had the decency to hide her smile behind her hand.It was my turn to squirm, but I did squirm gracefully.

   It was around 4:30pm when we arrived in Dix Hills. I was hungry. I suggested we go in a restaurant and find something to eat, but I  knew we had to wait for Dad who was racing the train. I settled for sodas from a news stand and bought a diet drink for Margolin and full sugared stuff or NervyWorm and me. We sat on the curb stone drinking and saying nothing.

   “This is really fucking stupid,” Margolin summed it up.

   “Well you’re as dumb as the rest of us,” I thought.

   “What’re you going to tell your dad when he gets here?”

   “I felt like taking a long train ride,” I thought of a dumb answer.

   “Whatif I tell him about the fight?”

   “Go for it.”

   “Your word against mine.”

   “I’m going to need a better story.”

   “I’m going to tell your Dad you’re lying.”

   “Mom and Dad are going to be very angry,” Nervyworm concluded.

   “You got it kid,” commented Margolin. “Smart, little kid.”

   “I hope that wasn’t sarcastic.”

   “She’s got more brains than you.”

   Dad pulled the SUV into the parking lot and honked the horn about an hour later. “Mr. Bihar…” Margolin began, and she lay before my father her tale fo woe. Yes, she had indeed called both Georgia Wolfson and RoAnn Testa some dumb names, but I had gotten all upset about it and threatened to abandon her in the middle of Brooklyn unless we went out to Suffolk County and she had gotten all lost and scaird.

   “Is this true?” Dad asked. He was more curious than angry which was a relief. I realized then that I was about to get in trouble with my father whom I hardly ever saw. Remorse does not describe what I felt. I knew that Margolin deserved her fate regardless of how much it made my Dad angry. I wondered if there was a way to make him understand.

   “Margolin called my mother Wolf Balls and called RoAnn a child abuser. I told her to apologize. She didn’t do it so I decided to leave her flat. I told Chin we were going home, but when we got to Fort Pierce, we took the first bus I could find that looked like it was leaving. This way Margolin could either get lost with us or go back on her own. She stuck around, so when I found an LIRR station, I said ‘You can either go to Suffolk County or go back to Manhattan.’ She stuck around again but first she apologized and cried. I’m not sure it’s a real apology, but you can see why I did what I did.”

   “I see,” Dad answered. He didn’t say anything else the whole trip. He didn’t play CD’s either. When Nervyworm asked if he was mad at me. He said he’d talk about it later. We dropped Margolin at the  Berna where she could tweet about her horrible afternoon to her heart’s content. Dad left the van at the parking garage and we walked into the Ardsley in silence except for Dad greeting the Domincan doorman in Spanish.

   Dad greeted RoAnn who was busy in the study/office and then asked she and Ivanna to clear out. NervyWorm also was not allowed in. Dad closed the study door and confronted me.

   “Kore, why did you do that to Margolin?”

   “She insulted my mom and stepmother. She deserved it. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

   “No, she was your guest and what you did was rude beyond description.”

   “Don’t you think insulting Georgia and RoAnn is rude beyond description?”

   “Kore do you know what a pretext is?”

   “You mean you think I went after Margolin because she was a member of the Fast Crowd.”

   “Margolin goes to Santa Balandina not Houghton!” I screamed. Couldn’t Dad understand that? Of course Margolin did run with the Fast Crowd. He was half right, and no I couldn’t get to Eliza, Stephenna, Unity, Hanna, or any of the other Fast Crowd kids. Some of them had graduated, and I had left. I was at Brooklyn Tech now. I felt tears come to my eyes. Dad was good at ignoring them.

   “She’s still connected in some way with that old crowd and you took out your feelings of revenge on her because she was handy. Now you’ve made life very difficult for me and for this whole family.”

   “Aren’t you sick of working for ECBAS?”

   “I don’t think what you did will cost me my job, but it was rude and immature behavior. It was also ugly. At least you are not offering me a false apology, because I’m not going to accept it.”

   “What are you going to do?” I asked. It was clear I was in trouble. The only question was what kind of trouble and Dad’s lecture was over. That was a big relief. Now if I could just figure out the rest, I  could put today behind me.

   “You’re grounded.”

   “I’m what?”

   “Grounded. You can go to school and official school activities. You can go out to shop, but that’s it.  No group study. No kidnapping Minerva. No study center with Young Achievers. Let someone else serve as leader for the rest of the school year.”

   “I’m just founding member,” I sputtered. I felt almost relieved.

   “OK, we’ve got asparagus to make. I’m going to expect you home every night by 7pm for dinner this week unless Drama Club rehearsals go over. There’s a courtesy phone you can use to call here if that’s the case.”

   “Thanks Dad,” I said. I had a lot of studying to do and a lighter schedule would actually make my life easier. As long as I had drama club, I didn’t really care. Nervyworm deserved more time with me anyway.

   I should have known there was more. Dad works be stealth. On Monday morning, a security guard at Tech asked to inspect my backpack after I safely passed through the metal detector. He dug around and then emptied it publicly, including school books, looseleaf, my bottle of Naproxen which he confiscated and a small bundle wrapped in a cotton dish towel. He carefully unfolded the dish towel and held up his prize. Several students watching the show ooohed and ahhed in appreciation at the sight of my beloved Blackberry, which Brooklyn Tech was about to confiscate.

   One had to admire how bloodless the whole business was. I was glad I did not have my laptop with me, but that too was no longer safe on Brooklyn Tech property. I did not doubt for a minute that Dad had called the school. Dad did not have to know I was on Twitter, Tumblr, or anything else. He could cut off my access during most of the day simply by forcing me to obey the same rules as more than half the students.

   Now the Fast Crowd would only tweet at me late at night. In his own way Dad was forcing me away from them, but in their own way when I really thought about it, they were long gone. We did not go to the same school, no longer had the ability to interact. I might as well have moved back to Scranton. Ivanna who danced at Houghton had more interaction with them than I did. That made me sad. Unfulfilled revenge is a sad thing, and my revenge really was unfulfilled. I had reduced Margolin to tears, but as I had told Dad, Margolin went to Santa Balandina. She’d had no part in persecuting me. She did not even know who I was until I appeared as K_Leaper. Then the word went out that I was “Wolf Balls” daughter. I could have wlaked away then, but it’s hard to walk away when you have a score to settle.

   I looked at my drama club pictures as I rode home on the subway Monday night. I had finally gotten on stage, something I had always wanted to do for three years at Houghton. True, I was not on the stage, I was over it, thirty five feet in the air. Didn’t that count for something? Wasn’t the score even? I pondered this and reached for my Blackberry, but there were only towels, a security blanket of sorts for a connection to my past that really was long gone.

7. Learning

   Saturday would be my last chance to convince the kids in teen minyan at Lincoln Square to take the pledge and join Young Achievers. Fortunately the weather was cold enough for  my red turtleneck which has not become too tight due to the fact that I am going to have small tits. None of the women in either of my families is big on top. In a way that is good.

   The turtle neck was a bit short in the sleeves. Everything I have is getting that way, but that is good since my arms are not long and I did not have to roll the sleeves, just scrunch them up a bit. Over the turtle neck, I put my Young Achievers’ t-shirt.

   On the bottom, I wore my grey parachute skirt. I have a whole wardrobe of parachute and military long skirts for dress up and schul. They are kind of like dress code clothes. I don’t have a problem with dress codes. They make my life easier.

   Nervy Worm wore her hot pink sweater and navy blue skirt to schul. We don’t have to match even though we are sisters, especially since we are nine years apart. Sisters do not mean clones.

   Nervy  never complains about walking to synagogue. She loves to sing the songs she has learned in junior congregation for five and six year olds. She also hates the kids who run around and do nothing. She thinks they have lazy parents who don’t yell at them. Parents are supposed to yell at kids who misbehave. Nervy lives in dread of authority which should make me sad, but I’m a realist so I’m glad my little sister knows the score.

   My t-shirt set off a firestorm as soon as we kids could legally talk without disrupting the service. That meant when we went from teen minyan to teen kiddush. “I hope you’re not going to proselytize us today,” said a tall boy who needed some zit cream and a shave. I felt like telling him, well you know what I wanted to tell him and sometimes RoAnn is riht about certain words indicating a poverty of imagination, but it’s hard to have much imagination when you are angry.

   “Yes, I am,” I told the asshole.

   “Why?” asked zit face’ companion who had a red beard that was half way there. “None of us are interested.”

   “You should be,” I took the high road.

   “Why?” asked a girl in a cream colored sweater and equally tasteful brown skirt. Those were expensive clothes and way too conservative for my taste.

   “Because it gives smart kids from all over a way to be together,” I made my pitch. I had thought about this one for a long tme.

   “But the kids in my school are smart,” said a boy who was still in middle school. The age for Bar Mitzvah is thirteen for boys and twelve for girls, so some of the kids in teen minyan aren’t in high school yet.

   “All except the learning disabled ones, and even they’re smart. They just learn differently.”

   “Yes, but we Jews are only two point five percent of the population,” I shot back. “Get ‘em with statistics,” I thought.

   “Don’t you want to know the smart kids in the other 97.5 percent?” I asked.

   “You mean the goyim?” asked red beard.

   “That’s an epithet take it back!” I snarled.

   “It just means nations,” fashionably dressed mouthed the party line.

   “It means gentiles, but there are politer words for it when you are speaking English. The five letter G word dehumanizes nonJews and puts them in the category of other.”

   Damn, I sounded like a teacher but this was the real explanation. I did not feel like lying. “Who taught you that?” asked red beard.

   “My stepmother. She’s a linguist.” This was one I don’t think they expected.

   “And is your stepmother Jewish?” asked fashionable.

   I hadn’t expected that and it was ridiculous. “What does that have to do with whether something is true or not? My stepmother is Italian American.”

   “Then your stepmother is a….” the middle schooler voiced the conclusion that was probably in half the kids heads.

   “Come on,” the youth rabbi called out. “We’re going to be making kiddush.”

   That meant food. We were all hungry. I wanted to eat junk food and drink soda and make sure my younger sister was all right. As we helped ourselves to fishlets, pretzels, bar-b-que flavored potato chips, and Cheez-its, fashionable sidled up to me and apologized. “I’m sorry,” she told me. “But our identity is really important to us. You have to consider your own first…”

   My own is a tiny minority, I thought. That had been true even in Scranton. It was true at Tech. It was true everywhere but Lincoln Square and a few other places.

   “Come on, want to see some pictures of my cousin whose on her year in Israel?”

   I liked the  idea of pictures from a foreign country, but in most of the pictures Israel looked either like California or New York. Fashionable whose real name was Elasheva’s cousin wore skirts and three quarter length sleeves, dress code clothes. She seemed happy enough. Pictures of kids on vacation usually either show them happy or bored, unless it’s some place like Realitee. I was glad I had no Realitee pictures. What I did have in my purse were pictures that a kid from the Eagle had taken of our dress rehearsals last week.

   The kid from The Eagle wore a mustard colored shirt and had ringlets down to his shoulders. He wore pressed blue jeans and took care of his face. I think he was Puerto Rican, but I don’t remember his last name. He was very proud of the way the pictures came out in the low light of back stage. They were beautiful pictures.

   I pulled out my pile of pictures. “What’s that?” asked Elasheva. “Photos. They were taken with an electronic camera and printed out. I opened the envelope and took out the eight by five and a half prints. “This is dress rehearsal for the one acts. I’m on lighting crew for drama club. This is my one act. It’s all dance. That’s Kwaata and the crew getting ready. They all have matching costumes.”

   “Kwaa who?” asked a girl with hair parted on the side and a white blouse and black shirt.

   “Kwaata,” I answered. “She’s a junior and she lives up in Harlem. Her name is Arabic, but they Anglicized the spelling to make it sound African.”

   “Why?” asked side part.

   “Because she’s a…..” I will not reprint the epithet that starts wtih an S. “They give their kids all kinds of weird names.”

   “Careful,” said a tall girl in a brown skirt and white blouse (What was with all the dull colors anyway?) “Koray’s pol-ti-ick-ally correkt?”

   “And why are those girls half naked?” asked side part who had gone from prejudice to genuine ignorance.

   “They’re wearing leotards. They put wrap skirts around their feet and Capezios, dance shoes, on their feet.”

   “Do they dance in front of…men.”

   “Tech is three quarters male,” I replied. “Drama club is closer to fifty fifty.” Then I realized what side part had asked.

   “Yes,” I said. “We perform for the public.”

   “Do you dance like that?” a middle school girl asked. I waited for one of the older girls to stop the conversation. Too many questions could be dangerous. These kids weren’t just snots. They had a lot to learn.

