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. Innocent Shadow and Shadowy Thoughts

   Alvarez had not taken the Math A Regents because he took it last year in eighth grade and gotten a hundred. He was my height give or take a half inch in either direction and smelled faintly of scented soap, which when mixed with reasonably clean boy skin, was a good smell. I did not have Alvarez in my French class because he took Spanish. Yes, it was also his native language but not the written version.

   Like some, small bookish boys, Alvarez practiced being invisible. I had seen this with some of the Asian boys in the Computer Club. Alvarez had spent most of the fall writing Facebook applications for the Computer Club but they had switched to i-phone which Alvarez claimed was lame because it cost too much money and AT&T told New York City to drop dead over Christmas etc…..

   They kicked Alvarez on to the old computer restoration side which was how we ended up together on the loading dock behind the cafeteria loading junk delivered to us by an “angel” on to carts that Alvarez and I had borrowed from the custodial staff. Alvarez said nothing as he worked. I tried to place this boy with amazingly delicate features; huge, sloe eyes; and raven hair with body no wave or mousse could impart. Was this invisible waif in any of my classes. In another time or place, he could have wangled himself a “mental health exemption” from the dress code at the Houghton of my past and imagination. Alvarez of course had never been near the real life Houghton past or present.

   We pushed our dolly cart of computer junk back past the cafeteria. Over the cafeteria and custodial workers lockers someone had put up a sign scrawled in black marker on a piece of yellow legal pad:

   Nosotros Apoyar a los “Jóvenes Triunfadores”

   “I wish I knew what that meant,” I said.

   “You don’t know…” asked Alvarez.

   “French is my language.”

   “I thought English was.”

   “That too, and a smattering of Hebrew.”

   “Hebrew?”

   “I’m Jewish. So what does the sign say?”

   “‘We support the Young Achievers!’ What else?” Alvarez yawned or pretended too. It was an uncharacteristically flamboyant gesture for him, because I remembered him sitting still as a stone in the backrow of my Enlgish class.

   “It’s good to see we are loved,” I told Alvarez.

   He sniffed with disgust and disdain worthy of Piper or perhaps my younger brother, Kyril. Yes, Kyril was still at the Fronick’s. Dad had arrived some time after I went to bed Tuesday night. I saw him sleeping in the study/office when I got up for school Wednesday morning. That meant Kyril would probably be back in the apartment tonight and the arguments, hand wringing, and general adult whinging would begin in earnest.

   I did not want to see it. I was glad I had computer parts to deal with at school. Of course the Computer Club closet had no sharpies. I went to the art room to get a box of markers. I hoped Alvarez would come with me, but he didn’t. He sat on the floor looking over his Math B book in which he was a year ahead of me. I had just started Math B which is a year and a half course like Math A. Alvarez put down the book and glared at me when I returned.

   “OK, let’s label the boxes and then we’ll sort the stuff and we can get home,” I tried to imitate one of RoAnn’s chirps and fell flat though I could fully appreciate that chirping of this type was a necessary evil.

   Alvarez heaved himself up and took out a razor blade he kept well hidden in his back pocket like a secret status symbol. It made my dish towel wrapped Blackberry feel wimpy and overpriced by comparison. With a single, practiced movement, Alvarez slit open the top of the first box.

   We began to sort the components. There were hard drives that might or might not have been wiped. There were circuit boards that were probably totally useless, there were cables that might come in handy. You get the idea.

   “You know this shit,” sighed Alvarez.

   “My dad’s an engineer.”

   “That explains it. I wondered what an English girl was doing in here.”

   “A what?” I’m Jewish not English!

   “You and Gwendolyn from Queens go at it  in class every day like that book is the most interesting thing in the world. You’d never know it’s just a story and it’s so old it almost makes no sense.”

   “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court makes lots of sense. It’s about the naive worship of technology and how stupid it is. You think people stopped worshipping technology after the nineteenth century?”

   “I don’t know, I’d rather read about present things, or books that teach me how to do something. I don’t need fables. That’s what those are.”

   “Yeah, stories with morals can be fables,” I said.

   “Good, I’m not so stupid after all.”

   “Alvarez, you whip my ass and all my friends asses in math,” I had to explain this???

   “Yeah but when you’re good in math, people think you’re autistic or something. I just like practical things. The rest….I mean the world should by run by practical people.”

   I didn’t answer. I thought of my Dad long ago nearly getting blown up in a mine. I was ten that summer. It was before he moved to New York City and I started riding the Greyhound to go see him. I’d ridden that bus with Kyril.

   I remembered that we sometimes had a half hour layover at Lehighton. There was a diner there. Kyril hated to order stuff in restaurants. He was terribly shy about adults whom he did not know. I was hungry. I often hadn’t had lunch and I had pocket money. I went into the restuarant while my younger brother squirmed in the hot sun. I asked about the soup of the day. Usually they had some kind of lentil, pea, or bean soup. I’d order a portion in a styrofoam container and eat hot soup on the bus all the way into Manhattan while Kyril sat and starved.

   After one particular trip Memorial Day weekend of fifth grade he cussed out Dad and RoAnn. RoAnn always took the worst of it. She threatened not to talk to him. At least no one said that Kyril was testing limits, and adults could sometimes do worse.

   My Dad did practical things all over the world. He designed buildings and water purifications and helped close down mines and reclaim land nobody wanted to make the land loved again or maybe loveable. He got paid well. He was seldom home and… Somewhere out there, Star Corps which was related to ECBAS paid Dad’s fees some of the time, and anyway, Dad with all his knowledge couldn’t stop ECBAS. The rich people in Star Corps could hire all the practical folks they wanted.  The did not even have to train their kids to be scientists or engineers or doctors or even teachers. They could find those and hire them.

