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. Politically Incorrect

   The very tall and very macho boy was Mitch, not Mitchel. He heated his full name. My name is difficult to pronounce for a lot of people so I half understood. He came from a town near Harrisburg in Pennsylvania.

   He was able to dive off the eighteen foot platform which I envied. I was still only jumping. Monday afternoon my concentration was off though I practiced hard to get my form right on the three foot board. “Maybe in a day or two. You keep working it at,” Craig told me.

   I got tired of diving and swimming laps. I came in under an overhang and got out my books to study. I remembered to rub on lots of sunscreen not that I burn, but it is a big ritual here in the islands. It also made sweet Craig happy.

   Mitch watched me study. “You really are fucking doing math,” he complained.

   “What’s your problem?”  I asked him. “And why don’t you fucking leave me alone?” I thought. “Don’t you know not to disturb people. I shouldn’t have to crawl away or wait until late at night if I feel like doing something quiet and not falling behind on my school work.”

   “It’s just…I never saw anybody who cared enough. I mean back home, even the kids who are not in the movement, they’re in Young Achievers because their parents make them.”

   I could have said that I was a founding member and that made me different or that going to Brooklyn Tech made me different, but I did not want to be different, and I did not want what I was doing to be different. “My friends and I study together when we’re back home,” I told Mitch.

   Then I told Mitch about Eugenia, Chin, and Larisa. I had no idea what their social lives had been like in middle school. Larisa had been fairly lonely. Eugenia was the congenial sort and she ran track so maybe she had a better time of it. Chin never spoke about her past and I told my story if someone gave me the opportunity. It was just that hard to forget the Fast Crowd.

   “And we all know who is good in what. We compete but we also support eachother,” I finished the story.

   Mitchell shrugged. “It’s sort of the way you care about sports, and I know there are kids who say sports are…” I hesitated. “You know the word they use.”

   “It’s gay. Well I think sitting and playing stupid video games or spending your life in a mall is gay, OK. And yeah we’re not supposed to use that word,” Mitch continued. “We had the lecture because there are really kids who are that way and we want them to be able to join too, but that’s not what I mean. I mean the kids who don’t even try.”

   Mitch shook his olive skinned head. “The worst part is when you try to tell kids to do something really good like cliff dive or save up and go to the Go-Karts, you get told it’s OK to just ‘be.’ I don’t want to just ‘be.’ I want to do cool stuff. That’s why I fight with my parents and every kid in ECBAS fights with their parents, you know that…maybe you don’t.”

   I didn’t answer. I had no answers for Mitch. If I told him that ECBAS can not deliver what it promises, he would not believe me. Young Achievers can deliver but only because it promises a lot less.

   The late afternoon around the pool petered out. We drifted back to the Teen Pavillion. Parents were there to pick up teens. Other teens walked back to their parents’ or guardians villas or rooms. I wondered if in other resorts, there was this kind of lax security or did parents have to show up and sign for their kids. I sat on the steps watching everyone going. I was tired so spying kind of came naturally. I wanted to see Mitch’s parents or his hosts if he had come with another family. He had come with a very tall father who came to get him saying nothing.

   Melody’s mother was fat and with hair the color of auburn fire. Yes, it probably came out of a bottle. Like mother. Like daughter or vice versa. The two talked about food as they walked away. Klarissa stayed with a group of kids and she went to join them back at their villa. Like me, she left alone.

   I had no desire to go back to the villa and feel the petty sniping. I was going to be the last to leave or the first to arouse suspicion, but I was neither. Jared and Jaime stood on the Teen Pavillion’s Christmas light decorated porch behind me. I thought one of them was crying or at least sniffling, but it was only the boy’s breathing and shifting his feet which were bare. Jean all ready had his flip-flops on. Somewhere which felt like far away, the screen door to the inside of the Pavillion opened and then slammed carelessly shut.

   “You haven’t left for dinner yet,” said a voice I recognized as Amanda’s.

   I shrugged.

   “Want to come eat with us?” she asked everyone. Us must have been the other counselors, or at least the ones on afternoon-evening shift who needed a meal before going back to work.

   I knew where we were going. I knew it as we entered the food court. This was a desulatory way to enjoy a meal. It was my turn to break out and head for Kuo Chang’s and some dumpling or to find out where to get a bowl of goat stew.

   “I don’t want to eat here.” Amanda’s words caught me by surprise. Jersey Dom who had come with her along with Dylan, a blonde counselor with amazing shoulder length hair and the nickname Ambassador.