   “No,” I replied. “I’m on lighting crew.” I showed the girls another picture. I wish the boys had been there to see it. “That’s me about to crawl up on the battens because we blew a spot light. I have the new bulb hanging from my waste and the tool kit for fixing the light. I needed to splice wires on that light. It shouldn’t have blown a bulb at two weeks.”

   I showed the girls another picture. That was of me climving the ladder to the battens and then the picture of me squatting on the battens at work. “How high is that?” asked the middle school girl.

   “Thirty five and a half feet,” I answered. Javonvitch was proud of telling this to all new members of the lighting crew.

   “What if you fell?”

   “I have a safety harness.”

   “Does it really work?”

   “Yes,” I answered. “I’ve fallen three times. You hang in midair when you fall. It feels a bit weird. Then you pull yourself back up on the battens and climb down.”

   “You’re mother lets you do that!” Elasheva all but shrieked.

   “I’m wearing safety equipment,” I all but laughed. “Look you either are afraid of falling and never go up, that’s not me. You fall once and never want to go up again, or you fall and then you are not afraid. That is me.”

   “You’re crazy!” said side part. “She’s insane.”

   “No, she has different values,” the rabbi interrupted. “You don’t go to a Jewish school do you?” he asked. This was obvious because he knew where I went to school.

   “I go to Brooklyn Tech,” I answered. “It’s a public entrance examination high school.”

   “Well kids here don’t do things like that,” the rabbi told me. “We live sheltered lives. We value Torah and learning.”

   “You don’t think lighting crew is learning?” I was aware of the difference in meaning that the rabbi gave an ordinary word. Saying that only religious studies were learning was like saying to the rest of the educated world to get a life. Whatever they were doing was not education.

   “No, It’s…. something you do for fun maybe.”

   “You’re wrong,” I answered and showed the rabbi the lighting booth. “See it’s all com puterized. There’s a lighting programming language. You also have to know about how to fix broken wires and splce cables and about circuit boards and safety. That’s all learning. You also have to know how to work with your group when you do one acts. My dancers needed a projection. See that extra lap top in the back of the booth. It’s hooked into the dataprojector.”

   I found the image to show the rabbi. “Here is how it all looks on stage.”

   The rabbi winced and blushed at the sight of six dancers moving as one sinuous, sensual body in skin tight leotards, tights, and thin skirt wraps that hugged their hips and accentuated their slim figures. Behind them was a silhouette of the Manhattan Skyline.

   “Getting that data projector to work was a bear,” I proclaimed.

   “That’s not Jewish,” answered the rabbi. I resisted the urge to slap him. I resisted the urge to run into the ladies room and cry my eyes out. I did not resist the urge to dump most of my kiddush snack in the garbage and go look for my sister who was giving several glass eyed kids and one or two fascinated parents a lesson in how to add and subtract with raisins and fragments of cookies.

   Someone had taught her “new math.” Actually, Dad had made her counting toys and she could do math with pictures rather than numbers. This was not shabby for a six year old, but I always thought such games were common. I watched feeling exahusted and wrung out. I was glad to get out on the sidewalk. I was glad I did not have an invite to turn down for a free lunch. I needed to get home, get changed, and take Ivanna for her walk to go get her brand of Power Bars and for me to stop at  Zabar’s and pick up cheese, olives, and coldcuts. The last were for Nervy and me. The first were for Dad who was due home. What would Dad have made of the synagogue?

   Couldn’t those kids see that really working at something was so important that it blocked out anything else. Didn’t any of those girls really want to be stars? Being a star was more important than using  the religion to play games? Being one of the best was the most important thing in the world, that had having a bit of recognition for it. Nervyworm was a star. She was a star at math and drawing. She was a good reader too. Some day Nervy Worm would join Young Achievers as a matter of course.

   “Why are you shaking?” Nervy Worm asked me as we walked home.

   “I think the weather is a bit cold,” I replied. Fleming was on duty. He asked me if I was all right. I was fine. I had to be fine. I changed quickly and found Ivanna practicing dance moves in soilded white tights and a royal blue lyotard. She asked me to take off the Young Achiever’s T-shirt. “You’re going to embarass me in public,” she said. I realized I should keep the piece and put the t-shirt away. Ivanna I could handle, I told myself as we re-emerged onto the streets and began the walk to the subway and then the walk downtown to a special nutritional health food store that sold mainly pills, powders, and bars.

   Ivanna spent sixteen dollars on the things and the lovely black haired woman with a long neck like something in the Song of Songs asked Ivanna where she was dancing. Halston was a great place like a great Yeshiva or Seminary in Israel would have been for the kids at Lincoln Square, but while the lady behind the counter might have understood that there were great Yeshivas and Seminaries, the kids in Lincoln Square Teen Minyan would not believe there were great public high schools or great dance stuidos. One reason that Young Achievers was full of smart kids was that there were multiple ways to be smart. I couldn’t dance, but I could do lighting crew. Some people, like Dad, wanted nothing to do with the stage. Some learned Hebrew. Some excelled at French. Some wailed at global stuides, and someone had to get a one hundred on the Math A Regents.  Part of becoming an adult instead of a snotty kid was accepting all of this. Was I an adult all ready? I wondered.

   The sun was out as I suggested we walk up to Zabar’s. “Oh pul-eeeze,” Ivanna complained. “Not a prom-en-odd.”

   “Let’s take a vote!” Nervy called out.

   Majority ruled, and Ivanna did not complain. “How was shool?” Ivanna asked.

   “Vile,” I answered.

   “Are those  kids real snobs?” she asked.

   “They’re ignorant,” I replied. “They don’t want to learn.”

   “That makes them stupid,” Ivanna passed her critique.

   “Am I stupid?” I asked.

   “No,” Ivanna replied. “You’re an asshole sometimes, but not stupid. You’re just a tool who likes being a tool. My mom is that way too, but you understand there are other things you can do.”

   We didn’t say much after that. The sun was out though the weather was cold for early May. I was glad we did not have a  Young Achiever’s meeting this weekend. I wanted to flee again. I planned to kidnap Nervy Worm and take her to Staten Island. The fantasy felt unbearably delicious.

   In Zabar’s Ivanna talked about additives, sodium, and carbs as I purchased a varietyof treats. “Stop saying bad things about the food!” complained Nervy in a too loud voice. I wanted to kiss my little sister.

   “It doesn’t bother you that this stuff is not kosher.”

   “No,” I said. “I’m not ready to keep Kosher yet?”

   “Then why do you go to an orthodox synagogue?”

   “To pray,” I said. I did not want to think that keeping kosher would sentence me to a life of eating with ignoramuses. I wanted to put this morning far behind me. I was sad to descend into the  subway though it was great to see the car full of all sorts of people heading to either second shift work or a good time on a Saturday afternoon. I was glad to emerge up in Harlem and begin the walk down to the river where we would meet RoAnn at Fairway.

   RoAnn was parked in the cafe reading a student  paper. She had tons of work to do tonight which meant we’d be studying up at Mann Hall and then maybe go out to dinner at some diner where we could all get what we want. Maybe we’d even eat at The Arena. I laughed at that thought. I tried to imagine ECBAS confronting the Orthodox kids at Teen Minyan.

   “What’s so funny?” RoAnn asked me.

   “You don’t want to know.”

   “The kids at shool are disrespecting Kore,”  Ivanna told her mother.

   “Churches can be funny places,” RoAnn mused. She did not want me to lose her faith. Fortunately, I don’t believe in my peers. I headed for produce. Dad had asked me to buy three pounds of fresh asparagus. He was going to help me make it for Nervyworm. Mom in another email said to buy Jane’s Crazy Mixed Up Salt to put on the asparagus after it was served, since it did not look like either Nervy or I would be up for making or eating Hollandaise and Italian dressing or “ranch sauce” was only for cold, cooked asparagus spears. 

   RoAnn stared with shock at the three bundles of asparagus spears. “What are you doing with that?” she asked. “Dad wants us to cook them,” I answered. “Oh yeah…Sammy,” sighed RoAnn.

   “I’m glad Dad is coming back,” I said, and I meant it even if there were fights. I would not tell Dad about my misadventures at synagogue this morning. I would not tell any one. I’d done all I could do. Next week was Saturday rehearsals and on the twenty-second of May the show would go on. That was what was important. My biology regents and my other finals were what was important. The kids at Lincoln Square had learned Young Achievers was out there. It was up to them to make the next move.

8. Power Bars and Canned Asparagus

   It rained all Sunday night and into Monday morning. It was one of those light, steady, rains that sticks around forever. The subway stank of wet coats. The Calliope even stank of them. Eugenia asked me how I could drink cold soda with the rain just coming down. I told her that Dr. Pepper tasted good in all weather. Do I have to tell  you that the rain made me yearn for snow. Snow is white. Snow covers everything. We’re not getting any snow on May third in New York City.

   Drama club had a break day so the juniors and seniors could study for AP examps. AP’s are advanced placement exams that award college credit. I got to go out to IS 179 and fight with the computer teacher who knows business but not math. A lot of the middle schoolers prefer math. Some of the kids also wanted to learn Cad-Cam. The teacher announced there was no Cad-Cam on the machines. I mentioned Google Sketch Up. Some teachers get very upset when they find you know more than they do.

   This teacher realized she was on her way into that territory. She is just a college student and I am just fourteen. No, I am less than a month away from turning fifteen. Fifteen makes me feel very old and mature. I’m not sure why. She asked the kids why it was so important they learn Cad-Cam. This is an old strategy to make the kids feel dumb. I winced, but this was Young Achievers, and these “academically engaged” middle schoolers did not always follow the rules.

   “I want to make blue prints of my bedroom,” a Latino boy answered.

   “Why do you want to do that?”

   “My cousin from Virginia is coming to stay with me. There’s no good high schools where he lives.”

   “Academic migrants,” I thought. Then I thought: “It’s really happening.” Then I thought worse things. Troy DeVilliers was more than right. If one in four kids in New York State went with Young Achievers or took a Full Academic program, and the average was one in seven nationwide, than there had to be places where it was a lot less than one in seven to average things out. “My parents friends from West Virginia are sending their daughter,” a black skinned girl with yellow framed glasses told the class.

   Needless to say, I gave a brief and clumsy lesson in Google Sketch Up, and the teacher who had her own finals to worry about, because college finals are in May, put Sketch Up days into the schedule. After class she thanked me.

   Monday night it was still raining. I got home in time to prepare the soup with stuff and the relish tray. On the refridgerator door was a list of recommended power bars. Halston wanted their students snacking well, and dancers are addicted to these glorified cookies. Some glorified cookies, I reasoned must be created more equally than others.

   The trouble was many of these cookies were not available at Fairway. RoAnn and Ivanna went round and round about who would get the fancy Power Bars that the “professionally” dancing Ivanna now required.

   Meanwhile, I opened a can of asparagus, drained it, and dumped it on to the relish tray. “Ewwww,” a voice belonging to my stepmother said. “What is that slimey green stuff.”

   “Asparagus,” I replied. “You saw me buy it two weeks ago.”

   “I’ve never seen it like that.”

   “It’s canned. It’s good either plain or with Italian dressing.”

   “Do you think Nervy’s going to eat that.”

   “I like asparagus,” Nervy replied. “It’s good with soup.”

   “And peas and carrots are good in soup,” RoAnn remembered aloud. “And don’t forget the bread triangles.”

   “Striped rye bread triangles,” Nervy reminded her mother who had not borne her.

   RoAnn  sighed and sniffed. “With you girls, I could almost not miss Sammy.”

   “Dad will be back soon,” I said, but there was no enthusiasm in our voice. Our delicate ecology that kept away the fighting and most of the snottiness had evolved without him. All four of  us would have to adjust to him being back in the mix. He might not approve about all of Ivanna’s dancing and prima donna requirements like fancy power bars and special taps for her Capezios.

   Dad might not find the star headed celebrities that Nervy drew amusing. He might find them disturbing because there was a disturbing side to all this. He might also get very angry that ECBAS/Youth Voices constantly called RoAnn a child abuser. All over the country Dr. RoAnn Testa was becoming a symbol of evil that now out-eviled (if there was such a  word) “Wolf Balls,” my natural mother. I could only hope to be so “evil” some day, but Dad might not see it that way. His protective instincts could kick in.

   I prayed they wouldn’t. I needed to live with a pleasant Ivanna and I did not want to see my dad and stepmother fight over something about which they could do nothing.

   Tuesday I sat for my practice biology regents and finally broke the ninty percent mark. That had taken far more work than it should. “Wait until you take chemistry and physics,” Micah laughed at me during rehearsals on Wednesday. “Now those are real sciences.”