   The fast crowd could also hire those they needed. They’d use a calculator for their poor version of math and buy expertise. They might even get some smug adult who should know better to talk about comaprative advantage, specialization of labor, and child centered learning.

   “Practical people like us have to fight,” I told Alvarez.

   “Why?” Alvarez asked.

   “ECBAS,” I said. “You want the Fast Crowd to run everything?”

   “What’s a fast crowd?” Oh dear, sweet, innocent Alvarez!

   “It’s a bunch of popular kids at fancy schools. They run everything, all the organiztions, all the mentoring, the drama club and music, and all the younger kids have to suck up to them to get anything. Otherwise you’re just stuck and you feel lower than dirt. It’s all based on pouplarity.

   “Some grownups would call it emotional or social intelligence. These are the grownups who say it’s who you know and how you make others feel instead of what you know and what you do.”

   “But that’s bullshit!” Alvarez all but exploded.

   “It’s bullshit if you take it to extremes,” I said, “and that’s what’s going to happen if the Fast Crowd takes over.”

   “But they can’t. Everything will stop.”

   “No, they’ll hire people like my Dad and like us, pay us what they feel like and then leave us with no status and no way to feel good.”

   “I don’t need a fast crowd to make me feel good,” Alvarez half won the argument.

   “You’ve never been under a Fast Crowd’s thumb.”

   “That only happens if you let yourself get hurt?”

   “No, Alvarez. It happens if you get stuck in the wrong place. It happened to me in middle school in Houghton. Now those Fast Crowd kids are working for ECBAS, understand?”

   “Shit…” was all Alvarez could answer.

   “You can’t walk away from the past. There’s no moving on,” I answered.

   “Now I know why you like those nineteenth century books,” Alvarez sighed.

   I got home and Dad met me at the door. I wasn’t used to seeing so much of him and not sure I wanted to know if he had retrieved Kyril yet. None of my brother’s stuff was in the living room which was a good thing, but a good thing would not last.

   “Can you replenish the kitchen cupboards from the pantry?” Dad asked me as I entered.

   “You don’t even want to ask me about Computer Club?” I asked Dad.

   “Not at the moment,” Dad answered. “I just had a very difficult afternoon with a certain family in the East Fifties.”

   “The Fronicks.”

   “Yes, and now I have to make another difficult phone call with your mother. I spent twelve hours on a plane back to New York from the other side of the planet. I’m jet lagged. I find my second child is running wild and neglecting his education and no one has done squat about it.”

   “Excuse me,” complained RoAnn who poked her head out of the kitchen.

   “You did what you could Ro, but that still leaves the custodial parent. Kore, go down to the pantry. I’ll be on the phone in the study. Knock before you come in, got that?”

   I was glad to be out of the apartment and on an errand. Flemming was on duty and commented on Mr. Bihar’s return and how it must be good to have a man home. I said I didn’t care.

   “You don’t mean that Miz Kore,” asked Flemming.

   “Dad is very distracted.”

   “Your father works very hard.”

   “It’s not work that’s distracting him. It’s a family problem.”

   “Oh pleaze.”

   “You said it, Mr. Flemming. Excuse me,” I was in no mood for talk. I was back in the apartment way too soon. The door to the study/office was locked. Ivanna whinged softly in the kitchen to RoAnn. Nervy Worm was using my desk to draw, so I read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court on my bed. Nervy asked me how I read without making noise. She then asked if I wanted Kyril back.

   “Only if he stops acting ugly,” I told Nervy Worm the truth.

   At dinner that night Dad announced: “I was on the phone with my exwife, Kore and Minerva’s mother, and we both decided that Kyril would be better off with her in Herkimer County in the Adirondacks. She is getting a court order to retrieve him on Thursday and will be in New York to pick him up on Friday.”

   “Like a package,” Ivanna burst out from her place at the table.

   “More or less,” I answered. “He’s eleven and he’s living with his friends’ parents. He doesn’t have the right to a permanent sleep over.”

   “Being a kid sucks,” Ivanna concluded.

   “Being an adult isn’t that much better,” Dad assuredh is stepdaughter.

   “I like being a kid,” answered Nervy Worm.

   “That’s because you don’t care where you live,” Ivanna told my little sister.

   “You live with your mommy!” Nervy replied.

   “Yes, but I have a daddy too,” Ivanna purred.

   “Yes, but your school is here in New York,” RoAnn tried to finish the story.

   “School is everything,” sing-songed Ivanna.

   “It is during the school year,” Dad concluded.

   “Now Kyril is going to go to that terrible charter in the Adirondacks that….Miz Wolfson…is trying to start.”

   “It’s Doctor Wolfson,” I corrected Ivanna.

   RoAnn stifled an unhappy laugh.

   “You know what else she is,” Ivanna told us.

   “It’s not even a fourth grade joke,” I replied.

   “Well put,” RoAnn intervened.

   “I forget Young Achievers is a sacred cause around here,” Ivanna sniffed in disgust.

   “What has ECBAS ever done for you?” I asked my stepsister.

   “It’s fun. We get to do dance every day in school and yes, I can’t ‘abuse the priviledge,’ but it’s good while it lasts.”

   No one replied. Next year would be different for Ivanna. Next year, Nervy would probably also be shipped to Herkimer county like a package. I’d be handling long distance visiting. Buses after all ran as far as Utica with a rest top in Albany, New York.

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