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. And her Little Mask Went with Her

   Wednesday and Thursday I arranged the logistics for kidnapping Nervy with Larisa. Eguenia thought it quite admirable and proper the way I looked after my little sister. Larisa worried whether my stepmother would really let me take Nervy Worm all the way to Coney Island, but I insisted I had permission, so we set the trip for Sunday.

   Meanwhile, Thursday night RoAnn received an email AND a follow up call from Dr. Angelus which put her in a foul mood. “That man has no business messing around with the way I take care of you girls!” declared a very pissed off RoAnn at the dinner table where she took occasional and angry bites at a tasteless Kapor’s concoction.

   The truth be told, and according to the article about parental love gone too tough in Achieve! magazine, RoAnn’s treatment of her natural daughter, Ivanna, had just slipped a point up or down the abuse scale because poor Ivanna was now on her third week of lock down. Duration as well as severity figured into the score. RoAnn as a recipient of support was a bit of a public figure. RoAnn told Dr. Angelus where he could take his kind concern. You get the idea.

   Meanwhile, RoAnn decided to have a fight with Ivanna, and my stepsister decided for once to lose her much vaunted cool. “You won’t be able to figure out our code!” Ivanna boasted.

   “What do you mean my colleagues and I won’t. Do you have engigma code or Navajo code talkers.”

   “It’s our code and we don’t tell tools about it.”

   “Ivanna,” my stepmother explained, “a language does not spring full blown in four months.”

   “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

   “It means you have a poverty of imagination,”  I spoke up. RoAnn despises foul language.

   “It means that your war chalking is highly derivative and based on an established language. It’s actually a symbolic form of creole.”

   “It’s based on Egnlish!” snapped Ivanna.

   “No, not really.”

   “Huh..well it’s sure not French or that fucking Pashtoon you study.”

   “No, it’s based on hobo symbols, but ECBAS is a highly hierarchical organization so there are many additional symbols to make the language functional.”

   I stared at my bean with bacon soup. Nervy Worm had wanted a hot supper. Now my little sister sat and mutely watched the interchange. What was she thinking about it? At least she did not call it bickering. This was an argument, an intellectual argument when one really thought about it.

   I swallowed a spoonful of soup. Ivanna had forgotten about Mitchell who was now a Young Achiever in Milton, Pennsylvania. As a defector, there was a good chance he knew a good deal of the chalk code if chalk code in Milton, PA was the same as in New York City. With ECBAS being both centralized and hierarchical, there was a good chance that it was.

   ---

   “What time are we leaving Sunday?” Nervy asked me on Saturday night. We were eatng zucchini in red sauce along with potato salad, a relish tray, and head cheese sandwiches for Saturday night supper. Nervy had almost not eaten the zucchini. She winced when I poured it into the sauce pan. I don’t like microwaves.

   “You said it was OK when we bought it,” I reminded her.

   “Yes, but you ask the wrong questions. I mean new foods are sometimes just gross. I know you can’t accept that,” RoAnn came to the rescue.

   “No,” I answered. “I ask the right questions. The world is dull without new foods.”

   RoAnn rolled her eyes. “Nervy,” I suggested. “Sniff the zucchini, please.”

   Nervy was compliant. “How does it smell?” I asked her.

   “All right,” she said noncommittally. Suffice it to say, she tasted some of the zucchini and said it was pretty good. I heated it up and the child ate her share.

   “Some day,” RoAnn observed, “she’ll ask her daughter all the same questions you ask. That’s how it works. I never figured it out.”

   “Neophiles have our own language,” I smiled back.

   “What’s a neophile?” asked Nervy.

   “Neo means new, and phile means lover. Neophiles are people who love to try new thngs, especially new foods,” RoAnn gave a vocabulary lesson. “Sammy and Kore and most of Sammy’s family are all neophiles. Nervy is being indoctrinated into the family.”

   “It’s better than being a neophobe,” I quipped. “A neophobe is someone who is afraid to try  new foods.”

   “Neophobes’ mommies get made at them,” Nervy explained.

   “Not always,” answered RoAnn. “Some mommies understand.”

   “Yeah but you don’t understand neophiles,” Nervy finished the argument.

   RoAnn laughed.

   “So when do we have to leave tomorrow morning?” Nervy asked.

   “8:30am,” I responded. Nervy could tell time. Mom would have given her a time. Before we went to sleep that night, we both showered, and my younger sister showed me the outfit she planned to wear. Nervy usually laid her clothes out on my desk and she did it without prompting. She was one blazingly good little kid. I shrugged. The jeans and sweater seemed fine s did the undershirt that went underneath them. She had taken to wearing her summer shirts as undershirts the same way I did. It was cute to see such flattering imitation.