   I said I liked biology well enough, though my heart was most in French and global studies with English when we studied literature a close third. “I know you wail in literature” Javonovich sighed. “It’s a good thing we get those Stuyvesent rejects.”

   “That was a long time ago,” I reminded both boys.

   “You used to care about it a lot.”

   “Yeah, but that was in the fall.”

   “Spring changes things.”

   “Yeah, I’m almost a year older.”

   The boys sniffed and laughed. The stage manager for an imitation of the rockettes told them to keep it down. Howard still did not have his gel colors right. He was going to have to do a safety check for faded gels. I thought of the gel that sliced my hands.

   I checked twitter on the subway back to Manhattan.

   @Sxxy_Arrow  (to the whole group) — Yeah it’s true, Assholes’ legal department is suing.

   @Unity_grrrl (to the whole group) — They can’t sue. We have free speech! Dr. Asshole even says as much.

   @Sxxy_Arrow (to the whole group) — Talk to the legal department. Something about private persons and defamation of character.

   I noticed the direct message from  @Sxxy_Sistah. “Coming back to New York May 10.”

   I messaged her back: “Do you still need a tutor?”

   “Yeah…I want to see you. I want to know you’re OK?”

   “I don’t have stars coming out of my head, but I”m fine,” I thought. Then I thought: “I’m busy and I’ll try to pencil you in.”

   Then I answered. “I can see you on Sunday afternoons.”

   Dad’s letter arrived on thursday. Thatwas the email saying he’d be home late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. I felt sad that he’d miss what happened in synagogue. I wondered if he could convince the men to encourage their sons and daughters to join Young Achievers or were the men as snotty as their offspring? Did Young Achievers really need all those truck loads of snot? Wouldn’t snotty kids like the ones in teen minyan contaminate the organization? I mused on all this and missed the 92nd Street Subway stop. I got off at 96th Street instead and stood under a cold clear night.

   I looked up and saw a moon playing hide and seek in the clouds. There are no stars over Manhattan due to all the light pollution. Then I tried to remember if we had any more canned asparagus. I realized I’d bought three cans of the stuff. That was good. Nervy and I both liked it.

9. Songs and Chants

   I went to teen minnyan at Lincoln Square on Saturday morning, and Nervy had junior congregation. They call Nervy, Malka at the synoaguge or at least they try to. Malka, her middle name, is Hebrew. Her first name, like my own is a Latin translation of a character from Greek mythology, only Minerva is Athena, the Goddess of wisdom, Kore is Persephone, a demigod at best and a hapless deity’s daughter at worst. They tried calling me Kinneret which is my middle name and which is Hebrew, but they mispronounced it. It may be the Hebrew pronunciation, but as an English speaker, I say Kinneret to rhyme with minaret, not Kin-ear-et, with the accent on the ear. I finally told them to please call me Kore, pronounced ko-ray. That is the name which everyone calls me who uses my first name.

   Minerva was even more insistent. “Malka is just my middle name. I’m Nervy. Nervy is short for Minerva. That’s my name. My mom gave it to me. You don’t have to like it, but it’s my name!” That got the point across. She’s otherwise one of the best kids in junior congretation where the kids goof off, slack off, wander around the synagogue and don’t pay attention. Nervy wants to sing and learn and follow the Bible story which we go over at home and then discuss.

   Saturday after services, I received a very backhanded compliment from one of the girls in teen minyan. “If you don’t know Hebrew how did you learn all those songs?” she asked. The girl was pastey faced and wore a horrible black  jumper with a clingy white “shell” under it. The jumper cried out for flaming red or something funky and a big jewelry treatment. Me, I wore my military style olive drab skirt with pockets and my salmon pink pullover, sweater. Black jumper should have known the answer to that question. “I have CD’s of hymns at home,” I replied.

   Black jumper blinked. “Hymns is the English word for religious songs,” I informed Black Jumper. Black Jumper giggled. I wasn’t part of her club and was utterly clueless even if I could hold my own in services. “What school do you go to?” once again Black Jumper’s questions seemed innocent.

   “Brooklyn Tech,” I replied and handed Black Jumper my business card. This made the poor girl snort with laughter. I fought down my anger. Whatever game this kid was playing was one I no longer got. Even kids at Houghton weren’t this stuck up.

   “You never even studied for your bas mitzvah did you?” Black Jumper continued her pointless game.

   “No,” I answered. “I don’t know Hebrew.”

   “Then what are you doing here?” OK, I could see where this went.

   “I want to go to services. I like to pray. I believe in God and I read the Bible. I also like the hymns. Do you have a problem with that?” All of my reasons were acceptible for going to church or synagogue or any other house of worship. In fact, they were the best reasons in the world.

   “Do you know this is an Orthodox Jewish schul?” We were back to the game again. I felt like answering: “Duh!”

   “Of course,” I replied.

   “And are you Jewish?”

   “Yeah, both my parents are.” That it’s my Italian American stepmother who thinks I Nervy and I should attend services would probably rock Black Jumper’s world. “I’m just more of a  universalist in the way I see the world than you. In a way that’s a strength,” I lectured back slipping into RoAnn mode. Let’s see what Black Jumper made of my remarks?

   “Aren’t universalists Unitarians?” asked a boy in red  kipah.

   “Yes, but that’s a different meaning of the word.” The boy was on my territory.

   “Are any of you in Young Achievers?” I asked giving the conversation a final flip. I hoped it would be final after all.

   “We don’t need to be in Young Achievers,” Black Jumper replied.

   “Why not?” I asked.

   “We are Jews. We are getting a Jewish education. That’s enough.”

   “Your schools are resistant. Why not put them on the map?” I argued.

   “We don’t care about some goyim’s map,” replied a blond boy.

   “Would you please not use epithets around me?” I asked blondie.

   “What epithet?” the boy asked. He truely was clueless.

   “Goy is an epithet for nonJew. Please don’t use it.”

   “She’s politically correct,” Black Jumper never missed a beat.

   “You’re effing prejudiced,” I spat back.

   “If you don’t like it here, go to a reformed temple,” Black Jumper answered.

   “You wouldn’t last a week in Young Achievers,” I spat back and it was true. I didn’t think any of these kids would last a week at Brooklyn Tech. They’d learn they weren’t unique. The Chinese are as old an ethnic group as we are and have a diaspora just like we do and are every bit as successful. Then there are kids that just shine no matter what their background. There are smart kids with potty mouths, and other smart kids who come to school in embroidered cardigans and retain their gentility. There are smart kids who eat blood sausage. There are smart kids that drink Slim Fast for lunch, and other smart kids who get a free school lunch. If you’re smart and able, you’re smart and able.

   And yes, I’ll keep going to teen minyan. The rabbi likes me. We might argue occasionally but he likes me. I’m not jaded. Being here voluntarily because “religion is good for me,” makes all the difference.

   That said, I was glad to be back home and ready to change into old clothes and go shopping. Ivanna complained she was hungry as did Nervy. “You’ll buy more food,” RoAnn said. She did not think this was a bad thing. Dad was coming back sooner or later. “Want Kapor’s for supper?” RoAnn asked Ivanna as we rode to Fairway in the music-free truck.

   “Yeah,” Ivanna replied. “OK, I’ll orer it while I have my coffee. What are you girls getting?” RoAnn addressed Nervy and me.

   “Butternut squash soup,” answered Nervy who really thought about it.

   “Do they sell that?” RoAnn shouldn’t have asked.

   I’d seen it. “It’s not going to have much stuff in it,” I explained.

   “We can add vegetables,” Nervy all ready had a recipe in her head. “Green peas and carrots might be good in squash soup,” I answered. RoAnn wriggled up her nose in disgust. I wanted to laugh. I needed to laugh.

   Saturday night was Ivanna’s social night. We went up to Main Hall to study while Nervy spent the evening at the Zantes. The stage was open and the people with stars in their heads were performing for half a dozen buses full of the faithful. This time Shantay was singing a song about faith but also a new hit single: “Mommy Listen to Me.” Shantay’s propagand in the form of music made my skin crawl. She used to be one of my favorite singers. “What a waste of talent,” I thought sadly. Then I asked Ivanna if there were stars coming out of Shantay’s head. She said there were and that she should draw Shantay.

   She drew. She read. I studied Math B and biology. I had a practice regents Tuesday afternoon. My scores were sagging because I had too much on my mind, but this awful weekend would just not quit.

   May 2, we had a Young Achiever’s meeting in Valhalla. RoAnn drove which meant Ivanna got to spend the whole day with the Dodgson’s, one of her friends’ families. Ivanna was clearly back in circulation. I also realized she was probably here to stay since ECBAS legal department did not want to handle a third spousal kidnapping that might end up in criminal court. Let Ivanna figure out that she sold herself cheaply. Hopefully by then she would have stars coming out of her own head, because she worked hard at dancing and was probably fairly good at it.

   RoAnn talked to Piper about every sibling needing his or her own niche as we rode up the Deegan toward the Cross Westchester instead of the Sprain Brook Parkway and then on, up north, into Valhalla. We’d probably have most of our meetings here from now on since there were more and better rooms for break outs. The college did not care if kids drank soda, and the auditorium was large enough so we could all be together for the opening presentation.

   Piper got to talk about the first academic migrants. I got to discuss Ivanna’s return. I was glad I was discussing Ivanna and not Kyril. Ivanna had found something to do. People with something to do usually don’t spend their time bothering others. I also said I missed the CD’s in the van. I really did. Conversation could just be a burden sometimes.

   Then I also managed to find Dr. Angelus. This was a first. He ate a salad instead of the pizza he and his minions ordered for us kids. I didn’t care. The pizza was good. You can get very good pizza in Westchester county. “Yes,” Dr. Angelus, did not want to be pulled away from his salad, or maybe discovered with it. It did not look like a very good salad, mostly lettuce and a lump of tuna made without relish or celery.

   “I need to talk to you about a bunch of resistant schools that aren’t on the map.”

   That got Dr. Angelus’ attention. I then gave the schools’ names.

   “Those are all religious schools,” he said not wanting to call them day schools since all schools where kids don’t board are day schools. Being a Jewish religious school does not make you the only kind of day school in the world.

   “So what,” I replied. “We have a chapter at Stepanac.”

   “I see what you mean. Well, it may take an adult talking to the principal, but we have to make sure everyone joins us voluntarily. That is why it is better to begin with the students. You may need to be more persuasive, Kore.”

   “Fat chance,” I thought. You can guess, that I rode home from the meeting in a funk. RoAnn chatted it up about a double dip in the recession and deficit spending in Europe with a pair of kids whose interest was foreign policy. Nervy slept, snoring soft Nervyworm snores. I stared out the window. It looked like rain. I needed to study. I tried to picture Black Jumper, blondie, and the rest of that stuck up teen  minyan crew as Young Achievers. “You wouldn’t last a week, ” I told them in my mind and then I backtracked. “You need the opportunity to see if you’ll last or maybe you need a real education.” Why should I deny you that?

10. Stars in their Heads

    “Ooooooh yeah! It looks beautiful!” cried Chin from the front of the stage where she looked like she was about to fall off, and Chin stood there without a harness. A big, wide stage was after all not a batten high in the air. Chin stood before the silhouette of the New York skyline. It was just one silhouette but it had landed perfectly.

    “OK, Kore, cue  up the music and let’s go!” she called out.

    The first bars of Manhattan Skyline began to play. The song had been in a movie before either of us were born. The movie was called Saturday Night Fever and it had been somewhat revolutionary for older grownups like RoAnn and Mom. Dad in an email to me from parts unknown said he hardly remembered it, but “dance music” had never been his thing.

    I ran the lighting program. The projector put the silhouettes in all the right places. Now all we needed was the dance troupe, but the troupe was having their lunch break somewhere saner. They were actually eating. I empited the dregs of my Dr. Pepper in front of my locker as I got my books for my afternoon class.

    Drama club on Thursday was mostly sitting around and studying. I had plenty of that to do. I wore the safety harness just in case. I owed Chin and promised to do any batten work if she needed it or to help her in any way since she had helped me so much at lunch by standing in so I could get the program straight. Two days of hard work was longer than anything should have taken, and this was my first time being person up front and in the booth.

    This was also Chin’s first time. I watched her small group with their horrible play about marital discord. It didn’t sound quite like my parents fighting, but their fights as I remembered them had been what I now realized was psychobabble. In my seven and eight year old brain they had been big, ugly words, like silver missiles armed with lethal barbs. I won’t say what I compared those barbs too, but I thought of it now and laughed.