   “Where do you want to go?” Dylan sounded peeved.

   “Could we go to Kuo Chang?” I ask.

   “Too much MSG in that food,” answered Amanda. “Let’s go to General 2. It’s quiet there and not so  much fast food.”

   “You want salad bar?” asked Jersey Dom.

   I winced. The salad bar did not look like anything about which to write home, but then again I was spoiled by by the pound places in Manhattan. We walked an unhappy huddle of three kids and three tired counselors into the bowels of Building 5 to General Cafeteria #2. Jersey Dom complained that General Cafeteria #1 had pizza at lunch and dinner. “Yeah fake pizza,” answered Dylan with disgust. “Even you know it’s fake.”

   Jean and Jared regarded eachother. They had enough social intelligence to sense when counselors let down their guard just a little. I no longer cared. I checked the assorted bars. The salad bar was dull. There were all sorts of sandwiches and even some interesting hot entrees including Irish Stew which I got along with a side salad with lots of radishes and Thousand Island dressing and sweet gherkins and Dr. Pepper.

   Irish stew which is rare in restaurants was actually a find. I munched on the soft and tastey beef stew meat. It couldn’t be lamb for some reason as I listened to the Jared and Jean who wat some kind of fried chicken sandwiches and who wanted to complain in what felt like a safe place.

   Dylan who ate a broiled fish dinner led off the conversation by trying to make peace and lay down the law. “You can’t go back to the Ninth Dimension. You’ll just get thrown out again and not behaving here adds to your profile back home.”

   “Wouldn’t that be subtracts?” I intruded. Dylan blinked his blue eyes and me and then looked away. I disgusted him and while the other counselors would talk to me, Dylan avoided me like the plague. My guess was he was either the group’s loyalist or radical. I was not sure which.

   “It sucks either way,” complained Jean.

   “And it’s not fair,” Jared added.

   “Life isn’t fair,” answered Jersey Dom.

   “Yeah, but group is,” Jared countered. “We didn’t do anything.”

   “That’s not true,” Jean answered. “But we did what was right.”

   “What did you do?” It was Amanda who asked.

   “We called kids gay,” answered Jean. “Well…they deserved it. I don’t mean they were really homo-sex-you-al. I mean kids who act weird and who don’t care about stuff and who try to I don’t know….well those kinds of kids are the ones we call gay.”

   “You have to be careful about stuff like that,” Dylan explained.

   “Why? I know the big adult leaders came around and gave us the big lecture about how we have to be welcoming to everybody including kids who can’t help being what they are, but that’s not what we mean. Anyway, why should grownups tell us what to say or how to think. That’s not really right when you think about it?”

   I looked for green peas hiding in my stew’s gravy. I found several.

   “You have to listen to the adults because they can help you,” Dylan countered with the party line.

   “Bullshit, ever done support?” asked Jean. “It’s we kids who do all the work. Without support, the parents go after the kids and the teachers go after the kids and the whole movement dies. There’s no group without support.”

   “Jean’s right,” Jared continued. “We worked hard and we deserved a right in deciding what we should and shouldn’t say. The grownups couldn’t order us around.”

   “Now they order us and our friends all get to play at Ninth Dimension.”

   “And Club Tiqi,” Jared rubbed it in.

   “It’s not fair,” Jared continued. “It’s so pole-it-ick-ally correct too!”

   Dylan did not respond. Dominic took another bite of his food. “You guys have to shut up or you get fired. I know you can’t help me because they pay you,” Jean explained. “Jared and I are going to look out for ourselves so you don’t have to do shit. Got that?”

   “OK,” answered Amanda. “Can you find your way back to your guardians’ villa on your own after supper. I think you need to get something for that scratch on your shoulder and you need to have on clean clothes for this evening.”

   The boys glanced at one another. I reached into my purse and showed them the maps with index. “I can get you one of these in Building 4,” I offered. I was not on the payroll to any one.

   “Won’t your group get upset with you?” It was Jared who wasked.

   “Positively not,” I replied.

   “We aren’t going to become Young Achievers,” Jean reminded me.

   I just smiled. Jared said nothing, but his face was red with silent rage. He pushed his half eaten dinner into the center of the table.

   “I’m not going anywhere until I finish my food,” I reminded the boy. He gasped and slumped down. Then once again he looked as if he could cry, but to his credit, he restrained his tears.

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