   “That will look pretty with the navy blue showing at the top,” I commented. Nervy had nice color sense. “I like the matching navy blue socks too. Good job.”

   “Aren’t you going to check it with the light?” asked Nervy.

   “Why?” I asked.

   “It could have stains.”

   “Oh shit,” I thought. “And you want me to sniff it too…” I asked.

   “Mom does that,” Nervy told me.

   I gave the sweater a perfunctory sniff. It smelled a bit of clothing drawer, but many sweaters smell that way. “You’re not going to be stained or stinky,” I told my younger sister. Stained and stinky was one pathetic inside joke.

   Nervy got her made to order breakfast early Sunday morning and I sipped Oolong tea. I’d gotten used to Oolon in the Turks and Caicos. I washed our dishes and we headed out into a Manhattan of still streets. Flemming, my favorite door person, was on duty. I greeted him.

   “Mr. Bihar haz been gone a long time,” Flemming said in a confidential tone.

   I shrugged. “Dad was home extra time during winter break,” I informed Flemming.

   “Are you worried?” Flemming cut to the chase.

   “No, he said he’d be gone three weeks and he’s only been gone two.”

   “And you are not afraid?”

   “No,” I confessed.

   “You are young and most young people are very brave. Tell Miz Testa I think of her.”

   “I’ll tell her that,” I said and wished my favorite door person a good day. We caught the subway downtown and made two changes. Around 10:30am we arrived in Coney Island and some time before 11am, we knocked on Larisa’s family’s apartment door.

   Larisa’s aunt had gone out shopping so we camped out in her bedroom. Larisa’s mom brought all of us tea. Nervy demonstrated her counting box and worked on her drawings. She worked on the floor with her butt in the air, little kid style. There was something cute and touching about it. I read global studies, worked math problems, and outlined an English essay.

   About 2pm, the shoppers returned and Larisa’s mother offered us cold cut sandwiches (some kind of salami) and deli salads for lunch. After lunch Larisa, Nervy, and I went for a walk. “We always have to go for a walk when we go out,” Nervy explained.

   “We have to see the beach,” I explained.to my younger sister.

   “Kore loves the beach,” Larisa further explained.

   “The beach reminds me of the Susquehanna which was the river that ran through Scranton where I grew up before I came to live in New York City,” I told a story. “You were born in Scranton.”

   “I don’t remember Scranton,” Nervy explained.

   “The ocean is where the world comes to an end,” I continued.

   “That’s not true,” Nervy protested. “The world is round,”

   “Yes, but try walking beyond the shore. The ocean is as far as you can get without a boat, and it goes all the way to Europe and Africa…and Asia. Think about that.”

   “That’s very far,” thought Nervy.

   “It’s more than you can count in your box,” I told her.

   “Let’s walk to AstroLand,” suggested Larisa who sounded bored. I hoped Nervy would hold up through the walk. Nervy had a way of finding the nearest bench and planting herself there or of whinging about her feet when she wanted to stop. Such whinging would be most unpleasant. It was kind of the price we paid for having a polite and quite studious little sibling.

   I did not tell Larisa any of this. I just started out. Nervy followed along, and I hoped for the best. Nervy stopped periodically to look around her. She hadn’t seen this much urban neighborhood or this much sky or the silvery winter sand and sea. When Nervy stopped,  we all stopped. When Nervy moved, she did so without complaint. It took us nearly an hour to find AstroLand which was half demolished.

   “Can we go there some day?” asked Nervy. “I love to go on rides and Mom never takes me!”

   “We can’t go to AstroLand,” Larisa told my younger sister. “It’s closed and they’re demolishing it. They’re wreacking all the rides.”

   “Why?” Nervy seemed genuinely hurt.

   “Because the land is valuable and they’re going to build apartments. Come on, let’s head back.”

   “I want to look more,” Nervy protested.

   “You can’t go in the park. It’s a hard hat area,” Larisa explained.

   “I just want to look,” Nervy complained.

   We stayed an extra five minutes and then went back by way of the boardwalk. I bought Nervy an orange juice and got an ice tea for Larisa and a Dr. Pepper for myself. I suggested a toast to moving under one’s own feet. “You’re a poet,” Larisa laughed. It was Nervy who was the poet, or maybe the world that Sunday was full of hidden poetry.

   On the way back on the subway, Nervy dozed. I did not wake her until we had to change trains which we did twice. I hoped we could do this again, but I knew that it would be at least two weeks, and Dad would be home by then and…there really wasn’t a very certain future, not when I thought of the locks RoAnn had put on the door to lock her own daughter into the apartment. “We’ll try and do this again,” I told Nervy. Then I congratulated her on holding up so well.

   “I’m very strong you know,” my younger sister told me.

   “You are,” I said back, and I added: “You’re a very good kid, Nervy Worm.” I love my Nervy Worm.

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