    “You’re fucking smiling, Bihar, you must be up to something,” Javonovich quipped. He was a senior. He was going to Renseleer Polytechnic Institue “far away from the fucking city,” he said with a smile. “No riots. Engineers, folks who are serious about their fucking work,” but right now Javonovich could take it a bit easier, being that his bright future was made. No one’s bright future is ever made, I thought.

    “I’m busy,” I told Javonovich.

    “Yeah, but you’re thinking about something.”

    “I think every day, what’s the fucking big deal?”

    “Yeah, but you don’t smile every fucking day. You’re always so fucking depressed, I could swear you are an emo or something and that scares me.”

    “She’s no fucking emo,” Micah snarled. “She’s a girrrrrrrl.”

    “It’s fucking private,” I answered.

    “Like fucking private parts?” Javonovich goaded me.

    Just then the fight on the stage fell silent and we were plunged from our shadowy realm in the wings into semi darkness. “Fuck!” complained Javonovich.

    I put down my books, grabbed the tool belt, and a spare bulb in a box with handles made from a plastic bag, made for the ladder to batten three. The big, hot, spot had blown. Down below the leading man in Chin’s group and the director were chewing a new one into Javonovich and Micah. “I thought you had those lights tested!”

    “The lights are fucking old pieces of shit.”

    “Why arent’ they being fixed?”

    “They are, that was Wang’s best friend climbing up to do it. You’re crew person won’t get her hands dirty.”

    I just kept climbing. Not only was the bulb on the big spot blown, but I decided to check its wires. It had been too soon for the bulb to blow that violently. Fortunately, someone below had put on the emergency lights for me so I could see what I was doing. I had to strip and splice wires while everyone else waited around. Below I could hear the director for Chin’s group abusing his cast in a nasty voice that reminded me of Philip, the boy with leather pants and a psychological exemption from dress code, at Houghton. I pushed away the memory and kept working.

    Then I backed away down the batten. I couldn’t drop the box because the stage was full or was it. “Heads up!” I called out.

    “She’s going to drop an empty cardboard box. Get out of the fucking way!” Javonovich interpreted.

    I dropped the box. “Test please!” called out Chin who could speak for herself.

    Down went the lights and on came the spot. I climbed down. I felt light headed. Javonovich was waiting for me. “Beautiful work, Bihar, fucking beautiful. You always gonig to work for Chin.”

    “She helped me get the projector straight at lunch,” I explained. Even tough talking Javonovich could understand a work trade. I watched Chin’s troop stage a mock fight with lots of crying and pain. I thought of the night Barry finally bailed. I think Mom cried. I know Kyril watched sports on TV and said nothing. Even then, I knew to avoid him. Was I afraid of him? Did I just have nothing to say? I remember thinking: “ugly.”

    I dug out my books and tried not to listen to the mock fighting on stage. That play must give the kids in that troop nightmares or else they all go home to tranquil, two parent families, I thought.

    I reached Main Hall around seven thirty in the evening. We were just going to meet up and go home. Nervy needed her dinner, a shower, and then bed. The rest of us had work we could do at home and… I saw the huge, outdoor stage, complete with lighting on the sidewalk near the main entrance which was open for night classes. The crowd was thick enough to almost stop business, but blue shirted, ECBAS volunteers kept a passage through it at one point wide enough to allow entrance and exit. Business went on and so too did the show.

    Caren Fish, last falls, American Hot Teen Model, was lecturing on parental abuse. “You don’t have to listen to your parents just because they’re older. In fact, many of them have learned the WRONG lessons. Parents can be abusive like Dr. Testa.”

    At the name Dr. Testa, the crowd which was made mostly of kids booed and hissed. It was a large crowd and it looked a bit young for Columbia students.

    I backed away toward the bodega. I wracked my brains. Where could one park buses in this part of the city? I walked several blocks before I found them. I was not looking for the drivers. I wondered if they still talked about whipping kids into shape or whupping their butts. Did I wish they had done it? Would it have been effective? At a certain point abuse cancels love. I thought of Kyril. I thought of my own family where RoAnn had stopped long before that point.

    Instead I wanted something else, something old that I hoped wouldn’t be there. The license plates on the buses were from all over. Some were from Florida. One was from Texas, another was from Tennessee. The diesel fumes from idling engines made me sick.

    I knew I had to look for the drivers. I found them in a coffee shop that was still open and where a tired Latino counterman glanced through the plate glass looking for hordes of returning kids so he no longer had to be “too busy.” The drivers sat at the old wooden counter, drinking third rate coffee in blue paper cups with a Greek design on them.

    They came in all shapes and sizes, including a female driver with a mouse brown bun. She aws overweight and wore a dark green uniform with a burnt orange t-shirt beneath it for warmth or a personal touch. I liked that. I asked where she was from and she mentioned I town I did not recognize. “It’s in Massachussetts up near Lee.”

    “Did you drive all the way from there?” I asked.

    “No, my run was from Grenwhich in Connecticut. You come in on one of the buses?”

    I handed the driver my business card.

    “You’re one of the enemy here,” she said.

    “No I’m not. This is Columbia University,” I smiled.

    “Yeah but that crowd outside. It could turn ugly.”

    “It’s just a bunch of spoiled kids,” said a lean faced African American bus driver.

    “Yeah, but the spoiled kids have taken over,” a small yellow faced driver answered.

    “Excuse me,” I asked, “but did any one drive in from Scraton, Pennsylvania?”

    “Are you lost?” the female driver from Massachusetts asked.

    “No, I have relatives in Scranton.”

    “She can’t be lost. She’s from Brookly,” said a fat, pasty faced driver with a crew cut.

    “Yeah, I drove in from Scranton. What d’you want to  know, young lady?”

    “I’d like to know if a Barry Blunt was on the bus. He’d be one of the adult chaperones.”

    “You mean Barry, the football coach, back when there was football?” asked the driver.

    “The one and only,” I replied.

    “Yeah, he was on my bus. He’s one of the ones gets the kids to skip school now. I dion’t know why the district didn’t fire him, but there was a big fight about whether kids could goof off and get away with it. My wife home schools our kids now cause of it.”

    I nodded sympathetically, and wished the night outside was cold, but it was late April in New York, and nights were no longer frigid. The world could no longer drown in snow.

    On the platform of the small stage, Troy DeVilliers had the mike. Standing next to him was his new wife Bari. I thought of how last fall, the police had raided his apartment. Now Troy was really a star. “You don’t deserve to be one,” I thought.

    “I’m going to give all of you a little mathematics lesson. Don’t worry. This kind of math is useful.” Troy smirked. “Only one in every seven kids is with Young Achievers!”

    I long series of whoops and cheers went up from the bused in audience. “Kore! Kore!” a voice called out. I turned to find Ivanna and Nervy standing not far away. I edged toward them.

    “Now here in New-York-State thanks to you-know-who, it’s one in about every four kids is with Young Achievers, but you know what those kids are — a min-or-it-y. And majority rules. We rule! You can’t run a world or a college for a minority. It fails. We’ve won. We just have to keep winning….”

    My legs felt like rubber as I climbed the stairs to the third floor to find RoAnn’s office. Ivanna and Nervy were with me. “How’d you get outside to watch?” I asked my sister.

    “Mom let me,” Ivanna replied.

    “Mommy said it was not violent,” Nervy echoed. When had RoAnn turned into my youngest full sibling’s mother? The answer was probably some time since Mom had dumped her with RoAnn and Dad but mostly RoAnn.

    “I want my crayons!” Nervy demanded.

    “There’s no time for crayons. We’re going home,” RoAnn amerged from her office. “Kore did you enjoy the performance downstairs?”

    “Which performance,” I wondered.

    “No,” I replied.

    “She’s a tool,” quipped Ivanna.

    “So am I,” RoAnn quipped back to her daughter.

    “I want to draw!” Nervy protested.

    “You can’t draw. We’re going home,” RoAnn tried to discipline her newest daughter. If Ivanna could lose her step, RoAnn could become Nervy’s mother. We rode the subway in nervous silence. Nervy did get out her crayons while I set up the relish tray and made lunches. RoAnn had all ready  had Kapor’s deliver to the service desk in the basement and Ivanna went down to get sandwiches for the other half of the family. I was glad Flemming, my favorite door person, was not on duty.

    I had to call Nervy from the study for dinner. “Want to see what I made?” she asked me. Nervy was experimenting with still lifes and figure drawing. Nervy’s picture featured men and women on what clearly looked like a stage. It was a very realistic picture except for the stars coming out of everybody’s head as if they were about to explode.

    “Those are all star people on the stage,” Nervy explained, and part of me wanted to laugh, but the laugh stuck as a lump in my throat. “Yes, Troy DeVilliers, Bari DeVilliers, and Caren Fish are all stars, but that doesn’t make them good people,” I explained.

    “Awwwww…..” cut in Ivanna. “Hey I got some good news,” she added.

    “I can use some good news,” I answered. Actually now that I thought of it I had good news of my own. “I passed my audition and I start dancing at Halston Studio on Monday. I’m in the Advanced Beginner class. I’m dancing at Halston!”

    “Congratulations,” I said, and I meant it.

    That night when Nervy Worm went to bed, I asked her: “Does Ivanna have stars coming outof her head too?”

    “Not yet,” she told me. “You have to really be famous to be a star person.”

     I did not answer. I had work to do. I did not want to think about how close Barry had been or that he might be looking for Kyril. Maybe Kyril would just drive him away. Maybe I only fantasized about the past, except it really happened. Anyway, dancers have stars coming out of their feet not their heads. Nervy’s image of Troy, Bari, and Caren adorned the refridgerator door. Something about it, the symbolism, tickled RoAnn pink. RoAnn was always brave. “I’m in the study if you need me,” I told my youngest sibling. I really did have work to do.

11. One of them At Least

    Tuesday brought nothing but frustration. The day at school was OK. I guess I don’t remember it much because rehearsals were just awful. That I was not the only one having trouble, didn’t make it any better. My dance troupe as I came to think of it, had unusual lighting demands. I got the gel colors mixed right. I even replaced several gels on the battens without falling or further injuring myself, but the dancers wanted several silhouettes of the Manhattan skyline, and those required a special projector which I did not know how to operate or integrate well into a lighting system.

    I made all the dumb mistakes first timers make. The dancers danced in front of an inverted skyline, one on its side, one placed too far off stage. I got an extra half hour booth time learning to get the it half right, but you know half right is not good enough.

    “You’re going to get it, Bihar, just fucking keep working at it. Silhouettes are a class one bitch,” Micah consoled me as we walked toward the subway. He had to take a train farther into Brooklyn. I was going all the way to Columbia to meet RoAnn and the siblings. We’d study together for a bit and then head back to the Ardsley for a late supper. RoAnn would probably get Kapor’s sandwiches for Ivanna. Our family was nothing if not predictable. I was glad of that.

    “Thanks,” I told Micha and a lump stuck in my throat.

    “Awww, don’t go all fucking to pieces on me. You girls cry way too much,” he complained.

    “I’m just tired and frustrated,” I told him blinking back a few tears.

    “Your not getting your monthly visitor?”

    “I got that the beginning of April,” I reminded him.

    “It’s been a month.”

    “Mine doesn’t visit every month.”

    “Shit, that’s bad.”

    “No, I’m not quite fifteen and it’s the way my body works.”

    “I’m glad I’m not a fucking girl.”

    “Well, I’m glad I’m not a boy,” I retorted.

    Micha shook his head. “Yeah, but girls make everything complicated. This is the first year we’ve had two girls in lighting crew and…fuck, it’s worse than I ever expected. You and Wang carry on all the time. Ohhh….Ohhh…Ohhh… Ewww… Ewww… Ewwww….You should hear yourselves. Then the drama club girls do it too. And when you have an exam. I just don’t want to watch what goes on when the scores go up. It’s huggie time. All the girls hug their friends and their enemies.”

    “We’re glad to see our friends do well,” I replied. “We’re in this together.”

    “And what are you going to do when they score you on a curve in college,” Micha suddenly got serious. We were down in the subway now and set to go our separate ways, but Micha wasn’t going anywhere.

    “Work with my friends to beat the curve together,” I answered.

    Micha snorted and we set off each in separate directions. I think I dozed a bit on the subway. I switched trains in Time Square and rode uptown. I passed the bodega and a few academic buildings and then I saw them by the side entrance to Main Hall which was still open for evening classes, and thus the easiest one to enter, except today it wasn’t easy.

    The picketers stood with well made signs and electronic cameras filming their every move. Other protesters handed out leaflets to students. The signs and the leaflets said: “RoAnn Testa — Child Abuser.” The pamphlets, one of which I took, had pictures of the kind of lock we had had to keep Ivanna from sneaking out of the apartment at the Ardsley.

    I jammed the pamphlet angrily into my in old, in-between coat pocket. I did not need this kind of aggrivation on a  good day, and I surely did not need it now. Then I got hold of myself. I looked at the faces on the picket line. Go-along-to-get-along Nicole was there. Talented Eliza from Houghton was there. The boy with the leather pants from Houghton was there. His name was Philip. Eden who also had a dress code exemption and bought all her clothes at Saks because her mother made her (She preferred certain exclusive boutiques of course…) was there.

    And then I saw who else was there: Stephenna Crowe, Marta Arrowhood, and the Marta clone whom went by the name Unity_grrl on Twitter. “Who needs closure when the past never dies?” I thought. Then I wondered about Ivanna. Was she inside? Did the protesters talk to her? What did she tell them?

    And what about Nervyworm? I walked up to Eliza whom I still think has more brains than Nicole. I’d talk to Nicole too, I thought. “You leave my little sister alone,” I said.

    “Ivanna’s not your sister,” sing-songed Eden.

    “I don’t mean Ivanna. I mean Minerva. She’s five years old, assholes! You saw her with Dr. Testa. RoAnn Testa’s our stepmother.”

    Several kids in the picket line giggled. A few snorted. “She’s five years old goddamnit!” I screamed.

    “Easy,” cautioned Stephenna Crowe. “You got in trouble at Houghton because you wouldn’t chill. Haven’t you learned anything?”

    “Thank God no!” I snapped back. “Mess with my little sister and you’re going to be sorry,” I threatened.

    “Ooohhh…I’m so scaird,” Philip cried out.

    “It’s all bullshit,” commented the Unity_grrrl.

    “What happened at Houghton was kid stuff,” I told the protesters. “Shit like that happens. I got out and I don’t care, but if you hurt my family, you’re going to regret it, understand?”

    “What are you going to do?” asked Marta Arrowhood herself.

    “Do you think I’m going to tell any of you,” I replied. I realized I was bluffing.

    Inside, Main Hall, the air was overheated and stale. I still shivered as I climbed the stairs. On a bulletin board in the department lounge were still images taken from YouTubes featuring the protesters. Above the images were the words: “Freedom of Expression.” I stared at the pictures. “They’re not just messing with my whole family,” I thought angrily. “They’re messing with everyone who works in this department or who has classes in this building,” and I wondered if my stepmother’s colleagues were sticking by her.

    Then I saw Nervy at the table trying to draw a vase with dried out pyracantha berries in it, or maybe the berries were fake. She didn’t care one bit about the Youtube images. I was glad. I went back to studying the images, looking for old classmates, and friends of Ivanna, and I froze….

    Ivanna was in several of the pictures. In one she smiled into the camera heroically. In another Eliza, Eden, Nicole, and several other girls were embracing her in a group hug. In a third she waved as she walked into Main Hall.

    “Ivanna,” I thought. “You’re a Goddamn point whore! You sold yourself. You testified the way they told you so you could be the center of drama for ECBAS. They paid you well. You’re going to fly through that fucking audition. All your friends will love you, and you’ll have lots of friends….as long as you do what you’re told and you don’t know how to do anything else. Pig! Filthy pig! That’s what you are! You don’t care who you hurt as long as you get that spotlight. And when they get tired of shining it on you, you’ll ask what else you can do for more points and more fame. Shit head! I’m ashamed that you are my sister!”

    I ran down the hall and flew into RoAnn’s office which was quiet because she and her colleague, Emily were working on their computers. Ivanna was nowhere to be found. “Where is she?” I asked.

    “Who?” asked Emily.

    “Ivanna. She’s not even here…”

    “She’s at Hallston Studio auditioning,” RoAnn answered as if Ivanna had auditions every day.

    “She’s in those videos!” I screamed.

    “I’m in them too,” RoAnn replied. “They asked us if we wanted to say anything.”

    “Did you sign a release?” I asked. This was a great way to get the videos pulled.  Young Achievers had a legal team and…

    “Yes,” replied RoAnn.

    “And did Ivanna sign one?” I sputtered.

    “Yes. They dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s.”

    “RoAnn isn’t afraid of anybody,” Emily told us.

    “The protesters are entitled to be here as long as they don’t block business in the building. The sidewalk is city property and Columbia believes in intellectual freedom.”

    “Nervy has to see all this,” I reminded RoAnn.

    “So she’ll learn about how freedom of speech works,” RoAnn answered.

    “You’re the only parent who can take care of her,” I argued back. “She doesn’t need to see you insulted.”

    “She’s going to have to get used to growing up the way things are now,” RoAnn’s brave face never came off. It was glued on. It never came off even when my youngest sister was concerned.

    “I’m going to take care of things if you don’t,” I threatened.

    “How’re you going to do that?” RoAnn asked.

    “Can I borrow your computer?” I asked my stepmother.

    “What are you going to do with it?” she asked.

    “Look up the school year at Grinell University in Iowa,” I answered. “Stephenna Crowe goes to Grinell.”

    I knew Stephenna’s father did not want his daughter in New York during the school year. Mom had done private consulting for the Crowes and could reach Stephenna’s parents when other people couldn’t, and Mom was just a cell phone call away. I drifted out into the hall.

    Mom picked up on the third ring. I explained the whole situation. While I was explaining, RoAnn and Emily both emerged from their office. Mom had the phone numbers and would be glad to call Stephenna’s parents. “Don’t mess with Wolf Balls,” I thought as I told my mother I loved her and hung up.

    “Do you feel better?” Emily asked. For some reason I wanted to slap her face.

    “Yes,” I answered. Among the shit heads protesting downstairs, there was going to be one very unhappy little turd.

    “Come on in the office and study,” RoAnn said to me. “You’ve got work to do, and we’re picking up Ivanna and nine. Then we’re going to Emmick’s for ice cream to celebrate.”

    I did not feel like a celebration any more than I felt like doing school work.

    “Kore, if Ivanna gets involved enough with the things she loves doing, they’ll matter more than ECBAS some day. She’ll also seen new and better role models and have friends who don’t share her politics.”

    “That’s the theory.”

    “It’s better than what I tried before. If this works, it will be the best thing I can do for my daughter.”

    I stared at the floor. RoAnn had just admitted she did not know what to do, which meant if we kids were clueless, then nobody knew what to do. “…And in the fall,” RoAnn continued. “She’ll be in with a different bunch of kids. There won’t be ECBAS as a major part of her life anymore.”

    “What if she goes back to North Carolina?” I asked.

    “It’s not going to happen. Anthony agreed to let her testify about the apartment even though he knew what our legal team would probably say about him. He was willing to give up Ivanna for the good of ECBAS. He sold his daughter for ideological reasons.”

    “That makes him a bigger point whore than Ivanna.”

    “No, not points, i-dee-ol-ogy. Anthony is a fanatic. He has his reasons, but he’s not close enough to his daughter to put her ahead of the cause, understand? Ivanna is going to have to live with that, but right now I’m glad because it’s giving me my best shot to get my daughter back.

    “It’s going to take a while. Those protesters will be gone in a few weeks. Ivanna will have her dancing, her yoga, her new school, and her new friends. Nature will take its course. We’re not going to have to fight.”

    I wasn’t sure I believed in what RoAnn was saying. RoAnn seemed to believe though. Adults though could convince themselves to believe all sorts of bullshit. “At least I got one of them,” was all I could answer. Maybe some day I could get all of the rest.

12. Goodbye “Step”

    Dad left us Thursday morning. RoAnn, Minerva, Ivanna, and I all had counseling once a week, and Thursday was our day for that.  Fortunately, the great Ms. Marmlestein, scheduled an evening session for us so that I could work on lighting crew, and Ivanna could spend time at the Douglas’. Lydia Douglas had returned from her sojourn in Vermont due to homesickness and the general “poor quality” of the local public schools which had turned Academic Optional in New York parlance.

    We were doing safety checks and lighting maintenance after school and I got to crawl around on the battens. I managed to slice the heel of my left hand on a wayward, cracked jell. Micah, after much profanity, managed to staunch the bleeding with a weird looking bandage built from the first aid kit. I then got to climb up on the battens again and go to work.

    As a result, I arrived at counseling with a dirty bandage. Someone had given Nervy Worm caryons and paper. She was drawing a pefectly symmetrical eight petal flower with each petal, identically striped. Since there were no turqoise crayons she mixed blue and green together using perfect technique. Something about the way Nervy drew reminded me of my mom, though my mom never drew anything. I thought of the virtues of hard work and executive planning.

    Nervy’s artwork kept her absolutely silent. Ivanna had nothing to say to me. Her Capezio’s as usual adorned her shoulder. She had been dancing at Lydia’s house and on her lunch break. She had a book on ballet open. It was not one of the ones with lots of pictures. Ivanna would read about what interested her.

    RoAnn brought papers to grade. I got out my Global Studies book on Japan and read about Commodore Perry pulling up his boats to Edo and “invading” the “Hermit Kingdom.” The reading took me away from the tomb like yet still close waiting room.

    When Ms. Marmlestein emerged she asked which of us wanted to go first. None of us answered, not even RoAnn. That meant Ivanna went first since she took us in alphabetical order by first name. Ivanna emerged looking spent.

    Then it was my turn. “Are you glad to have your sister back?” Ms. Marmlestein asked me. I was not sure how to answer the question. “I’m fine as long as she treats Nervy well and doesn’t make a lot of scenes.” I wondered if I should tell Ms. Marmlestein that she left out the “step.”  Was that on purpose?

    “Why do you think that would Ivanna make a scene or mistreat Nervy?” asked Ms. Marmlestein. Wasn’t the answer to this perfectly obvious? “I think my…” I stopped. Did I want to leave the “step” out too? “I think that Ivanna would rather be in North Carolina. I don’t think she likes being sent back to New York by a judge.” 

    “Then you can feel some empathy for your sister?”

    “Yes!” I cried out and I added. “I’m sorry I blew it and talked politics with her.”

    “Are you still talking politics with your sister?”

    “We haven’t had time for that yet?”

    Ms. Marmlestein tried a different question: “Kore, how do you think you can help your sister adjust to being back in New York?”

    “Well, I can not gloat around her or rub her face in it, or remind her that she sold her spot with her father for a whole bunch of ECBAS points?”

    “How do you know about that?” asked Ms. Marmelstein.

    “I learned about those things in Realitee. I also know Ivanna. I suspect she got paid a lot of points for telling about RoAnn locking her in the apartment. At least I hope they paid her.”

    “You’re very shrewd.” Ms. Marmletein put her long, old lady fingers together like a church steeple.

    “Do you think Ivanna made a mistake?”

    “I think Ivanna made a lot of mistakes, but it’s not my life.”

    “I mean in Ithaca in court?”

    “I don’t know….I mean yes, but no one can do anything about it now. ECBAS is the way it is, and it’s her choice.”

    “Your sister needs to put her life together back here in New York. Is there any way you can help her do that?”

    “I all ready told you,” I replied. “Just shutting up is half the battle.”

    “What about the other half?”

    I shrugged. “I don’t have much sympathy for ECBAS twirps,” I spat, and then I thought of Kwaata. “I have a friend in Drama Club who dances at a very fancy studio up in Harlem. I’m not sure what it takes to dance there or take classes there.”

    “Probably an audition. Maybe a bribe.”

    I suddenly realized, I was grinning as if I had swallowed excrement and was now ready to laugh at the joke someone had played on me. It is wonderful NOT to feel powerless.

    And by the way Ms. Marmlestein is right. Ivanna is not my “step” sister any more. I am closer to her than I was to Kyril even back in Scranton. You don’t have to agree wtih somebody to sympathize with them or want to help them.

    Friday, I found Kwaata at lunch and got the details about the studio from her. “They only do auditions in the fall,” she told me. I felt my heart sink, but then I remembered all of Ivanna’s points. I didn’t say anything. “Well, maybe we can schedule one for my sister for next fall,” I said which came out all awkward, but explaining that Ivanna was a poor little rich girl was not going to fly here at Brooklyn Tech. I did not want my fellow students even metaphorically spitting at my sister with contempt.

    Friday night I came home to Ivanna teaching Nervy yoga moves. I got dinner readyand reminded everyone that Nervy and I had to go to Lincoln Square in the morning. “What about the trip to Fairway?” I asked.

    “Can’t we make it later?” I asked. “You’re the one who suggested we atetnd services.”

    “We need to practice our songs,” Nervy added.

    “You’re singing at a synagogue?” asked Ivanna.

    “Everybody sings in synagogue,” I replied.

    Then I gave Ivanna the card from the studio that I had coaxed from Kwaata at lunch. Ivanna turned it over in her hands. “You may have pull to arrange an audition there,” I explained.

    “I’ll think about it,” Ivanna told me.

    After supper, Nervy and I practiced hymns. Then Nervy went to sleep and I joined Ivanna and RoAnn in the study. Ivanna read her dance book. RoAnn worked at the computer. I read biology and took a practice Regents. My scores was better than last week, but still not where I wanted it.

    RoAnn rearranged the schedule. I had to take the subway uptown and walk Nervy to Fairway after services. RoAnn had brought the truck for shopping. She sat in the cafe and left us to our own devices. Nervy wanted canned asparagus. I got three cans. She had eaten it at Mom’s and was just remembering it. I also bought spinach for spinach salad with “ranch sauce,” another Nervy request. Apples were at the end of their season.  I bought four mangoes. Nervy loved mangoes and asked for them, but she asked me take out one apple to take with us to Columbia when we were loading the truck for the drive back.

    “Nothing in this house ever changes,” complained Ivanna as we rode back. RoAnn was not playing any CD’s. I noticed the silence and suddenly I felt a weird kind of fear.

    “Did you expect anything to change in two weeks?”

    “Well, you thought I was gone forever.”

    “You weren’t gone,” answered RoAnn. “We talked on the phone every night.”

    “Yeah…but you didn’t sound like you thought I was coming back. You threatened to give my room to Nervy.”

    “Do you think it was fair she should have to sleep in a corner while your room sat empty?”

    Ivanna did not reply. “I want to go to the Zante’s this afternoon,” Ivanna told us all.

    “Fine, I’ll escort you after lunch, and then the rest of us will study at Main Hall. We’ll come back and get you at what time?”

    “I don’t know.”

    “Fine, call and ask discretely if they are  inviting you for dinner?”

    RoAnn glanced at me. “I wish I could just get everyone sandwiches from Kapor’s.”

    “We just went grocery shopping,” I reminded my stepmother.

    “OK, I’ll get sandwiches for just Ivanna and me. You make sandwiches from what you got at the deli and whatever other stuff you eat wtih them. We’ll eat at eight o’clock if Ivanna is not going to eat at her friend’s.”

    For a few seconds, it felt like we were back in September and that the riots and ECBAS had never happened. Ivanna stayed at the Zante’s until well past ten pm. Then after our own dinner, RoAnn, Nervy, and I drove across town to get her in the truck. Again, there were no CD’s playing on the ride across Central Park. RoAnn did not ask what happened at the Zante’s and Ivanna did not tell, but then again, my sister’s social life should have been partly private.

    I did not ask about the CD’s until we were back in the apartment. “Ms. Marmlestein asked me not to play CD’s every time you kids were in the truck. She said we had to learn to talk like a family again.”

    “You’re serious about this,” I asid.

    “So are you,” answered RoAnn. “Ivanna is going to try to arrange some kind of audition at that high powered dance studio on Monday. She didn’t get to do much dancing in North Carolina.”

    “How come?”

    “My exhusband used her as a babysitter.”

    I had nothing to say. Nervy, meanwhile, had gotten out her crayons and was drawing instead of getting ready for bed. What she drew was an apple, an exact copy carefully approximating all the variations in tints. Nervy usually did not draw still lifes. “What’s with the picture?” I asked.

    “Ms. Marmlestein says I should draw new things instead of just abstracts. What you draw changes the way you think.” I did not answer. I wondered if Anthony DiFranco was going to keep his half of the counseling bargain. I wondered what would happen if he did. Then a part me very much wanted Ivanna’s father to act in good faith. Ivanna after all was my sister.

13. RoAnn’s Verdict and All of our Verdict

    Dad was getting supper readywhen I got home. “Come eat, Kore,” he greeted me. We had lentil stew and home made potato salad and red cabbage from a can.

    “RoAnn is taking Ivanna out for ice cream tonight!” Nervy told me. “All day long Ivanna sat at her daddy’s table in the courtromm, but then RoAnn walked over. The judge asked what she was doing. She told the judge she wanted to invite her daughter out for icecream. Isn’t that great?”

    It sounded one hundred percent like RoAnn. It also brought a lump to my throat, but then I recovered my reason. “How did you find out about all this?” I asked my little sister.

    “I read her the email,” answered Dad. “Here, I put it on the fridge door.”

    An email on the fridge door could not be all bad. I started reading.

    Dear family,

    Today has been tumultuous to say the least, but I am still going to take my daughter, Ivanna, out for Purity Ice Cream. Kore, I don’t know if you remember how we all went out to eat Purity the weekend Sammy and I got married. It is very wrong for Ivanna and me to miss this opportunity.

    After our legal side presented its evidence that was mostly papers, ECBAS put Anthony on the stand and questioned him. Then the Young Achiever’s attornies got to cross examine him. It was rather pleasant to watch.

    Then th judge insisted on taking Ivanna in chambers. I did not expect this, but it is usually part of these sorts of proceedings with an older child, and Ivanna is nearly eleven.

    Ivanna spent way too long in Judge Gershbein’s chambers. When he came out he asked to put ME on the stand. He showed me a transcript of what my daughter had said. Ivanna did not lie. She did not have to lie. The judge then said he was showing the transcript to Anthony’s legal team.

    I found myself on the stand. I admitted to locking Ivanna in the apartment for three weeks though I did say she was let out to go to school and to shop and had full computer access which she often refused to use. I said I regretted it but had no choice.

    Then my attornies got out the rest of the story. They switched effortlessly to a strategy we had jokingly called Plan B. No, it is  not a contraceptive. Instead, we presented the paper trail and depoisitions that provide evidence of Anthony’s failed and successful spousal kidnapping of Ivanna.

    The judge then asked our attornies if they wanted to put Anthony on the stand. Anthony refused to testify. The judge told him that this was NOT a criminal proceeding. Then my legal team said they preferred to examine Ivanna before they examined Anthony.

    Ivanna gasped. One of my lawyers told her that she would not be testifying against her father. “All we want is a few facts.”

    “I’ll stop the proceedings if they get to harsh,” the judge reassured my daughter who was none too reassured. She was brave though.

    The judge mainly went over the details of both the failed kidnap attempt which got as far as Republic Airport and the successful one in which Ivanna flew out of New Paltz.

    Then it was Anthony’s term. The legal team asked about picking up his daughter at Ashville airport and how he had arranged a private plane from Republic and again from New Paltz. He said that friends he preferred not to name had paid for the flights. The lawyers asked how he had arranged for the town cars that picked up Ivanna both times. He said he had paid for them.

    At this point, the judge called a recess which is why I am back in my motel room. I have to drive up to the Statler and get Ivanna. We are still going out for ice cream. Anthony is welcome to come with us if he doesn’t trust me. I could after all, just keep going back to New York with Ivanna as a passenger. I am not going to do that though.

    I hated seeing the whole mess aired in court. I felt embarassed describing how Dr. Angelus talked me into taking the locks off the doors. I felt embarassed speaking about my own desparation.

    I am also puzzled. My legal team’s original plan was not to discuss the spousal kidnappings, NOT because I had locked Ivanna in the apartment after the first failed attempt, but because I still felt that Anthony and I could better work out the best arrangements for Ivanna without a judge getting involved. Now that chance is gone. Mre puzzling, the head of my legal team, said that Anthony had far more to lose by attacking me for locking in Ivanna than I did due to the two spousal idnappings. Now of course the whole mess is out in court. Anthony’s, Ivanna’s, and my own fate are in the hands of judge Gershbein who will have a decision for us at 2pm.

    I hope I have a pleasant evening eating ice cream with my daughter. I wish all of you were here with us in Ithaca.

    Love
    RoAnn Testa

    I thought of the mural of the asshole on the sidewalk in front of Houghton. I wondered if Youth Voices would be covering “RoAnn’s Trial.” I wondered if any one had bribed judge Anthony.

    I don’t have to tell you I could not sleep Monday night. I read until my eyes ached. I did math problems. I even took a practice biology Regents and scored badly. When I gave up studying, I listened to hymns ripped from my practice CD so I could learn to sing the Hebrew songs at services. Around 4:30am, I got up and put on tea. I took a shower and got dressed and woke Nervy Worm. She is still my favorite Nervy Worm. She needed her made to order breakfast and her escort to Houghton.

    Oddly enough, I had no fears about dropping off my little sister. I was even surprised that there were news photographers, bloggers, Tumblrs, and the curious gathered in a crowd around the sidewalk mural. The crowd gasped and laughed. “That’s my sister,” Nervy Worm said aloud, but people don’t listen to little kids. Littlest siblings belong in their place.

    “What do you think the judge is going to do?” Nervy asked me as I took her in to before school day care.

    “I’ll find out when I get home from school,” I told her. Actually I would find out some time later because the Computer Club had an angel mission to the study center down near IS 179 in Queens. We were bringing some of our old computer parts to fix several old computers and try and get them working. We carried the big boxes of parts on the subway and staggered down the sidewalk with them.

    Big high school boys helped us haul them up the service elevator. We had a space behind the lab for computer surgery. I managed to nearly burn myself with a soldering iron. I was in a foul mood as I rode back on the subway to Manhattan. I decided to make the mood fouler. I dug out my blackberry and checked Twitter.

    @Sxxy_Pache: @Sxxy_Raven @Sxxy_Sistah @Alepha @Unity_grrl @Sxxy_Arrow @Silver_Feet @Inner_Beauty  It’s official. The judge gave Dr. Testa-Asshole her kid.

    @Sxxy_Raven: @(all of the above except her)  Can’t they appeal?

    @Sxxy_Pache: @(all of the above except her)  Not likely. Maybe…. Who knew they were getting ready for this thing. it was like a trap or something.

    @Unity_grrl: @(all of the above except her) We are going to have to take action. I think this needs to go direct message. You know who might be reading this.

    @Sxxy_Pache @(all of the above except her) She always hangs out on here and reads this. She’s been stalking us for almost a year.

    Direct Message from @Sxxy_Sistah: What’s going to happen to poor Ivanna? I feel so awful!

    Direct Messsage from me  to @Sxxy_Sistah: Ivanna will be home about eleven o’clock tonight.

    Somehow RoAnn managed to FAX a copy of the judge’s transcript to Dad at work before she and Ivanna got on the road back to New York. Here is an except….

    “By not communicating with his former spouse and by arranging for Ivanna’s transportation behind her mother’s back, Mr DiFranco has been found to have acted in egregious bad faith. It is not for this court to judge whether a crime was committed. Ms. Testa chose not to press charges, but when two spouses can not communicate about their child, joint custody is impossible and when one spouse shows consumate, poor judgement, it is the other spouse who needs sole temporary custody of his/her child.

    “I am therefore awarding RoAnn Testa sole temporary custody of her daughter, Ivanna DiFranco.

    “I am also ordering that the entire family undergo communications counseling. When Mr. DiFranco proves he can communicate with his exspouse and behave in a responsible manner, I will be willing to revisit the custody issue and return joint custody.

    “In the interim, this court awards Anthony DiFranco supervised visitation two weekends a month either in North Carolina, New York City, or at a third location.”

    “What a win!” I nearly gasped.

    “They’ll be here in less than two hours, and it’s your night to shower with your sister,” Dad answered.

    Ivanna had all ready eaten. I decided Nervy needed a shower more than I needed food. We stood under the hot water with Nervy kicking and splashing like an ecstatically happy little kid which she was. Two of her beloved “big girls” were returning. I did not have the heart to tell her that one of them would be wretchedly unhappy and overflowing with anger like the fizz on a shaken up Dr. Pepper.

    I helped Nervy get dry, put on my nightie, and padded into the kitchen for a late dinner. There was still some lentil soup and I also wanted some Japanese style frozen vegetables from two trips ago to Fairway. Everything gets eaten eventually.

    Then I saw them. RoAnn drank coffee and nibbled at an ice cream sandwich. Ivanna ate a power bar. I wondered if the power bar were stale. Do those thigns ever get stale? It was as if they had never left. For a moment, I pretended they were a tableau in a wax museum.

    Then Ivanna looked up. “It’s good to have you back,” I told her.

    “Fuck you,” she replied.

    “You know that curse words show a poverty of imagination.”

    “That stupid judge had a poverty of imagination,” Ivanna told her mother. “What am I supposed to do here?”

    “You answer the question,” RoAnn responded.

    “I’m going to school in the morning, aren’t I?”

    “Yes, and you’ll make contact with your tutors. You also need some fresh books from the library. By the way, you’re not on lockdown any more, so let’s see what we can do for your social life.”

    I wondered if noblesse oblige is back, but I thought about Nervy waiting for me to put her to bed. I had to read a story to her. “Excuse me,” I said to my stepmother and stepsister. Nobelesse oblige was never going to return. That much was certain.

14. On the Boards and On the Pavement

    Sunday night, Nervy and I practiced singing with the boys choir on our practice CD’s. There were no girls in the choir of singing children, but at Lincoln Square both girls and women could sing as part of a co-ed group. I’d heard about the women not being allowed to read the Torah in Orthodox synagogues from Dad. A rabbi in Coney Island confirmed it last fall. It did not matter to me since I don’t know Hebrew. Just following along well would make me happy. I think it would make Nervy happy too. If Dad wanted to fight the battles of the 1970’s then let him. I wasn’t even born then.

    Monday morning I took Nervy down to Houghton and found a huge crowd outside the high school entrance. It was not just kids my age and older, but middle schoolers, lower schoolers, and even the pre-K’s with their day care workers and counselors. Faculty watched from a distance. First I thought someone had gotten sick or died, but I’d hope that in a case like that the adults would have the sense to take the little kids inside.

     I made my way to the edge of the crowd. Nervy Worm’s hand felt sweaty in my own. She wanted to see too. I realized I needed to drop her off at day care and continue on to school. “Come on,” I told my little sibling. “This is not for us.”

    Nervy groaned. She really was curious. “OK, just one small look,” I told her and managed to find a space in the crowd that let me see. On the sidewalk etched in thin charcoal or soft pencil was the beginning of an elaborate pastel drawing. Guarding the drawing was not only go-along-to-get-along Nicole whom I remembered from last year but also the nasty girl with black tips on her blond, baby fine locks, and several other kids whose names came back. The artists worked from what looked like an oil painting.

    I recognized one of them as Eliza. I had sat next to Eliza who in other circumstances might have made a good friend, but the big kids liked her and she was content in her privilege. She was content enough that she constantly gave me advice on how to be “more popular” and “more liked.” None of the advice would have worked anyway, I told myself now. “At least you got what you wanted,” Eliza told me when I told her about my acceptance to Brooklyn Tech last spring.

    Eliza’s head was down. She could not see me as she mixed gold and pink pastels to get the perfect flesh tone. The oil panting she was helping to copy was of a huge human rear end with a soft, realistically squishy, and very brown turd dripping out of its slightly reddened orifice.

    Above the defecating asshole was a circle with a picture of what I recognized as Cornell’s bell tower in Uris Library. Once long ago, Ivanna and I had climbed the hundred plus steps to the top of the bell tower in time to watch a student with long hair play the six o’clock concert on the bells which were attached to a wooden machine sort of like organ pedals. As I thought of it that morning, the bell  player had been the organist at Dad and RoAnn’s wedding. “Nervy you were too young to see all this,” I thought. “You weren’t even born yet.”

    Then I saw another circle with a girl drawn inside it. The wavy hair and shape of the face and ribbon that bound two Capezios together so she could wear them as a fashion accessory when they were not on her feet were enough to tell me who stared at me from the pavement.

    “They’re giving Ivanna support!” Nervy explained as if any explanation was needed.

    “Ivanna is in Ithaca,” I replied.”And RoAnn thinks it’s find if she stays in North Carolina. They weren’t getting along anyway…”

    “Hello Kore,” Nicole sauntered up to me. “What are you doing here?”

    “Dropping off Nervy at day care,” I responded. I felt painful vibes.

    “No one’s inside the day care,” Nicole turned just a little helpful. “The day care kids are over by the door. Here, I’ll take your sister over.”

    “Too bad RoAnn’s trial is not on TV today. It would be great to watch,” said black tips who had once spat at me last winter during the beginning of the push back.

    “My step mother is not on trial,” I replied.

    “Huh?” black tips was really clueless.

    “The legal papers say ‘Matter of DiFranco.’ RoAnn is Dr. Testa.”

    “Doctor Testa,” snorted black tips. “They ought to take away her license!”

    The other girls laughed. I felt like screaming at them that their code was broken, but this wasn’t code, it was art. I found Nervy’s day care counselor and dropped her off. Some of the little  kids looked bored to tears. They had no interest in the politics or conflict behind the pictures. I was glad to get away from Houghton and yes, I crossed the street to avoid flying saliva. You only get a chance to spit at Kore Bihar once.

    After school we had lighting practice. I was rusty with my programming and rusty just using the lighting board. Drama Club was going to present it’s experimental one acts the first week in June and it was time for each member of the lighting crew to get paired up with the cast of their very own one act. The one acts had started blocking. Howard got a boy whose one act was mainly a trumpet solo and a short monologue. I got four acrobatic dancers who performed to a 1970’s tune called Manhattan Skyline. Chin got a group of four who were doing a scene from a play in which married couples squabble and argue. Chin’s actors talked endlessly about costumes and props. Their blocking was actually quite complex.

    The best way to handle blocking to set up a preprogrammed lighting pattern that would only need small, manual adjustments is to mark out actors’ positions on stage with tape. With eight one acts, we needed eight colors of tape. Javonovich snarled and growled over the tape box. “We don’t have enough fucking colors!” he announced to all and sundry.

    Chin nosed over to the box and took count. We have nine colors, but there’s not enough silver. “The silver’s duct tape,” explained Micah. “We need that to fix really bad cables.”

    “So that makes eight colors,” Chin answered.

    “Wow she can fucking add,” groaned Javonovich, “but how do you get eight? I only see seven.”

    “Blue, white, yellow, black, chocolate brown, green, scarlet, and burgundy.”

    “Scarlet and who?” asked Micah.

    “Two shades of red,” replied Chin. “The bright one is scarlet and the dark one is burgundy.”

    “And how are we supposed to keep that fucking straight?” groaned Javonovich.

    “Easy,” Chin explained as if teaching a younger sibling. “Look at Kore’s sweater. It has scarlet and burgundy stripes. You do see three colors there?” Chin looked genuinely concerned.

    “Yeah, but it’s just red and white!” Javonovich shook his head.

    “That’s not white. That’s cream, and then there are two shades of red. Can’t you see that?”

    “Yeah, but it’s…Chin, my brain doesn’t want to remember forty-five hundred fucking colors. It’s not important!”

    “Tell you what,” Micah interrupted. “Why don’t you and Bihar each take one of the red shades since you’re so good at telling them apart. This way the rest of us will just avoid the red. OK?”

    Chin shrugged. I smiled. “Which one do you want?” Chin asked me. I took scarlet since I’m the scarlet type, and I went to work with my group who were mainly dancers.

    The dancers hated blocking. They wanted to move around and practice moves the way Rachielle and her friends practiced gospel songs around the piano. This was not like Houghton where the dancers used their talent to treat the younger kids they didn’t like like dirt. We had no younger kids at Tech unless you counted freshpeople like me, but there was at least one freshwoman among the dancers.

    She sat near the edge of the stage, near the ladder to the lightinng loft doing stretches and impossible splits. She was tall for a dancer, all lean, and all brown. I was in my Global Studies class with her, though we seldom took the same subway home to Manhattan. I was a lot more politicized so want home from Queens half the time and lighting crew made my schedule subtly different from drama club and whatever else the girl did after school.

    “So where’d you go to school last year?” the tall freshperson dancer asked me as she stretched. As a dancer she certainly could walk and chew gum at the same time.

    “Houghton,” I nearly spat it out. I’d never forget it. I tried not to think of the mural on the sidewalk, a mural everyone in the neighborhood would see, a mural that would make the newspapers and possibly the local TV news.

    “Didn’t you go to school with an Eliza Phelps?” dancer asked.

    I reached for my Blackberry instinctively, but then remembered it was wrapped up safely in its towel in the bottom of my backpack.

    “How did you know?” I asked.

    Dancer replied: “I used to take gymnastic dance class with her. She was very good and she was such a sweet, sheltered kid. She used to talk about you and how she was afraid you would get like Dylan and Kliebold, the two kids at Columbine.”

    “How would I make myself into two people?” I felt the heat rush to my face. I don’t have a brave face. I wish I had a brave face.

    “You know what I mean.”

    “Well I took the exam to get in here instead,” I answered. Actually, I took the exam to get into Stuyvesent, but now I was here. So too was Dancer.

    “I took the exam because my parents wanted me to get a ‘real education’ and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be around performing arts types and nothing else. It’s more diverse here.”

    “You can’t ever make peace with the past though,” I added. “We’re all products of it and it keeps influencing the present. You can’t get rid of it.”

    “You’re right…kind of.”

    “I saw them making this incredible mural at Houghton when I dropped my little sister off there.”

    “Houghton’s not really a school any more,” Dancer told me. “The rich brats took it over. You’re political. You ought to  know.”

    “That’s one of the reasons I am political,” I smiled.

    Dancer pulled herself up into a squat. I remembered her name then. It was Kwaata. She did not like nonWestern Studies despite her African name. I was an English and history person because I’d been to a fancy private school and who knows why else.

    “When I go to studio to teach the little kids, I still sometimes see Eliza,” Kwaata told me. “She doesn’t talk much about you any more. We have a rule at studio since Christmas, NO POLITICS. Kids on both sides dance and we’d start fighting if we started that kind of talk. Still, stuff gets out.”

    I was supposed to ask what Eliza said about me, but Eliza and I were down different roads. “Stuff gets distorted,” I wanted to end this conversation, NOW!

    “True,” Kwaata mused. “Eliza was talking about how they were going to put Doctor Testa from Columbia University on trial for child abuse charges in Ithaca, New York. First, Columbia is here in Manhattan. That one was good for a big laugh….Kore are you OK?”

    “RoAnn Testa is my stepmother,” I replied. “She’s in Ithaca for a hearing about her separation agreement from her first husband. They have to edit it because my stepsister went to live with her in North Carolina.”

    “Fuck!” Kwaata shook her head.

    “And your stepsister’s not I-van-a Di-Fran-co, is she?” Kwaata rose to her full five foot eight inch height and blinked.

    “She is,” I said. “I miss her. She’s a good kid at heart though sometimes we fight. It was just normal fighting.”

    “Understood, I do that with my cousins sometimes. School has gone out of fashion.”

    “It’s more than that.”

    “No politics.” Kwaata raised a finger to her lips.

    “It’s too late for that,” I said and then I stopped. “I’m sorry,” I confessed.

    It’s OK. Kwaata rode back to Manhattan with me that night on the subway. I told her about Houghton and not being allowed to even try out for things, and the kids with the mental health exemptions from dress code. I told the whole story which was actually fairly fresh to Kwaata because she had only heard Eliza’s side of it.

    I did not tell about RoAnn, Anthony, and Ivanna. That was family business. Besides, I did not know what had happened at the hearing in Ithaca that day. I had been way too busy to check my email.

    “You had your reasons for being pissed off,” Kwaata summed up my story which was also Eliza’s story and her own.

    I climbed back to street level at 96th street and walked down Central Park West in the beginnings of spring weather. I needed a new in between coat. I needed to check my email. I needed to fix Nervy’s lunch if Dad didn’t do it first. I needed to study. I did not need to forget the past. I told myself that tonight I did not want to watch the news, though news of the giant mural on the sidewalk would find its way to me no matter what I did.

15. First Lessons in Religious Education

    Saturday morning before RoAnn left for Ithaca, I took Nervy Worm to Lincoln Square. The rabbi’s assistant at Larisa’s synagogue had recommended Lincoln Square and I had always intended to go. Nervy had a dark “uniform skirt” that she wore with a favorite sweater and I wore one of my synagogue skirts, so having the right clothes was not a problem.

    The problem was once we bid adieu to the Dominican door person and headed down town on Central Park West that I realized how absurd and stupid the whole errand was. Now going to synagogue is a good thing. RoAnn is right there, but she was leaving on Sunday, and I should have been spending time with her. Of course there was an empty place now from when she used to go out and get pastries for Ivanna. That was all the more reason I needed to stay with her.

    Then there was my father. He was here to look after Nervy and me, but when RoAnn returned he would be gone in a matter of days for a matter of weeks. Time with my family was precious, and time in a house of worship was NOT time with my family. Of course Nervy Worm was family too, but once we reached the synagogue, I needed to deposit her in the Kindergarten and Grade One religious class. Also, Lincoln Square reminded me of Houghton Middle School. Little kids and even some older kids did not go to their classes but instead roamed around or hung out at the main service with their parents. I could see kids on the playground. Did they ha ve a mental health exemption like the one from Houghton’s dress code? I felt faintly irritated. Nervy did not have to be exposed to bullshit like this. I knew that once she saw it, she would feel poisoned on learning what for her, thanks to our secular parents, was a totally  new religion.

    I tried to concentrate on the service. The Bible reading was the best part even though it was the curses in Leviticus which frightened many superstitious people. I’m not superstitious, and besides, I was cursed for three years. It was called Houghton Middle School.

    The singing was the second best part, though I didn’t know the songs, and the service is all in another language. Public schools teach French and Spanish (and sometimes other Western languages. Chinese is trendy but it’s just a fad. They do really teach it at Brooklyn Tech though.) not Hebrew, so I had to follow along in English to understand the words which meant I could not sing. They were pretty songs with great singable tunes. Many of them were prayers. I realized that if Nervy and I stuck with going to synagogue, we were going to need a practice CD to learn the songs.

    They had piles of junk food for what they called kiddush after the service. I warned Nervy not to eat too much since we were going to Fairway and then either out to eat for supper or to have a very late lunch at home. We did not have that many lunches as a family, and family was more important than the food. A lady in a dusty pink suit introduced herself to me as Ms. Gross (What an awful name with which to go through life. If I was named that I would change it!) asked if Nervy and I had any place to go for lunch. We had our apartment of course. She then asked where our parents were. I told them that my stepMom was a lapsed Catholic and my dad was not religious. Then I realized I should have told the lady with the gross name to mind her own business, but synagogues are full of nosey people. At least no one said we couldn’t go to the service.

    I walked Nervy home and got ready to hear her complain, though she doesn’t whine much around me. “It was good, but all the songs are in another language,” Nervy stated. This was not exactly a complaint. “We have a lot of catching up to do. I’m going to get us a CD so we can learn the songs.”

    “Why not download it?” asked Nervy.

    “I don’t think they have religious CDs on the net. Besides we’d have to burn it anyway. You don’t have an MP3 player.”

    I then asked if they had read the Bible in Nervy’s religious class. “They did somethign called Torah portion. It was about Moses and the Jewish people.”

    “Sounds like Bible. They have fancy names for things,” I explained back. “We need to get a children’s Bible so you can learn about that stuff.”

    “Then I’ll be a great student?” Nervy’s killer instinct surfaced.

    “You got it,” I gave my favorite Nervy Worm a smile. The nosey ladies and kids who were three steps ahead of us due to being in religious families hadn’t caused my little sibling to lose interest in religion. Maybe RoAnn was right. This kind of a project would be good for us.

    I told Dad about all the stuff we needed to buy as we rode to Fairway. RoAnn had Gigi, an old Broadway show playing on the CD player in the truck. We were not walking and RoAnn was not giving any one else a choice of CD. RoAnn needed her music even though she would have it all five hours on Sunday for the long drive to Ithaca.

    “I guess we have our trip on Sunday planned out,” Dad said with a laugh that could not have been happy. It was, obliging. That was the best word for it. “We can visit the Judaica stores in Williamsburgh in Brooklyn. You can ask the peple who run them if they make what you need. The Bible stories we can buy at Barnes and Noble or Books a Million. Do you have the money for this?” Dad asked.

    The answer was yes. I had over a hundred dollars saved and I was willing to invest fifty or more in obtaining some kid friendly and beginner friendly religious material. “And now,” Dad announced. “You are going to load up on a week’s supply of pork products.”

    “Keeping up in synagogue is not going kosher,” I snapped back.

    “One step at a time,” RoAnn ended the argument.

    “What would you do if Kore went frum?” Dad asked his wife who is also my stepmother.

    “Who knows?” RoAnn sighed. “My sister, Jacqueline used to to drag me to mass regularly, but even she never considered becoming a nun.”

    “It’s different for Jews,” Dad explained. “There are whole frum families at Lincoln Square. They’re not cloistered.”

    I thought of Ms. Gross. I wanted to laugh at the name, but for a moment I remembered her utter nosiness, and the efforts to stuff Nervy and me full of junk food.

    “First, Kore and Nervy would have to change their diet,” answered RoAnn.

    “RoAnn, do you know what keeping kosher involves?” Dad asked.

    “No meat and milk together and no exotic meats,” I answered.

    Dad smiled. “It’s more than that. It involves throwing out all our dishes and buying new ones.”

    “No one around here is going to do that,” I replied. “Besides, I’m not ready to give up cold cuts.”

    “I don’t think you have to worry for a while,” RoAnn told Dad and we headed into Fairway for the weekly stockpiling  of food.

    Sunday Dad was good to his word. “You need to see what you’re both getting into,” Dad told us as we descended into the 86th Street subway. Dad didn’t know about Ms. Gross. I all ready knew about nosey people and rabbis who didn’t really answer questions which was why we were going to do some home religious education.

    “No one’s even thinking about making RoAnn throw out all the dishes,” I told Dad. “We’d have to get rid of that beautiful blue, Muranno bowl. That would be traumatic.”

    Dad smiled, and then his smile faded. He held on to a pole so he could keep an eye on us girls while we sat on the subway’s hard plastic seats. We wore dress code clothes. It was too cold for shorts, and it was Sunday after all. Still we wanted to look clean and respectable. It was in between coat weather, and my in between coat was too short in the sleeves and ratty from two years of middle school. I thought the coat smelled like Houghton.

    I was glad Nervy did not complain. Dad promised to take us out to lunch “somewhere good,” which since we did not have RoAnn with us, meant somewhere where we didn’t have to worry about a picky stepmother finding what to eat that did not revolt her.

    RoAnn by now was probably across the New Jersey/New York border and somewhere bewtewen Rockland and Orange Counties. Perhaps she had made her way to the throughway which she would take to Suffern. Beyond Suffern, she would follow a road called the Qickway into the Catskills as far as Binghamton and then she would head north to Whitney Point and then east to that temple of learning, Ithaca.

    I thought of the last time I had been in Ithaca. I was not yet nine. Dad and RoAnn asked if I had a nice skirt to wear. I had a nice dress, a red plaid one. I packed it along with dark socks to pick up the black in the plaid and my school shoes and good barettes for my hair. I was a vain kid at times.

    We rode north past Binghamton and then through Owego and into a town with a college like a city. This was Cornell where Dad had his undergrad, Mom had her bachelors, and RoAnn had earned her PhD. It was also where the English department ate Anthony DiFranco alive. Anthony and Ivanna were now in Asheville, North Carolina, but Anthony was long gone on that day and Ivanna was with RoAnn.

    There was no other place for my dad and stepmom to get married. Cornell had a beautiful chapel called Sage with pictures of philosophers on the walls and in the mosaic on the floor. There was even an organ, and don’t ask me how my dad or stepmom had hired an organist to play Lady by the Little River Band instead of Here Come’s the Bride All Dressed in White. Ivanna and I watched Dad and RoAnn get married. The irony is that Dad married Mom in Sage Chapel too. I know this from my mom’s wedding albums. I wonder where Mom would have married Barry if the two of them had not broken up. Ithaca is the place in my family where people get married and in RoAnn’s family where they get divorced too.

    In Times Square we changed subway trains. Nervy did not complain. She needed to tie her shoe and to pee. We found a ladies room. Dad did not complain. We rode the train to Brooklyn and part of it was above ground after the train went through deep tunnels under the East River. Dad talked about the sand hogs who dug the tunnels and about how they had taught scientists about the bends which you get from working at high pressure in the sand under the river bottoms.

    We emerged in a part of Brooklyn called Williamsburgh. Many of the people here were what Dad called frum. The men wore long black suits and a few wore knickers or breeches. The women didn’t get to wear knickers. They were dresses and all seemed to have their hair dyed a reddish brown. I would later learn that most of the women wore wigs. Some wore head scarves though shot through with shiney material or in pretty floral prints. I would have preferred a red bandanna myself. I had on a red sweater and air force blue military surplus pants with red piping. I wore trouser socks and shoes. Nervy’s sweater was chartreuse and her pants were black courderoy. Dad had on a plaid flannel shirt and he had his jacket open.

    It took us a while to find the Judaica stores. There were several of them all piled up. The first one had a man with a big white beard and a yarmulke on his head behind the counter. I thought of the Calliope for some reason but everything was such a mess in this little store, Nervy and I could find nothing. The man gave us an ugly stare too. He said he didn’t have stuff for goyim. I said that we were Jewish and would take our business elsewhere.

    “We’re going to get in trouble,” Nervy advised me.

    “Any luck?” Dad asked.

    “No,” I said and we tried the next store. Here the proprietor had a reddish brown beard and he asked why we wanted to learn Jewish songs. I told him we attended services at Lincoln Square.

    “Are you Jewish?” he asked.

    “Are you fucking nosey?” I thought. I felt like telling the man that we were secret Nazi spies sent to take notes, but I didn’t. Instead I said that of course we were Jewish and we were interested in getting more out of the service. The man had a CD we could buy for thirty-five dollars.

    I said we’d think about it. He offered it for thrity-two dollars. I felt like telling him to fuck off. I knew we needed to get out of that store fast. I did not want to cause a riot.

    “Any luck?” Dad asked.

    I shook my head. “I’m glad you didn’t get really pissed off,” Nervy summed things up.

    “Did someone insult you?” Dad asked.

    “Yeah,” I answered.

    “Do you want to go home?” Dad asked.

    “I want to try another store,” I said.

    This time a man with a salt and pepper beard manned the counter. I explained what we needed when I saw that half the CD’s were in a locked cupboard and had tiny Hebrew titles. Were there Jews who shoplifted, I wondered. The man opened the case and offered us three CD’s for twenty-four dollars.

    He asked how long we had been going to schul. “What’s schul?” this time it was Nervy who spoke up.

    “Syn-a-gog,” the man translated. “Do your parents know you’re doing this?” the man asked. There is a fine line between  nosey and insightful and you can guess which side this proprietor was on.

    “Yes,” I said. “It’s my stepmother’s idea.”

    “Is she Jewish?”

    “She’s Italian American,” I replied.

    “I’m glad you’re wanting to learn,” was the man’s answer. He gave us his businss card and threw in an easy siddur in English for Nervy and a book of Jewish teen values for me for another six dollars.

    I showed Dad the goods when we emerged from the store. I didn’t expect Dad to be pleased. He looked at the book of Jewish teen values and sniffed. “You ought to try reading this,” he said. I told him I was more interested in the Bible. I reminded him I’d written a paper on the Song of Songs for English. I thought about bringing Mr. Markelow, the proprietor, a copy of my Song of Songs paper.

    We went all the way to Queens for Sunday dinner. Dad wanted to try a Uighur restaurant where they served lamb though he got the vegetarian plate. Nervy and I had a lamb dish with bread instead of rice, and there were potatoes and string beans with what tasted like Indian spices. The meal left us stuffed. Nervy said she was tired.

    We sat on a bench for a while. I was not ready to read any of the new books. I wanted to think of RoAnn who was probably in Ithaca, checking into her room at the Meadowcourt which is where she had Dad had had rooms when they got married. I pictured the Meadowcourt motel in my mind. It’s a little place on Rt. 13 but it is always well kept, though it is a long way to campus. I remember a long walk through the flat lands of sad houses that looked not that different from the houses in Scranton. At eight, I had found that reassuring.

    We had ended up at the court house across with its back to a gorge that had become a stream down on Spencer Street. “This is where Anthony and I got our divorce,” RoAnn had told me. Anthony was Ivanna’s father and RoAnn’s exhusband. I thought of that courthouse now because RoAnn would be there on Monday with the Young  Achiever’s Team and Anthony would be there with the ECBAS legal team. The whole hearing would be very political. I also knew from emails that Ivanna would be there too.

    I’d be in school. We’d be starting working on library programs and patterns for the Drama Club’s One Act Extravaganza of experimental productions. According to Javonovich “this is going to be fucking hard work.”

    I thought about lighting programs, and the pictures of Ithaca faded from my mind. I wanted to pray for RoAnn and Ivanna. I wanted to pray for the drama club members. I wanted to pray for Nervy girl who really did regain her energy and who talked quietly about the teacher asking her where she was going to school for first grade. Nervy was glad she had a place picked out. Apparently, she liked the idea of staying in New York. I was not going to tell my little sibling she was being dumped. Just like RoAnn’s hearing was going to be political, Nervy’s childhood was political. All the grownups either worked for ECBAS or were involved in the political fight for Young Achiever’s. School politics mattered. Schools were the future. Schools were the way out. That was why I had books in my backpack and CD’s of songs with translations in English. School had taught Nervy and me how to learn for synagogue or anything else we wanted. Learning was worth fighting for.

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